I serve up the hits, and I enjoy doing it.
— Dion DiMucci
For me, God's country is sirens and subways and all kinds of ethnic groups trying to cross the street all at once.
I want to rock till I drop. I love rock and roll music. It keeps you young.
I moved my family down to Miami to stay with my father-in-law, Jack, for a while. Best move I ever made.
1967 was the bleakest, darkest, most emotional period of my life.
My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.
I never knew I was a songwriter. I didn't even know I was a singer. My parents just got me a guitar 'cause my uncle told them to get me one, and I started fooling with it.
That is amazing that a guy like St. Jerome who lived in the fourth century could bring people together. Sometimes you think people are dead and forgotten. But they can actually bring you together in the best way.
A lot of my friends, they think I grew up to rock and roll, but I didn't. I grew up to Hank Williams, Jimmy Reid, Howlin' Wolf, listening to a race record, blues.
I left Columbia in the mid-'60s. I had a guaranteed contract for, like, $100,000 a year. And I just let it go. And I wasn't a rich man. There were a lot of bad vibes around the whole thing.
I just love to do the songs, and that's what I'm still about - taking people on a trip. A good trip.
I got a little advice for everybody: marry the girl who's going to get you to heaven.
If I could sing and play like Lightnin' Hopkins, I would.
I've got these die-hard fans on Facebook, and you'd swear they haven't heard anything I've done since 1962, 1963.
Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know - the end of the sentence. It sounded like he'd bite into the word and rip it off.
If you don't have God in your life, you have to fill up on something. And you usually reach for the four great substitutes, the classical addictions: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. So you try to fill yourself up.
The point here is that I enjoyed singing. I enjoyed the rhythm of it. I grew up listening to Louis Prima, who was also rhythmic.
When you're a kid, you get all these rules and regulations coming down on your head. You've got a need to be recognized. But as time goes by, this stuff, if it remains, can kill you. The attitude alone can't sustain anyone forever.
I used to think God only liked organ music.
I show rock and rollers how to grow old gracefully.
Trains had the greatest bass sound in the world.
In New York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood, the code of the streets is respect and reputation.
A rock-and-roll group needed a name that fit criteria in three areas: It had to be great for a bowling team; it had to be great for a gang; and it had to be great for a rock-and-roll group. So we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts.
We all fled from religion. Living la vida loca, whatever. The '60s, you know. But it always stayed in my heart. As I got older, I started coming back to religion.
The form of the blues helps us express our joys, our fears, our - anything you want to express. And it helps you get it out instead of it spiraling inward, and you're getting twisted up and exploding. So it's a bit of salvation.
There's a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-'60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.
There were a lot of bad relationships that got very convoluted up at Columbia with me, what they expected from me.
I got one of the best sax players in the business - Arno Hecht. He plays with the Uptown Horns and all the great blues bands. He expresses the heart of the Apollo Theatre, let me tell you.
People were watching the TV set, and they said three rock-and-rollers died - Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper, including the pilot. I walked out of the hotel. I got on the bus alone. Their clothes were hanging on the racks, their guitars on the seats.
I feel really relevant and creative, and I don't think I would've made an album if I didn't feel relevant. I wouldn't have said a word.
I tell you, gospel music is very uplifting. It's great. It's just a lot of fun to write, and it's wonderful for the heart, soul, mind, and spirit. It's just great.
Songs, to me, have always been kind of like a diary, you know - and, say, when I did 'Teenager In Love,' maybe I was 16.
I don't believe in being a victim. I think with information and motivation, you can do anything.
Early on, I tried to sing, but sustaining a note was something I wasn't comfortable with. So I tried to get off of the note as soon as I could.
Life is full of awe and grace and truth, mystery and wonder. I live in that atmosphere.
The day I heard Hank Williams for the first time, my life changed.
Doo-wop was full of blues for me.
People didn't know I played guitar on all the hit records I had. I've never been in an acoustic guitar magazine and I'd put myself up against anybody.
Trying to explain what community is to someone who's never experienced it is like trying to explain what an artichoke tastes like.
I couldn't wait to get out of school in junior high to get with Willie Green to pick up some of the riffs he knew.
I thought you had to be humble to become a saint, but a priest told me it takes all kinds to make it to heaven.
My definition of the blues is the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God.
It's hard to explain music when it goes in your gut and makes left and right and turns and moves you and resonates with you.
Music is an expression. It's almost like a diary in my life, you know. You express your perceptions and your view on life - your world view.
I have a great band from Jersey and New York. I say that because they got great attitude, and we have a great time on stage.
I come from this macho Italian neighborhood. When I was thirteen, during those real vulnerable, impressionable years, and a boy starts becoming a man, to make that transition, and you start making decisions, and you start developing virtue and principles - I never made the transition.
I don't sing white; I don't sing black - I sing Bronx. When I sing 'Ruby Baby,' I'm rolling like Jimmy Reed. I wanted to communicate like Hank Williams and groove like Jimmy Reed.
I grew up with my parents screaming and yelling at each other for the rent in Bronx, New York City at the time. It was $36. So my mind hadn't stretched out to that place where I could spend a whole month's rent on a 45-minute plane flight to Fargo, N.D.
If you make excuses, you're going to believe in a lie. And I don't believe in that lie that you can't make it, that somebody is trying to hold you back.
By the age of 15, I knew over 40 Hank Williams songs.
