The killings and physical violence were not to protect innocent life, but instead were repugnant and morally indefensible images designed to appeal to young consumers.' Cover versions 'The Wanderer' However, Dion filed a lawsuit claiming he was not informed it would be licensed, saying that it '.featured repeated homicides in a dark, dystopian landscape, where violence is glorified as sport. This had been fully licensed by Dion's label. In 2015, the Bethesda Softworks game, Fallout 4, was released, and advertised via a live-action clip of the protagonist and his dog walking through a wasteland, with 'The Wanderer' playing in the background. The song has been categorized as rock and roll, rhythm and blues and pop. However, on Maresca's original demo of the song, the lyrics were 'with my two fists of iron and my bottle of beer', and the change to 'with my two fists of iron but I'm going nowhere' in fact seems to have been at the record company's insistence. It sounds like a lot of fun but it's about going nowhere. It's 'I roam from town to town and go through life without a care, I'm as happy as a clown with my two fists of iron, but I'm going nowhere.' In the Fifties, you didn't get that dark.

Bruce Springsteen was the only guy who accurately expressed what that song was about. But you know, 'The Wanderer' is really a sad song. It's my perception of a lot of songs like ' I'm A Man' by Bo Diddley or ' Hoochie Coochie Man' by Muddy Waters. 'The Wanderer' is black music filtered through an Italian neighborhood that comes out with an attitude. ДЄt its roots, it's more than meets the eye. Musicians on the original recording included Bucky Pizzarelli and Johnny Falbo on guitars, Jerome Richardson on alto sax, Buddy Lucas on tenor sax, Milt Hinton on bass, and Panama Francis on drums. The Del-Satins were an established doo-wop group led by Stan Ziska (later known as Stan Sommers), who at the time were also contracted to Laurie Records, and who later formed the core of Johnny Maestro & the Brooklyn Bridge. The song was recorded with an uncredited background vocal group, the Del-Satins, in a rockier style than Dion's earlier hits with the Belmonts. It also reached number 10 in the UK and number one in Australia. The record was turned over by radio DJs who preferred 'The Wanderer', which duly entered the US charts in December 1961 and rose to number 2 in early 1962 (behind ' Duke of Earl' by Gene Chandler). They passed on it in favor of another Maresca song, so Dion was given it as the B-side of his follow-up single, 'The Majestic', a song which his record company had chosen for him.

Maresca had co-written Dion's previous number-one hit, ' Runaround Sue', but originally intended 'The Wanderer' to be recorded by another group, Nino and the Ebb Tides.

The wanderer song