The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast (Featuring Ronnie James Dio)

The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast is a concept album and subsequent live rock opera appearing in 1974 and 1975 respectively, based on the children's book of the same title (The album cover design is from Alan Aldridge's design for the book).

It was originally conceived as a solo vehicle for Jon Lord and to be produced by Roger Glover, but Lord proved too busy with Deep Purple and Glover took up the reins on his own. Using his connections, Glover recruited a large cast of noted rock musicians to perform on it, with a different vocalist for each track. The single "Love Is All", with vocals from Ronnie James Dio, made a minor impression in the UK but reached number one in The Netherlands. Its accompanying animated short movie also gained unexpected success in France, where the newly launched second TV channel Antenne 2 used it as a fill-in every time it experienced "technical difficulties". These random airings, together with the psychedelic tone of the clip and the lack of subtitles, made it very popular amongst young viewers. In 2006 the song was used by the Dutch political party CDA in its election advertisements for the 2006 Dutch General Election.

Love Is All and it's animated music video was also given wide exposure in the southern hemisphere. It became something of a favourite well into the 1980's on pioneering Australian music show Countdown (1974 - 1987). With its rousing lyrics and parade of animals marching through the forest on their way to the mythical Butterfly Ball, the song attained Top 10 status 'Down Under' four years after it was recorded.

On October 16th 1975, a one-off performance at the Royal Albert Hall took place. Again it had a star-studded cast of rock musicians, most notably Ian Gillan who was drafted in at the last minute and received a standing ovation on his entrance. He replaced an unavailable Ronnie James Dio who had commitments with Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow (although Dio did eventually get to perform the song at the Royal Albert Hall in 1999 as the guest of Deep Purple). Gillan had not performed since leaving Deep Purple in 1973. Also notable was the appearance of Vincent Price as narrator.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Ronnie James Dio
• Roger Glover
• Deep Purple

[chiptheghost]

Can this song and it's message get any better than this?? It's brilliant! 

[Brunhyldra]

RIP Ronnie, God of Heavy Metal :'(

[polepositionify]

I loved DIO as the frog in this cartoon.

[bigtone12]

@pantherslair I remember this clip used to play all the time on the ABC, along with that Bach instrumental piece fused with Prog Rock from "Sky" and that morris-dancing clip from Mike Oldfield...remember those ?!? Awesome.

[Legionbass19]

It's hard to believe that ten years later he would have worked with some of the most respected musicians of rock and metal and would be fronting his own massively popular band. Ronnie accomplished so much in his life.

[fubar42bar]

remember this song when i was a kid,didnt know Dio sang it!!dam he made some songs his own

[4Drought]

One Year... R.I.P. God.

[SGH28N]

Oh My... I remember this...So long ago..

[toecutterr6]

R.I.P. DIO \m/

[Siamo3Idioti]

I love this song and Dio's voice...And the video is amazing!!! :D

[spellbound153]

bloody brilliant