Dion Interview

Dion Interview

Wandering Between Eras and Influences…
Dion Discusses His Amazing Evolution from Teen Idol to Blues Superstar and the Paths In-Between
(by Lee Zimmerman)
 
Very few artists can claim to have been part of the complete evolution of modern popular music from Rock and Roll’s early beginnings in the 1950s through the vital scene that continues today. However, Dion DiMucci can claim to have done just that. In the process, he’s also managed to reinvent himself several times, starting from his seminal career as the chief namesake of the Doo Wop group Dion and The Belmonts, whose early chart-toppers “Teenager In Love”, “Runaround Sue”, “The Wanderer”, “Ruby Baby”, “Donna the Prima Donna”, and the like made them one of the most successful singing groups of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, through to his comeback hit “Abraham, Martin and John”, his immersion in Christian music and most recently, a series of Blues albums which has given him a new musical trajectory entirely.
 
Along the way, he’s reaped any number of honors, including a GMA Dove Award in 1984 for the album I Put Away My Idols. When he returned to making secular music in the late 1980s with his album Yo Frankie, critics who had dismissed him early on as little more than a teen idol heaped praise on his efforts, while acknowledging the influence he’s had on generations of other musicians.
 
In 1989, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, followed by his honors from the Grammy Hall of Fame for the song “Runaround Sue” in 2002. He even managed to form a new band, Little Kings in 1996, featuring Scott ‘Top Ten’ Kempner and Frank Funaro of the band The Del Lords, and Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens.
Naturally then, he’s not only attracted a new legion of fans, but also maintained the ongoing reverence and devotion of some of today’s most influential musical icons, among them Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Joe Bonamassa, Brian Setzer, the late Jeff Beck, John Hammond, Van Morrison, Joe Louis Walker, Jimmy Vivino, Billy Gibbons, Sonny Landreth, Paul Simon, Samantha Fish, Rory Block, Patti Scialfa, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Boz Scaggs, Eric Clapton, G. E. Smith, Keb’ Mo’, Marcia Ball, Mark Knopfler, Peter Frampton, and Rickie Lee Jones. It’s more than reverence and respect in fact. Each of those individuals have eagerly made guest appearances on his recent albums and become enthusiastic participants in the process.
 
Indeed, at age 84, Dion remains as vital and involved as ever. He’s overcome his obstacles, including a heroin habit that sidelined him early on in his solo career. Before that, he narrowly averted certain death when he turned down a seat on the airplane chartered by Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper (JP Richardson), and Richie Valens following a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 2, 1959.  Holly, Valens, Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson were killed when the aircraft crashed into a cornfield five miles northwest of Mason City shortly after takeoff.
 
Turning to the present, with ten albums released since the turn of the century, Dion can claim a remarkable track record that shows no sign of slowing down. The word ‘comeback’ no longer applies because in truth, Dion’s never gone away.
 
His new album, Girl Friends, marks his third consecutive album on the Keeping The Blues Alive Records label, following 2020’s Blues With Friends and 2021’s Stomping Ground. Those two albums included liner notes written by Bob Dylan and Pete Townshend, respectively, and featured musical contributions from the various artists mentioned above. 
For its part, Girl Friends finds Dion keeping company with any number of stellar female artists throughout the album’s twelve tracks, eleven of which were composed by Dion and Mike Aquilina, along with one track written by Dion and the late Scott Kempner. The all-star guest list includes Susan Tedeschi, Carlene Carter, Rory Block, Shemekia Copeland, Debbie Davis, Randi Fishenfeld, Sue Foley, Danielle Nicole, Christine Ohlman, Maggie Rose, Joanne Shaw Taylor, and Valerie Tyson. It also finds Dion singing with a passion, purpose, and vitality that’s absolutely as essential as ever. Dion himself co-produced the album along with Wayne Hood, both of whom worked together on his two previous efforts.
 
In her liner notes, Darlene Love writes ‘I’ve been a huge fan since I was a young girl. In fact, when I sang ‘He’s a Rebel’ I was singing about outsiders like Dion. I’m a bigger fan today’.
 
Happily, too, that fandom has more to draw on than ever. A new musical based on Dion’s life story, recently debuted at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey and is expected to arrive on Broadway later this year. It’s already received raved reviews, and yet despite all. His triumphs, Dion remains remarkably humble and down to earth. When The Alternate Root recently had the opportunity to interview him by phone from his home in Boca Raton, Florida, we were struck by his gracious and personable attitude and the sheer enthusiasm he maintains for. his work.
 
Lee Zimmerman: You must have an amazing phonebook given the way you gather these other artists for these projects of yours, not to mention the fact that on your last album, you had Bob Dylan and Pete Townsend doing the liner notes. There's a book by the photographer Richard Avedon, which was called What Becomes a Legend Most. I know you've written a book, but that would have been a great title for your book.
 
Dion: That's funny that you mentioned Richard Avedon. He took some photos of me back in the day. And he apologized to me.
 
LZ: Really? Why?
 
Dion: He called me up one day, and he said, ‘You know, you're about the only person I got wrong’. He was thinking I was like a teenage idol or something. He kind of lumped me in with a bunch of people. And then later on, he started appreciating some of the songs I was writing and my later albums, and he got in touch with me, and he said, ‘You know, I got it all wrong’.
 
LZ: That's hilarious. Especially because I can't think of another artist who made such a successful transition from the pioneering days in which you started through to your hit “Abraham Martin and John” in the 1960s, through to your Christian albums, and now with these Blues albums. It’s truly impressive the way you were able to effectively wander through each of these genres and find success.
Dion: No one ever asked me to seriously think about what I wanted to do. As a kid, I was so insecure, because you had all these people just telling you what to do. Like they knew something you didn't know. And I was listening to them, but I also had the sense— well, I would say half the sense — because I told them ‘let me do “Ruby Baby” and then I'll do the song you want me to do’. So, it was like one for you, one for me.
 
LZ: Well that makes sense I suppose. So now you are firmly entrenched in the Blues. Out of curiosity, what started you on that trajectory?
 
Dion: Let me do a “Run Around Sue” and I'll do something that you want me to do. That’s the way it worked. When I was at Columbia Records, I was sitting on a piano bench with Aretha Franklin. I was very young, and we were both sitting in an arranger’s office and he had a piano and they were giving they were giving her Al Jolson songs and they were giving me Al Jolson songs. Oh my god. So, I was I was sitting on the bench with her and I started singing, and John Hammond Senior, who was maybe five feet away from us — his office right across the hall — came in and basically said to me, ‘do you have a flair for the Blues?’. This was like 1961. He gave me a Robert Johnson album, The King of the Delta Blues and he gave me some Furry Lewis, Fred McDowell, and Lightnin’ Hopkin albums. It was exciting to me to listen to the roots of what I loved. It was always down inside me, but it just never really landed. So now I know what the center of my being is. I was doing an interview on NPR in the early 2000s, just around the turn of the century, with Terry Gross. I was telling her a little about my upbringing and how I navigated into my music and my journey, and I was punctuating the stories with songs. And a lot of them were Blues things. It was like John Lee Hooker stuff and Jimmy Reed stuff, and my friend, Richard Gardner from New York, called me and said, ‘you have to do an album with these songs but I kind of brushed him off. Then they had a repeat of the interview and he called me again.
 
LZ: You must have followed his advice.
 
Dion: I did an album, Bronx in Blues. I went into the studio and I recorded maybe 14 songs with my guitar in two days and it got nominated for a Grammy. The funny thing about it is that I was listening to this record in my truck, and coming home after I recorded the 14 songs with only my guitar, and I was thinking, ‘wow, this stuff comes out of me so easily. I don't even have to think about it. This is like in the center of my being’. I just feel like I'm roller-skating. like, I caught a wave, you know? And that's how I knew. That's when I first discovered what I was about. Would you believe it? After all these years!
 
LZ: You also did a Rock and Roll tribute album, Heroes: Giants of Early Guitar Rock, but it seems that of late you've really immersed yourself in the Blues with quite the consistency. It seems you’ve found your muse.
 
Dion: I really did and I made a bunch of great friends, or maybe I had a lot of friends and I made some new ones. You know, it's a funny thing. What happened to me during the lockdown was that I wrote some of the best songs of my entire life. I wrote like 30 songs. I couldn't have planned that if I tried. I went in and recorded 14 of them right at the beginning of the lockdown. Joe Bonamassa said he’d like to play on it. So that’s what sparked it all, After I heard that, I knew I could make a great record. But I also saw how limited I was in imagining what these other artists could contribute to a track that I could put together. So I started calling Jeff Beck and Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton and Peter Frampton — just all these great Blues players —  Sonny Landreth was another. I was having such a good time. They were saying yes. And they loved doing it. And in fact, I think they were playing better on my records than on theirs. It’s amazing.
 
LZ: That put you on a roll and you haven’t stopped since.
 
Dion: I just kept it going because it was so much fun and it came so easily. And I'll be honest with you — with the last two albums, Blues with Friends and Stomping Ground, I worked with Marcia Ball and Ricki Lee Jones and Samantha Fish and I had such a good time that I thought I should do a whole album with women. In fact, I could write some songs for them, maybe have some back-and-forth dialogue, you know? So that's what I started doing. I wanted to make it interesting. I had a great time working with these girls, man. It was just great to have that feminine genius.
 
LZ: You should get some sort of award as the number one feminist of the year or the decade or something like that. Maybe NOW, the National Organization of Women, will give it to you based on the concept of this new album alone, you certainly deserve the recognition. So, getting back to the original question — do you have all these people in your phonebook? Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen…Is it a matter of you just picking up the phone book and giving a call and saying, ‘hi, Bruce, this is Dion. You wanna be on my album?’
 
Dion: Well, yes. It’s kinda like that. For example, with Van Morrison — every time he comes to Florida, he calls me. We did a gig together and we became friends way back. My wife would say, ‘That's our guy!’ She has ten CDs of his in the car.
 
LZ: So, with all these famous friends, is there anybody you haven't met? Who you would like to meet or to work with that you haven’t worked with already? Maybe one of the Stones or a Beatle?
 
Dion: You hit it. Somebody asked me that yesterday. They asked, ‘is there anybody that you would like to work with? And I was thinking, well, I'd love to work with The Rolling Stones. It’s a little bit of a pipe dream. But hey, I might as well dream big’.
 
LZ: Don’t rule it out. It just seems like the admiration and respect that these iconic individuals have for you is beyond measure. So, do you do you ever look back at this career of yours, and think about all you’ve accomplished? Maybe think, ‘wow, that's pretty impressive. That's me’. In other words, are you ever in awe of yourself?
 
Dion: I don't know. I don't think I can gather that kind of impression of myself. I think if I ever really felt like that or thought of myself like that, I'd be stepping into insanity. The other day, I was with a friend of mine, and he says, ‘you know, everybody knows who Dion is’. And I said, if I ever walked around thinking everybody knew who I was, that would be what’s called insanity. Give me a break. Someone once asked Keith Richards, ‘how does it feel to be a living legend?’ He said ‘the legend part is easy. The living part is hard’.
 
LZ: That sounds like something Keith Richards would say.
 
Dion: To be honest with you, I'm a humble guy. Because what applies to the cab driver applies to me. What applies to the electrician applies to me. Whatever applies to just any regular person applies to me. I'm not above anyone else. The human experience applies to us all, and it hits us all the same It doesn’t matter who you are.
 
LZ: It’s very obvious that you have a very humble persona. But then again, it's kind of dazzling to those of us who look at your career and listen to your music, because your music literally transcends the whole evolution of rock and roll. And my gosh, what a fortunate thing that you didn't get on that airplane that took the lives of Buddy Holly and Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.
 
Dion: That's an interesting thing. Because I miss those guys — Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, JP Richardson, the Big Bopper. I miss them on a lot of levels. I live my life kind of wanting to make them proud. I remember Buddy Holly telling me, ‘I don't know how to succeed. But I do know how to fail and that comes from trying to please everybody’. If he hadn’t told me that I probably wouldn't have done “The Wanderer” or “Run Around Sue”.
 
LZ: Nevertheless, there are few people who transcend the whole evolution of popular music like you do, sir. You've kind of seen it all.
 
Dion: Yeah, you know, when I think back, it's amazing sometimes. I sometimes feel like Forrest Gump. I knew Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson. I knew Little Richard and his mom. I remember hanging out in his dressing room. I knew Chuck Berry. I recall sitting in Jerry Lee Lewis’ dressing room and asking him questions because he seemed so elusive to me. I wanted to know things about him. He would talk to me and it was great. So, I really feel very blessed. I remember I was doing an interview with Dave Marsh at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he said to me, ‘you're the only guy from the ‘50s, who’s remained relevant’. And I started arguing that point with him, but I lost. So, I came home and I told my wife and she said, ‘well, what are you going to do about it?’. So, I started writing.
 
LZ: By the way, your wife of 60 years must be very proud of you. I can't think of a better way for a husband to ingratiate himself with his wife than to record an album with all these lady singers.
 
Dion: I'll tell you a funny story. There's one song in there called “Don't You Want a Man Like Me”, which is in the category of a bragging rights kind of thing. I'm doing it with Rory Block and she's so involved. She's so into this song. She sounds like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. I'll have whatever she’s having.
 
LZ: Wow!
 
Dion: She really takes it to a climax, and I’m like, Oh my God!’. And then her husband comes over to me and he goes, ‘I wouldn't play this for your wife’.
 
LZ: That is hilarious. So, when you when you do these all-star albums, do you have to make a special effort to put these other artists at ease? They're probably a little awestruck and intimidated, maybe thinking, ‘Oh my god, we’re doing this with Dion! He’s a legend!’. So what do you do to set them at ease?
 
Dion: No, I didn't get that feeling from anybody. But Eric Clapton did say ‘you were part of my musical make up. So, when he went into the studio to do his part, he was in in England. It was during the lockdown. So, he sent me his contribution, his part, and after I listened to it, I called him back, and I said, ‘Eric, you sound like you’re 19 years old on this. Wow’. And he said, ‘Dion, I stood up when I played’. Which means that he sits down when he’s recording his albums. I don't know.
 
LZ: They’re on their best behavior for you.
 
Dion: I feel real good about that. It really makes me feel good.
 
LZ: One would think so. On this current album, were you in the studio recording at the same time with these women?
 
Dion: Some of them. A lot of them actually. Like with Sue Foley, we did the whole song in harmony with each other. And when we finished, she said ‘you're gonna have to take me out here and there’. She kind of directed me because she said we sounded like the Everly Brothers because it was so in tune with each other. She was probably right.
 
LZ: Was there anyone who wasn’t available that you wanted to work with?
 
Dion: I did call Emmylou Harris but she wasn’t going into the studio anymore. Actually, there’s a lot of women that I'd really like to work with. I’d love to record with Chrissie Hynde. And there’s this girl, Maggie Rose from Tennessee, who is so good. I heard her on the Blues cruise.
 
LZ: So why not do a part two?
 
Dion: You might be right there. I might do another album.
 
LZ: So, what are your plans now? Do you still tour?
 
Dion: We're putting together something to get out there with the people. I love writing. I love creating. But I like doing shows too. It's a lot of fun. And the way I feel now is like I'm at the top of my game, and I can enjoy being in front of the people more. So it's like a plus for me, you know?
 
LZ: And you have the Broadway show as well, right? The Wanderer. What’s the status of that?
 
Dion: That'll be opening in the fall. And, man, it's a play that cannot be denied. It’s some story, I'm telling you — the early street Rock and Roll history and the gangs. It’s like the young Sopranos and the punk scene combined, and there’s the love story and there’s betrayal and overcoming adversity, achieving victory and there’s a lot of laughs in-between. It’s a good play. I really enjoyed it. I've always been about taking people on a trip. Stevie Van Zandt and myself kept the play on track. I didn’t write it but they wanted me there. We kept the songs in the same groove so it would connect with the audience. Rock and roll and theater is kind of like a shotgun marriage. But it can be done. It's been proven. So that's what we did.
 
LZ: Did you have final say on who played you?
 
Dion: Yeah. I'm very much involved in it. But didn't write it and I didn't put it together. The director did that. I said just keep it genuine. But I tell you, they know what they're doing. This is a whole different ballgame. This isn't rock and roll. And I love it. To be in a rehearsal hall room, a big room with like, 30 young people full of talent like that. It just keeps you young.
 
 
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