Dio 'Best-Of' In Stores Tuesday

10/02/2000 3:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(10/2/00, 3 p.m. ET) - The early solo career of heavy rocker Ronnie James Dio is celebrated with tomorrow's (October 3) release of The Very Beast Of Dio, a 16-song collection culled from the diminutive singer's work between 1983 and 1994.

Dio rose to fame during the '70s, first as the singer for the group Elf and then as the frontman for Blackmore's Rainbow, the group founded by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in 1975 after he left Deep Purple. Dio was also Ozzy Osbourne's replacement in Black Sabbath from 1979 to 1982 before launching his solo career with 1983's Holy Diver.

The Very Beast Of Dio draws tracks from his seven releases for Warner Brothers and Reprise, with a track list that includes: "Stand Up And Shout," "Holy Diver," "Rainbow In The Dark," "Straight Through The Heart," "We Rock," "The Last In Line," "Mystery," "King Of Rock And Roll," "Sacred Heart," "Hungry For Heaven," "Rock 'N' Roll Children," a live version of Rainbow's "Man On The Silver Mountain," "Dream Evil," "I Could Have Been A Dreamer," "Lock Up The Wolves," and "Strange Highways."

This year, Dio formed a new solo band and released a new album, Magica, and he's working on an autobiography.

Dio is known for his relentless touring schedule and his dedication to giving back to his fans with huge concert extravaganzas. He told LAUNCH that the money he made from album sales and ticket sales went back into the stage set.

" You have a choice [of] what to do with that money," he said. "If you're playing 20,000-seaters five nights a week, you're making a lot of bucks. What do you do with it? Well, most people took it and put it in the bank or put it up their noses or put it in their veins or put it in their livers and kidneys-- absolutely the wrong thing to do. But that's what their choices were. My choice was to give it back to the people again, to create these big shows, to allow them to spend the same amount of money but yet have that incredible escape for a couple of hours, to be able to go, 'Whoa, you know what I saw? I saw a dragon. It was unbelievable.'"

-- Darren Davis, New York, and Gary Graff, Detroit

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