Wendy Dio Releases Rainbow In The Dark

<p><br></p>RAINBOW IN THE DARK: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Ronnie James Dio with Mick Wall and Wendy Dio is the long-awaited autobiography from heavy metal music icon Ronnie James Dio, the powerhouse voice of Elf, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his longtime bespoke band DIO, will be published on July 27 by Permuted Press in the U.S. and Canada and Constable in the U.K. Co-written with British music journalist Mick Wall and Dio's widow and long-time manager Wendy Dio, RAINBOW IN THE DARK: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY is now available for pre-order. For actor and musician Jack Black, in whose 2006 film Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny Ronnie played a pivotal cameo role, Dio was "the Pavarotti of heavy metal." When Ronnie James Dio lost his valiant battle with gastric cancer in 2010, Chuck Klosterman, the author of Fargo Rock City, told Rolling Stone. "Anybody who tries to caricature heavy metal singing is really just doing an imitation of what Dio did naturally. His cultural influence is vast." Ronnie James Dio had begun writing the manuscript several years before being diagnosed with cancer. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and raised in an Italian-American family in the upstate New York town of Cortland, his journey to international fame was hardly pre-ordained. He first began playing trumpet and then guitar and bass in local bands at parties, bars and clubs while still in high school, surviving lifechanging setbacks--among them the loss of his bandmate and best friend in a car accident that put his own life in jeopardy. These events only made him more focused and determined to succeed. He documents how he evolved from sideman into singer and frontman to not one, but three, internationally-renowned multi-Platinum-selling bands, playing on the world's most hallowed stages, among them London's Hammersmith Odeon, Tokyo's Budokan, The Forum in his ultimate hometown of Los Angeles, and the arena that represented, for him, the pinnacle of success-New York's Madison Square Garden, where this book begins and ends.