Quoted from ronniejamesdio.com. Interesting point -
"It's simply a song about things that are not always what they appear to be. You need to look at more than what the package is, you need to look inside. The cover of the album hightlights that - Dio has said many times, why is a devil drowning a priest? well, maybe it's a priest drowning a devil! Bad people don't always look bad, many times they look normal. Also, good people may not always be the ones who are prettiest on the outside.
He's actually somewhat of a prophet - think of the more recent problems with priests misbehaving with young kids (maybe we should have Murray drown them!)
The song just uses lots of vivid fantasy metaphors. "Ride the tiger you can see his stripes but you know he's clean" - black stripes, could be dirt, but you know a cat is clean. "Jump on the tiger you can feel his heart but you know he's mean", again the tiger has a heart, but will kill you.
"Holy diver, you're the star of the masquerade" - again, a clear reference to something being different that what it appears to be.
Dio just takes a pretty old, basic proverd ("don't judge a book by it's cover") and writes a cool song, with lots of vivid metaphors, that people try to deciper."
Quoted from ronniejamesdio.com. Interesting point -
"It's simply a song about things that are not always what they appear to be. You need to look at more than what the package is, you need to look inside. The cover of the album hightlights that - Dio has said many times, why is a devil drowning a priest? well, maybe it's a priest drowning a devil! Bad people don't always look bad, many times they look normal. Also, good people may not always be the ones who are prettiest on the outside.
He's actually somewhat of a prophet - think of the more recent problems with priests misbehaving with young kids (maybe we should have Murray drown them!)
The song just uses lots of vivid fantasy metaphors. "Ride the tiger you can see his stripes but you know he's clean" - black stripes, could be dirt, but you know a cat is clean. "Jump on the tiger you can feel his heart but you know he's mean", again the tiger has a heart, but will kill you.
"Holy diver, you're the star of the masquerade" - again, a clear reference to something being different that what it appears to be.
Dio just takes a pretty old, basic proverd ("don't judge a book by it's cover") and writes a cool song, with lots of vivid metaphors, that people try to deciper."