Vol. 1 Number 1 Sept. 02(Thanks to Ray for forwarding this )
But all was not well in the Dimucci household on East 183rd street. Dions Dada Pasqual ( Pat) was not just a near' do well , he was a very public failure in the family of course loud-mouth in-laws who would not let him forget his shortcomings. This burned into the young Dions psyche', haunting him for the better part of 30 years. However the sad funny puppeteer managed to transmit a sense of fun to Dion of theatricality and impressed on the young performer in waiting the need to keep trying . Dion himself describes him as a man into an alternative lifestyle, a free spirit when the straitjacket of post-war America was constricting.
However a small child processes experiences without the temporising factors of maturity. Dion saw and feared to repeat the failure his father was in. In his own words:
"He was a babe in the woods when it came to business the kind of man the other men found easy to be superior to. When they all marched away to the Second World War , he told stories about how he'd talked his way out of the draft ... It was hard to respect a man like that and, for me, respect was everything. Sure, I'd been taught the code on the street, but in my life, getting respect went way beyond that, way beyond just winning. I [was] driven by the need to be looked up to. I loved my old man but when I heard my uncles laughing behind their hands, I never wanted to be like him. "
Before stardom, Dion most assuredly absorbed the scenes of his father's meticulous attention to sculpting puppets, of working out new and funny scenarios featuring the "little folk." He could savour the madcap of show business on the fringes of the dying vaudeville circuit of the Catskill resorts and the big movie houses in New York's outer boroughs. But a hunger was born, so that which truly formed and scarred him, which no doubt gave the hauntingly plaintive quality to his voice, was fear of failure.
On the other side of the aisle, so to speak, Frances, Dion's consummate mother , and a second-generation Italian-American character such as was so familiar in the 1940's and 50s in big cities. She was concerned with appearances above all. Is your tie tied right? Do you have to wear your hair in such a pompadour ? You can sing better than that!
Underpinning this parental conflict raging inside Dion's head, was a love of the street life that was happening scene, hip, cool, and most of all, free. On the gang-riddled streets of Crotona Avenue and Fordham Road, you could be someone just by displaying the correct mix of bravado and loyalty.
One quiet night, fiddling with the radio, a sound came through the ether that seemed' to reach out and touch the Italian heart of the boy in The 'Bronx. In the late 40s, late at night, radio station signals "changed directions," so someone listening in New York could dial around and pick up Detroit or Baton Rouge or Cleveland. And, each particular city had developed its own parochial taste, its own sound. What reached Dion's ears and entered the melange of his consciousness were the lonesome sounds of Hank Williams.
Dion has tried to explain the appeal of a performer like Williams to his over-hyped, street-corner punk mentality, but it boils down to two things: here was another, perhaps purer, culture reaching through the night skies, and Williams sounded like someone who was at least as lonely and hurt as "D."
In fact, when one looks down the Dion discography, it is liberally peppered with the two competing elements of the Italian-American street culture and the ol' lonesome whipperwill. There is the swagger of "The Wanderer," mixed with the urbane cynicism of "Runaround Sue;" and there is the faraway, worried, overly romantic strain of "Lonely Teenager," the stunningly poignant interpretation of "Where or When," and the acutely painful question found in "Teenager In Love."
Going beyond the bedrock influences on Dion were other ambient cultural currents. of the time. Quite naturally the listener detects the thread of the big'-time crooners of the era: Sinatra, Bennett, Dean Martin. And, in another part of the weave, the rainy-night, jazziness of the big, big city. While he came by this honestly, his tight friendship with Bobby Darin early on in both men's careers focused Dion on the legendary stylishness of nightclubs like the Copacabana, Danny's Hideaway, and the Gaslights. Darin was a headliner at such clubs just as Dion and the Belmonts were beginning.
One final note on Dion's early music has to be made. He fell hard in love with a transplanted Vermonter, later - much later - to become his wife. But, for many years for Dion there was the chronic and near tragic inability to commit to love. Luckily for the superstar Susan had an almost limitless tolerance for unaccecptable behavior and their relationship while not actually prospering endured. (Eventually they would have three daughters: Tane, Lark and August.)
All the diametrically opposed elements were in place for Dion DiMucci. The Italian village in The Bronx; the lure of the faraway; the brightly-lighted glamour of New York; the nagging lessons of his father's shortcomings and his mother's disappointments combined with something lethal that has risen from the streets for generations: heroin.
Heroin gave the inwardly shattered boy "courage," as Dion describes it in his autobiography, The Wanderer, a book Dick Clark describes as "a painfully honest story by a true musical legend." Snorting the white powder in those days was considered to be cool, and put a white kid in touch with the raw side of life that was hitherto open only to bluesmen, jazzmen and the ultra-hip African-American arts scene. For Dion, it consumed 10 years of his life, a life that had a public side sparkling with success, but a private side that was a lived in a stark, deep well that nearly killed him, his career, and his profoundly artistic inner life.
Through this haze, he became what has come to be known as a "teen idol," his popularity in the northeast almost unimaginable for the late 50s and early 60s. It seemed everyone was happy. He ensconced himself Manhattan's Upper East Side in a luxury pad, became a man about town, and "lived the life." He came into contact with New York's rich musical life, rubbing elbows with the likes of Carol King, Otis Blackwell and Neil Diamond. Later, after he broke with Laurie Records and signed with Columbia, he would have the opportunity to hang with Bob Dylan. But there is back-story to that intersection of musical sensibilities.
The Dylan connection is particularly intriguing and wrought with irony. Dion DiMucci was part of the "Winter Dance Party" tour that included Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens. When that marked trio took their fatal plane ride, Dion was absent because he refused to pay the $35 to hop on the puddle-jumper. He claims that $35 still represented a month's rent for his parents Belmont apartment when he was growing up, and the price was too dear. The tour promoters needed to book other acts to fulfil their contracts. One of the performers was Bobby Vee, another ethnic teen idol who sang, among other tunes "Take Good Care of My Baby". The night after the "day the music died" there was Vee filling in backed by a band with a keyboardist by the name of Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing Minosoatta .
Eventually Dion became close with Tom Wilson, Dylan's talented, young producer. Legend has it that Dion persuaded Wilson to "electrify" Dylan's latest crop of songs in the early 60s and, although the work would go through many transformations, this influence led to Bringing It All Back Home, in which Dylan abandoned true folk and infused his music with and urban punch that had been lacking previously.
Among other pals and jam session partners Dion knew in those heady days of ferment and creativity in the Village were John Sebastian, Kenny Rankin and, oddly enough, Richard Pryor. It was during this period that "D" became intimate with the Blues,, as well as the Folk vibe downtown, and its influence can readily be heard in Songs such as "Ruby Baby," "This Little Girl," and "Love Came to Me."
The sounds that were blowing in the wind then would later return to Dion in numbers like "Abraham, Martin and John" and "Your Own Backyard." The first reached number four on the charts, Dion's tenth top-ten single, its lasting value familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the turmoil of the 1960s. "Your Own Backyard" is perhaps too personal, but nevertheless is a gem in its own right. It alludes to the philosophical notion that all the answers to inner conflict lie within ourselves, our experiences, the blows taken, the feelings hidden.
While achieving little notice it is one of Dions finest songs .Essentially it is a glimpse into a mans soul a soul that has been lost in terrible racking of time and tide.
Dions life went on ,goes on of course He still occasionally cuts an album -gospel or inspirational music . He can best be described as a home boy , someone far different for the person who played 300 dates in a year to slake some inner need . In the more recent past he has played with Springsteen , Phil Spector, Billy Joel, Lou Reed Cher and other headliners. He has done a reunion with the Belmonts , loved it and never did it again. His routes are never far from him in spite of all the pain he truly relishes his upbringing , no anger of resentment detectable in his voice. His box set title say it all ,not just for him but anyone for whom his music is a quintessential part of life: King of The New York streets . He was inducted into the Rock’N’Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.