Dio – “Rock ‘n’ Roll Children” (video)
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The mention of Dio’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Children” in yesterday’s Sinister Realm interview led me to see if that song had a video. (For catching cultural Hail Marys, YouTube is unrivaled.) Sure enough, it did. For four and a half minutes, I was lost in the ’80s, when music videos made on five-digit budgets aired on MTV only once. I must not have sneaked out of bed to catch this video the night it was aired; I’ll take this second chance to wear my metal pajamas.
The video is very much of its time. The styling, the wardrobe, the sets – it’s hard to describe to someone unfamiliar with the ’80s, but this film set, from the props to the Expressionist-yet-soft lighting, is THE ’80s film set. Any number of movies come to mind: The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, The Goonies, Gremlins. Children are prominent characters in these films, but they encounter adult situations. This video does likewise.
Thematically, it fits the ’80s narrative of losing innocence (see, e.g., movies set in high school, Bryan Adam’s “Summer of ‘69″, Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence” placed squarely at the end of the ’80s). It’s not a straight read of the lyrics, which say that the two kids in question are “paper and fire, angel and liar, the devil of one another”. In the produced-for-mass-consumption video, they’re just teenage lovers. This works, since the video adds another element, that of the big, bad “real world”. (The trope of “rock ‘n’ roll vs. the squares” is a timeless one.)
So the video isn’t innovative, and the music is standard ’80s pop metal. But the combination of the two is powerful. Admittedly, it may only appeal to people who grew up then. Kids now encounter music under far different conditions. It’s not scarce, it’s often visually bereft (contrast MP3s with full-on ’80s presentations of vinyl and videos), and as fans increasingly segregate themselves into subgenres, music is often a destination, not a doorway. These aren’t necessarily bad things, but the sensibility might not be there now to appreciate what might seem like pure cheese.
Musically, this song might be cheesy (the keyboards, geez). But its expression as a video is serious and fulfilling for me. Dio repeating “Rock ‘n’ roll children” like a mantra – 11 times, I think – each time appending a descriptor: “alone again”, “without a friend”, “children of the night”. By jove, Dio was talking about me. I truly was a rock ‘n’ roll child. It was what I lived for when I came home from school, what I stuffed in my ears for hours each night. Like the video, my rock ‘n’ roll obsession got me in trouble with authority figures. It wasn’t a smart obsession, and I’m still recovering from it decades later. But it was who I was.
Dio recognized rock ‘n’ roll’s power to define identities. Out of 15 songs on his 2005 live album Evil or Divine, three were about rock – and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Children” wasn’t on the set list. He did not differentiate between metal and rock. Since he predated metal, likely he saw it as existing on rock’s continuum. At the end of the day, such terminology is academic. Does the sound reach you? Do the images stay with you? Are you a different (and hopefully better) person afterwards? For me with this video: yes, yes, and yes.
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Being redundant, I thing this is a cult classic
Great writing here!!! this blog is the best!
You’re right that Dio as a performer predates metal, but I think there’s something important to explore about his continued use of the word “rock” or “rock ‘n’ roll” in those years when he was also clearly being marketed as a metal performer. Obviously “If You Don’t Like Rock ‘n’ Roll” from the first Rainbow album is an updated throwback to the mid-60s (a la Aerosmith), but there’s something about Dio, in his mid-40s in the mid-80s, singing about rock ‘n’ roll that seems deliberately archaic. Part of what made metal “metal” in the 80s was its often self-conscious embrace of that term: that it wasn’t “rock ‘n’ roll” or “punk” or anything else. And, in every other way Dio was metal (the dragons, the guitar solos, the arenas) except when he sang about rock ‘n’ roll. Interesting, is all I can say for now.
I think Matt A answered your inquiry below. In all phases of his career, Dio was a showman, and calling things “rock ‘n’ roll” was acknowledgment of that. I’m not sure about calling him “deliberately archaic”; his music definitely moved with the times, at least up until the late ’80s.
Without a doubt Dio moved with the times. He was quite conscious of the need to stay current. Still, he had a very successful career as a band leader (and quasi teen-angel) in the 60s, when it really was called “rock ‘n’ roll” and you really were supposed to put on a “show” (as Matt A pointed out). That’s why Dio is so fascinating to me: he carries those formalities into the 80s, when they really were somewhat archaic, and he doesn’t hide them away the way he *completely* hid away the music he wrote in the 60s. As I said, just interesting to think about…
I can’t think of any big songs by the biggest metal bands of this era that overtly reference heavy metal. I don’t think Priest had songs about heavy metal music until Ram it Down, did they? Ozzy, Scorpions and AC/DC sang about rock’n'roll, Maiden sang about films and fantasy books…I guess there’s Quiet Riot-Metal Health, and Accept-Metal Heart… Generally I think that having lyrics about metal was for younger/more underdog-like bands like Metallica and MANOWAR and Kick Axe and Nasty Savage and Holocaust and Heavy Load and….:D
The blog won’t let me reply below your comment Matt…
“Heavy Metal Love” was a minor hit for…whoever it was. “Metal Gods” approached heavy metal sort of the way “Rock ‘n’ Roll Children” approached rock ‘n’ roll. You’re right that all those songs about thrash metal in early Anthrax and Metallica were very self-conscious, but they were also statements that *their* version of metal was the true one. (Steve Waksman’s punk-metal book has a great chapter about the NWOBHM’s tussles over the “metal” label.)
Sometimes the pop metal world claimed the mantle of metal for itself and sometimes it didn’t, depending on who was doing the marketing that week. No one in the 1970s did (I’d be happy to be proved wrong about that) although journalists tossed the metal label around pretty loosely, and I don’t think Dio ever sang about “metal” or “heavy metal” did he? Once he got to Black Sabbath he wrote about dragons and the dark and the sea (but not the ocean, an important distinction), but if he sang about music it was always “rock ‘n’ roll” or the generic “rock”.
Wait, is this song basically the metal version of John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane”? haha
Or Johnny and Gina from “Livin’ on a Prayer”?
SOrry, one more thing. I don’t understand the video now that I’ve seen it. So the dream world is their nightmare? With the jocks, and the parents, and the mean teacher, but real life, after RJD frees them from the cabinet, is better? Their parents in the real world are…what…cool? Usually metal is escapist in that the kids should escape mean parents by going into the cabinet where RJD (a la Poison) is onstage rockin’ out. So what’s happening with this video? It seems backwards to me…
one thing that I love about Dio is his intense, sincere commitment to being a professional entertainer. Underground metal is so deeply alienated from the “show business” paradigm, but Dio’s work commands respect, and it came about by his real personal investment into that business structure and set of aesthetic formalities. Reminds me of a certain optimistic minded band with the initials H.S.
dio definitely tapped into something more universal than “hey look at this cheesy video”, even for those of us who grew up after his heyday. i certainly wouldn’t underestimate his impact as a touchstone for metalheads of all ages. the first rainbow album came out 10 years before i was born and “catch the rainbow” still gets me every time
The “Bang!” hasn’t become less funny with time.
+1