Hard Road Back to Top : Rock: Dio struggles to regain popularity among the heavy metal set.

Dio, one of the most popular heavy metal groups of the 1980s, is in for a hard struggle to regain that popularity in the ‘90s.

The band’s latest album, “Lock Up the Wolves,” came out last April and died a quick death on the charts. And on Dio’s current U.S. tour, which includes an appearance Saturday night at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park, half-empty houses are not uncommon.

But hey, that’s to be expected when you suddenly come back after a prolonged absence--in rock ‘n’ roll, memories are notoriously short. In 1987, singer-songwriter Ronnie James Dio fired the band with which he had recorded five best-selling albums since 1983.

It took him nearly three years to get a new band in shape and a new album in the can. And in the meantime, well, out of sight, out of mind.

“You’ve got a pretty fickle audience out there,” Dio said. “We have a good nucleus of people who stayed with us, but we also have to recapture the ones who didn’t, and that’s going to take some time.

“I’m not in the game of thinking with my ego, so it doesn’t matter to me that we’ve gone from playing for 20,000 people to playing for 4,000 people. What matters to me is that we’re still making good, solid music, and that we have a loyal core of fans who still want to hear us.

“We simply have to go out there and recapture what we had before.”

Dio’s decision to break up his original band, he said, was prompted by his sense that the band members had lost interest.

“They just weren’t putting out anymore,” he said. “I’m very intense about what I do, and the guys in the band seemed to be merely going through the motions, bringing their lunch to work and looking at the clock, waiting to go home. And I just can’t go for that.”

Shortly after the release of 1987’s “Dream Evil” album, Dio dismissed guitarist Craig Goldie. In his subsequent search for a replacement, Dio said, he listened to upwards of 5,000 audition tapes, finally settling on Rowan Robertson, a 17-year-old Englishman.

“When he came into it, his enthusiasm and fresh approach pointed a finger at the rest of the band, who seemed to be floating after all these years of doing work together,” Dio said. “So I found the need to replace them, as well, with other musicians who had the same intensity he (Robertson) had and I still had.”

The three other new recruits were drummer Simon Wright, formerly with AC/DC; keyboardist Jens Johansson, formerly with Yngwie Malmsteen’s band, and bassist Teddy Cook.

“I view this as a brand-new band, with four new guys and one old guy--me,” Dio said. “And after a three-year layover, we’re essentially starting all over again.”

Dio, who recently turned 40, was born in New Hampshire and raised in Upstate New York. When he was 5, he began taking trumpet lessons; when he was in his teens, he formed his first rock band and soon switched to vocals.

“Everyone else tried singing and they were awful,” Dio recalled. “Then I tried and they said I was great.”

Dio’s break came in the early 1970s, when the band he was with at the time, Elf, showcased for Columbia Records. They were signed on the spot. Drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover of Deep Purple were also at the audition; they were so impressed that they offered to produce Elf’s debut album--an offer Dio readily accepted.

“Deep Purple was a band I really idolized,” Dio said. “To me, they were what classic heavy metal was all about, and to be able to work with them was really a dream come true.”

Elf subsequently cut two more albums for Deep Purple’s own Purple Records label, and opened for the heavy metal progenitors on eight world tours.

In 1975, Glover and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple to form Rainbow. They asked Dio to join them on lead vocals, and again, he said yes.

Three years and five albums later, Dio jumped ship to Black Sabbath, another veteran heavy metal group he had long idolized.

“While Deep Purple was into musical expertise, Black Sabbath was just four working-class kids from Birmingham (England) who wanted to play music,” Dio said. “They played from their hearts and their souls, and that’s really the culmination of heavy metal.”

Four years and three albums later, Dio left Black Sabbath and put together his own group. Right from the start, he said, he knew that one day, somewhere down the road, it would come to an end and he’d have to start over again.

“Being in Rainbow and then Black Sabbath, those two aspects of my musical life were really important to me,” Dio said. “I never, ever, thought any of the two were going to end; I went into each situation thinking it would last forever.

“But from both experiences, from seeing that things do stop, I learned a lesson that nothing lasts forever--only the Rolling Stones, and even they have their troubles.

“In Rainbow, it was musical differences between Ritchie and myself. I’ve always been very adamant about what I write. I don’t really like writing love songs--girl and boy, trips to the drive-in, make goo-goo eyes. I’m a serious person, and I don’t find that a very serious subject.

“And when Ritchie asked me to write songs not as steeped in medieval or Gothic lore, I blanched and said, ‘That’s not what I do,’ so we split.

“In the case of Black Sabbath, it was more of a jealousy factor. They weren’t prepared to grab their careers by the horns anymore, so I ended up doing everything myself--for them. I was the one doing all the interviews, and they got jealous.”

This lesson that “nothing lasts forever,” Dio said, stuck with him ever since, and made his decision to break up his original group--and form a new one--a lot easier.

“I just felt we needed to regroup. Dio has always been a band, and this is just one more version of the band. One version ended, and another began.”