Simon Wright

Simon Wright is the drummer who spent the longest time in Dio, a member across two periods between 1989 and 2010. Born in England in 1963, he arrived with a résumé unusual for the genre: he came from six years in AC/DC. He joined the Australian band in 1983, at twenty, replacing Phil Rudd, and recorded Fly on the Wall (1985), the album Who Made Who (1986) — the soundtrack to the film Maximum Overdrive — and Blow Up Your Video (1988). It is a specific school: in AC/DC the drummer exists to keep the groove absolutely steady, with no fills and no variation, and that discipline is what he carried with him. In Dio, that grounding proved apt. Wright plays with weight and constancy, leaving the melodic space entirely to voice and guitar, and the foundation of Lock Up the Wolves (1990) and of the whole late-phase output, from Magica (2000) to Master of the Moon (2004), is his. He stayed until Ronnie James Dio's death in 2010, and went on afterwards in Dio Disciples, the group formed by former members of the band.