Some Things Hurt More, Much More, Than Cars And Girls: “The Wanderer” by Dion

So, was this an about-turn or a contradiction of “Runaround Sue”? Some might construe it as an answer record, but there were at least two “answer” records (“I’m No Run-Around” by Ginger Davis and the Snaps and “Stay-At-Home Sue” by Linda Laurie, neither of which is recommended). In one sense it’s Dion coming of age, with a new-found swagger and confidence. Musically – if not thematically (at least at first reading) – the record is compelling and swinging, with Mr di Mucci having lots of fun rolling around those “around”s; the swing element is probably not surprising, given that the musicians on the recording included Panama Francis, Bucky Pizzarelli, Sticks Evans (two drummers!) and Jerome Richardson. The stop-start backing vocals – long-held drones followed by abrupt air-catching gulps, as if being dared to hold down quarter of a bottle of tequila – were by the doo-wop group the Del-Satins, who later formed the nucleus of Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge. Producer Gene Schwartz understands how this should all work, in 1962.

Songwriter Ernie Maresca had originally offered the song to the Bronx doo-wop outfit Nino and the Ebb Tides, but they passed and so the song was given to Dion – yet again, it was initially the B-side of something called “The Majestic,” chosen by his record label, but radio DJs flipped it anyway. The cavalier thrust of “The Wanderer” may not, as Lena has pointed out, relate specifically to the girls with whom he sleeps, and then abandons, but more so to the tag of “I hop right into that car of mine and drive around the world.” He seems more in love with the idea of travelling than of loving.

No doubt the song influenced Marvin Gaye’s “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home),” which was released in December of that year. But the cars-and-girls theme of “The Wanderer” is surely something on which the teenage Springsteen would have picked up – and Dion has named the Boss as the only musician who understood the song’s inherent sadness and emptiness. Dion’s brief was to inject an Italian-American element into what was essentially a 12-bar blues template – a whiteboy “Hoochie Coochie Man” or “I’m A Man,” perhaps – but the key line comes at the end of the middle eight: “With my two fists of iron/But I’m going nowhere.” This depicts a world infinitely darker than “A Teenager In Love” and suggests that the sixties aren’t going to be quite as simple and elementary a ride as the fifties were.

Date Record Made Number Two: 24 February 1962

Number of Weeks At Number Two: 1

Record At Number One: “Duke Of Earl” by Gene Chandler

UK Chart Position: 10