What can The Dominator tell us about the fading star of celebrity? Not much, we’d imagine. By the early ’90s, he’d lost the ability to speak. That was the official story, anyway. His ex-wives thought it was a ploy to avoid unpleasant questions—from journalists, ostensibly, but most likely from the ex-wives themselves. He put himself to pasture a long time ago, they’d say. “How far the great have fallen,” and other such well-worn platitudes typical of the speaker’s own fleeting devotion. But they had a point.
As heavy metal heroes go, you couldn’t get much heavier or heroic than Valdas “The Dominator” Paskas. In his prime, he stood 6-foot-7 and weighed 375 pounds. As a teenager in his native Lithuania, he reportedly punched out a mountain lion and then impregnated the beast as it lay unconscious. (To this day, rumors persist of a half-man/half-lion terrorizing weary travelers in the hills near the Belarus border.) As the lead singer for Face Violator, he was an intimidating stage presence, wearing thick industrial chains across his chest in the He-Man style and often hoisting guitarist Ricky “Pete” Damone and bassist Ron Rager onto his shoulders while taunting the audience with horrifying promises of a “severe backdoor delivery.” Toward the end of Face Violator’s career, it was widely reported that The Dominator had attempted to “Burton” Rager by threatening to push the band’s touring van (they hadn’t traveled in a bus for years) onto the bassist at a gas station somewhere near El Paso. No one present doubted he could do it.
Face Violator got their first break opening for Grand Funk in 1975, on that band’s decidedly bloated All The Girls In The World Beware!!! tour. To audiences across America, it was an obvious mismatch. Grand Funk’s waning “Some Kind Of Wonderful” mid-period performances were decidedly ineffectual after Face Violator’s delirious proto-grind had punished them so thoroughly. As The Dominator himself later pointed out, Face Violator had made Grand Funk look like “a buncha weepy teenage split-tails."
The band enjoyed steady popularity in the UK throughout the late ’70s and early ’80s, playing alongside the likes of Motörhead, Venom, Diamond Head and Tygers Of Pan Tang. In 1981, the editors at Sounds tried to arrange a charity boxing match between The Dominator and Samson drummer Barry “Thunderstick” Purkis, but it fell through when The Dominator attacked three constables during a race riot in South London and subsequently spent three nights in a Brixton jail.
In early ’84, Face Violator famously opened for Sabbath on the Born Again tour, which was more or less the beginning of the end. After joining Sabbath onstage for “Zero The Hero” in Cardiff, The Dominator had words with Ian Gillian backstage and reportedly told the former Deep Purple lung-smith to “huff my sweaty bag, fat boy.” Face Violator were unceremoniously booted off the tour and replaced by Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi’s then-girlfriend, Lita Ford.
Face Violator broke up in early ’87, after The Dominator caught Damone and Rager in bed together. (They refused to let him join in.) Ruined by the scandal, the duo never worked again. Though clearly deteriorated in the eyes of the public, The Dominator remained viable. As his contemporaries were busy drinking and whoring themselves to death, he did squat-thrusts at the Y and quietly plotted his revenge. Later that year, he landed a bit part as an SS officer in Roger Corman’s little-seen Nazi boot-camp flick, Iron Youth. (As Corman tells it, The Dominator demanded that his costume be made by the originalmanufacturers of SS uniforms, Hugo Boss.)The Dominator’s first solo album, Painful Insertion (1987), was bolstered by the modest hit, “I’m Gonna Make You My Reverse Cowgirl,” though many claim the songs were actually written by then-Whitesnake guitarist John Sykes, who still turns pale(r) when he hears The Dominator’s name.
By ’89, The Dominator’s mental state had become increasingly unstable. Some said it was dementia, others claimed a bipolar disorder was exacerbating his already semi-acute Frotteurism. Whatever his affliction, he was clearly out of step with the fans’ prevailing tastes. His second solo album, China Sideways, was greeted with the kind of enthusiasm that usually accompanies a particularly noxious dog fart, and The Dominator quickly went to seed. He ballooned to 500 pounds and cultivated an extensive chin collection before fleeing to Southeast Asia, where whisperings of drug abuse and Thai pool boys persist to this day.
When contacted via email for comment on his activities of the last 20 years, The Dominator simply replied, “What’s Decibel?”
This bullshit originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of Decibel magazine.
I'm of Italian-American heritage and my grandmother used it to ward off the evil eye or to give the evil eye to someone who was messing with her grandchild. --Ronnie James Dio, on why he can't stop throwing the fucking goat.
Question: If you put all the current and ex-members of Black Sabbath in a steel cage and made them fight to the death, who would live? Answer: Tony Iommi
Question: What if Ronnie James Dio could somehow transmogrify into that red-eyed devil beast swinging the huge chain on the cover of Holy Diver and pretending not to jack off outside the bedroom window on the cover of Dream Evil? Then who'd win? Answer: Dio. Look out! He's evil but he's pretty. You can feel his heart but you know he's mean. I'm pretty sure he's the Man On The Silver Mountain (you know that one is autobiographical, right?), and he's definitely got a fucking song called "Overlove."
Say it like you fucking mean it, already: Ronnie Jamesah! Now show me your cigarette lighters. Oh, wait... wrong dude. Woops.
RJD is the love-gun pumping, goat-throwing, horn-tossing, garden-gnome-battling King Of Heavy Metal and if anybody says any different, I will fight you. Not in a steel cage--or to the death, or whatever--but I'll definitely slap you around a little and maybe give you a good talking to. Just so you know who's boss. And I'm not talking about me, either. I'm not the boss, dude. RJD is the fucking boss. So Bruce Springsteen can feel free to suck it. Question: Who is the only person in the entire universe to play in bands with members of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Foreigner, Whitesnake, Sweet Savage and Def Leppard? Answer: Dio. Sensing a pattern here?
Any pop psychology assessment of RJD will inevitably include the words "Napoleon" and "complex," but you gotta figure the dude has a sense of humor about his size: The first band he was in was called Elf. Besides, when there's lightning, you know it always brings him down. Question: How many times does Dio say the words "We rock!" in the song "We Rock" from 1984's The Last In Line? Answer: 28
Question: Is there any doubt in your mind about whether, in fact, they "rock"? Answer: Dio.
I feel like maybe you're getting the hang of this.
Like a rainbow in the dark, or whatever, Ronnie James has been left out on his own. Shunned by Sabbath, Ritchie Blackmore, and most of the 40-year old mullet squadron who abandoned him for inappreciable pursuits like gainful employment, a wife & kids, and/or Nickelback concerts, RJD has been forced to resort to Lord Of The Rings-style fantasy-concept albums like and Magica and Killing The Dragon just to maintain some sort of aesthetic cohesion and fill his garden with those conniving gnomes that insist on falling over unexpectedly to sever the tip of his thumb, like that one particularly insidious gnome did back in 2003. If I ever see that lawn statue, I will smash it with my cast-iron Mjölnir replica. And then I will blow a hot, smelly asparagus piss all over the pulverized remains.
As if it weren't totally obvious, I have listened to "Holy Diver" and "Rainbow In The Dark" approximately 25 times on nonstop psychotic repeat mode (they're back to back on The Very Beast Of Dio) in the last three hours. And that's on top of the approximately 9000 times I've heard those jams since I first saw the videos on Headbangers Ball back in the '80s. And they never get old. Ever. In fact, I'm gonna stop typing now so I can do some push-ups as the power of The Diver courses through my veins like nitro.
I think you know what I'm trying to say here: Ronnie Jamesah!
Now that's a truth as hard as steel. Like a never-ending wheel.*
Look out!
Rest in peace, Ronnie. You were a true gem. This bullshit originally ran in the May 2006 issue of Decibel magazine. *Ronnie actually said, "Life's a never-ending wheel." But I know our man is cool with artistic license.
