The legendary Ronnie James Dio became one of the most important Heavy Metal vocalists of all time, especially for his work with Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his band Dio. The musician sang a lot about fantasy and mystical subjects, but curiously when he wrote many of those lyrics he wasn’t in a castle somewhere reading a novel about dragons and kings. As he revealed in an interviews with Steve Newton back in 1985 he wrote a lot of tracks where he was simply watching sports on TV.
Why Ronnie James Dio wrote song lyrics while watching sports on tv:
When asked by Steve Newton if he still wrote songs while watching sports, Dio said: “I do yeah. I do. All the albums that I’ve done I think I’ve been watching some kind of sporting event. And only because it really relaxes me. There’s no music in the background. I love athletics anyway. And it’s kind of my fantasy; I always wanted to be a great sports star. And so I’m writing about fantasy things while I’m watchin’ my fantasy. So it all works for me.”
In the same conversation the musician revealed that his favorite sport to watch was basketball but his favorite sport was Football. Dio also said that when he was on the road, he used to play some sports: “Well we toss the football around. We kick the soccer ball around. Throw a baseball around here and there.”
“But there’s just so little time. The entire day is either taken up with traveling or with soundcheck, doing the show, or speaking to people before and after. This is just a full-time occupation out there. There’s not a lot of time left for fun things,” Ronnie James Dio said.
He said he was a “real sports buff”
In a conversation with KNAC back in 2002, Dio once again talked about his love for sports, saying: “When I’m home, I’m a real sports buff. I’m usually involved with whatever sporting event is on television or whatever I can see live. I’d love to see a football game, but being I live in L.A., I can’t really do that—nor am I too happy about it. Basketball is great though.”
“I just completed another studio in my home. So that takes a lot of my time. Craig (Goldy) and Jimmy (Bain) and I will lock ourselves away for a while. So it’s music and sports. I guess that’s basically what makes Ronnie a dull boy. I’ve always felt that you only have so much time in your life to do the things you love”.
Dio widow, Wendy Dio, talked in an interview with Loudwire back in 2017 about the musician being an avid sports fan (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). “He was an avid sports fan. He wrote songs watching sports. (Watched) the New York Giants (Football).”
Dio died back in 2009 at the age of 68 victim of stomach cancer. At the time he was reunited with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice witht the Black Sabbath spin-off band Heaven & Hell.