Joe Siegler, webmaster for the BLACK SABBATH website black-sabbath.com, has posted a tribute to RONNIE JAMES DIO. An excerpt is available below:

Back in early 1982 (or was it Christmas 1981 - I don't remember now), I was leafing through the pages of one of the rock rags at the time (either Circus or Creem), and saw the cover art for the Mob Rules album in a magazine. I wondered what kind of music would go with that kind of artwork. So I headed down the record store, and bought a pre-recorded cassette tape of The Mob Rules. Brought it home, stuck it in, and heard the opening riffs of 'Turn Up The Night'. I was stinkin' blown away. That was my introduction to the world of Black Sabbath at all. It was my first Black Sabbath album, so the Dio era has a special significance to me. The Ozzy era is what it is, and we wouldn't have the Dio era without that. But the Dio era seemed much stronger musically to me on a ton of levels. Whether it was the writing or the lyrics or what, I don't know. But Ronnie James Dio had a big part in the music I listened to.

Sadly, Black Sabbath had just left Philadelphia (where I was living at the time) - they played there in early December 1981 (although Joe K saw 'em!), and as such I had to wait quite awhile to see Black Sabbath with Dio (slightly over a decade). Sadly, the Dio era of Black Sabbath was to fold before too long, and I was pretty sad about that. The first thing Black Sabbath released after I got into the band was the Live Evil album. At the time, I thought it was pretty cool, but over time it seems flat. It was supplanted by the Live at Hammersmith album, but enough of the history of Sabbath. It's supposed to be about my thoughts.

When it was announced that Ronnie was coming back to Black Sabbath in 1991, I was rather overjoyed. I was looking forward to seeing him with Black Sabbath finally. I'd seen Ronnie several times with Dio inbetween his first two Black Sabbath stints (5 times), and enjoyed the heck out of the show in August 1992. Sadly, that broke up again not long after that. I continued to follow Dio through the various Dio incarnations, and his third stint in Black Sabbath (more commonly known as HEAVEN & HELL).

I finally met Ronnie for the first time face to face in 2007 when I was backstage after the Dallas concert on that tour. I had been talking to Tony & Geezer before that, partially about a practical joke I ran back in April of 2007 about Dio quitting the band yet again. When Ronnie came out, he was in part of his stage garb, and was carrying a glass of wine. I waited my turn, and introduced myself, leading off with a story about how I crossed his wife and was sorry about that. Ronnie replied, 'Well, we've all been there, no worries on that.' We chatted about some of his pre-ELF material, I talked about my Sabbath website, we exchanged pleseantries. Nothing in the conversation that in and of itself was anything totally epic in scope. Just the fact of WHO I was talking to. I also joked with him a bit about George W. Bush (someone he strongly did not like), and referred to him as 'your buddy.' Ronnie replied with 'He's not MY buddy - fuck you too!' We had a laugh about it, and shook hands and parted on nice terms. I didn't have a stopwatch with me, but we talked probably for about 10 minutes, which is an eternity to talk to any one person backstage, let alone a fan like myself."

Go to this location for more.

"This is video from Ronnie James Dio's final concert ever - fronting Heaven & Hell (aka the Dio version of Black Sabbath). It was in Atlantic City, NJ on August 29, 2009 - the final date of the "The Devil You Know" tour. I had two friends travel there in my name and filmed some footage, mostly of the interview type. However, my friends were granted permission to film one song, that being the first one, "The Mob Rules". What we didn't realize at the time was that this clip ended up being the final time that Ronnie ever took the stage for a concert ever.

Those of us at black-sabbath.com are glad to finally be able to bring this video to you. Thanks to Gloria Butler, Wendy Dio, & Ralph Baker for allowing me permission to use this online. A huge thanks to Damian for actually going there and filming this stuff.

I hope you enjoy this footage from Ronnie's final concert. The band did not professionally film this concert, so other than a few short clips from people's iPhones and whatnot, this is the only video clip that you'll see from Ronnie's final concert."