Dion & the Belmonts Biography

Dion DiMucci, better known as Dion, is an American singer-songwriter born July 18, 1939, in the Bronx borough of New York City. His career in popular music began in the 1950s with his group Dion & the Belmonts (named after his northern Bronx neighborhood, Belmont). He went solo in the early 1960s and continued to have hits with songs like "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer" and "Ruby Baby" until 1964, when changing public tastes and heroin addiction caused him to enter a commercial decline. Nevertheless Dion, along with Bob Dylan, was the only pop artist to be featured on the album cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

During the mid-1960s, he struggled with his addictions and recorded songs in a folk-rock vein. After getting clean from drug use (he has remained so ever since, except for a brief period in the mid-1970s), he switched to protest songs in the late 1960s. Perhaps his best-known song as a soloist, "Abraham, Martin & John" (1968), was a response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy during the summer of 1968. Dion continued to record protest songs into the 1970s.

His album Born To Be With You, produced by Phil Spector and released in 1975, was a commercial failure, but has been cited by Jason Pierce of Spiritualized as a major influence on Spiritualized's work. Pete Townshend of The Who has also praised the album.

In the late 1970s, Dion recorded albums in a contemporary Christian music vein; he is today a devout Roman Catholic. In the 1980s and 1990s, he returned to secular pop music. His Déjà Nu album found him covering Bruce Springsteen, a major follower over the years. In January 2006 he released Bronx in Blue, an album of blues and country standards, to critical acclaim.

In 1988, Dion's autobiography (co-authored by Davin Seay), titled The Wanderer: Dion's Story, was published by Quill. Dion was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. The induction speech was given by Lou Reed.