DION DiMUCCI: HIS ROCKING, RIGHTEOUS ROAD PCC's Vintage Interview with the Legendary Rocker
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:
DION: 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: DION: PCC: DION: 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:
DION: 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: DION: 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:
DION: 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: DION: 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: DION: 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:
DION: PCC: DION: PCC: DION: PCC: DION: PCC: DION: 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: DION: PCC: DION: PCC: DION: For more on this artist, visit www.diondimucci.com. |