I’ve been wondering about this for years now. Well, not constantly, just every now and then, when I happen to hear the song *The Wanderer *by Dion and the Belmonts. Dion sings about how the pretty girls are “all the same” and that he skips town whenever he finds himself “falling for some girl.”
But then there’s this:
Well, there’s Flo on my left and there’s Mary on my right
And Janie is the girl, well, that I’ll be with tonight
And when she asks me which one I love the best
I tear open my shirt and I show her “Rosie” on my chest
If there is an actual girl named Rosie whom he loves the best, well, then he *did *fall for some girl and they’re clearly not all the same. Unless “Rosie” is really a reference to the old joke about “Rosie Palm.” One imagines that a guy who travels a lot would tend to engage in a good bit of self-love. or am I reading way to much into a silly old pop song?
For a long time, I thought Flo, Mary, and Rosie were all tattoos. I guess I was too literal-minded to realize a “girl on each arm” meant that he had two actual women because he’s such a playa.
Ernie Maresca wrote a lot of doo-wop hits and they weren’t known of that kind of layered meaning, IMO. “The Wanderer” started out with “two fists of iron and a bottle of beer,” but the record company induced him to change it to “two fists of iron and I’m going nowhere.” That was about as deep as it got.
Damn me for not knowing Ernie Maresca wrote that song! I’ve always loved *Shout, Shout, Knock Yourself Out *and had no idea he was responsible for *The Wanderer *and *Runaround Sue *as well. Cool beans!
But, yeah, not a lot of depth to the lyrics of any of those.
“Loves” is relative here – it might just as well be “likes.” The guy likes to brag about being with different women, getting tattoos, avoiding commitment, getting out of town when things get too close, fighting, and having no other aim in life. In this context, I’d say getting the tattoos was done cavalierly and is just another indicator of a life of abandon rather than a sign of serious emotional involvement.
I think reading too much into it, and I’d say really reaching. The truly definitive answer could only come from the songwriter, but it really doesn’t make sense that a bragadocious skirthound is going to put in writing – on his body, no less – that he prefers masturbation to actual women.
I think you’ve got that backwards – the most literal meaning would be that he has actual women by his side. However, I think a stronger argument can be made that he is indeed referring to three tattoos. I can’t see Janie asking her question when two other gals are right there. It’s just more natural that she’s inquiring about the tattoos, with the answer being yet another tattoo.
Yeah, but when he shows her Rosie on his chest, it could be his hand (Rosie palms) and he means he loves himself the best which ,obviously,he does. That’s a propos for a “playa” womanizing misogynist. Skirthound is a good one
The song came out in 1961. It’s a baby-boomer song.
Now ask yourself who would have been the most famous Rosie in 1961? Rosie the Riveter. She was a famous symbol for women during WWII. And what happened to all those women when the war ended? They went home and gave birth to the baby-boomers.
So the Rosie on the singer’s chest that he loves best is his mother.
It has nothing to do with masturbation, or self love, it didn’t have anything to do with Rosie the riveter, or his mom, a love bite, or tissue damage on his chest either.
How do I know this? You might be asking, well I’ll include a link at the end of this post to an article on "SongFacts.com that has combined several different source materials containing conversation with the artist Dion into one article where he talks all about what the lyrics meant, and where he got the ideas for them from.
@Sigmagirl & @Gary_T Had it right when guessing that the names Flo, Mary, Janie, & Rosie are all tattoos. Which is also discussed in the article,
"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!”
So go have a look at the article over on song fact for some more information about the song.
