Thursday,
December 14, 2006
Dion DiMucci:
Doo-Wop Legend; Opens Up
The
ANNOTICO Report
Dion DiMucci, the doo-wop legend is
ready to talk about his lifelong love of the blues, his collection of 12 gold
records and how God has saved his life three times.
Dion was a part of "The Day the Music Died" is rock'n'roll legend. In 1959 his group, the Belmonts, went on tour with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and
the Big Bopper. He chose not to Fly, and the others died when the
Airplane crashed.
It's 10 o'clock on a muggy
The
reason for their reverence is that Dion - always
known by just his first name - is rock music's embodiment of the
Italian-American urban experience, a street tough who
became a star with his doo-wop group in the 1950s, then a heroin addict (he
started using at 14), and then a protest singer. It's a wonder he hasn't been given
a guest role in the Sopranos, like his contemporary, Frankie Valli.
For the past decade, since the youngest of his
three daughters moved out of the family home, Dion
has been living in a gated community in
"They call
it a community," Dion laughs, "But that's
not how I define a community. I know what it is. I don't know if you know what
it is. But trying to explain what community is to someone who's never
experienced it is like trying to explain what an artichoke tastes like."
Dion knows because he grew up
in the Bronx, running the turf around 187th street and Crotona Avenue with his
gang, the Fordham Baldies (who were later immortalised
in Richard Price's novel The Wanderers, which was made into a hit movie), and
singing on the stoop in the tough, sweet voice that would make him doo-wop's
breakout star.
"In New
York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood,
the code of the streets is respect and reputation," he says, "When I
sang a song like I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry it wouldn't threaten my friends,
but if I ever verbalised what I was singing to them,
told them that I felt lonely and confused - you'd get punched in the face.
"We used to
fight the Puerto Ricans, the blacks, the other Italians, but when I got
interested in music and started stepping outside the neighbourhood
and into another world, it started rubbing. Soon after that I had to move
out."
In 1959 his
group, the Belmonts, went on tour with Buddy Holly,
Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. The Winter Dance Party was a freezing
three-week trudge through the midwest
on a bus with broken heating, and by February 3, Holly had had enough. A plane
was chartered in
The day the music
died is rock'n'roll legend. As Dion
tells it, the plane ticket cost what his parents paid in rent each month, so he
chose to huddle up with Waylon Jennings on the back of the coach instead.
"Buddy Holly said, 'Let's flip a coin.' I said, 'Let Ritchie go.' Ritchie was sick. He was 16 years old, he had a bad
cold. He never saw snow before. I said, 'Let him go, I'll save the $36.'"
Astonishingly, the show after the fatal crash went ahead as planned, with
Dion's first two solo singles
meant he would never have to worry about rent money again. The Wanderer and
Runaround Sue both reached No 1, earning him a contract at Columbia Records
worth a guaranteed $100,000 a year, and forever defining his image: macho yet
vulnerable, the sensitive soul with fists of iron.
There are 12 gold
discs on the wall in Dion's study, but only two
photographs. The first is of the backing singers at his mid-80s comeback
concert: Lou Reed,
When the Beatles
arrived in
"1967 was
the bleakest, darkest, most emotional period of my life," he says. "It
was hell on earth, and I could see that I was at death's door. I used to get
high with Frankie Lymon. We used to share needles, it
was pretty grim. I was getting off one time in a cellar and I saw the devil
himself. I don't know if it was a hallucination, an illusion or what, but he
was standing right in front of me."
The following
February, Lymon died of an overdose at his
grandmother's house in
In 1974 Phil Spector was offered his pick of the Warner Brothers roster
to produce, and he chose Dion. The artist had been
straight for six years by that point, but on the resulting album, Born to Be With You, he sounds like a junkie talking with God. The
record was never released in
Dion has heard Born to Be With You called great, but he's still not convinced it's any
good. "Doing it was torture," he says. "The sessions were like a
circus, with Sonny and
Now 67, Dion is in robust health. He looks like Jack Nicholson
might if he, too, had been sober for decades. He wears a micro-beard under his
bottom lip, a black New York Yankees cap, and expensive shades. He is aware
that "the junkie finding God is a cliche"
but speaks the language of self-help regardless. "When is a train most
free," he asks, "on or off the tracks?"
There is a small
shrine to the Virgin Mary tucked away in the corner of the living room, a
sculpture of hands clasped in prayer on the coffee table and religious studies
books on the shelves. His favourite photo, stuck to
the fridge door, shows him posing not with his family, nor his rock'n'roll friends, but with the Pope, back when he was
plain old Cardinal Ratzinger.
Dion's latest album,
None of his
friends listened to the blues, but Dion was hooked.
"Every time I see Van Morrison he says, 'When are you gonna
do that blues record?' because he knows I love those songs," he says.
"I was inspired by Robert Johnson before Clapton was. I was listening to
Robert Johnson in 1959."
He relates how
Columbia Records executive John Hammond played him an acetate
of King of the Delta Blues Singers shortly after he signed to the label. When I
tell him that Bob Dylan describes exactly the same experience in Chronicles,
the first volume of his autobiography, he replies: "Well, it happened to
me first. I was at
The sleeve of
To underscore the
point, he picks up a rare black Kramer guitar given to him by Joan Jett and
shows off his rhythmic, rolling touch with a version of You're
the One by Jimmy Rogers. His voice still sounds pure and strong, although he's
hardly trying. "You're the one, that really gave me a buzz," he
sings, "I didn't think I could last much longer but then it shows you just
how wrong I was."
His new album has
been nominated for a Grammy, in the best traditional blues category, and given
the cycle of cool it may well win. But it's all just music, reckons Dion. It's the playing that matters. "I did a show in
7
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