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Dion - A Quiet Knight with Zappa

1998 by Greg Herriges

(YO FRANIUE MAGAZINE Mar 98)

As is the case for an entire generation, Dion looms large in the Technicolor, high-fidelity memories of my youth. Roughly a year ago I wrote for Yo Frankie an account of a meeting I'd had with Dion in 1976, a meeting during which I had the opportunity, in however small a way, to return his gift of music. But that was just the glamorous part of a much bigger story. I had, by then, met Dion twice before. (I wasn't the type to simply admire my childhood heroes from a distance.) My first encounter with the man was a crashing failure, one that until now I haven't talked or written much about; the second, more successful, but still bittersweet, even when considered from a distance.

The Quiet Knight -a folk/rock club on Belmont Avenue in the Windy City, one story up, where a bouncer waits to greet patrons, especially patrons who are not yet twenty-one. My palms perspire as I slowly climb the stairs, looking confidently ahead. I have nothing to hide, other than my birth date, which is emblazoned on the drivers license in my wallet, waiting to expose me like a traitor. As I reach the top of the flight, the bouncer is suddenly and inexplicably called away. I'm in. This is too easy.

There in the foyer is an easel upon which rests the jacket of Dion's latest album, Sit Down Old Friend. A bearded man stands next to it, chatting with the clubs clientele. I don't know it at the time, but he is Zach Glickman, Dions manager. I take a small table just in front of the stage and practice looking mature, suave. A waitress appears-would I like to order? There is a two drink minimum. I sure could use a beer, but why tempt fate twice? Tea," I say, "with a cinnamon stick What an urbane fellow I am l A true man of the world. I can almost feel the hair graying at my temples.

As the cinnamon stick slowly disintegrates in my cup of Morning Thunder, Dion is announced and comes walking down the aisle-directly alongside my table. He is somewhat shorter than I expected-wearing a black shirt and a pair of blue jeans, a guitar strap slung over his shoulder. He takes the stage, sits down upon a stool, and begins playing an acoustic guitar. Thats it-just a voice and a guitar, but somehow he manages to make it sound as though he has a five piece band with him. He sings Natural Man," Sweet Pea, Your own Backyard," If We Only Have Love, and a funny folk parody called Almond Joy. The audience is enjoying themselves, and I would too-except that my heart is racing and my mouth is hanging open like an idiots. This is Dion, is all I can think. It's really him!

There are now two cups of tea and as many withered cinnamon sticks on my table as he concludes his set to enthusiastic applause. This is my chance. While he walks back down the aisle, I shoot up from my chair to tap him on the shoulder. He turns around to face me.

'Dion,' I say, can I talk to you for a minute?

A waitress hands him a glass of club soda as he sizes me up. Sure, come on back.

I follow him down a hall to his dressing room. Whoa- I haven't counted on this. Inside the cramped, dim dressing room are five or six disciples sitting on the floor, waiting for him. They are exotic looking; they wear the self-assured patina of showbiz hippies. I can't talk to Dion like this, the intruding outsider in a room full of insiders. Ill be laughed at, scorned, the odd man out. Dion fully expects that l am following him into the room, but instead, at the last second I turn around, quickly duck out of the club, and descend the steps to the sidewalk I'm standing on Belmont Avenue-an irony I can't fully appreciate at the moment. Discarded, wind-driven newspapers float down the sidewalk at shin level, like lost spirits. The harsh glare of neon signs stings the eyes. I close my coat against the chill of the night and walk back to my car listlessly, feeling dejected, foolish. And bloated. (All that goddamn tea.)

You've waited nine years for this moment! Why did you bolt? I am merciless. I spare myself nothing. It's a long ride home.

I think about that cold, awful night on Belmont Avenue four years earlier. I cringe. Then I agree.

Northern Illinois University is in DeKaIb, a college town surrounded by a sea of corn and not much else. I am carrying a cassette recorder and a 35 millimeter camera with an adjustable lens. I have no idea how to use the camera. (If you don't believe me, look at some of the photos that accompany this article.)

The guard at the door of the Field House makes me wait outside. He has to get clearance. Its a soggy cloudy day, and I take shelter from the rain by leaning as closely to the outer wall as I can. in jazzed up and nervous, hoping that this meeting with Dion will go better than my original fiasco. In a moment of distraction my gaze finds the Field House marquee. It reads:

FRANK ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS OF INVENI1ON , With Dion.

Zappa and Dion? Whose idea was that? And Dion has to open the show? My God-it's a disaster waiting to happen. Why not just pair up Elvis and Pink Floyd? My heart sinks. I examine the kids lining up in the drizzle on the sodden grounds-freaks, dopers, artistic dilettantes.

The glass door abruptly opens. You can go in now,' the guard tells me.

But now I don't know if I want to. I can see already what I'm up against. I will have to detail for hundreds of thousands of readers the chilly, if not openly hostile, reception Dion will likely receive. My name will appear above an article that says my hero bombed. Why couldn't it have been Dion and James Taylor? Or Joan Baez, for that matter? Peter Noone-anybody! But Zappa?

A member of the security team leads me to the stage area, to a bearded man in his mid-thirties, the same man I remember from the foyer of the Quiet Knight, Zach Glickman. We exchange some banter as I see Dion take the stage, a series of stark risers surrounded by theatrical lights and speakers. Zach, a fellow possessed of a natural equanimity, explains that Dion will talk to me directly after the sound check. Dion begins playing an Ovation six-string guitar. There is no band. In addition to the impossible task of opening for Zappa, he will have to do it with an acoustic set. But the riddle of the unlikely billing is finally solved as I chat further with Zach-he manages them both-Dion and Zappa.

That, however, does not improve the situation.

Zach introduces me to Dion after the sound check. We shake hands and my nerves show as I almost drop my Nikon in the process. Thank God-he doesn't remember me. We begin talking immediately on our way to the dressing rooms, which are really makeshift areas within the athletic locker room. I begin by saying that New York City Song" seems to be about his own life in 1964.

Yeah, Dion responds, it mentions in the song, That's the year my dream died: But its really about a dream being born. Its like, once in a while you hit a point in your life where you redirect yourself."

"Are you satisfied with it now, your life?'

Dion nods slowly. He appears somewhat shy or tired; I can't tell which. "Oh, yeah, yeah. I can say at this point, I've got a lot to be grateful for."

"Enough time for the wife and kids" I ask.

"Oh-a lot. A lot of time. Good enough. It's good enough. Things are working out nice. I'm still working to get my music to more people"

He will have an opportunity to do exactly that tonight, and it won't be easy. Zappas musicians have taken the stage for their turn at sound check. Grotesque synthesizer sounds erupt over the PA. system, making it hard for Dion and me to hear one another. We sit down on a locker room bench, and as he places his guitar carefully in its case, I mention that I like his song Dr. Rock And Roll."

"I'm working with Cashman and West now he chimes in, growing less laconic, "the kids who produced Jim Croce, and it's magic, working with them. They're the first producers I've ever got with that just really understand what I'm trying to do, mostly before you even go in [to the studio]. And I understand where they're coming from. It's kind of nice, you know? It's just that magical thing where people work-it happens. It's nice to know that that's around."

"Have there been people who were hard to work with?" "Yeah. But listen-I can't blame anybody... because maybe I was hard to deal with at times myself. But maybe I'm ready for this kind of relationship now."

Zappa walks past us and distracts me somewhat. He is dressed in what looks like a white chicken costume, holding a chicken's head mask under his arm, somewhat like the headless horseman. Strident trumpets and trombones wail over the sound system. This is like a weird dream, or a Fellini movie not the best circumstances under which to conduct an interview. But I persist; I have no other choice. I tell Dion that I've long admired "The Road I'm On (Gloria)," a song from the beginning of his turn to folk music.

"I haven't heard it in a long time," he says. "I don't know what the hell... it's almost like a diary-you know- songs, and I haven't... I don't have that record. I don't really know. Maybe I could get some tapes from Columbia."

"I could write the lyrics out for you. I memorized them.

"Jesus. I'd like that"

He seems to have no recollection of it. "It was a picking song," I add.

"I was just getting into that"

"Right after 'Drip Drop:" And then I just have to ask:

'What happened at that time, Dion?

" John Hammond, Senior, got a hold of my head. He was right next door from where I was recording. And he says, Hey-you got a taste for the blues. I hear you're doing Ruby Baby and all that kind of stuff" He says, "Take a listen to this stuff: So he played me Bessie Smith and Leroy Carr, Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins. He was in charge of all the Thirties' blues people who were delta and rural, before it got to the city, and he played me some of those blues things and I almost got a resentment because I was wondering who was hiding this stuff from me. I'd never heard it. It was like, Where did this come from? And from then on I just kind of turned my head around. You know, that was Dylan's time. And he did a job of it. Commercially I didn't do too much. I lost . . . just lost the thing of a commercial feel, a commercial touch."

I ask if that was when he stopped listening to producers, took the reins of his own music.

"Yeah. I guess I wanted to get into myself and know a little bit more about where I was coming from, and it kind of stirred things in me, you know? Where maybe I was on the surface of things. At that time that I was in music, I had a good touch as far as commercially-but in my personal life, I guess for a long time I was just doing 'Please like me: the whole ego thing. Not that I'm not doing it for that now. I like it when people like my music and all that, but it just seemed to be on the surface. It wasn't deep enough running, I guess.

"I'll tell you the truth. At that time, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I wish I could say that I thought, 'Well, I thought I'd get away from this for a while: but it just happened. It overtook me. You know, my head got batted around a little, but a lot of good things came out of it. Even in my personal life, even in my soul, I'm at peace. I had to overturn some stones, see what the hell was under them. My nature is, 'Why? Why? Why?' I accept a lot of things now. At the time, I had to just-learn the hard way? I wouldn't want it any other way. I still do. I'm still making mistakes."

Though at times still wistful as he recounts his memories, Dion has, by degrees, warmed up to the interview process, unafraid to expatiate, which is just what I have hoped for. I want him to examine his life and career for me, to put it in some kind of perspective for my readers. What, after all, must it be like to be one of the original rock progenitors, an artist who was there at the inauguration of a cultural movement? And so I stray from my notes. "What happens to you now when you hear "Lonely Teenager on the radio?"

"Well-" Dion takes a lengthy pause, as though he can't quite find the words he's looking for. 1t brings kind of fun memories, mixed kind of feelings. The first kind of feeling I get in touch with is-it just doesn't seem like it's me. You know what I mean. It's like, imitate yourself fifteen years ago. It's a trip. 'Did I do that? But of course you appreciate it. You'd rather not hear it, because you'd rather think of it as something better than it really is. If you're listening to it now, you say, 'Geez-it isn't as good as I thought it was: But at the time you're doing it, you're behind it one-hundred percent. Well, actually, "Lonely Teenager', "Teenager ln Love," those were just commercial. It wasn't really something I was behind, but commercially I was. We knew they would sell. They aren't the kind of songs I like to sing in a club room."

"Do you perform acoustic dates in clubs anymore?"

"Yeah, I'm working like that tonight. This is a little hard, opening for Zappa, because they (the audience) are all keyed up to a .. . he brings out a very loose thing in people, with that kind of attitude. Even if it's the same audience that would come and listen to Joni Mitchell, it brings out a different side of them, and they're in that place, ready for that, so it's hard to come down to an acoustical set."

It is as though he is warning me not to expect too much. But I know. I knew the moment I saw the billing. try not to think of what I will have to write after the show, and continue with the thread of his last response- acoustic sets.

"Will you ever do another album like Sit Down Old Friend, just you and a guitar"

"I doubt it, 'cause there's a lot of pressure behind well, first of all, that was really self-indulgent. At the time, I was behind it. At the time, I loved doing it." That's a great album, Sit Down Old Friend."

'Thank you," Dion says, modestly.

We take a break and head for the catered spread backstage. In my peripheral vision I spot a man in white, sitting rather morosely on a locker roam bench. It's Zappa. His hair is cork-screwed and disheveled. Beside him is the chicken head mask. I nod in his direction. "I admire your head," I say.

Zappa scowls at me, remains aloof, mute-looks as though he might bite me.

Nice meeting you too, I think.

I follow Dion to the hastily set up tables, tables heaped generously with deli meats, cheeses, salads, and beside them metallic barrels filled with crushed ice and a variety of beers and soft drinks. As we eat, we're still talking rock and roll, and I inquire about that time in his career when he strayed from it, began doing supper clubs, singing standards.

Dion explains: 'At that time there was no business. The reason I was doing clubs, at that time there was no rock and roll business. It was a promoter's business. Now the artist has a lot more to do with it. But they only had about two, three shows a year, and some tours. They had The Murray-The-K Show, The Alan Freed Show. You know, there was no business. It was a big strain on guys like me, because I was doing something new, yet there was no place to do it"

"How did you feel, dressing up in a tuxedo in supper clubs?" I ask. "Did you feel out of your element?

"Yeah."

Zach joins us. He's heard my last question and teases with Dion. "He can't wait to get back to it"

Dion ignores this. "I liked part of it, because there was a big band and stuff.'

Zach continues to needle him. "He's going to Vegas for twenty weeks."

"I like music," Dion says, "but thats when you start doing things out of fear. You feel like you won't be able to stay in it. The thing was, you got three hit records, you go on 'Ed Sullivan and sing a standard. You don't sing 'Runaround Sue' on 'Ed Sullivan"

Zappa's musicians have invaded the buffet area-they are rowdy and loud and I can barely hear Dion's response after I ask him if he gets worked up or nervous before a performance.

"Butterflies," he says.

I'm surprised. "Still?"

"Always. It might get a little better as you work the club, as you grow accustomed to it."

One of the Zappa people overhears Dion and begins singing loudly, "I've grown accustomed to her face/ lt. almost makes the day begin." Others explode into raucous laughter. I look at Dion's expression, to see how he will react to this intrusion. He doesn't at all. He remains oblivious. He continues his previous thought

'Maybe its good. I accept it."

I say, "You accept a lot of things now.

"No, I don't. Not people who try to rip me off or complicate things.'

For just a moment, I wonder if that is a general statement, or if it is in reference to the obnoxious behavior of the band members. Either way, there does indeed seem to be some tension here.

Dion and I walk back to the dressing area. It is time for me to leave him alone so he can prepare for the show. Our time together has been, from my point of view, all too brief, but I am grateful for it, will never forget it. And here is one of the last exchanges we have. When I ask him why his picture is on the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, he doesn't miss a beat. He just looks up sheepishly and answer 'Why do you think that album sold? I shake his hand, thank him, wish him luck.

On my way out to the arena I run into Zach again. He asks me if I got what I needed, and I assure him I did. But I'm still worried about the show. "Zach," I say, "does it ever happen that a crowd is so enthusiastic to see Zappa they get impatient with Dion?"

"He tells them to cool it" Well, that answers the question. The answer is yes. Zach goes on to tell me that Dion is only doing nine or ten of Zappa's fifteen scheduled shows. And then he surmises, "It's good for him. You can't always have it easy."

That phrase turns round and round in my head as I sit in the crowd and the concert begins. "You can't always have it easy."

My article was all set to be published, when nationally-syndicated columnist Bob Greene happened to read it. Bob had attended the concert. What were the chances-a million to one? So of course he had entertainment editor Al Rudis pull my review and run his own, under the banner:

PARTIAL ECLIPSE OF A FIRST MAGNITUDE STAR.

It read like a premature obituary, even though he obviously admired Dion immensely. The shame of the matter was that Dion's introspective and revelatory comments of that afternoon never saw print. He had that conversation with me, not with Bob.

Since that time, Dion has grown into the stature of rock royalty that he deserved all along, and he has done it with dignity. I, like many of you, always knew that he would. And I'll tell you one thing-I'm glad that it was someone else's name under that headline, and not mine. The truth is, I'm a fan, not a critic, and I intend to remain one.

- Greg Herriges is the authar of three novels, the most recent which is THE WINTER DANCE PARTY MURDERS, to be published this spring by Wordcraft Of Oregon.

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