DION

Love At First Strum

“My uncle got me a Gibson L-1, that’s what I learned on. I have a picture of myself holding that guitar at 12 years old. My God, I wish I still had it today. Once I’d learned that first song – Hank Williams’ Honky Tonk Blues – you couldn’t get me away from it. My mother tried to get me out of the house, but I just wanted to learn another Hank Williams or Jimmy Reed song. Then, when I started getting a little better, I saw the J-200 and saved up the $350 for that. Man, that was the guitar. I just had to have one. So I was a pretty weird kid. I was reading Saint Thomas Aquinas, listening to Jimmy Reed. How freakin’ weird could you get for a Bronx Italian neighbourhood kid, y’know?”

Wrong Side Of The Tracks

“The Bronx was a tough neighbourhood. You learned to defend yourself real early on. I wouldn’t consider myself a tough guy. I’m a poet, I’m a singer, I’m an artist. But I had an attitude. You had to. I belonged to a gang. But inside me, I wasn’t that guy. I grew up across the street from George’s [1961]. “Did I have any run-ins? Well, once they heard the kind of music I was making, they left me alone, because they didn’t think anything of it. They wanted to hear Italian music, like Jimmy Roselli or Al Martino. They thought I sounded like a wet dishrag.”