DION IS STILL KING

A ROCK AND ROLL ICON, FROM THE BELMONTS TO A HIPPIE FOLK HERO, DION IS AT HOME WITH THE BLUES.

- MIKE GREENBLATT

There’s a reason why The Beatles put Dion on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. He’s a classic. Period. Starting as the lead singer of Dion and The Belmonts in 1957, continuing through his string of solo hits from 1960 to 1964, reinventing the blues with an arrogant sneer in 1965, he became a hippie hero with his folk phase in 1968 (the same year he turned the Jimi Hendrix classic “Purple Haze” into a trance-like mantra). Then he started the 1970s by penning the greatest addiction/recovery song of all-time (“Your Own Back Yard”). He rocked throughout the ’70s and ’80s as a badass New York City street king and bonafide rock and roll hero with a voice that could peel paint. He had an overt Christian-music phase like Bob Dylan, but soon mastered the art of Mississippi Delta blues guitar like no white boy from the Bronx has a right to do. Sure, there were fallow periods. He may be a legendary pioneer, but he’s also human. Point is, Dion is not only a role model, he’s larger than life. His new album, Blues With Friends, is one of the best albums of a disappointing 2020. His friends include Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, John Hammond, Jr., Dylan (who wrote the liner notes), Sonny Landreth, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Bonamassa, Stevie Van Zandt and others, yet Dion is not overwhelmed by all this star power. They’re his songs. His voice is still elastic. And he answered the phone on the occasion of promoting it just the way you’d want Dion, “King of the New York Streets,” Francis DiMucci to answer the phone.

DION: Yo!