Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Welcome to the show, it’s so good to have you with me. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by a true rock and roll legend, Dion DiMucci, better known to the world simply as Dion.
You probably know him best as the voice behind classics like Run Around Sue and The Wanderer, but there’s so much more to Dion than all of those timeless hits. In this episode, Dion opens up about his incredible journey. It’s an honest, heartfelt and often funny chat with one of the true survivors of rock and roll.
I loved creating, you know, ever since I was a kid. I was hurled into this place of enchantment by Jimmy Reed and Hank Williams and I think my whole life, I’ve never really changed. I love creating a song or a book or a play or whatever I’m doing to take people on a trip and to take them to a place of enchantment, pleasure, delight, you know, somewhere transcendent that lifts them maybe to a place they’ve never been.
But it’s that 12-year-old inside of me that got touched so deeply that I’d like to transmit that feeling to others. It was street music, homemade music. We didn’t have instruments, you know, we just had our voices to work with so we just struck up harmonies and rhythms and made music on the streets.
Don’t know why I love you, don’t know why I care I just want your love to share I wonder why I love you like I do Is it because I think you love me too? I wonder why I love you like I do, like I do What were you drawing on to create that sort of music? You know, I would say I just had a gift, I was creative. I drew from the Apollo Theater band in Harlem. When I went down to the Apollo Theater, I’d hear these sax players, you know, they had a section of saxophones and a section of horns and they’d play like And I’d come running back to the neighborhood and I’d say, hey guys, do this.
Ruby, ruby, ruby, baby. We were like a poor man’s horn section. I said I love a girl and a ruby is her name Hear me talkin’ now This girl don’t love me, but I love her just the same What’d I say? Whoa, ruby, ruby, I will want you Like a ghost, I’m gonna haunt you Ruby, ruby, ruby, will you be mine sometime? Each time I see you, baby, my heart cries Oh, it does, Ruby I tell ya, I’m gonna steal you away from all those guys I didn’t want to walk from the happy day I met you I made a bet that I was going to get you Ruby, ruby, ruby You worked tirelessly at it, didn’t you? I mean, as far as I can gather, you guys were always on the street corners.
You met, you rehearsed, you created. Well, I don’t think we called it work, Sandy. We just were having a lot of fun, you know.
And it was interesting finding solutions to these songs, you know, and harmonies. And we weren’t attached to any genre or rules or, you know, you couldn’t put a label on us. We just did what we felt like doing rhythmically, lyrically, you know, percussion.
We didn’t know how to write words too well. But then when we got a record contract, when I got a record contract, we ran into some real songwriters who helped us out, you know. How did you get that record contract in the first place? Well, this is just fortune where I was born.
You know, if I was born maybe in Nebraska, I wouldn’t have had the chance to do this. But I was brought up in the Bronx, and there was a songwriter who knew two brothers who were opening a record company. They took me down to Manhattan, which was a little train ride from my neighborhood.
And I took my guitar and sang a few songs for them, and off I went. They loved what I did. I came in and sang them a, let’s see, I think it was a Lloyd Price song and a Carl Perkins tune, and maybe a Fats Domino song, a backside called Rosalie.
And they loved what I did, and they signed me right there. I lucked out. So what did that record contract mean for you? Well, it opened up my whole world, Sandy.
You know, I have a gift writing songs, communicating songs, and putting arrangements together. You know, I went on tour with Sam Cooke and Bobby Darin and Buddy Holly, and up until the present with Eric Clapton. My last few albums I did with Clapton and Paul Simon and Samantha Fish, you know, even young women who are new in the business, you know.
It’s just opened up my whole world and everybody in between, you know. When you did first get that record contract and started heading off on tour, were you writing your own songs then, or did you have writers that were creating those very first hits? A little of both. We’d have a writer come in with a song, and yet we were writing our own things, you know.
I wrote Runaround Thru and Donna the Prima Donna was writing. I was having a good time just putting these songs together. I met a girl a month ago I thought that she would love me so But in time I realized She had a pair of roving eyes I remember the nights we dated Always acting sophisticated Talking about high society Then she tried to make a fool out of me Donna the Prima Donna Dion, you started to become known for those slightly self-pitying, sort of pained stories to adolescents and early adulthood.
They really started to characterize a lot of your work from then on, didn’t they? Well, you know, Chuck Berry was writing about school and cars and I guess Paul Anka was writing Put Your Head on My Shoulder, all these very romantic songs. And I just thought, let me do something like The Wanderer or, you know, like Little Diane. I think the self-pity songs were coming from outside the company.
I kind of rebelled against them. The self-pity songs, I didn’t care for much. I thought, let’s have a harder edge.
Let’s talk about something contentious in a relationship instead of the namby-pamby thing. Yeah, I was looking to do something a little different. Diane, down deep inside I cried Diane, without your love I’d die Diane, you know you drive me wild Diane, you’re such a little evil child Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah You were a little different yourself too, weren’t you? Because you had that kind of cocky, suave edge about you.
You weren’t a soft… Yeah, what’d they call them in England? Teddy boys? I was in a gang, you know, and that’s the way I started out. You know, I had a friend, a black friend, who he was a superintendent of a tenement building, a janitor, and he played blues, you know. His name was Willie Green.
He was through a lot, and he overcame drinking and drugging, and he came into a brighter spot, and he always would tell me, Diane, I don’t see your future with these guys. I think you have much more to do. I don’t know.
He kind of pushed me out of that gang style. I started hanging out in Manhattan with the theatre people. I liked creative people, so I started hanging out with creative people.
I still wake up with that passion. I haven’t changed much. Yeah.
You’re lucky that you did have the guides that you had at the time because despite having a recording contract and despite making some huge hits then, you were going through a difficult time yourself personally, weren’t you? Well, you know, my father never had a real job, and my mother was totally super responsible. She had two jobs, and they would always be arguing, you know, over the rent money, the $36 a month rent, and that was an everyday argument, and, you know, I really didn’t know how to handle it. You know, when you’re a kid, you just don’t know how to make sense of your emotions or get a handle on it or get some perspective on it.
You know, and sometimes you just build a whole personality around these insecurities, you know, and that’s what I started doing. I just didn’t know where to place them or how to get over on them or make sense of them. So, man, when I took that first drug, I was like, yeah, now this is where it’s at.
You know, I didn’t have to say yes to anything, you know. Anybody here seen my old friend Abraham? Can you tell me where he’s gone? Oh, but it seems good they die young. You know, I just look around and he’s gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend John? Can you tell me where he’s gone? He freed a lot of people, but it seemed good they die young. I just looked around and he’s gone. That did cost you around five years of your early career, didn’t it? Because you pulled right back from doing what you love to do.
Well, you know, that stuff could take your life. It’s not good. You think you found heaven, you found hell.
I was using drugs in the mid-60s, heroin. I was running the streets with Frankie Lyman, another lead singer of a group that I was hanging out with. He overdosed and died.
And it scared me. And a month later, I gave up everything. Man, I never looked back.
I got clean and sober, and I’ve been clean and sober 57 years. In 1968, you’ve emerged as a bit of a gentle folk rocker. And that first hit that you had at that point was Abraham Martin and John.
That was a very different Dion that we saw. Well, in the mid-60s, I guess nobody was watching me, so I was hanging out in Greenwich Village. And, you know, it was the folk era, so I would be hanging out with Tom Paxton or John Sebastian from The Loving Spoonful.
Richie Havens was down there, and Bob Dylan came down into the village. And Tim Harden, unfortunately, heroin brought him down. He died, but I loved him.
He wrote some beautiful songs, and I bought some picks, and I was picking the guitar. So by the time 1968 rolled around, I was ready to do Abraham Martin and John, because I had been picking, and I was writing much more frequently. I became more of a writer of my own material.
That song and I, stars are in the right place, you know. You’d certainly changed with the times already. The doo-wop had slid away, and then again come the early 70s, the times changed again.
Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with Phil Spector, and then Dave Edmonds and Lou Reed also came across your path? In the bright lights, the big city Went straight to the baby’s head She never listened to a word Or what her daddy said The music and the parties And the laughter turned her on She lost herself in running And all we had was gone That’s the year my dream Died in New York City That’s the year I had to leave that town That’s the year before my dream Died in New York City That’s the year I left without a sound The bottles are all empty And we sang our farewell song Thank the Lord that New York City People love you strong I think of all the good times When I’m my cup overflowed Ain’t it funny baby That we’ve taken different roads That’s the year my dream Died in New York City Lou Reed, we were always close, you know, just guys from the streets, and we liked guitars and writing and just taking each other on a trip, you know. Phil Spector, that came about in the, I would say, the mid-’70s. I remember that clearly.
I wrote about it in a new book I put out called The Rock & Roll Philosopher. I was on the beach at Malibu next door to Neil Diamond’s. I was walking the beach with him, and just about that time, Phil Spector was handed the roster over at Warner Brothers Record Company, and they asked him who he would like to produce, and he said Dion.
So we started producing an album. Man, it was a crazy time in my life because he just came off doing an album with John Lennon and Harry Nilsson. Nilsson lost his voice.
It was a very chaotic session and everything, but I had been clean and sober for about seven years, so I had a little wisdom under my belt, you know. I could handle him. So we went in and recorded this album.
Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven would hang out in the control room and Cher and Greg Allman and Jack Nicholson. You know, everybody wanted to be around Phil Spector. He was a legend.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. There he is in his white wig and his white jumpsuit with his .357 Magnum and is waving it around, pointing it at Bruce Springsteen saying, you want to know how to make a freaking record? I’ll show you how to make a record.
Like Bruce Springsteen really needs some help making a record. Was that your first introduction to people like Bruce and Stevie Van Zandt and the like? Well, I knew Stevie. He was part of my band in the early 70s.
So we were friends. Yeah, when they got to California, he called me, said, Dion, you know, Bruce and I would love to come over and meet Phil Spector. So I got them in to meet him, you know, but then he started abusing them.
But they didn’t care. They felt like it was Don Rickles, you know, chomping on them. So they rolled with it, you know.
There was one incident I didn’t mention at the beginning, if you don’t mind just jumping back a little bit for me, because in 1959, when you were 19 years old, you were on the tour with Buddy Holly’s Winter Dance Party. And it was only because of luck, really, that you weren’t on that plane where Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper and Ritchie Vallance actually crashed, were you? Yeah, that was a traumatic time in my life. You know, it was a really mixed up time for me because I was 19 and it was like one of the best things that ever happened in my life, touring with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Vallance and the Bopper, who was a great songwriter and a great guy.
And, you know, to have it ripped out from underneath you like the floor came, just was torn out beneath me. You know, we were crisscrossing the Midwest in this little yellow school bus and it kept breaking down in between towns and it was like 20 below zero and it was cold and the heater on the bus kept breaking and the belts kept snapping and I’m telling you, it was cold. In fact, Buddy Holly’s drummer caught frostbite.
We had to leave him at a hospital because he was so cold he put on five pair of socks and that kept the cold in. He didn’t end up too good. He almost lost his foot.
Yeah, Buddy Holly got tired of that kind of, you know, the bus breaking down and he just got tired of it and he was 22 years old and he was a very decisive, he was very statuesque but I remember him being very decisive and he decided to charter a plane, a one engine, four seater and the pilot and him and there was two other seats and there was Richie, the big bopper and myself. There was only two other seats so we had to flip a coin. I won the coin toss but when he told me it was $36 to get on the flight, my head hadn’t stretched out to paying a whole month’s rent that my parents were arguing about all my life.
I just said, no, I gave my seat to Richie and, you know, that plane must have crashed about five minutes after it took off so I missed those guys and they affected me on a lot of levels. They really inspired me. They were great guys, great songwriters, friends, buddies, they were like family, you know.
Well, that’ll be the day When you say goodbye Yes, that’ll be the day When you make me cry You say you’re gonna leave But you know it’s a lie Cause that’ll be the day When I die Well, you give me all your lovin’ And your dirty lovin’ All your hugs and kisses And your money too Well, you know you love me, baby Still you tell me maybe That someday we’ll all be through Well, that’ll be the day When you say goodbye Yes, that’ll be the day When you make me cry You say you’re gonna leave You know it’s a lie Cause that’ll be the day When I die Did your parents live long enough to see your success? They did, they did. My mother died, she was 104. Yeah, she saw most of it.
I think she was proud of me. I mean, they never said anything. Never said I’m proud of you or anything like that.
Unfortunately, they just didn’t know how to express themselves. It was their generation, wasn’t it? They weren’t brought up like that at all themselves. No, they weren’t.
I’d imagine you took over those $36 a month rent payments for them, though. Yeah, I did put them on the payroll, I did. I had no doubt about that.
I was thinking that I just went to pay taxes and I probably paid more taxes than my ten uncles on my mother’s side and nine uncles on my father’s that the whole family made in a whole lifetime. What they earned in a whole lifetime. I probably paid more in taxes.
Yeah. Was the family into music? Nobody in my family. No, my father had no rhythm at all.
I don’t know. I call myself a rhythm singer. He had absolutely no rhythm.
He didn’t even know what it was. So your talents just sprung out of nowhere. I know that you’ve been really hooked on the blues all your life and you’ve carried that through the whole career too, haven’t you? Absolutely, yeah.
I started out with Jimmy Reed and Hank Williams and, you know, over here in the States, they usually refer to the Beatles as like the British Invasion. I thought it was the British Infusion because I think the UK, they understood American music better than Americans. You know, the roots.
They could connect the dots. Over here, we were just interested in hit records, but they understood it. So I identify a lot with the British.
Keith Richards wrote a book called Life or something and I wasn’t crazy about the book, but there are two chapters in there that he explains the music. The book was worth just reading it for those two chapters. All right.
What does he say about it? He just talks about tunings and how the Stones listened to one record for a whole week. They would take a Jimmy Reed record and listen to it for a whole week and get all the nuances. That was their schooling.
That was going to college for them. That’s why they’re so good. They knew the sound of the bass, where it’s placed in the record, how the drummer played, if he played before the beat, after the beat, on the beat, the turnarounds on the guitar, what amps they used, the sound they got.
They studied everything. It’s amazing how he explains it, but he does it well because Thelonious Monk said talking about music is like dancing about architecture. In other words, just make the music.
You don’t have to talk about it. But Keith Richards talked about it. It was amazing.
You’d have Dave Edmonds produce one of your albums too. The era you’re talking about, it was an era where commercial music was great and great music was commercial. And then it started changing.
You’d have to go to different stations to get different kinds of music. But the era that you’re talking about was so creative with the Beatles and the Stones. It’s when great music was commercial.
They were one and the same, not so much now. And Edmonds, he studied all that music. He was a real historian, and he knew what was on all those records, all those great records, all those great Carl Perkins records and all Chuck Berry’s records.
That was going to college for him. There was a bit of a lull in your career during that period, and I think it was because of Stevie Van Zandt again and Bruce Springsteen that it was regurgitated one more time. Am I correct in saying that? I’ve just made music over the years.
I was up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Dave Marsh was interviewing me, and he said to me, you are the only guy from the 50s that has remained relevant and creative. And I started arguing with him, and it was hard to take in, but I lost the argument. So when I got home, and I told my wife about it, and she said, what are you going to do about it? So I started making these albums, and the last three albums were just Sandy.
I’m telling you, in the last five years, I wrote 40 of the best songs I’ve ever written. I asked Eric Clapton to join me on a song. I asked Peter Frampton, Mark Knopfler, Jeff Beck, some of the greatest guitar players on the planet.
I had a ball making these albums. Look at that, look at that Where do you think I am? Look at that, look at that Where do you think I am? If you want to rock and roll Baby, don’t you know I can I’m gonna never fall below If I want to be king, baby I can’t prove all my love I’m a ridiculous king, baby I can’t prove all my love I can’t prove all I want to do You really have to thank your wife, Susan, for reigniting it all in these past five years. I remember last time we spoke, you told me that she had insisted that you include Van Morrison on one of the albums because he was her favourite singer.
Yeah, absolutely. She’s been pretty influential on you, hasn’t she, all these years? I think so. I think I’ll keep it.
There’s great stories about her in this book, The Rock and Roll Philosopher. Well, she turned Dave Marsh’s comment into a dare. You know, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it, you know? So, yeah, she keeps me going.
Those albums that you talk about, can you just run through those very briefly for me? There’s one that’s called Stomping Ground, and that was fun. Got Boz Skaggs to do a song, and Ricky Lee Jones, and just so many amazing artists, Springsteen and Paul Simon. And I just kept asking people, but not so much just to ask them.
I recorded the song, and then I was thinking, whose sound would just make this song even better, you know? So, you know, when you write a beautiful ballad, I went to Jeff Beck, because he was the only guitar player that could make me cry. But I found out that Peter Frampton is just remarkable. He’s a remarkable guitar player.
We became fast friends. He’s a great guy also. There was a time So long ago There was a fire There was a glow And there was you I didn’t know There was a time And in that time You looked at me I wondered If it could be I didn’t hope I couldn’t see There was a time Did anybody turn you down? Were you surprised that every one of the ones you asked actually said, yeah, I’ll play with you, Dion? Well, there were some people that were hard to get to, like Harry Connick Jr. I wanted him to play some piano.
Couldn’t get to him. John Mayer was busy. But most of the guys I contacted just, they said, you know, like when Eric Clapton played on If You Want to Rock and Roll, it was so good that I called him up and I said, Eric, you sound like you’re 19 years old.
He said, Dion, I wanted to do a good job for you. I stood up in the studio. I didn’t sit down.
He said, I stood up. So I said, thank you. They sent you all their files digitally.
So you’re working in a whole different way today than you started off, obviously, or had worked throughout most of your career. Did you manage to acclimatise to the whole new way of working very easily too? Well, it’s the same thing. They would be playing to the same exact thing if they were right in the studio with me.
Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t. Like Joanne Shaw-Taylor, she’s English, and I did an album called Girlfriends, and I sent her a track because she wasn’t here at the time. And she took it into the studio and rocked out, man.
She’s a great guitar player. It came out great, you know. I don’t think I would have been able to make these three albums without this here computer thing, you know.
We didn’t have it in the 50s, you know.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Well, I’m one grateful guy that I could do it with this because especially during COVID, nobody was going anywhere and everybody was home.
So they were available and ready to go and it was great. It was a creative time for me. I remember talking to you about it.
Yes, exactly. I mean, I can’t believe that you’re in your 80s, you’re in your mid-80s now, and you’re still so together and with it. Perhaps the fact that you told me that your mother didn’t pass until she was 104 has something to do with that.
But you’re so together. What do you put that down to? Well, a couple of things. You know, first of all, I don’t know.
Like everyone else, yeah, I get that. You know, sometimes, you know, your life could change like this, you know, and so I’m just very grateful that I’m healthy and by the grace of God, you know, but I got to say that I’ve been April 1st, I’m clean and sober 57 years. So that helps a lot.
I’ve been sitting here thinking about when I started in drinking. I went on the dope, surely to change my life. I cried a tear and a beer for me.
I lost everything near and dear to me, namely my children and my wife. My idea of having a good time was sitting with my head between my knees. I knew everything.
There was no everything except which way to go. I cried. Oh, God, take me with you, please.
I take care of myself. You know, I’m always like walking or I go to the gym once in a while. I’m not a gym rat or anything, but, you know, I take care of myself.
So I guess that’s part of it. You know, my good cook. She makes a lot of good soups and salads and stuff.
So here I am. Yeah. Dion, tell me about the book.
This new book. Well, it’s the new book. It’s called The Rock and Roll Philosopher, and it has 60 stories in it.
And the reason why I call it The Rock and Roll Philosopher is a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. And your philosophy is perfectly designed to produce the results you’re getting. And that’s what the book is about.
It’s like your belief system, where you actually see your belief system, is in relationships. So there’s a bunch of stories that I’m reflecting on, you know, events in my life that I just reflect on and usually has, like, a life lesson in it, how I got over or through something, like the Phil Spector story. You know, Phil wasn’t an easy guy to get along with, but I reveal how I did it, how I took him into a private room and how I talked to him privately.
Not publicly, privately. So I have all these little gems in the book, stories about Eddie Cochran, you know, maybe Gene Vinson, and stories about Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, you know, just Paul Simon, Lou Reed, just a lot of stories about music, stories about recovery, because I’ve been clean and sober 57 years, and there’s stories about life and music. Got up another Monday, another subway I got to another workday Hey, what’s my ambition? Five stops on down to Broadway You step right through the doorway I saw you coming my way Hey, a brand new mission You took a breath in New York minutes A lot of stories about faith, because I think my faith is a big part of my life.
You know, it’s where I get my sustenance, you know, and power, and wisdom, and beauty, and truth, and goodness, and all the serenity and the peace. I’m a funny guy. For a rock and roller, if you unzipped my head and looked inside my mind, you’d probably see a very orderly, peaceful place.
You’ve had to work hard to create that and keep that going, though, haven’t you? And I guess what I’m hearing you say about this book is that it’s not just stories of your life that people can get to know you and your friends a little bit better, but anybody reading it can gain that wisdom that you got too. So there’s really tangible stuff that people can get out of this. Actually, it’s a book of mentoring.
I wrote it with a friend of mine, Adam Jablon, because he’s a younger fella, a huge business guy, and he took a liking to me, and I kind of mentored him through a lot of different situations in life, and that’s a big part of the book. You know, I really feel like I had a lot of, you know, like a philosopher’s a lover of wisdom. Who doesn’t love wisdom? Because it teaches you how to navigate through life, you know, how to, otherwise you get stuck, and you get argumentative, and you get cynical, and you get critical, and you get self-pity, and you get, you go, you spiral inward, and you become, you could become a real jerk.
Hey, I’m not criticizing, I’m like, I know, I was there. Hello. Faith can turn an angry sea Into a gentle stream Faith can turn a stormy cloud Into a bright sunbeam Faith can turn a tear drop Into a shining star Faith is what I have in you No matter where you are There’s a way to get out of it.
There’s a way. And you don’t have to live like that. So the book is like, actually, you know, a story is to take people to a higher reality, a higher ground, a higher pitch in life, you know, because where you actually see your belief system, like I was saying, is in relationships, is with your wife, your kids, your friends, your co-workers.
That’s how you actually see it. You know, it’s not talking about it. I could, you know, virtue signal all day long and come off as like a self-righteous jerk.
But where you actually see somebody’s belief system is in their life, you know, how they get along with their band. You know, you could want to save the world. Like sometimes I was thinking of John Lennon the other day.
I said, man, he wanted to save the world. He couldn’t get along with his bandmates. Well, you know, he’s a human being.
I love John Lennon. Hey, first one, he was my guy. All we are saying is give peace a chance.
Give peace a chance. Give peace a chance. Why did you decide to do the book? Because you felt that you had so much to pass on? Well, you know, I would go out with my friend Adam and we’d go out for lunch and we’d be telling, you know, we’d be talking about different situations and some friends were around.
And you’d always hear, wow, I wish everybody was here to hear these stories. I wish my family could hear. I wish my friends could hear this.
So Adam and I, we got the bright idea one day, why don’t we put it on voice memo or start documenting some of these? And after five years, we had 60 really great stories, you know. And we’d hone them out. You know, as we were talking, we’d remember them and then we’d fill them in.
And that’s what the book is about, these great conversations. They talk directly to you, you know. Yeah.
And finally, Dion, there’s even a Broadway show coming. It’s called The Wanderer, and I know that’s been in the pipeline for some time, but it’s about to hit the stage this year, I believe. Yeah, the producer and writer made a lot of decisions to get through the lockdown.
And now that Broadway is back on its feet and it’s not so anemic, you know, it went through a rough period, but it’s back. So right now, they’re looking for the theater, because everything’s in place. The show, there’s nothing to do.
It’s all there. Written, done, scenery, it’s all done. So they’re just looking for the theater and, you know, of course, the finances.
You know, they’re always into that. So, you know, this year might be the year for us. Oh, I’m the type of guy who will never settle down Where pretty girls are, well, you know that I’m around I kiss them and I love them, cause to me they’re all the same I hug them and I squeeze them, they don’t even know my name They call me The Wanderer, yeah, The Wanderer I roam around, around, around, around Oh, well, there’s Flo on my left And there’s Mary on my right And Janie is the girl, well, that I’ll be with tonight And when she asks me which one I love the best I tear open my shirt and I throw a rosy on my chest Cause I’m a wanderer, yeah, a wanderer I roam around, around, around, around Oh, well, I roam from town to town I go through life without a care And I’m as happy as a clown With my two fists of iron, but I’m going nowhere Of all the songs that you’ve written and released, do you have an absolute favourite one? Oh, my Lord.
Which one should we go out on here? You know, I wrote one recent, well, it’s kind of recent. It’s kind of a favourite of mine right now. Because I love the lyrics, the way the words come out of my mouth.
It’s written about a drunk. It’s written about a guy who’s really in self-pity, talking like he was saying. It’s called Crying Shame.
It’s like, why do I wait when you won’t come back? I’m on the wrong side of the zodiac. You know, it’s a crying shame. But it’s, Sonny Landreth played guitar on it, and it’s, right now I just like singing it, because I like the way the words come out of my mouth.
Great. Well, we’ll take a listen to it right now, and I’ll let you go. You’ve been so generous with your time, as always.
You’re an amazing person, an amazing musician, and we have so much love and so much to share. We are very, very grateful to you, Dion. Thank you, Sam.
It’s a joy to be with you, really. Why don’t you tell me when it’s coming on? Why don’t you tell me when I’m going wrong? Why don’t you tell me when I lost my touch? Why don’t you tell me when I drink too much? Oh, how I’ve found Not a well The lights went out Yeah, the lights went out I couldn’t get my grip again The means they justified the end It’s a crying shame Nobody told me what it’s all about Nobody told me I could fight them out Nobody told me I was stumbling Nobody told me about anything Oh, that I’m down Oh, too late The lights went out You always call yourself a friend You weren’t there to lift me then It’s a crying shame Crying shame And I tasted blood Don’t remember when I hit the mud I can’t remember that black-eyed day All I remember is that you walked away Oh, then I found It was like Well, the lights went out All the very best to you. Till 104 at least.
I hope we’ll talk again. Thank you, Sam. Farewell.
You too. Lots of love, Dion. Great day.
Bye now. You too.