Dion recalled in Mojo magazine March 2008:

I was trying to do what they (his record label) wanted me to do. It was the times, you know? You could say ‘The Wanderer’ is my little white version of ‘I’m A Man.’ I saw Bo Diddley do ‘I’m A Man’ and he had this big belt buckle and I thought, I gotta get a song like that, so I did ‘The Wanderer.’ But if you listen to the lyric, it’s really a sad song, and it actually turns in on itself, because it says ‘I roam from town to town/I go through life without a care/I wave my two fists of iron/but I’m goin’ nowhere.’ You’ve got a thin veneer of what a man is. The guy’s goin’ to hell, but he’s having a lot of fun doin’ it.

However, on the original demo of the song, the lyrics were “with my two fists of iron and my bottle of beer”, and the change to “with my two fists of iron but I’m going nowhere” in fact seems to have been at the record company’s insistence.

Dion told Blueswax in 2009:

The other inspiration was a little bit of “Kansas City,” because that song was popular at the time and I loved it. The big inspiration was this kid in the neighborhood… I think his name was Jackie Burns. He was a sailor and he had tattoos all over him, like he had ‘Flo’ on his left arm, ‘Mary’ on his right. Janie was the girl that he was going to be with the next night and then he put ‘Rosie’ on his chest and he had it covered up with a battleship. Every time he went out with a girl, he got a new tattoo. So the guy was worth a song!

In the late 1950’s, during the golden age of Doo-wop, a young Italian boy from the Bronx was given the chance to record a record. Dion Francis DiMucci sang lead to a pre-recorded song, “The Chosen Few”, with everything but the lead vocals. The backing vocals were by a group called The Timberlanes. Dion said that he had never met the Timberlanes and didn’t even know who they were.

The vocal group was so white bread, I went back to my neighborhood and I recruited a bunch of guys – three guys – and we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts.

Dion and The Belmonts would record several Top 50 songs and had a measure of success. In 1959 Dion and the Belmonts were part of the historic and tragic Winter Dance Party tour that lost three performers in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. DiMucci was offered a seat on the plane by Holly, but thought the fee of $36 was too much for such a short plane ride and declined. Shortly after the tragedy, the quartet hit again with “A Teenager in Love”. It became their first release to break the Top 10, reaching #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Another Belmont sang lead on that song, Angelo D’Aleo, who went to great efforts to contribute his famous falsetto to the song.

After their Top 10 success with “A Teenager in Love”, Dion and the Belmonts recorded four more singles. There were musical, personal and financial differences between Dion and members of the Belmonts, and in October 1960, Dion decided to quit for a solo career. By the time of their breakup, eight of their releases had charted on the Hot 100.

They wanted to get into their harmony thing, and I wanted to rock and roll. The label wanted me doing standards. I got bored with it quickly. I said, ‘I can’t do this. I gotta play my guitar’.

Dion recorded a solo album, which didn’t do as well as the record company had hoped. However, he then recorded, with an un-credited new vocal group, the Del-Satins, an up-tempo number co-written with Ernie Maresca. The record, “Runaround Sue,” stormed up the U.S. charts, reaching No. 1 in October 1961. It sold over a million copies, achieving gold disc status. Two months later he followed that up with the solo “The Wanderer”.

By the end of 1961, Dion had become a major star, touring worldwide and making an appearance in the Columbia Pictures musical film “Twist Around the Clock”. At the end of 1962, Dion moved from Laurie Records to Columbia Records; he was the first rock and roll artist signed to the label, which was an anomaly considering that its then-A&R director, Mitch Miller, passionately loathed that particular genre of music.

Following a European tour, Dion returned to the U.S. and was introduced to classic blues by Columbia’s John Hammond. To the consternation of his management, he began recording more blues-oriented material, including Willie Dixon’s “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Spoonful,” but these releases – some produced by Tom Wilson, with Al Kooper on keyboards – were not commercially successful. He did, however, in June 1965 record fellow Columbia Records contemporary Bob Dylan’s composition “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” a half-year before Them (featuring Van Morrison)’s hit version. His other Columbia releases were less successful, and problems with his heroin addiction and changing public tastes, especially The British Invasion, saw a period of commercial decline.

In April 1968, Dion experienced what he identified as a powerful religious experience. After getting clean once again from heroin addiction, an experience he documented in his 1970 song “Your Own Backyard,” he approached Laurie Records for a new contract. They agreed on condition that he record the song “Abraham, Martin & John,” written by Dick Holler (also the writer of the Royal Guardsmen’s “Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron”) in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 and those of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy during the spring of 1968.

For the next few years, Dion’s music became radically different, moving to more contemplative and mature material. He released several albums essentially as a singer-songwriter, to moderate sales, moving to the Warner Brothers label in 1969.

In December 1979, there was a radical spiritual change in Dion, who had become a born-again Christian. Thereafter, his recordings for several years were in a contemporary Christian vein. In 1984, Dion won the GMA Dove Award (Christian Music Award) for the album “I Put Away My Idols”. He was also nominated for Grammy Award for “Best Gospel Vocal Performance, Male” for the same album.

In 1987, Dion agreed to do a concert of his old hits at Radio City Music Hall in New York. This concert helped free him to celebrate both his past and his future, and led to a series of special appearances, including a fundraiser for homeless medical relief. There he shared the stage with fans such as Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Lou Reed, all of whom cited Dion as one of their prime influences.

In a December 9, 2011 article, Dion and his collaborator, writer/director Charles Messina, discussed details about a Broadway play project, titled “The Wanderer: The Life and Music of Dion”, revealing that it will focus on the years between 1957 until the late 60s and will feature more than 20 songs from that era as well as new, original music. In the article, Dion gave his perspective on the story:

You know, I always saw my story as a young Sopranos with great music and a Rocky Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me ending. It’s a story of redemption. A rock and roll redemption story!

Now a practicing Roman Catholic, Dion pursues prison ministry and reaches out to men going through addiction recovery. He was a member of the American board of directors of Renewal Ministries in 2004. He currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida, and New York City.

“The Wanderer” is ranked number 243 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

In 2000, Dion and the Belmonts were inducted in the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

Dion was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 (with a moving introduction by Lou Reed). Controversially, when Dion’s solo induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame occurred, the other original members of the Belmonts were not inducted, and as of 2014, have yet to be. The Belmonts were not well pleased.

Views: 78