|
|
A Heroin Nightmare and the Road Back
(Extract from "Where Are You Now, Bo Diddley? " by Edward Kiersh 1985?)
One Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1959, the DiMucci clan sat around their Bronx kitchen table, listening to the Top 10 countdown. Once it was announced that their twenty-year-old bambino had moved into the number one slot with "Teenager in Love," pandemonium broke out. Meatballs started flying. Dion's parents wept. His aunts hugged each other, and ran to the windows to share the good news with the neighbourhood.
This scene repeated itself several times over the next few years. Dion had a string of international hits "Where or When," "Runaround Sue," "The Wanderer," "Donna the Prima Donna"-that made him the Michael Jackson of his day. With him around, Fabian and Avalon had to stand aside. In bobbysoxers' hearts, he was It.
Especially in his own neighbourhood. Whenever he returned from a show at the Brooklyn Fox or some other rock palace, the girls mobbed him. They'd wait outside his house just to smile at him. Or to get an autograph.
Even the local storekeepers stopped him in the street, as did priests, and the guys hanging out at the corner candy store. "Everyone," says Dion, "treated me like I was a Super Bowl hero. I was so special to these people. Sure' they'd say 'Hey, meatball, don't forget where you from.' But overwhelmingly, there were mostly cheers, my success Was a neighborhood deal. Everyone was into it. And that was so neat, for like most kids, I was still wondering about who I was, where I was, and where I was going. Their praise gave me a feeling that I was connecting, that I had an identity. I needed that. I said to myself, 'Wow, I must be good at what I'm doing."'
The adulation continued. Dion was so esteemed that Dimucci Clan members told their children, "Look at your cousin Dion, he's such a success I pray to God that you'll be just like him."
How unsuspecting everyone was. They never saw anything amiss. Even Dion's closest relatives assumed he was happy. They didn't realize he was truly the Wanderer, travelling a lonely, aimless road that led straight to hell.
For even as a fifteen -year old, Dion was snorting heroin. Smack softened the insecurities of growing up. It was a release from the pressures of making it. And for a while, the white stuff was a dreamy good time.
Until it became an addiction.
By the 1960's, Dion was mainlining.
Tormented by the drug's deadly grip, Dion went into seclusion, his career seemingly finished. That period was so nightmarish, so stained with grief, Dion has trouble remembering its grimiest details. Only one thing is for certain, he'd hit rock bottom.
But unlike Hendrix, Elvis, or Janis, Dion was blessed. Miraculously, he had escaped death once before, having refused to go on the flight that crashed with the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly aboard. Destiny mercifully gave him a reprieve in that instant and again in 1968, his death sentence was commuted. For after falling to his knees, in anguished supplication to the "Man above," Dion rose from his bedroom floor freed from drugs.
Though dismissing the "born again" tag, Dion is now involved several Miami, Florida, churches, in their crusade against drugs.
hoping to steer young people away from "the mistakes I made," he lectures to church groups, and appears on religious TV shows, "essentially help youngsters find themselves."
Apparently, the identity crisis that first led him to heroin is finally over. Now, at forty-six, he's found new purpose. No longer nagged insecurities, he's content with himself. In a sense then, he's come home his wandering has ended. So why should we retrace that journey? What purpose does it dredge up old hurts and horrors?
In Dion's case, such probing is crucial, since it destroys the myth of some Rock Babylon. Contrary to popular thinking, success isn't just glitz, glamour, and good times. Being Mr. Teen to millions of young girls was a burden for Dion. It prevented him from defining his own life. He couldn't be. Nor could he talk about these frustrations to his friends and relatives. They believed in the mythical Dion. He became the vicarious fulfilment of their own dreams. To avoid disappointing them, he kept everything inside. Only now can he bare his soul or as was once pointed out, remember where he came from.
In the early 1950's, the borough was still Yankee land. Most boys dreamed of wearing the famed pinstripes and following the footsteps of Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra. Except for the weirdoes who harmonised on street corners, or in subway entrances, youngsters weren't involved with music. Since the transistor-radio fad-and the rock explosion-were still years away, street kids focused on baseball, batting Statistics, and driving a stickball over a schoolyard fence.
The Yankees won the pennant again in 1950, but the "doo-woppers" gained another convert-a soft-spoken eleven-year old with the angelic good looks of a choirboy.
"I remember the day I was first attracted to music," says Dion wistfully. "It was a Sunday, and I remember the aromas in the kitchen, the spaghetti, the meat sauce, the whole bit. There was a show that came out of Newark, the Don Larkin show, and while I was sitting in the kitchen, I heard this Hank Williams song, 'Honky Tonk Blues.' Then they played 'Be Careful of Stones That You Throw,' and I said to myself, 'Who is this guy?' I did a little research, and became a big Hank Williams fan. By the time I was thirteen, I had two hundred of his seventy-eights. I also got this little guitar, and on Friday nights my uncle would take me down to this club that I wasn't allowed into. They'd hide me in the kitchen, just in case the police came in . . and they'd bring me out a couple of times a night to sing a few songs. People would stick money into the guitar, so I'd come back home with about thirty-five dollars."
Sitting in the den of his North Miami Beach ranch house, Dion props his legs on a big antique desk, and then points to a photograph on the wall. This particular photo of his mother and father is set apart from the gold records and other memorabilia. Before continuing, he stares at it and smiles.
"After a few years of hiding out from the law, I taped this demo, as sort of a Valentine's Day gift for my mother. It was 'Wonderful Girl,' the back side of an old Five Satins record, and an original song, 'We Belong Together.' I think that's it. Well, there was a song writer in the neighbourhood who knew people at Laurie Records, and they were looking for a singer. I went down there and they wanted to put my voice on this recording; it was called 'The chosen Few.' But the background was so sterile, so polished. It was bad, so I said 'If you want to listen to real music, I'll round up some guys.'" That song was released in 1957, and the backup group that he never met, the Timberlanes, became part of the Dion legend.
But he still went back to his neighbourhood, to "the Belmont Avenue candy stores where the guys buried themselves in the jukebox," and put together the Belmonts.
"These guys could really harmonise," continues Dion, proudly pointing to another photograph. "They were the best singers from each candy store, Carlo [Mastangelo], Freddy [Milano], and Angelo D'Aleo]. So we went down to Laurie, and started fooling around there was no fear in us, we were just goofing. Eventually we came up with this song, 'I Wonder Why' (a typical 'doo-wop' mix of nonsense syllables, falsettos, and cappella vocalising, that made it to the Top 20 in 1958]... that impressed a lot of people."
Once they became local celebrities, the group left the candy stores for a more private "studio." They did their riffs behind abandoned tenements, or on subway platforms. Here, they could escape envious neighbourhood gangs, and as Dion relates, "It's in these places that we did our best music.
"We'd also have bashes on Saturday night, these parties where we'd bang on beer bottles and cardboard boxes. We'd get riffs going, and those are the kinds of things that I'd put lyrics to, and bring to Laurie. That's how most of our songs started, 'Runaround Sue,' 'Donna the Prima Donna' . . . But every time we made a record he chuckles], the guys would signal thumbs down; they felt it was better the time we did it at a party, or in the tenement."
Admitting that Laurie's writers sharpened this street material into recordable songs, Dion praises the company for their early help. Unlike most artists of this era' he doesn't have any complaints about being bilked out of money. And he even commends Laurie executives particularly owners Gene and Bob Schwartz) for treating him squarely once they learned about his heroin problem. "I started to snort heroin even as a kid," admits Dion, his tanned face beginning to tighten. "First it was pot and stuff, then snorting heroin then it was skin-popping heroin, and finally mainlining. A lot of the guys I hung out with, even Frankie Lymon, died very young . . .my parents didn't know anything about it . . . at first I was just dabbling in it, I wasn't full-blown. But once it grabs you, it's a career. I didn't have that, not at first. I had a problem that I knew of, and it was kind of periodic. I'd leave it [the heroin]. I'd think, 'Thank God, I can get off.' But it's progressive, if you don't deal with the problem, with the root of the sickness, it keeps surfacing, it just keeps progressing .
The Schwartz brothers, and one of their investors' Alan Sussel, urged Dion to seek medical help. But once "Teenager in Love" soared to the top of the charts in 1959, Dion joined Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper on their ill-fated Winter Dance Party tour. This bus caravan moved slowly through the Midwest that winter, because of subfreezing temperatures in the cranky old school bus. It often broke down between towns, so the older band members, worried about freezing to death, complained to Holly. As Dion sadly recollects, "Buddy got tired of the whole thing, and besides, he liked to rent planes . . . On this particular night [the caravan had reached Clear Lake, Iowa by February 1], he was kind of recruiting, offering places on the plane. The more people you got on the plane, the less it would cost. I wasn't going to go for the money; since the Belmonts and I were splitting the pay-checks, I didn't want to spend anything extra. I don't know, but I was cheap. I turned it down."
Shuddering, Dion shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
"Afterward, I wasn't only thinking that I could've been on it [the plane]. It was just that three guys I was travelling with were gone. When something like that happens to you when you're only nineteen years old, it's baffling. One day it's just rock 'n' roll, having a lot of fun, the girls screaming, and sharing chords with three friends. While the next day these three guys are just taken away, that's it . . you wonder you what life, death, and everything's about. You start asking yourself some deep questions; it baffles you at nineteen. I don't know if it affected my singing . . . I was just struck with a deeper sense of reality. We did go on, we finished the tour. But, to be honest with you, I was puzzled, I was in a state of shock."
Though Dion's drug dependency worsened, he continued to work. In 1960, he had another hit with "Where or When." But this would be his last record with the Belmonts until 1973. Egos and "instincts" started to clash, so feeling "the old tightness just wasn't there," Dion decided to go solo "We had a lot of internal problems," confesses Dion. "Everyone was very strong in what they believed. With our creative juices flowing, there were bound to be collisions. I think we just had to pursue different avenues . . . it's easy to make it, but once that acceptance comes you sometimes have differences. There wasn't any hate there, but the other guys were into harmonies, jazz, and Freddy was really a rock 'n' roll fanatic.
"I liked rock 'a' roll, no doubt about that, but a different approach. I just couldn't get into the high-low harmony thing, they wanted to go more that way. I guess it's an ego thing, or there was just something inside me that I wanted to communicate. I wanted to do more rhythm things. I couldn't identify with four guys singing harmonies. I was hoping to share my experiences with people, that's it, maybe the music I wanted to do should be called 'Bronx Blues.'"
With songwriter Ernie Maresca's help, Dion's "autobiography" took shape on the best selling "Runaround Sue" (number one in 1960) and "The Wanderer" (number three). Admittedly, these songs don't have any profound existential themes. Based simply on Dion's adolescent experiences, they were vinyl pictures of teenagers in the Bronx: the girl who was making it with everyone but Dion, and the neighbourhood macho guy with girls' bodies tattooed all over his chest. And while the lyrics often lacked sensitivity ("It was sick to blame the girl for my own promiscuity," admits Dion, referring to "Runaround Sue"), they weren't just catchy numbers to dance to. Suddenly sex-conscious teenagers could identify with the infidelities of a "Wanderer"; there was a desperation in these tunes that underscored young love.
"Lovers Who Wander" (number three in 1960), and "Donna the Prima Donna (number six in 1963), were variations on the same love-is- tormenting theme. And as Dion tightened his grip on the charts ("Little Diane," "Ruby Baby," and "Drip Drop" also made it to the Top 10 by 1963), he left Laurie for Columbia Records.
That 1963 switch, however, was his undoing.
"Once I got that Columbia contract, or the guarantee of money, it allowed my drug addiction, or my obsession to surface. Not having to worry about earning a living, I could go full time with the drugs. It got bad, it became a daily thing, all kinds of drugs. It became a full-time heroin thing by '64."
What drove Dion into the sordid world of smack, syringes, and street-corner pushers?
When asked this, he winces, and murmurs, "I don't have all the answers . . . I always wondered who I was, and where I was going. I thought when I got fame, fortune, and romance, I'd be happy. After eight gold records, a couple of million dollars, marrying my childhood sweetheart, a beautiful house, and material security, I still felt there was something missing. I didn't know what it was.
"People can look at you and think you've got it all-yet I was into a slow suicide. I've seen friends of mine and contemporaries die every year; they've just gotten fried in the spotlight . . . When things got really down, when my life was in this bleak valley, I never dealt with the root of my problems. I used different formulas to avoid things .
Like a man squirming in a straitjacket, Dion ricocheted off the walls of that valley for four years. All the joy in his life dissolved, as he lived in seclusion, tormented and fearful.
Finally in 1967, after being told by his wife, "Dion, I can't help you anymore, I don't know what to do," he was forced to pray for guidance. "I just got on my knees, and said, 'God, I have some questions, I just can't handle life anymore,'" sighs Dion, standing up, and moving to another corner of the room. Looking vacantly at his gold records, he continues, "I came up lacking, empty, so I had to know if God was real. I asked him to come into my life, to direct me. I needed a wisdom beyond my own . . . I was looking for peace of mind, I had reached the end of my life, I felt like I knew absolutely nothing "I had broken so many promises to myself, it was insane to do the same actions and to expect different results. I promised myself that tomorrow would be different-and I was so devastated, the more you break the promises the more you lose faith in yourself. I felt I didn't have power, I kept asking myself, 'Why am I on this merry-go-round?' You keep saying, 'How did this happen?' "The moment I got on my knees is the moment I ran out of excuses. Before, I was so frustrated, I'd blame people for my problem. I'd accuse them, and fight everybody and everything. I had just had it I couldn't make excuses anymore, I didn't know what to do, so I got on my knees." From that moment on, Dion says he was "released." Purged of self-doubt and other fears, he immediately renounced all drugs. A calm came over him, as he felt like a new person. And while this turnaround sounds too fantastic to be believed, Dion insists, "The need for drugs was lifted right Out of me. I've never done drugs since then."
Besides seeking "more of God," Dion then tried to revitalise his sagging career. Up until this spiritual "commitment," he had released several singles, and an album with the Belmonts (Together Again),
which went nowhere. In a vain attempt to score another hit, he also moved back to Laurie. But nothing clicked. Overly romantic love-rejection songs were out of date by 1967. Political protest sounds were fashionable, a fact which Dion couldn't recognise.
At least not until 1968.
Influenced by Dylan, Baez, and other folksingers, he came up with a "monster" ballad, "Abraham, Martin, and John," his tribute to three assassinated American leaders.
"The country was going through a restlessness, an emotional upheaval," says Dion, who then appeared in coffee houses, armed with an acoustic guitar. "The Kennedys had gotten shot, Martin Luther King the song was an attempt to make something good out of a bad situation. I do believe that in God's economy there's no waste. You can turn everything for good. And that song was an attempt to say, 'Hey, these guys had a dream. The dream didn't die.' Maybe the Kennedys died but we could pick the ball up and go on."
Written by Richard Holler, the song was clearly a radical stylistic change for Dion. The mood was so gentle, critics didn't believe this was the "old" Wanderer. Yet, according to Dion, the song was "the natural result of spending years in seclusion, of a lot of years quietly working on a guitar [around that time, he was also working on an anti-drug song, 'clean Up Your Own Backyard. I didn't only like Dylan, I was also listening to Lightnin' Hopkins, John Hammond, Jr. . . . It seemed at the time that this music was at the roots of what I'd been doing earlier, only I had never heard it. It was like 'Where did this stuff come from?' This is my grandfather, and I didn't even know it. It was a great discovery."
Though Dion feels the song was "a step toward a higher reality, a search for love" that was far different from his "putting down women," this quest took a U turn in 1972. Slipping back into the past, he joined the Belmonts for a reunion concert at Madison Square Garden, only to recognise, "the show was a disaster . . . the fans gave us more than we gave them." Admitting that such nostalgia shows are a "rip-off," he quickly adds, "It's sweet for the first hour, talking about memories, but you can't stay there [in the past], it soon turns bitter."
An album marking that event, Reunion, was issued in '973, but there were no more Belmont concerts. Over the next two years, Dion continued on the coffee house circuit, enjoying "the creative excitement of working with so many writers." In 1975, though, Dion broke with this cerebral world, to enter a playground that was hardly spiritual.
Along with his new Street Heart band, he regularly appeared at Las Vegas casinos. "It wasn't as intimate as the coffee houses," "but Dick Clark called me, and he had started to do some Vegas. I guess it was a time I wanted to get back with a band. I wanted to integrate and incorporate some of the things I did in coffee houses ( [with rock] . . . I did this for three years, I did Cher's TV show, Dinah Shore show' .
There is an edge of doubt in his voice, a hint of defensiveness. Vegas, a return to rock-this was more wandering, the antithesis of Dion's current crusading. Sensing the contradiction, Dion grins sheepishly, then tries to clarify matters.
"I know this is going to sound wild, but after all these years I really felt I found myself, I realised what I wanted to do. I always had this sense that I wanted to share what God had done for me on a personal level-and not just for entertaining people. I loved rock 'n' roll, and I loved music, but there was a lack of motivation, there was a lack of direction. I didn't know why. I saw these covers coming out, I became very unimpressed with what people were selling he still released Return of the Wanderer in 1978].
"So I thought it would be nice if I could share something of worth with people, to show what God had done for me. He had released me, given me life, love, and a deep sense of who I was. I said to myself, 'Gee, it would be nice to express this in a happy, joyous, and free atmosphere, that didn't require my wearing a three-piece suit on the pulpit.' So I went into the music ministry."
Focusing on the upbeat and inspirational, Dion now sings praises to the Lord, that can best be described as "good news," or "contemporary Christian" music. Besides appearing on radio and TV broadcasts, he has recorded Inside Job, Only Jesus, I Put Away My Idols, and most recently, Kingdom in the Street. Passionately insisting "I haven't had to change musically," he says that only his lyrics have taken a new direction.
"God has refined my lyrics, and given me words of life, and has just made me part of the solution. I can share real neat things now. I've done the '7oo Club' and other religious TV shows, but I don't like preaching, I just see myself as a ministry of encouragement. I want to bring hope, life, and love to people. God has brought me through so much, I see people like Presley, Jackie Wilson, and Bill Haley dying, and he's saved me from that. Without his grace I wouldn't have gotten through the sixties. And what I'm doing in song is just passing on, I just hope I'm passing it on."
