By Paul Freeman [ 1997 Interview]

Whatever style of music he sings, Dion DiMucci grabs listeners right down to their souls. His voice exudes power and passion. And it always, always rings true.

Dion’s extraordinarily soulful, urgent and expressive vocals display depth, making each performance compelling and authentic.

In the 50s, Dion and the Belmonts defined the New York sound with such doo-wop hits as "A Teenager in Love" and "Where or When." They co-headlined the tragic 1959 Winter Dance Party tour that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. At the last moment, DiMucci had given Valens his seat on the ill-fated plane.

As a solo artist, Dion recorded such rock smashes as "Runaround Sue," "Lovers Who Wander" and the iconic "The Wanderer." In 1968, after emerging from a dark period of drug addiction, he enjoyed huge success with the moving "Abraham, Martin and John." As a singer-songwriter, he continued to record memorable albums, right through 2016's "New York Is My Home," earning rave reviews and numerous honors.

We had the privilege of chatting with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer in 1997, following the release of "The Road I'm On: A Retrospective." The collection explored Dion's mid-60s, Columbia Records period when he was imbuing his rock 'n' roll with blues and folk flavors. In addition to his strong originals, the set included tunes penned by Willie Dixon, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Chuck Berry, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Joe Williams and Woody Guthrie. The album also featured his big hits from the era -- "Ruby Baby," "Drip Drop" and "Donna the Prima Donna."

Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed and Paul Simon are just a few of the artists who have declared Dion to be one of their primary influences and inspirations.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
When a retrospective of your work is assembled, does it give you a new perspective on your career?

DION:
Hmm, interesting question. You know, sometimes you take inventory, but you just see what the core of you is all about. It kind of confirms it again, the reason why I got into this business in the first place. There was a certain kind of music. And basically, I've always liked music where I could hear a person behind the music. You know? No matter what it was. So I don't know... It kind of brings me back to my first love, in a sense, which was always rhythm & blues, rock 'n' roll, blues, just what I started out with.

I got into this business, there was a guy in my neighborhood, in the Bronx, his name was Willie Green, he used to play guitar on the stoops of Bronx, New York City. And he played a lot of that, I guess it was John Lee Hooker stuff. I never really knew, I don't think he had the equipment to turn me on to where he'd heard all this stuff, but he used to play it. And I later went on and discovered the roots of that whole thing, which was John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson.

PCC:
And why do you think that music resonated so strongly with you?

DION:
You know, it's funny what throws people on a road. You listen to a song and it makes a certain turn or a note bends a certain way and it hits your gut and it just grabs you and you get involved. Like you must have, somewhere, back when, read something and thought, "I could do this with words, take people on a trip." But I've always loved the expression of rhythm & blues and blues and rock 'n' roll. Still do. I'm a rock 'n' roll diehard. In other words, no matter what else is happening in my life, that's the way I like to express it.

PCC:
It seems like, no matter what the style you're delving into, the connective thread is the honesty that runs through all your music.

DION:
Well, I was trying [chuckles]. At one time, I was imitating white guys trying to imitate black guys. They were things that sounded cool. But eventually, I digested it. But there's a lot of stuff on here, I could hear the changes. When I was doing this stuff at Columbia, I had made about three Top 10 hits for them at the time, "Ruby Baby" and "Donna The Prima Donna" and "Drip Drop." I had some songs out there on the charts.

And John Hammond, Sr. was right across the hall from where I was rehearsing at Columbia Records at the time. He called me in and said, "Dion, I see you have a flair for the blues." And he started playing me Robert Johnson. This was like in the early 60s. And Leroy Carr. He was a piano player and a singer. Mississippi John Hurt. He started playing me all these, especially the Robert Johnson album, he was so proud of, because it sold 25,000 by word of mouth. And, at that time, that was a lot.

And I kind of freaked [laughs], because it reminded me of Willie on the street corners in the Bronx, in the 50s. And I said, "Wow! There's more of this stuff around?" I didn't know. I was listening to radio, so you didn't hear a lot of that stuff. A lot of it was rural country blues. And I went ballistic. I got very excited and very resentful at the same time, like "Why isn't this on the radio? Who's been hiding this from me?" I was excited because he filled my arms with a bunch of albums and I took them back to my apartment.

And that's where I discovered "Drop Down Baby," a lot of these songs that are on here. And then I even started writing songs, like "Kickin' Child," stuff like that. I was just fooling with it all a lot. Because, at the time, I was doing like "Ruby Baby" and "Drip Drop." And I didn't know where those songs had come from. And Leiber and Stoller [who wrote both of those Dion hits] were tapped into that stuff, too, you know.

PCC:
But at that time, music on the radio was much more commercial. Were you concerned that you were moving in a direction that wasn't going to match the mainstream tastes?

DION:
You want to know something? They were talking about like The Beatles were taking over. I wasn't even aware what was going on. I was so involved with what was going on in Greenwich Village at the time, with the new people coming in.

I mean, Dylan had hit the Village, The Lovin' Spoonful were starting up. I don't know how the years work out here. But like Richie Havens had a guy on conga drum and he was just pounding on his guitar. And Tim Hardin, I was hanging out with him. Mike Bloomfield. There was a lot of stuff going on. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were hanging out down there. And Lightnin' Hopkins was coming into town all the time. And that's what I was aware of. I couldn't care less about The Beatles.

I mean, I never even listened to The Beatles. I was so involved with this stuff that I kind of lost it. I got into a hassle with Columbia. I had to leave. I had a five-year contract, $100,000 a year, which at that time was a lot of money. That's when a buck was a buck. And whether I made records or not. So I left the last two years. I said, "I'm out of here."

At the time, when I was doing "Spoonful" and all these other songs, I would bring all these guys in from the Apollo Theater, all these black guys. And we were just playing. And the label guys were like, "What are you doing? We don't know what you're doing."

They felt like I had taken a left turn or something. I don't know why. So they weren't releasing anything. They kind of trivialized what I was doing. Like, "We don't know what you're doing." And the producer walked out. And they sent Tom Wilson up there, who did some stuff with Dylan. But that was that time. That was the early 60s. But when I listen to it [laughs] there's a little fondness in the center of my heart. I get a kick out of it, because all the guys that played on it, a lot of it was really fun for me.

PCC:
There must be a sense of excitement that a lot of this stuff is going to be discovered for the first time by listeners.

DION:
I don't know. I think a lot of it was released. A lot of it's embarrassing. I mean, you look at some of that stuff. But a lot of it just kind of confirms in me, and I feel like more solid in myself about what I've always loved. And I can see the thread of what was driving me all these years, in spite of everything.

For me, that was kind of a difficult time, because I was half-good-looking and I had that Italian thing. And all those guys were going into clubs. They couldn't get maybe Little Richard in the Copacabana or guys like that. But they were hopping on my case to do that.

So being as insecure as I was, I was thinking like, "Well, should I? Should I put on a tuxedo and try to singing a little more, that kind of stuff that I didn't like, growing up?" Because I remember, as a kid, seeing these guys sing at weddings and feasts in my neighborhood. And their throats would wobble. They had all this vibrato. I hated it. It seemed so stupid to me.

When I heard Hank Williams, I went crazy, because his voice just stayed straight. He didn't have a vibrato. He didn't have a movement in his throat at all. And I loved it.

PCC:
So you never did veer off into that slick club singer path?

DION:
Well, at one time, I spent $10,000. I had these guys at Columbia, they got me involved with a nightclub act writer and they did all this. And I opened. And that night, I went ballistic. I took all the arrangements and threw them down the incinerator. I got crazy. I threw the suits down the incinerator. And I never looked back. I don't think I'd be here today, if I'd followed that. It wasn't me.

But you can hear it on here. I was trying to do "Fever." You can see I was trying to go into that. Even "Work Song" was kind of a halfway attempt, because Oscar Brown Jr., he could get on in clubs. That was a good song. And there was a lot of stuff that they didn't release on this album. I think Mitchell Cohen [music critic and A&R executive, he looked through all the stuff I did and he said, "Wow, you really took a walk in the woods." And I started telling him about it. I think he put it all together. He said, "It sounds like this is what you're really about." And I said, "Oh, definitely."

PCC:
But then as the years went on, you were still making good albums and a lot of the material wasn't getting heard. How frustrating was that? Were you just satisfied with the work?

DION:
You know, I'm not a frustrated kind of guy. I just don't look at it that way. I look at it maybe from a different vantage point, kind of above the circumstances. I feel very fortunate that I've been able to create all this stuff and get in on tape and move it forward. I consider myself blessed really. I've got a great family.

This business of expressing yourself through music to people has been such a blessing in my life. It took me all over the world. I mean through Australia, through Israel, through the States and Canada and South America and Europe. It's opened my world totally, from the street corners of the Bronx. So I don't really see it that way.

I still feel that my stuff will connect, somewhere down the line. I don't know how. But that's not my job. My job is just to keep doing it. You know? Some of those tunes connect and get heard more than others. And in a lifetime, I would think that I had more than my share. I just don't see it that way. Would I like every album to really hit? Yeah. But that's not the way it is [laughs].

PCC:
It sounds like a very positive journey, but was there a period where you really got lost?

DION:
Oh, yeah. In fact, right after that period that I did all this stuff was probably the bleakest emotional period of my life. I would say '65 to '68, that was the period of my life where I went in the dumper. And I think everybody had a period like that, where I was like blaming people. I was uncomfortable in my own skin. But it was a moment.

Some people get stuck and they stay there. Thank God, I didn't. It just turned for me. And at the beginning of '68, I just saw the light. It was just like, "Hey!" And I didn't look back. It just changed. And I was able to do and think and see and believe things that I never had. And I just moved forward.

PCC:
Was this a religious revelation?

DION:
I tell you the truth, I was doing a lot of drugs in the mid-60s. And my choices were so limited -- take drugs and get mad [laughs]. Two choices. Something like that. Blame people. And it got really boring and very, very frustrating. I don't know if you've ever been through a period like that, but it was difficult. It's like you get stuck. And to be honest with you, I said a prayer and I had a revelation that changed me, right in the core of my being. It's like, "The prayer is answered. Here I am." So it was definitely a profound, sudden, brilliant spiritual awakening for me.

PCC:
And how was that awakening reflected in the subsequent music?

DION:
Well, right after that, I put together "Abraham, Martin and John." I would say about six months after that. That was kind of like a song of hope. It was saying, "You can kill the dreamer, but you can't kill the dream," because it's people like you and I that pick up on it and take it further.

PCC:
You're based in Florida now. How much time do you spend on the road?

DION:
Well, last year I put a band together called Little Kings and we were working in the Village. I just had a lot of fun. But I decided, with my career, to go out and tour just like about four months, like in the summer. I enjoy doing that. And I have a 24-track in my home. I just like to do a lot of other stuff. I'm writing. Just finished another book.

PCC:
And you've been married a long time?

DION:
I've been married 33 years. I have three daughters.

PCC:
And the new tracks on this album, how did they come about?

DION:
They just asked me. In fact, I was talking to one of the guys up at Legacy who was putting this together. In fact, I was in New York. I had an apartment there. I was working with Little Kings, this group I put together with Mike Mesaros [bassist], from The Smithereens and Frank Funaro, the drummer from The Del-Lords [and Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker] and Scott Kemper [guitarist for The Dictators and The Del-Lords], who you could see they were part of producing those two tracks. I put those guys together and we called ourselves Dion & Little Kings.

And we went and just knocked those out for the album, two new things. It was fun, we just went in and knocked them out. One Scott Kempner wrote and one was a song I wrote with I was 16 years old, called "Born to Cry." It kind of still holds up.

PCC:
Might there be a full album with the band?

DION:
In fact, we recorded live down at the Mercury Lounge in the Village. I'm working on it and I might just release the live thing, because it's so.... You just can't recreate it. Live is just great. It just has that vibe.

PCC:
And the role that music plays in your life, has it always remained the same?

DION:
Yeah, music has always been my art form. Once you go past the thing that gets you into it... sometimes that's a lot of anger. But if you grow past that, you find out that it's a tool that you can communicate with internationally. You can express your thoughts and your beliefs and your insights, what you're about. You can talk about all kinds of things. It's great.

PCC:
You must hear amazing reactions from fans who tell you what your music has meant to them.

DION:
Well, yeah, all the time, with all different kinds of people. All the time. I know how much it's touched me, other people's music. I mean, I'm a fan, too.

For more on this artist, visit www.diondimucci.com.