GEEZER BUTLER Says RONNIE JAMES DIO's Death Could Have Been Avoided

January 7, 2011

Bassist Geezer Butler (HEAVEN & HELL, BLACK SABBATH) has told AOL's Noisecreep that his bandmate Ronnie James Dio's (HEAVEN & HELL, BLACK SABBATH, RAINBOW, DIO) death could have avoided — if only the legendary singer had seen a doctor earlier.

"All the doctors said if he'd have gone in [for a checkup] a year earlier or two years earlier, they could have treated him," Butler told Noisecreep. "But by the time Ronnie was diagnosed, he had stage four cancer, which was inoperable. The doctor hinted that it was just a matter of time and there was nothing they could do."

According to Butler, HEAVEN & HELL guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Vinny Appice both underwent routine colonoscopies to check for signs of colon and intestinal cancer in 2008, and they were talking about the procedure in one of the band's rehearsals.

"Vinny had just had it done and he couldn't sit down on his drum stool, and I was making arrangements to have it done, and Ronnie was going, 'Oh, I'm never going to have anything like that,'" Butler told Noisecreep. "If he'd have gone in at the same time as everyone else, they'd have caught it before the tour. If he had regular checkup..."

He continued, "All the doctors said if it had been stage one, they could have dealt with it. It's really upsetting to think about that, and hopefully it will encourage people who need to have a checkup to get it done."

In a recent interview with Revolver magazine, Wendy Dio, the widow and manager of Ronnie James Dio, stated about the singer's final days, "I was actually leaving that Friday morning [on May 14, 2010, two days before Ronnie's passing] to go to, I think it was, Chicago. And he wasn't feeling well. And I was like, 'You know what? I think we should go see the doctor.' The doctor said, 'I think we should take him to the hospital.' So we went to the hospital and Ronnie says, 'Go, go. I'll be fine.' And I'm like, 'No, no. I'm staying.' And thank God I didn't go, because that was the Friday, and then he got these incredible pains. Incredible pains which he hadn't experienced before that strong. And they gave him a bunch of morphine, and once they'd given him, like, three shots of morphine, he was almost in a coma. He came in and out of it a few times, and then he passed away on the Sunday."

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