An original rock ‘n’ roll idol salutes his roots
Who would have thought that at the age of 69 that Dion would have this album in him? If his voice doesn’t have the full swagger of earlier years, it’s still incredibly solid and filled with the spirit that lifted him onto the first wave of rock ‘n’ roll. Even more surprising is that Dion’s an accomplished guitarist, and together with Bob Richardson, he salutes the real giants of early guitar rock: Cliff Gallup, James Burton, Scotty Moore and other players whose six-strings provided the sting of many early rock ‘n’ roll classics. Dion’s picked 15 well-known hits from the catalogs of Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, The Everly Brothers, Gene Vincent, Del Shannon, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Bill Haley and his own “The Wanderer,†and on each he and Richardson highlight their core guitar sounds.
Given Dion’s first-hand experience with these songs and their original artists, these aren’t so much covers as personal renditions of the folk music of his adolescence. Most of us can hazily remember our teenage years, but few expressed it so fully at the time, night-after-night in song. Dion’s recitations of youthful pique, broken hearts, freewheeling joy, feverous love and adolescent braggadocio are obviously much more than distant memories. He cooks with the passion of a hormonal teenager on “Believe What You Say,†aches with longing on “Runaway†and rekindles his own young swagger on “Blue Suede Shoes†and “Who Do You Love.†This is both a stroll down a nostalgic street and a vital new work by an artist forever infused with the emotional fire of rock ‘n’ roll. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com] 