Name: Del Shannon on Later with Bob Costas, January 24, 1989
Uploaded: 2017-08-06T02:26:03.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Del Shannon on Later with Bob Costas, January 24, 1989' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-08-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Del Shannon on Later with Bob Costas, January 24, 1989' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-08-06. Transcript available.

Thanks for staying up later.
I'm Bob Costas.
Tonight we'll be visited by one of the classic names in the history of rock and
roll.
Back in the early 60s, before the British invasion, Del Shannon had a string of
hits
that vaulted into the top of American popular music.
But let's make a distinction here.
Del Shannon was not and is not a pop star.
He's a legitimate rock and roll guy.
He wrote his own stuff, hard driving stuff, that still holds up.
In fact, in 1986, his classic Runaway was adapted as the theme song for the NBC
show Crime Story.
Now, this little item is more than just a jukebox.
It's a video machine.
It's a time machine, in fact.
Let's take you back to 1961, the old American bandstand show.
Here's Del Shannon with Runaway.
I'm a-walkin' in the rain.
Tears are fallin' and I feel a pain.
Wishin' you were here by me to end this misery.
And I wonder, I-wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder, why?
Why-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-she ran away.
And I wonder, where she will stay.
How long did it take to write and record Runaway?
Three hours.
The whole thing?
Yeah.
Well, I did come back, I think, to New York and re-over dub a voice, a lead
voice.
But, uh, yeah, you'd walk in and in the old days it was two-track.
And we did, uh, they had a band there.
And we had, uh, Runaway, Jody, the B-side, and Max Crook, uh, my organist at
the time,
had a, his little Musitron that he played, uh, the solo in Runaway.
And he did Matt, The Snake and some other song, four songs in three hours.
How about writing it?
How long did it take you to write it?
Did it just come to you in a burst?
Well, I think, I think I wrote, I read a lot of songs in the back of my mind
before they
come out.
But when they come out, they just, whoop, there they are, you know.
Like, Runaway was, was done on stage in Battle Creek at the high-low club one
night when Max
hit an A minor and a G. And I said, "Wow, what a great change that was." So I
said, "Look,
follow me, everybody follow me, everybody. It's only Max, a bass player, and me."
So
I went, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun." And, uh, Max followed
me all through
the song. I'd call out, "G! F!" And I just followed this whole structure of
song. And
the next day I wrote the words to it.
When Runaway hit in early 1961, it was on the charts for 15 to 20 weeks. It was
number
one for better than a month. You come out of total obscurity. Bingo, here you
are, you're
a big star. How old were you?
I think I was 21 or something. Sometimes I lie about my age.
You were 21 then.
Yeah. I was 21 then. Let's just say I was 21 then. A little bit older than that.
And,
uh, I just came out of nowhere. You know, I mean, I called up one day my
manager, uh,
and I said, "I was working in this horrible club in Battle Creek, Michigan, the
high-low
club. I mean, the fights and knifings and bottle throwing." And I said, "Uh,
you're
just, uh, we just cut this record. How's it doing?" And he said, "It's selling
about
80,000 records a day." I said, "Is that good? Is that good?" I had no idea
about the record
business. And he said, "Yes, and you're opening next week at the Paramount."
And I couldn't
believe it, you know.
The Broadway Paramount.
That's right. Yeah. With, uh, with Dion and Jackie Wilson and all these acts
where you come out and you do your, your hit and then you go back to your
dressing
room. You do it five times a day. And in between they play a Frankie Avalon
movie or something. So it was really shocking. I didn't know what to do.
My guitar was my, my old manager. Uh, you don't use a guitar. He had a big
cigar. You don't use a guitar. Yeah. You do like Frank Sinatra. You get cufflinks.
You wear a
suit. You know, so...
He just wanted you to come out and, and lip sync? Were you lip syncing at that
point?
No, no, no. He had a band, but no guitar, you know. Yeah. Which is, you know,
it's like...
You wouldn't stand for that, would you?
No, I didn't after that. No. My guitar is with me all the time. Uh, except when
I did Shauna now once and they wanted me to do a little
dance or something, you know. He says, "Hey, I'm not a dancer. I'm a singer and
I play guitar." You know. Uh, but my guitar ever since has been with me. I'll
always have it with me.
When you appear on Dick Clark though, at least initially, you have to lip sync.
I mean, that's one of the staples of America. Oh, absolutely.
A guy can have a record that requires 42 different musicians to get the orchestration
and the arrangement down, but he stands up there by himself and lip syncs the
damn thing.
And sometimes when you use your guitar on those shows, you'd stand up there
with your guitar and you didn't have a plug. I mean, it was ridiculous.
At least when they kept doing that on, I noticed that and I said, "Uh, before
we do this, I need a chord. At least it'll make me, it'll look like I'm
actually playing, you know."
How closely could you match it? Did the lips match? I was a pretty good lip syncer.
I think.
But did you feel good about it? It wasn't a real performance, right?
Oh, in those days you didn't care, you know. I mean, it wasn't unhip not to do
it. I mean, it was just, you just, today they do it in videos on purpose.
Yeah.
What about those girls in the background on Runaway? Jumping up and down, cheerleader
style?
Oh, well, I don't, I can't even remember them doing it. Why they were doing it,
I didn't know even, I didn't remember using them. I really don't.
How about when you came to New York? You mentioned that you worked with Dion.
By this time, he's established. He's had a lot of hits.
Mm-hmm.
Did he look upon you as kind of a kid wet behind the ears?
Yeah. He said, well, I walk in this little, first of all, I thought, wow, I'm
working Broadway and now I'm out of the strawberry patch and I'm out of selling
carpets and I'm out of all this other junk.
Because when I was in the strawberry patch in Coopersville, in the summer you
used to work in the strawberry patch.
Coopersville, Michigan.
Yeah, and earn a few bucks. Well, I hated the strawberry patch and I didn't, I
never really stayed long at picking strawberries.
But there's where I always told people, I'm going to be a star, I'm going to be
in the movies.
And they used to tell me that, so I always feel that, that when they said that
I was going to Broadway and open up there with Dion and all these people,
I said, wow, it's going to be a great dressing room and it's all going to be
different now.
I got in his little room, it was just like a toilet, and there was Dion and
Bobby V and we're all in the same room.
Bobby, the knight has a thousand eyes?
That's right. And I walked over and I stepped on, I think, Bobby or Dion's toe.
And I said, I'm really sorry.
I said, well, look at what a klutz this guy is. Hey, Bobby, look at his pants.
Look at his shoes.
What was wrong with your pants and shoes?
Well, they were all baggy. I thought, you know, baggy. At the time it was hip,
I guess, to have tight pants, pegs, peg legs.
Yeah.
So Dion was a great dresser. So was Bobby in those days. I mean, really immaculate.
And I walk in from Cooperstown with a red tie and red socks and these baggy
black pants.
A lot of artists and groups that had hits in the 60s went through a period of
time where they thought it was unhip to play those hits in concert.
I don't know how many shows I went to during that period of time where a good
portion of the audience was screaming, begging for the hits.
And the artists almost disdainfully refused to do them at all or save them for
the very end before sending the people home happy.
Did you go through that, too?
Yeah, I went through it. I watched others go through it, I think, more or less.
I was at the time I was producing Brian Hyland when we had Gypsy Woman.
So I would go out and just sing background with Brian. I thought it was great.
And I was managing the Smith and I could get fat and smoke cigars because he
smoked cigars in the old days.
And it was a great time for me in life. But I'd notice other people weren't
doing their hits.
And they were all trying to be this, um, getting back to reality.
They were trying to be like, like Bobby V came out with an album called Robert
Villain.
And I said, "Wow, that's cool, man. I'll just be the real self. We've got to
find ourselves now."
So I said, "The Further Adventures of Charles Westover," which is my real name.
And all people were going through, everyone was following each other to nowhere.
So anyway, here you are and you're not doing Runaway for a while. What
convinced you that...
And it isn't just Runaway, I mean, it's Little Town Flirt and Hats Off to Larry
and Searching and everything else.
Yeah, and keep searching, yeah.
Well, I just didn't. I just got out for three years when the Beetle Invasion
came and I still had...
That went... I went through that and then I started producing. I knew something
was going on, you know.
I went to see Frank Sinatra once and I wanted to see Frank Sinatra.
So I went and I saw Frank and Frank was unbelievable.
I mean, he did all his great hits, but at the end he started doing, "America."
Why is he doing that? And he did something, something in your eyes.
He went through a period of time where he started covering rock and roll stuff.
Yeah, he did do that, yeah. And that's fine, because where else are you going
to go? I guess you keep doing it.
But, you know, for an artist like Frank Sinatra or even the Rolling Stones
started again doing their hits, "Satisfaction" and stuff like that.
And I was starting to be aware of that, that what's wrong with being who you
are? It's silly.
Now, Dion is doing his hits and I saw Dion and I worked together last year.
And Dion's not been on the road much. He's been into his thing, which is great,
you know.
But now he's back and I saw him and I sat through the whole show and he did all
movie baby and all his great hits and he had a great band.
It made me feel good. I'm like, yeah, it's okay to be Del Shannon, you know.
It really made people feel good recently when you came out on The Letterman
Show.
I mean, to hear you do Runaway pretty nearly the way it sounded in 1961 with
that hard driving sound.
You realize how happy that makes people?
I'm all about the ring of the ring. Cause I'm falling and I feel the pain. She's
hurt by me. To let this misery and I wonder.
I go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. She ran away and I hope.
Where you're gonna stay? Yeah.
I will run away, run, run, run, run away.
Stay tuned. Later, we'll be right back.
Understand what I've got to do.
I've got to find a place to hide with my baby by my side.
That'll hurt so much to treat her being a pro.
Try to keep us by part, there's only one thing that we can do.
We've got to be searching, searching, find a place to hide.
Searching, searching, should be by my side and we've got to keep on the road.
Follow the sun, follow the sun, follow the sun.
More now with Del Shannon.
You knew Elvis at least a little bit, huh?
Very little, yeah.
His office, when I was producing Brian Highland, I remember the day,
I remember their office calling and said,
we're up in Las Vegas with Elvis and he's doing runaway in his act
and he'd like you to be his guest.
So we went up there and it was quite a funny night.
I'm sitting there and Elvis says, I'd like to do something.
I was drinking a little bit that night,
as usual in those days and I'd like to introduce now.
Del, you out there?
And it went like that and I remember him doing that.
Got the spot and they couldn't find where I was sitting.
And Brian Highland, who was a really a shy guy, one of the shyest guys.
He always loved Elvis, but he was so shy.
He gets up in the middle of all these people.
He's over here!
And he pointed down at me and I took a bow and I don't think Elvis introduced
too many people, I don't think.
How was Elvis' runaway?
It was pretty good, you know?
I like Bonnie Raitt's better, but we did talk with Elvis for a couple hours
after the show.
We got back and talked to him and he wasn't drunk or bombed or anything.
I think I was much more drunk than he was.
And at that point he wasn't bloated yet, right?
No, no, no, he was the best looking guy I'd ever seen in my life.
I've never seen a man look so, you're a good looking guy yourself, Bobby.
And a lot of people compare me to Elvis pretty much.
Well, what can I say?
That happens all the time.
But, but Elvis Presley was the best looking man I've ever seen.
Now maybe it was his makeup, I don't know, but even though the movies and all
that,
seeing him in person was amazing and this guy was so good looking.
He had almost an animal magnetism about him.
He was just amazing and he looked great and he had all these little, you know,
these little belts and stuff that he wore and we sat and talked for about two
hours.
You were one of the first rock and roll guys who wrote almost all of his own
stuff.
That became commonplace later, but you were writing almost all your own stuff.
Now you have an interesting distinction.
Elvis recorded Runaway, but so did Lawrence Welk.
That's right.
I think it was the record of the year or instrumental of the year that in '62
or '01.
Oh, no vocal on Lawrence Welk.
Well, I liked him doing it.
No, there's no vocals.
Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
They do that in it with girls or something.
But I liked him doing it because it sort of puts you in a little, you know,
it expanded you into the adults maybe.
I don't know.
I just felt good when I hear it.
It still does feel good.
Into the very mature adults.
Because he did it so precise.
I mean, every note's right, you know.
Lawrence Welk, funk master.
I wouldn't want him to do a whole catalog on me.
Just one song, please, Lawrence.
Stranger in Town.
That was, I guess you could say, an early rock video, right?
Yeah.
Not too complicated, but...
Yeah, um...
You know the piece I'm thinking about, where you've got the girl at your side,
and no one else will look at you?
Yeah, right.
You're the stranger in town?
That's right.
And they've got one of me in England.
I don't know where that tape is, but the windshield wipers are going.
I'm in this make-believe car, and they've got rain falling down out of a hose,
and...
Stranger in Town!
But, uh, Stranger in Town was a very, uh, one of my, I think, most intense
songs in the production.
Harry Bulk did on it.
It was a very good production.
I mean, we had boards in it.
Harry got a couple of boards, of two-by-fours, and clapped them together.
Like this.
He had somebody clap them together, and...
It's the way wrong, boom-boom, tsh-boom.
Yeah.
All these big clackers, man.
And then he used tons of echo on it, you know.
That song reminded me a little bit of some Orbison stuff, where you're able to
create
that feeling of movement and that feeling of desperation within a song.
Plus the vocal.
I think I learned from Orbison, the...
That kind of thing.
I just sort of automatically came to me.
Because I do crying every night, wherever I work, I've done that song.
And I also used it in, like you say, Stranger in Town.
So we rung, yeah, we rung, yeah, we rung!
You know, you're way up in there.
Yeah.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
Here's Eric Burton, who was, I guess, by any definition, kind of homely.
Certainly, he wasn't a guy who looked real sharp in the fashion that Bobby Rydell
did.
And Rydell was probably looking out, seeing the future.
He's saying, hey, I can't go out and do a wild one and swing in school anymore.
Yeah, yeah, whatever he was thinking, I don't know, because we never talked
about it.
It's just a feeling I got that day when he did peek out there, and there was
just that sort of look.
He didn't really have to say anything.
The look was on my face, too.
It was fear, really.
You mentioned the Beatles.
You mentioned the Beatles.
You actually appeared with them a few times, right?
Not a few times.
The Beatles and Brian, mainly.
I knew Brian Epstein better than their manager, better than I did the Beatles.
The Beatles used to come backstage.
I did a lot of shows in England, and they'd come backstage and chat a bit.
They were the strangest guys, I mean, especially John.
I mean, it was like when I first met Dion, when I was in New York doing the
Paramount, one of my first shows in the business.
I thought, this guy's from New York, but he sounds like he's from Mars or
something.
And I had the same feeling when I met John Lennon.
I got to be really good friends with Dion, but John, he was something else.
You were very open and very frank.
John was very frank and open.
Didn't you wind up covering one of the Beatles songs?
I did, yes, from me to you.
And I told John about that.
I said, John, I'm going to, at the Albert Hall.
I said, also, John, I'm going to cover, from me to you, because the English
were always covering the American Hardest.
And when he, he said, that would be great, mate.
But when he walked on stage, just on stage, he turned to me and he said, don't
do that.
And I did see him after that one time, and he never said anything about it,
because they, at the time...
You think he was kidding, or why would he, would he have a legitimate reason
not to want you to cover it?
Yeah, I think Brian didn't want anybody to cover any other songs before they
were released in America.
They really had a war program going, I think, to attack.
I just read an article about Paul, or one of them, stating that they wanted to,
they had Liverpool, and London, and then the rest of the world, you know.
And I really think Brian and the Beatles had that in mind, and they did it.
The man is also generous, passed on where the action is, and Freddie Boom Boom
Cannon added it to Palisades Park, and Tallahassee Lassie and his portfolio.
That's fine, he can have it.
Tell Shannon, it was great to see you.
Thanks, Bob.
Thanks for being with us.
See you later, everybody.
Join Bob tomorrow night, when his guests will be TV's Lou Grant, Ed Asner.
Ed Asner.

Del Shannon on Later with Bob Costas, January 24, 1989

Thanks for staying up later.
I'm Bob Costas.
Tonight we'll be visited by one of the classic names in the history of rock and
roll.
Back in the early 60s, before the British invasion, Del Shannon had a string of
hits
that vaulted into the top of American popular music.
But let's make a distinction here.
Del Shannon was not and is not a pop star.
He's a legitimate rock and roll guy.
He wrote his own stuff, hard driving stuff, that still holds up.
In fact, in 1986, his classic Runaway was adapted as the theme song for the NBC
show Crime Story.
Now, this little item is more than just a jukebox.
It's a video machine.
It's a time machine, in fact.
Let's take you back to 1961, the old American bandstand show.
Here's Del Shannon with Runaway.
I'm a-walkin' in the rain.
Tears are fallin' and I feel a pain.
Wishin' you were here by me to end this misery.
And I wonder, I-wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder, why?
Why-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-she ran away.
And I wonder, where she will stay.
How long did it take to write and record Runaway?
Three hours.
The whole thing?
Yeah.
Well, I did come back, I think, to New York and re-over dub a voice, a lead
voice.
But, uh, yeah, you'd walk in and in the old days it was two-track.
And we did, uh, they had a band there.
And we had, uh, Runaway, Jody, the B-side, and Max Crook, uh, my organist at
the time,
had a, his little Musitron that he played, uh, the solo in Runaway.
And he did Matt, The Snake and some other song, four songs in three hours.
How about writing it?
How long did it take you to write it?
Did it just come to you in a burst?
Well, I think, I think I wrote, I read a lot of songs in the back of my mind
before they
come out.
But when they come out, they just, whoop, there they are, you know.
Like, Runaway was, was done on stage in Battle Creek at the high-low club one
night when Max
hit an A minor and a G. And I said, "Wow, what a great change that was." So I
said, "Look,
follow me, everybody follow me, everybody. It's only Max, a bass player, and me."
So
I went, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun." And, uh, Max followed
me all through
the song. I'd call out, "G! F!" And I just followed this whole structure of
song. And
the next day I wrote the words to it.
When Runaway hit in early 1961, it was on the charts for 15 to 20 weeks. It was
number
one for better than a month. You come out of total obscurity. Bingo, here you
are, you're
a big star. How old were you?
I think I was 21 or something. Sometimes I lie about my age.
You were 21 then.
Yeah. I was 21 then. Let's just say I was 21 then. A little bit older than that.
And,
uh, I just came out of nowhere. You know, I mean, I called up one day my
manager, uh,
and I said, "I was working in this horrible club in Battle Creek, Michigan, the
high-low
club. I mean, the fights and knifings and bottle throwing." And I said, "Uh,
you're
just, uh, we just cut this record. How's it doing?" And he said, "It's selling
about
80,000 records a day." I said, "Is that good? Is that good?" I had no idea
about the record
business. And he said, "Yes, and you're opening next week at the Paramount."
And I couldn't
believe it, you know.
The Broadway Paramount.
That's right. Yeah. With, uh, with Dion and Jackie Wilson and all these acts
where you come out and you do your, your hit and then you go back to your
dressing
room. You do it five times a day. And in between they play a Frankie Avalon
movie or something. So it was really shocking. I didn't know what to do.
My guitar was my, my old manager. Uh, you don't use a guitar. He had a big
cigar. You don't use a guitar. Yeah. You do like Frank Sinatra. You get cufflinks.
You wear a
suit. You know, so...
He just wanted you to come out and, and lip sync? Were you lip syncing at that
point?
No, no, no. He had a band, but no guitar, you know. Yeah. Which is, you know,
it's like...
You wouldn't stand for that, would you?
No, I didn't after that. No. My guitar is with me all the time. Uh, except when
I did Shauna now once and they wanted me to do a little
dance or something, you know. He says, "Hey, I'm not a dancer. I'm a singer and
I play guitar." You know. Uh, but my guitar ever since has been with me. I'll
always have it with me.
When you appear on Dick Clark though, at least initially, you have to lip sync.
I mean, that's one of the staples of America. Oh, absolutely.
A guy can have a record that requires 42 different musicians to get the orchestration
and the arrangement down, but he stands up there by himself and lip syncs the
damn thing.
And sometimes when you use your guitar on those shows, you'd stand up there
with your guitar and you didn't have a plug. I mean, it was ridiculous.
At least when they kept doing that on, I noticed that and I said, "Uh, before
we do this, I need a chord. At least it'll make me, it'll look like I'm
actually playing, you know."
How closely could you match it? Did the lips match? I was a pretty good lip syncer.
I think.
But did you feel good about it? It wasn't a real performance, right?
Oh, in those days you didn't care, you know. I mean, it wasn't unhip not to do
it. I mean, it was just, you just, today they do it in videos on purpose.
Yeah.
What about those girls in the background on Runaway? Jumping up and down, cheerleader
style?
Oh, well, I don't, I can't even remember them doing it. Why they were doing it,
I didn't know even, I didn't remember using them. I really don't.
How about when you came to New York? You mentioned that you worked with Dion.
By this time, he's established. He's had a lot of hits.
Mm-hmm.
Did he look upon you as kind of a kid wet behind the ears?
Yeah. He said, well, I walk in this little, first of all, I thought, wow, I'm
working Broadway and now I'm out of the strawberry patch and I'm out of selling
carpets and I'm out of all this other junk.
Because when I was in the strawberry patch in Coopersville, in the summer you
used to work in the strawberry patch.
Coopersville, Michigan.
Yeah, and earn a few bucks. Well, I hated the strawberry patch and I didn't, I
never really stayed long at picking strawberries.
But there's where I always told people, I'm going to be a star, I'm going to be
in the movies.
And they used to tell me that, so I always feel that, that when they said that
I was going to Broadway and open up there with Dion and all these people,
I said, wow, it's going to be a great dressing room and it's all going to be
different now.
I got in his little room, it was just like a toilet, and there was Dion and
Bobby V and we're all in the same room.
Bobby, the knight has a thousand eyes?
That's right. And I walked over and I stepped on, I think, Bobby or Dion's toe.
And I said, I'm really sorry.
I said, well, look at what a klutz this guy is. Hey, Bobby, look at his pants.
Look at his shoes.
What was wrong with your pants and shoes?
Well, they were all baggy. I thought, you know, baggy. At the time it was hip,
I guess, to have tight pants, pegs, peg legs.
Yeah.
So Dion was a great dresser. So was Bobby in those days. I mean, really immaculate.
And I walk in from Cooperstown with a red tie and red socks and these baggy
black pants.
A lot of artists and groups that had hits in the 60s went through a period of
time where they thought it was unhip to play those hits in concert.
I don't know how many shows I went to during that period of time where a good
portion of the audience was screaming, begging for the hits.
And the artists almost disdainfully refused to do them at all or save them for
the very end before sending the people home happy.
Did you go through that, too?
Yeah, I went through it. I watched others go through it, I think, more or less.
I was at the time I was producing Brian Hyland when we had Gypsy Woman.
So I would go out and just sing background with Brian. I thought it was great.
And I was managing the Smith and I could get fat and smoke cigars because he
smoked cigars in the old days.
And it was a great time for me in life. But I'd notice other people weren't
doing their hits.
And they were all trying to be this, um, getting back to reality.
They were trying to be like, like Bobby V came out with an album called Robert
Villain.
And I said, "Wow, that's cool, man. I'll just be the real self. We've got to
find ourselves now."
So I said, "The Further Adventures of Charles Westover," which is my real name.
And all people were going through, everyone was following each other to nowhere.
So anyway, here you are and you're not doing Runaway for a while. What
convinced you that...
And it isn't just Runaway, I mean, it's Little Town Flirt and Hats Off to Larry
and Searching and everything else.
Yeah, and keep searching, yeah.
Well, I just didn't. I just got out for three years when the Beetle Invasion
came and I still had...
That went... I went through that and then I started producing. I knew something
was going on, you know.
I went to see Frank Sinatra once and I wanted to see Frank Sinatra.
So I went and I saw Frank and Frank was unbelievable.
I mean, he did all his great hits, but at the end he started doing, "America."
Why is he doing that? And he did something, something in your eyes.
He went through a period of time where he started covering rock and roll stuff.
Yeah, he did do that, yeah. And that's fine, because where else are you going
to go? I guess you keep doing it.
But, you know, for an artist like Frank Sinatra or even the Rolling Stones
started again doing their hits, "Satisfaction" and stuff like that.
And I was starting to be aware of that, that what's wrong with being who you
are? It's silly.
Now, Dion is doing his hits and I saw Dion and I worked together last year.
And Dion's not been on the road much. He's been into his thing, which is great,
you know.
But now he's back and I saw him and I sat through the whole show and he did all
movie baby and all his great hits and he had a great band.
It made me feel good. I'm like, yeah, it's okay to be Del Shannon, you know.
It really made people feel good recently when you came out on The Letterman
Show.
I mean, to hear you do Runaway pretty nearly the way it sounded in 1961 with
that hard driving sound.
You realize how happy that makes people?
I'm all about the ring of the ring. Cause I'm falling and I feel the pain. She's
hurt by me. To let this misery and I wonder.
I go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. She ran away and I hope.
Where you're gonna stay? Yeah.
I will run away, run, run, run, run away.
Stay tuned. Later, we'll be right back.
Understand what I've got to do.
I've got to find a place to hide with my baby by my side.
That'll hurt so much to treat her being a pro.
Try to keep us by part, there's only one thing that we can do.
We've got to be searching, searching, find a place to hide.
Searching, searching, should be by my side and we've got to keep on the road.
Follow the sun, follow the sun, follow the sun.
More now with Del Shannon.
You knew Elvis at least a little bit, huh?
Very little, yeah.
His office, when I was producing Brian Highland, I remember the day,
I remember their office calling and said,
we're up in Las Vegas with Elvis and he's doing runaway in his act
and he'd like you to be his guest.
So we went up there and it was quite a funny night.
I'm sitting there and Elvis says, I'd like to do something.
I was drinking a little bit that night,
as usual in those days and I'd like to introduce now.
Del, you out there?
And it went like that and I remember him doing that.
Got the spot and they couldn't find where I was sitting.
And Brian Highland, who was a really a shy guy, one of the shyest guys.
He always loved Elvis, but he was so shy.
He gets up in the middle of all these people.
He's over here!
And he pointed down at me and I took a bow and I don't think Elvis introduced
too many people, I don't think.
How was Elvis' runaway?
It was pretty good, you know?
I like Bonnie Raitt's better, but we did talk with Elvis for a couple hours
after the show.
We got back and talked to him and he wasn't drunk or 