Dan Padavona, Son of Cortland Rock Legend Ronnie James Dio Joins Bobcat for the Cortland Beat

Bobcat: X101 Always Classic DJ Bobcat here in our Centralis Health Studios in Homer with a very special guest today as we’re celebrating the birthday of Cortland music legend Ronnie James Dio. Woot woot! Happy birthday Ronnie. I got with me today the son of Ronnie James Dio, Dan Padavona. Welcome.

Dan Padavona: Thank you for having me.

Bobcat: Thanks for coming. It’s an exciting day. We happen to be here a couple days before the air date on July 10th, which is Ronnie’s actual birthday. That’s pretty cool, we can celebrate and honor him. I think he’s probably the biggest musical name ever to come out of Cortland. He’s done a lot of great stuff. We’re going to get into that, but first let’s take a minute, introduce yourself.

Dan Padavona: I’m Dan Padavona. I am the son of Ronnie James Dio, better known as Ronnie James Padavona to his friends in upstate New York. I’m an author, a retired meteorologist, and I currently live in Ithaca with my wife and we have two children.

Bobcat: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Let’s start out for those who don’t know, who was Ronnie James Dio?

Dan Padavona: Ronnie James Dio was at first a local musician in high school. He had several doowop bands and gained quite a bit of fame just locally from that. In fact, they even recorded a record called Dio at Dominoes. That just kept building and building and he eventually formed Elf with his cousin, my godfather, Rock Feinstein, Mickey Lee Soule, and Gary Driscoll. They went on to become minor stars in their own right touring with Deep Purple. Then one thing led to another and my father went from Rainbow to Black Sabbath to Dio, and became quite famous during the 1980s and 90s.

Bobcat: It’s an incredible success story. Kind of stuff like a storybook, as I was saying earlier, just to go from a local Cortland kid opening up for a band you admire, getting hired by the guitarist in the band to start being in his new band, that starts to go south, and you land a gig with Black Sabbath, post-Ozzy, big shoes to fill, crushed it, and then when that started to not work out, you start your own band, Dio, on your own terms, and some of the best music I think he made. Great success story. Let’s back up for a minute and I want to think back to your childhood. What’s one of the oldest memories you have of your dad?

Dan Padavona: He used to play me a lot of different records and I think he was introducing me to music at a very early age. I’m guessing this was probably when I was two or three years old. He played me an artist called McKenzie Springs, who since then I’ve tried to find on Spotify and Apple Music and there’s very little. But there was one particular instrumental that I really loved and he would tell me stories to that instrumental. I think that’s probably my earliest memory. It’s either that or coming home one day in our old VW bug and there was a bee, which must have been the size of Mothra, which was buzzing around the top of our house, and every time we tried to get out of the car, my mother, my father, and me, this thing would swoop down at us very aggressively. I was terrified. I went on to be stung probably a Guinness Book of World Records amount of times over my lifetime, so I think that was the beginning right there.

Bobcat: So he prepared you for future bee stings and it sounds like you prepared him for songwriting. That’s pretty cool. It was instrumental music and he made up his own stories over that when you were a kid? That’s pretty cool stuff right there. He was very much into mysticism and religions, but it looks like he almost took more of an academic approach than a full-on spiritual approach. You want to talk about that?

Dan Padavona: I think that’s true. He read a lot about old medieval times, the Renaissance periods, and a lot of that is reflected in his music. He loved fantasy. I think it is true to say he was more of an academic coming at it from that standpoint because he was atheist. He may have been spiritual, but he was certainly atheist. He made that quite clear to me a few times.

Bobcat: Nice. Good stuff. So now, Cortland kid rises to stardom, travels the world playing music, and here you are, little boy back home in Cortland. For better or worse, what was it like growing up with a rock star for a father?

Dan Padavona: I’ll be honest with you, it wasn’t very good at all. I can remember the day that my father told me, I was four years old, we’re sitting at the kitchen table on Evergreen Street where we grew up, next to Rock by the way. My father said, “Mom and I are having some issues, I’m going to go live with grandma and grandpa for a little bit.” That threw me off, not having dad in the house. But grandma and grandpa were just on the other side of town, so no big deal. Well, that turned out not to be a true story. He was moving to California. That pretty much was it. After that, I would see him maybe once a year during my childhood, and then probably a little bit less frequent than that when I got to be an adult. At that point, that was my fault as well. I had my own kids, my own job, and I just couldn’t travel anymore, so we lost a lot of valuable time there. I’ll tell you another thing too, Bob, that wasn’t easy, was growing up in high school, actually even I’ll go back as far as when I was in Junior High School at Cortland. I would be approached all the time by very popular people who were much older than me, who would want to get to know me. I knew what was up. That was pretty obvious. My father was just such a huge star at that point and it made it very difficult for me to trust anybody as to what are their intentions. I think that I was already an introvert and I became even more of an introvert. I very carefully chose my friends after that. Fortunately, I think I found the right crew eventually. But it was tough because people wanted to know you for the wrong reasons.

Bobcat: Yeah, I can see how that could be tough just by your name, not who you are and what you do. It’s like, yeah, they’re trying to get something out of you. That’s got to be tough. But those are some good stories. I appreciate you opening up a little bit because being a rock star seems awesome and great, but it comes with some drawbacks and some downsides. I’m sure your dad was bummed—I would like to think at least a little bit—that he left you behind. That’s not easy. Like I was telling you earlier, every time I go do a DJ gig, I have a hard time just leaving my kids at home for a couple of hours. It is a sacrifice that parents have to make sometimes to earn a living, but at the same time, it is tough that unfortunately the business that he was in required him to kind of—not required him to move to LA, but if you want to be a mover and shaker in the business, you got to be where the action is, and unfortunately, it’s not in Cortland.

Dan Padavona: You weren’t going to sing for Black Sabbath and live in Cortland. No, you weren’t.

Bobcat: Yeah. So, everything happens for a reason. You seem to have turned out all right. You got a good attitude, a good head on your shoulders. So, kudos to you and your mom and whoever else raised you right. And…

Dan Padavona: She did. Yes, she did.

Bobcat: Yeah, but either way, it’s pretty cool that Ronnie was able to fulfill his dream and he brought joy to millions, right? And so, even fortunately, if that’s a sacrifice he had to make to the family, he shared his gift with the world, and that is a pretty special thing.

Dan Padavona: Well, I’ll always love him, and I’ll always miss him, and I’ll always be very proud of him, too. I mean, it is… I only, on very rare occasions, come out and tell people who my father was. And part of the reason these days is because a lot of people don’t know who Ronnie James Dio is anymore. Certainly around here, that’s not so true, but he certainly isn’t the icon that he once was. But when I do, it usually gets a pretty big reaction. A lot of people from my generation certainly remember the music and still love it. And I am pleased, too, that there is a new generation of rock fans who are starting to discover him and appreciate him. Just being able to go down rabbit holes on YouTube to find the people who are doing covers of his songs, who are young, much younger than my kids, people who are learning how to sing by practicing along to his vocal tracks. I mean, I just think this is all awesome, and I hope that he continues to find a new audience.

Bobcat: Yeah, cool. A couple things you said there… I recently went down the YouTube rabbit hole, and I got to say, it’s cool to hear Ronnie James Dio speak. Even though he’s no longer with us, just hearing some of those interviews, you get to know him a little bit. He seemed very humble. Seemed like he cared about his fans a lot, cared about the music a lot, was very much into the mysticism and all this academic stuff he was singing about. It wasn’t just for show; it seemed like he lived it. So, seems like a genuine guy. You mentioned his inspiration he had on so many other artists as well. And I got to admit, as someone that grew up in the 80s, not from the Cortland area, not into metal, I didn’t really know who Ronnie James Dio was until I got into Tenacious D, and that’s when I first heard of Dio. So, it’s kind of funny the way we discover things. And then that’s a good segue. That’s why we’re here now, to tell his story. So, we appreciate you taking the time to help tell his story. And I think it’s a good segue to play a song. So, once again, we’re here with Dan Padavona, Ronnie James Dio’s son, and I want to know from you, what’s one of your favorite songs from Dio?

Dan Padavona: I would say “Tarot Woman” by the band Rainbow.

Bobcat: All right. Well, we’re going to play that one now. We’ll take a quick break, and we’ll be back. It’s “Tarot Woman” with Rainbow on X101.

(Music Track: “Tarot Woman” plays) 

Bobcat: All right, and we’re back with the Cortland Beat Podcast on X101. I forgot to mention earlier, thanks to our sponsors: Eve’s Digital and X101 for making this podcast happen. We appreciate it as we explore the past, present, and future of music here in Cortland County. And of course, today we’re talking about one of the greatest musical success stories to come out of Cortland: Ronnie James Padavona, better known as Dio. So, Dan, can you tell us a little bit about the story of the devil horns? Is it true that Ronnie said he got it from his Italian grandmother? Do you want to speak about that a little bit?

Dan Padavona: Yeah, that is absolutely true. He relayed that to me at one point as well. Here’s the thing: we really don’t know who invented it in rock. Gene Simmons was a good friend of my father, and I think they both had some fun going back and forth with “I invented it,” “you invented it.” You could probably find pictures of them both doing it very early in their careers. But there is some truth to the whole thing going back to old Italy and superstitions. Some people say it’s called the “Maloik“—it’s not actually. You’re close, though, if you think that. It’s called the mano cornuto. I’m going to apologize right now to my Italian family and friends for not even trying to get that correct. But what that gesture is, is warding off the so-called evil eye. And the evil eye is the “Maloik.” So what they would do is they would put up the “metal horns.” But it’s a little bit different, though, where it originates from. I’m not sure if my father was doing this originally, too, but in order to do it properly, when you raise the horns, you take your index finger and your pinky, and the tops bend over just slightly. So if you could imagine, if you could take it and then poke outwards, you would be going after the evil eyes which are coming at you. Which is kind of like if you ever saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that’s what Tim the Enchanter seems to be doing when they’re discussing the killer rabbit—which was my father’s favorite movie, by the way. So yeah, it’s the mano cornuto, and that is an absolutely true story.

Bobcat: Cool, yeah. God bless Italian grandmothers—I had two of them myself. And yeah, it’s funny because I used to do those metal horns for years before I even moved to the Cortland area. And when I found out that story, I’m like, “Man, that’s so cool.” It was just like, “This is the place for me to be.”

Dan Padavona: He also said in an interview, probably about 10 or 15 years prior to his death, that it was something along the lines of, “Yeah, we were the first ones to do it, but when you look at pop artists now and you see Britney Spears on stage raising the devil horns, it’s probably lost all meaning by now.”

Bobcat: Yeah, yeah. And the other cool thing—I mean, you kind of touched on this a little bit—I went back and did some research on some YouTube videos, and you hear Ronnie just straight up saying, “I never claimed to have invented it, I just think maybe I popularized it, made it more fashionable.” People have done it for a long time, like the Italians. So I think that’s cool. Now you know the story of the devil horns, the metal horns, whatever you want to call it. And speaking of stories, what is one of, or you can tell us a couple of, your favorite stories that your dad has ever directly told you?

Dan Padavona: Yeah, so my father dealt with a lot of criticism. If you think that the religious right is strong these days, you should have seen it back in the ’80s. Between the televangelists and just all the crazies out there, they were always trying to ban this in rock and roll and that in rock and roll. And one of the things they wanted to ban was my father, especially when he came out with the album Holy Diver and it had this devil-looking creature on the front, which was flailing what appeared to be a minister or a priest who was drowning in a sea. I know that even some people I knew around town, who liked my father’s music, kind of took a little offense to that. Me, I grew up on metal and punk, so it was all cool to me; that didn’t bother me. But I kind of grilled him about it once, maybe several years after Holy Diver came out. I think he was actually saying, “I don’t like how I get portrayed, I don’t like how our band gets portrayed as being like these devil worshippers or something—we certainly aren’t.” And I said, “But your album cover—just why, if you don’t want to be portrayed like that, why is that your album cover? Why is the devil, or a devil-like creature, destroying a priest on your record?” And he said, “How do you know that that creature is a demon or a devil and not a force of good? And how do you know that that priest is a force of good and not a force of evil?” This was before all of the scandals hit the Catholic Church. So I found that that was kind of preemptive to what would eventually come into our reality as what was going on behind the scenes in some of these churches. I know that that made me look at it very differently after that. As I said at the onset, my father was an atheist, so by that definition, he’s not going to worship the devil. But yeah, that was a really interesting story, and I only tell that also to people who know that music and grew up in that era, because I think that they wonder as well.

Bobcat: Yeah, that’s a pretty cool story. Well, I mean, and it makes you think, when you think about album art, it’s just that, right? It’s art. Art is—some people say it shouldn’t be graded or judged. It’s about how everyone looks at a piece of art and feels differently about it, and that’s what art is supposed to do.

Dan Padavona: But why do we judge musicians differently, though? It’s like if the makers of The Exorcist—do we now go back and say, “Well, they were obviously devil worshippers because they made a movie about devil worshipping”? Which was based on the book, so was William Peter Blatty a devil worshipper as an author? And of course those things aren’t true. It’s just a story which is meant to entertain us. Well, this is just music, which is meant to entertain us.

Bobcat: Yeah, it makes me think of people that criticize The Daily Show for their journalism. It’s a comedy show.

Dan Padavona: Oh, sure. Yeah, it’s a comedy show.

Bobcat: So, yeah, I agree. Music, it’s art and shouldn’t really be judged that way. But the other point I was going to make to that story, it seems like Ronnie really was thinking about this stuff. If you have to ask, you’re not asking the right questions, right? Because that’s just a preconceived notion that you have—because that looks like something you might have associated with the satanic in the past. But the art doesn’t have any feelings or emotions, so it’s up to the person viewing it. They’re making those judgments on their own. It’s a really interesting way to look at it.

Dan Padavona: I don’t have an opportunity to go back and ask him again about it. I think the next question should have been: “Did you do it to make a statement, or did you do it to get a reaction?”

Bobcat: Yeah, or did they just need to put something on the album cover and that was the first thing they came up with? It could be anything. So, yeah. Any other stories you want to share?

Dan Padavona: That was by far my favorite, but we used to argue about Green Day a lot. Because I grew up with what I consider to be real punk, and Green Day to me was never punk. It was just kind of pop with sneering. So my father, he really appreciated them as musicians, unlike a lot of punk artists who he didn’t appreciate. So he would argue with me and say, “No, they’re not only a great punk band, they’re one of the greatest punk bands ever.” And I think one day I finally lost it with him, and I said, “You know something, Dad? You ever notice how punk artists are angry about something? They’re angry about politics, or they’re angry about religion, or they’re angry about this.”

And he goes, “Yeah, yeah.”

I said, “You know what Green Day’s only been angry about?”

And he says, “What?”

I said, “That nobody else considers them to be a punk band.”

Bobcat: That’s pretty funny. So speaking of other bands, do you have any favorite local bands or current metal bands that you like?

Dan Padavona: Yeah, sure. My favorite local band was Creeper, but they went away, unfortunately, quite a while ago. They were by far my favorite local band. Now I really like Perilous a lot. I grew up on the Ramones and Joan Jett and stuff like that, so if you dig that type of music, then Perilous is totally a godsend for you. And on a national or world view, I’m way too old to have a favorite band at my age. I’m about to turn 58, but I’m just going to flat-out say that Ghost is my favorite band, and has been for quite a few years now. I just absolutely love that band. I think if you took ’80s poppy alternative and merged it with Iron Maiden, you’d have Ghost, and those are two of my favorites, so it makes sense that I would like them.

Bobcat: Nice, cool. Good stuff. Any last-minute things you want the people to know?

Dan Padavona: No, I think that if you haven’t heard Dio, go back and listen. And even if it isn’t your style of music—maybe you’re not a metalhead, or you like the modern stuff more—listen to the vocals and really appreciate it. He is certainly, inarguably, one of the top three rock singers of all time. I know some people say he’s the best. I don’t care to argue stuff like that or even claim that he was, but he’s in the top three for metal, there’s no question. And his longevity, too, is just absolutely insane, that he went from Elf all the way through the late days of Dio and was singing right up until the last year before his death. So I think that that’s one way to look at it. And also, if you’re a musician from more of a classical or horns background, consider the fact that he considers his vocal training to all come from playing the trumpet when he was a kid. And before he became a “rock star” with Elf, he was asked to be in Dick Clark’s American Bandstand band as a trumpet player.

Bobcat: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Dan Padavona: So he was a huge, huge deal as a trumpet player. And how they knew about him, I don’t know, but that would probably be an interesting story, too, if anybody can tell me.

Bobcat: Yeah, cool stuff. All right, well there you have it. We’re going to play one last song on our way out. So do you have a second favorite Dio song?

Dan Padavona: Yeah, “Heaven and Hell,” Black Sabbath.

Bobcat: All right, great tune, great choice. Dan, thanks for joining us, we appreciate it.

Dan Padavona: Thank you so much, Bobcat.

Bobcat: Dan Padavona. Do you want to plug your books real quick?

Dan Padavona: Yeah, so I write thrillers. I write crime thrillers, and they’re actually based in the Finger Lakes. I’m blessed they’ve done really well. I’ve had several top 100 books on Amazon. It’s strange, though, that people in the Finger Lakes don’t read them—they’re not aware—but that’s starting to change. I’m starting to get the word out. So if you live in the Finger Lakes area and you want to read a creepy thriller about places where you live, check it out. My first book is called Her Last Breath.

Bobcat: Nice, cool. Well, thanks, Dan, we appreciate it. Yeah, if you like reading, go check out a local author, son of Ronnie James Dio and all-around good guy, Dan Padavona. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you again to X101 and Eve’s Digital for sponsoring the podcast. Thank you all for listening. That’s all we got for today, but we’re going to send you home with some “Heaven and Hell” by Black Sabbath on the Cortland Beat. Until next time, this is DJ Bobcat signing off. Peace out.

(Music Track: “Heaven and Hell” plays)