Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Dion DiMucci

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Dion DiMucci.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Dion Francis DiMucci, better known simply as Dion, is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. His music has incorporated elements of doo-wop, pop, rock, R&B, folk and blues. Initially as the lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, and then during his solo career, Dion was one of the most popular American rock and roll performers of the pre-British Invasion era. He had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, or with the Belmonts and the Del-Satins. He is best remembered for the singles "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", "Ruby Baby" and "Lovers Who Wander", among other hits.

American - Musician | Born: July 18, 1939

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Dion DiMucci

I couldn't sing like Mick Jagger, not that I wanted to.

Dion DiMucci

Doo-wop was full of blues for me.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

With Del Shannon - and I've got to tell you this - there's nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.

Dion DiMucci

I was playing with Chuck Berry, who sounded like an English teacher. Did you ever listen to his records? He pronounces every word.

Dion DiMucci

I don't believe in being a victim. I think with information and motivation, you can do anything.

Dion DiMucci

There were a lot of bad relationships that got very convoluted up at Columbia with me, what they expected from me.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

I've got these die-hard fans on Facebook, and you'd swear they haven't heard anything I've done since 1962, 1963.

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

In New York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood, the code of the streets is respect and reputation.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

It was a lot of fun in the back of that bus with Ritchie Valens, Buddy and The Big Bopper sharing each other's songs.

Dion DiMucci

I got a little advice for everybody: marry the girl who's going to get you to heaven.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

I moved my family down to Miami to stay with my father-in-law, Jack, for a while. Best move I ever made.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

I used to think God only liked organ music.

Dion DiMucci

I want to rock till I drop. I love rock and roll music. It keeps you young.

Dion DiMucci

When I didn't do 'Runaround Sue' on the 'Ed Sullivan Show,' for example, I didn't listen to my inner voice. I should have.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

I show rock and rollers how to grow old gracefully.

Dion DiMucci

I never got into this business to do interviews. It was always about the music.

Dion DiMucci

I heard Robert Johnson way before I heard about Eric Clapton.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

I was a weird kid. I loved music, and I loved reading about God.

Dion DiMucci

While Paul Simon is revered, I don't think people get how deep he is. I love the guy. He comes from that early street-harmony, first-generation type of rock and rollers. He gets it.

Dion DiMucci

Trains had the greatest bass sound in the world.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

1967 was the bleakest, darkest, most emotional period of my life.

Dion DiMucci

The day I heard Hank Williams for the first time, my life changed.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

You constantly have to take inventory, not get on someone else's agenda. You want to write something that's poignant and moves people.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

I just love to do the songs, and that's what I'm still about - taking people on a trip. A good trip.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

My definition of the blues is the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

If I could sing and play like Lightnin' Hopkins, I would.

Dion DiMucci

By the age of 15, I knew over 40 Hank Williams songs.

Dion DiMucci

Be authentic, true to yourself, genuine. Question what you really love along the way. There are so many voices out there. And you can lose yourself.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

Life is full of awe and grace and truth, mystery and wonder. I live in that atmosphere.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci

Trying to explain what community is to someone who's never experienced it is like trying to explain what an artichoke tastes like.

Dion DiMucci

I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.

Dion DiMucci

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.

Dion DiMucci