2001Released
2:47

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about The Wanderer. By Songfacts®.

In this song Dion is warning Flo, Jane and Mary to stay clear of The Wanderer. Dion told Rolling Stone magazine in 1976: "You say to a chick, 'Stay away from that guy. And she would say, 'What guy?' Chicks loved a rebel."

Dion recalled in Mojo magazine March 2008: "I was trying to do what they (his record label) wanted me to do. It was the times, you know? You could say 'The Wanderer' is my little white version of 'I'm A Man.' I saw Bo Diddley do 'I'm A Man' and he had this big belt buckle and I thought, I gotta get a song like that, so I did 'The Wanderer.' But if you listen to the lyric, it's really a sad song, and it actually turns in on itself, because it says 'I roam from town to town/I go through life without a care/I wave my two fists of iron/but I'm goin' nowhere.' You've got a thin veneer of what a man is. The guy's goin' to hell, but he's having a lot of fun doin' it."

Dion told Blueswax in 2009: "The other inspiration was a little bit of "Kansas City," because that song was popular at the time and I loved it. The big inspiration was this kid in the neighborhood... I think his name was Jackie Burns. He was a sailor and he had tattoos all over him, like he had 'Flo' on his left arm, 'Mary' on his right. Janie was the girl that he was going to be with the next night and then he put 'Rosie' on his chest and he had it covered up with a battleship. Every time he went out with a girl, he got a new tattoo. So the guy was worth a song!"

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of The Wanderer.
DKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
114BPM

Album

The album The Wanderer is released on.
The Best Of DionDion
2001Compilation

Released By

The record label that has released The Wanderer.
Capitol Records (CAP)
© 2001 Capitol Records LLC
℗ 2001 Capitol Records LLC

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