|
This article originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Bazooka Magazine.
The hard rock/heavy metal genre of music has always been closely associated with fantasy--Led Zeppelin recorded numerous songs about Lord of the Rings, Yngwie Malmsteen can't go 10 minutes without mentioning Vikings, and metal album covers are full of dragons, demons, and big oily guys with swords. During the month of May, the metal/fantasy community lost two of its all-time greats: Ronnie James Dio and Frank Frazetta. Comic book artist Tony Moore (Battle Pope, The Walking Dead, Fear Agent) said it best in his Twitter feed: "Jeez. First Frazetta and now Dio. I feel like I should be involved with some kinda memorial D&D campaign or something."
Frank Frazetta started doing comic book art in the late 40s, drawing for companies like EC and Prize as well as working on the Lil' Abner and Flash Gordon daily strips. From there he branched out to book covers, creating some of the world's best-known images of characters like Conan the Barbarian, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan. He also worked with Ralph Bakshi on the animated feature Fire and Ice, provided art for a number of movie posters, and did album covers for bands like Molly Hatchet and Nazareth. One of Frazetta's best-known works is "The Death Dealer," who appeared on the cover Molly Hatchet's first album. The dark, brooding, axe-wielding black knight from this piece exuded such wall of sheer bad-assness that Glen Danzig started his own comic book company just so he could write a comic about the character. In recent years, Image comic followed Danzig's example, publishing a number of comics based on Frazetta's work (a couple of them by Kentucky artist and writer Mark Kidwell). Frank died of a stroke on May 10, and I'm going to assume that numerous demons and devils are hoping he goes to hell so that they can finally get some properly atmospheric portraits of themselves.
Ronnie James Dio was a musician all his life, but his first real break came in 1969 when his band Elf toured with Deep Purple. When Ritchie Blackmore left Purple, he recruited Dio to be part of his new band, Rainbow. Dio recorded 3 albums with Rainbow before moving on, and in 1979 he was tapped to fill Ozzy's heavy boots of lead as the lead singer of Black Sabbath. After reviving Sabbath to the point where Tony Iommi could continue to beat the band like a dead horse for years to come, Dio formed his own band, which he just called "Dio," because by that point that name said it all. By the time metal hit its high point in the mid-80s, Dio was such a badass that he could release a song with the word "rainbow" in the title without a single metalhead making a snide comment or cracking a smile. In addition to rocking off faces, Dio is usually given credit for popularizing the "devil's head" metal salute, was inducted into the Rock Walk of Fame in 2007, and had a brief cameo as the rock god Dio in Tenacious D and The Pick of Destiny. Ronnie James Dio died of stomach cancer on May 16. The Westboro Baptist Church has (unsurprisingly) announced that they will boycott Dio's memorial service on May 30th. I suspect he would consider that a compliment.
|
