Ritchie Blackmore’s opinion on Ronnie James Dio

During his successful and influential career as a fundamental member of Deep Purple and his own band Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore had the chance to work with some of the greatest singers of all time. One of them was the late Ronnie James Dio, who first achieved fame as the vocalist of Rainbow on their first three albums. Throughout his career, Blackmore has given his opinion on all the singers who worked with him, including Dio.

What is Ritchie Blackmore’s opinion on Ronnie James Dio

Although their friendship had its ups and downs, Ritchie Blackmore loves Ronnie and was a big admirer of him as a singer. He had the chance to make up with the musician before he died.  “Oh yeah (I made up with Dio before he died), years before. I went into the Rainbow Bar & Grill in Hollywood.”

“Wendy Dio (wife and manager) was there and she said ‘Why don’t you come and say hello to Ronnie?’ I said: ‘I will, but isn’t he upset about the situation?’ She said: ‘No, not at all!’ So I went and sat with him and we talked like old days,” Ritchie Blackmore said during a livestream in 2026 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). He had already paid tribute to Ronnie after his death in 2010, saying: “Ronnie had a unique and wonderful voice. He will be sadly missed in the Rock and Roll world.”

A few years before Ronnie’s passing, Ritchie Blackmore recalled in an interview the making of the classic Rainbow song “Stargazer”, which had important contributions by the singer. He recalled that he could write good riffs, something vocalists usually can’t and called him a legend.  “(In ‘Stargazer’) Ronnie delivered very well. (He) wrote the middle part of that, which is very unusual for a singer to write, the part which goes up, he actually got the keyboard player to play something he heard in his head, which I thought it was brilliant.”

He continued:

“Normally, singers don’t write riffs but he had good ideas with riffs. He has an incredible sense of humor, he’s probably one of the only guys who can make me laugh. He is a very good host, if you go around his house for dinner he fusses all over you. ‘Would like this? Would like that?’ He’s got his little slippers on and ‘What about this? What about that?’ He makes you feel at home. I’ve seen the other side of Ronnie, (he) could be like a monster if someone bothers him the wrong way. But yeah, he’s definitely a legend,” he said in an interview available on his Youtube channel (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Ritchie Blackmore believes they probably wouldn’t have worked together even if Dio had lived longer

Blackmore reformed Rainbow for a few years during the past decade touring with a new line-up with Ronnie Romero on vocals. At the time he was asked if he was disappointed that he couldn’t invite Dio for this reunion. He said that he wasn’t before he believed that they probably wouldn’t have worked together again.

“I hate to say it, but no, I wasn’t. I’d finished with Ronnie a long time ago. We kept in touch now and again but I went on to other things and he was in other things. We kept it very convivial and that, but I think neither one of us really wanted to get back together. He’s a strong alpha male, and so am I. He wanted to go one way, I wanted to go the other,” he told Newsweek in 2017.

A few decades earlier, Dio was asked why he never rejoined Rainbow because he and Ritchie were making different kinds of music. In Dio’s view, he liked to experiment while Ritchie, according to him, stuck to the same kind of songwriting.It was their different songwriting directions for the band that eventually led Dio to leave in the ’70s.

He said:

“We don’t make the same kind of music. I am an experimenter, I like to try different things. I think this album (“Angry Machines” – 1996) will show that. This is a very different album for us, a much more modern album than the other things we’ve done before. But Ritchie continuously seems to make the same album to me. Seems to be searching for what he had when he let go the best thing that he probably ever had. That was the first band with Jimmy (Bain) and myself, or Bob Daisley, Cozy Powell and Tony Carey.”

“He seems to be continually trying to make that same kind of music and I’m not having a go at Ritchie for it. Good for him, whatever he wants to do he needs to do. But for my own sake, I need the experiment. I need to take steps forward and not just take steps backward or to remain in place. So I don’t think it ever could possibly work. You know, I never close the door to it, there’s always the chance that something like that could happen.”

Ronnie James Dio continued:

“In fact we are doing some shows together in America in November, with Rainbow and Dio. So if that means anything at all, it means that Ritchie and I don’t hate each other. I never have hated Ritchie and I know he’s never hated me. We’ve always had nothing but good things or nothing at all to say about each other. There’s never been a problem.”

(…) Again, I try to be an innovator as much as I can within the traditional bounds that the kind of Heavy Metal I make has allowed me. Ritchie has not taken those steps forward, so I could never see myself going back to do that again. I just don’t want to rewrite ‘Rainbow Rising” or ‘Long Live Rock N’ Roll’.”

“But as I say I will not close the door if Ritchie was willing to make some changes and the circumstances were right I perhaps might consider it but at this particular point I’m never going to find a band as good as or a guitar player (Tracy G) as good as the one I’m playing now, or one that makes me happier, that’s for sure,” Ronnie James Dio told Metal Express in 1996 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).