True Indie by Don Coscarelli

Author:Don Coscarelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

THE LAST IN LINE

Back in Los Angeles, counting the days until her due date, Shelley and I awaited the arrival of our first child. In the interim, I had heard nothing from De Laurentiis.

I received a mysterious invitation to a meeting over at Warner Bros. Records about directing a music video. The producers who greeted me there were two earnest young women, Francie Moore and Leslie Libman. They escorted me in to meet the Warner’s executive in charge, Jeff Ayeroff. I learned that these three bright and intelligent people had been assigned to supervise the creation of a music video for one of the label’s big-selling acts. The band was Dio, fronted by one of the most powerful vocalists in heavy metal, Ronnie James Dio.

Ronnie James’s metal cred was impeccable. He had replaced Ozzie Osbourne in Black Sabbath; after that, he teamed up with guitar god Ritchie Blackmore in founding their band Rainbow. His new Dio band had previously released Holy Diver, a platinum-selling record, and now were looking for a director for the video of the title song of his new album. Ronnie James liked Phantasm and thus I was there.

Ayeroff popped a cassette of the song into his deck and we listened to it. “The Last in Line” was a damn good metal song. It had a soulful intro and then kicked into a hard edge on the strength of Ronnie James’s vocal. It had a kickass guitar solo and lyrics of which I had absolutely no clue as to their meaning. Jeff told me he had a basic concept for the video: a teen falls down into hell. He then asked what would hell be like from a teen’s point of view. I genuinely liked Dio’s song and this project sounded interesting, so the next step was a meeting with Mr. Ronnie James Dio.

Ronnie was a legend who invented the heavy metal “sign of the horns,” formed by extending the index finger and pinky while holding the middle and ring fingers down by the thumb. Dio’s invention became the symbolic signal for hard rockers everywhere that is now so ubiquitous. The story goes that Ozzie used to flash the peace symbol onstage at Black Sabbath concerts; when Ronnie replaced him he wanted to honor but not copy his predecessor. Dio started flashing the sign of the horns, which he claimed his grandmother from southern Italy taught him could be used to ward off the evil eye. In person Ronnie was a supercool guy and did not affect a rock star swagger, although he never did dress in anything but jet-black.

Though born with an outsized voice, in person Ronnie James was a full foot shorter than I was. Ronnie quickly started describing to me what he was looking for in this video. He had a specific Dio philosophy in regard to the lyrics of the song and he tried to explain it to me. He told me that from birth we are all trapped in one long line, an immense line, that stretches from the day we are born until the day we die.

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