Me, the Mob, and the Music

by Tommy James

  All of a sudden the haranguing stopped. I had been delivered the lecture for the day and now we got back to business. “Karin,” the voice erupting out of the office door, “cut Tommy a check for ten grand.” That was the way it would always happen. First he would pulverize you, than he would end up giving you the money. Later on, I would get better at these encounters, but this first one left me drained.

  As I left the office Morris said, “Hey, kid, don’t be a stranger. Call every once in a while.” Ever the concerned parent. On the way out of the building, I stopped by Red’s office, and he handed me a box of “Hanky Panky” singles to take with me on the road. I was so busy cutting the album and working the phones that I had not had a chance to see a commercial copy of the record on Roulette until now. It was good news and bad news. The good news was that my name was on a monster hit on a major label. The bad news was that Bob Mack, without saying a word to me, had gotten Morris to print “Bob Mack Presents” above the title, implying that it was all Mack’s show. I was furious. I also found out from Red that Mack had received a lot of money from Morris for the sale of the master. No one could yet account for any money from the sale of the 80,000 bootleg copies that had sold so well in Pittsburgh. And I had just had to beg for road money. I tried to keep my cool but it was tough. The next day, the Shondells and I rented a station wagon and a U-Haul trailer to lug the equipment and headed north toward New England.

  There were no seasoned road warriors on this trip. The only road experience I had ever known was when I traveled the Midwest with Bob King during those months back in 1965 after I graduated high school. The new Shondells had even less experience, but they were not prima donnas. They got right in the trenches with me. They knew how to take care of business and each guy had his own area of expertise. Ronnie Rossman had a knack for details, like arranging hotel reservations and collecting the money for the gigs. Mike ran the scheduling and rehearsals and kept the other band members in line. Somebody else was good with maps and directions; God knows I wasn’t. I was in charge of the wallet, which allowed for special status and longer nap time. They were good guys and they understood the pressure I was under.

  When you are promoting your first record, the first dates are always the worst. Even though “Hanky Panky” was a huge radio hit, we were still an unknown band. Our opening dates were a string of open-air nightclubs called the Surf Ballrooms. These clubs had been built during the big-band era and ran up and down the New England coastline. They each held about five thousand people. Even though they were considered the low end of the food chain for any group with a hit, they turned out to be fun dates.

  For the next three weeks, we worked from Connecticut up to Maine, playing the Surfs and other rock clubs. They were all one-nighters. Just what ABC was famous for. We worked five to six nights a week and usually did two shows a night. During the long drives between dates, we had the radio on nonstop. Top 40 AM all the way. While listening for “Hanky Panky” we got to know every lick of every other song that summer: “Cherry, Cherry,” “Wild Thing,” “Lil’ Red Riding Hood,” “Summer in the City,” “Red Rubber Ball,” “Sweet Pea,” “Black Is Black,” “Along Comes Mary,” “96 Tears,” and on and on.

  Every time “Hanky Panky” came on the radio, I had to laugh. How in the world did this silly little record ever get on the radio with all these monster hits? It was unreal, and yet here I was on the road with five guys I barely knew masquerading as the group who made the record. I thought often of Larry Coverdale, Jack Douglas, Dickie and the record shop, my wife, Diane, and my son, Brian, and all the other people who really made this happen. Not one of them was with me.

  Any ideas I had about the glamour of rock and roll went right out the window like a cigarette butt. Traveling the country, in the summer, with five sweaty guys and no air-conditioning is no picnic. The car developed a permanent odor of greasy French fries, old socks, and bits and pieces of aromatic oddities undefined but acquired along the way. The ashtrays overflowed with cigarettes and the plastic seats were hemorrhoid factories. There were stains whose origins you did not want to know about. By the end of the first week, that station wagon had become a slum on wheels.

  Normally, we would pull into town by early afternoon. The first thing I would do, once I got to my hotel room, was call Red Schwartz. Red would give me daily updates on “Hanky Panky” and a list of interviews I would have to do that afternoon with the local radio stations and newspapers. Usually I would phone them in but sometimes the newspaper people would be waiting for us at the hotel. While I would be schmoozing with the press, the guys would be down at the venue setting up for the night’s show. In the summer of 1966, roadies had not been invented yet.

  By the second week, we had developed a pretty good system. None of us had ever worked this hard before. We were sore all over and our voices were shot to hell. We were all beginning to sound like little Morris Levys. The following day we would load up the U-Haul and drive to the next town and start the whole procedure all over again. Red told us everywhere we played there was a major spike in sales. The tour was beginning to look like a success, and as a result, new and better dates were pouring in. If I had to work such a schedule today, in one week they would take me away in a body bag. When you are nineteen years old and promoting your first national hit record, it is easy to convince yourself you’re having fun.

  The Northeast leg of our tour ended just after the Fourth of July weekend in Troy, New York. We were scheduled to fly to Alabama the next day to play two big shows for WBAM radio in Birmingham and its sister station in Montgomery. These were our first big arena dates, the Big Bam shows as they were called, and we were on the bill with Herman’s Hermits and the Animals in both cities. Not only were these bands heroes of mine, but the radio stations sponsoring the shows were key stations in the South.

  The day before we were supposed to leave, there was a national airline strike and all air travel was suspended. Red was frantic. “You’ve got to get there. I don’t care if you have to crawl.” So after we finished the show in Troy, we did the only thing we could. We packed the U-Haul, drank a lot of coffee, piled into the station wagon, and headed for Alabama. All I remember is trying to sleep in the backseat with my mouth and the windows wide open. Each time we got pulled over by the cops for speeding, I would wake up with bugs and gravel in my throat. Somehow we made it. We got to Montgomery about two hours before show time, no sleep, no hotel, no shower, and went right to the arena.

  The first person I ran into was Eric Burdon of the Animals standing, almost posing, by himself in a dressing room doorway. I went up and introduced myself, even stuck out my hand. He looked at me as if to say, “Who the bloody hell are you?” He was like a pit bull that snarled every time you tried to pet it. Of course, what did I expect? The guy was an animal.

  Peter Noone, on the other hand, could not have been nicer. I was a little shy about introducing myself after Eric’s growling but Peter was terrific. He went on and on about how much he loved “Hanky Panky.” The Hermits were great guys too. We made plans to meet after the show. Sleep or no sleep, we were going to party with Herman’s Hermits.

  As the arena began to fill up, you could hear the noise of the crowd from backstage. It was electric. We were the opening act and it was the biggest crowd we had ever played before, nearly 30,000 people. The stage was an immense rectangle glutted with scaffolding and hundreds of klieg lights and a sound system on a board that looked like the skyline of New York at night. Because it was so big, we ran on stage as soon as we were introduced, grabbed our instruments, and started playing before the applause died down. The eruption from the crowd was louder than expected but the lights were so blinding, we could not see the audience, we only heard them.

  “Hanky Panky” was now in the Top 10 and was a big enough hit to brand us legitimate stars in the eyes of any audience. We got more screams than we’d ever had before. Screaming, by the way, was how groups compared themselves to one another. The more screams you
got, the bigger you were. At least that’s what we told ourselves.

  After our set was over, I became a fan again and caught every song the Animals and the Hermits did. It was incredible to be backstage listening to all those hits back to back. I felt like an amateur next to these guys; me, with my little up-and-coming hit, next to all that gold. As I listened, I couldn’t help thinking I sold every one of their records at the Spin-It in Niles and now I was working with them. After the show, we got together at the local Holiday Inn pool bar, where we were all staying. It was me and the Shondells and the Hermits having a great time on one side of the pool, and the Animals, belligerent and surly, on the other side. You had to love them, though; they were the same offstage as on.

  The next night in Birmingham was an even bigger bash than Montgomery. Limousines picked us up at the hotel, so for once we did not have to take the station wagon. There was a huge press conference before the show; lots of snapshots and interviews between the hors d’oeuvres. We were really getting spoiled. It would be tough going back to ballrooms and small clubs after this. Those two days in Alabama left a lasting impression on us because it was how we measured the rest of our gigs. After a few more dates in the South, we ended up in Atlanta. The airlines were still on strike and the green station wagon was becoming rancid, but we soldiered on and did another marathon drive to our next stop on the tour, a huge gig in Chicago.

  We were now into the third week of July 1966, and “Hanky Panky” finally hit number one on the charts. For most of that month, a battle was raging between “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra and “Paperback Writer” by the Beatles, but “Hanky Panky” came along and trumped them both. We drove up the interstate listening nonstop to the two big Chicago stations, WLS and WCFL. WLS was our beacon. Not only were they playing “Hanky Panky” to death, they were also relentlessly plugging our upcoming date at McCormick Place in Chicago. Red was obviously back at Roulette working the phones nonstop.

  But even more exciting was hearing our new record, “Say I Am,” on the radio for the first time. Roulette had just released it and Red had given WLS a “world exclusive.” I remember thinking what a brilliant move it was giving WLS a vested interest in breaking our new record the very week we were going to be in Chicago. I loved “Hanky Panky,” but to be honest, I had been living with that song for more than three years. It was so good to hear something else on the radio. And this time, the guys had a stake in it because they were actually on the record. We drove all night and heard “Say I Am” at least once an hour. They were referring to it as the new smash by Tommy James and the Shondells.

  When we finally saw the Chicago skyline come into view, it hit me just how unbelievable all this was. If anybody had told me eight months ago, while I was beating my brains out playing go-go clubs on Rush Street, that by the following summer I would have the number one record in the country and would be staying at the swankiest hotel overlooking Lake Michigan, and headlining the biggest rock show of the year, I would have told them they were crazy.

  With the Beatles coming into town the following week on what was to be their final tour, the energy in Chicago was electric. The release of “Say I Am” came at the perfect time because the McCormick Place gig was a little intimidating for us. The event was called the World Teen Fair and we were going to be bumping heads with some of the biggest acts in the business, most of whom had more hits than we did. Bands from all over the world were on the bill or playing the Chicago area during the next couple of weeks. The Mamas & the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Association, the Dave Clark Five, the Shadows of Knight, Martha and the Vandellas, Chad & Jeremy, our old friends the Animals and Herman’s Hermits, the Standells (who were actually from Boston but goofed on everybody by speaking with fake British accents), the Outsiders, the New Colony Six, Sonny & Cher, even Stan Musial was going to be there signing autographs. We would be playing at different times and on different stages, but this time, Tommy James and the Shondells were getting top billing.

  We pulled up to the Executive Hotel on Michigan Avenue. There were screaming girls out front rushing up to us with things to sign. There were more screaming girls in the lobby. There were photographers from the newspapers, and at the desk there was a mountain of messages, mostly from Red Schwartz, that had to be answered. Before I went up to my room, I called Red from the lobby pay phone. He was more excited than I was. Roulette had gotten an initial order from All State Distributors in Chicago for 50,000 copies of “Say I Am,” which was an unheard of number of records for a song that had only been on the air for forty-eight hours. We had two chart hits at once in Chicago.

  Red had a laundry list of DJs, promo guys, and distributors I would have to talk with. As he rattled off an alphabet soup of station call letters, I was frantically trying to write everything down on a hotel napkin. Red had promised the stations that I would do live interviews with them in exchange for them playing “Say I Am” the following week. Red said, “Listen, man, we can bust this record wide open by next week but you have to make these calls. Don’t make me look like a schmuck.”

  McCormick Place, the site of this weeklong rock festival, was a gigantic complex of arenas and exhibition halls. The show’s sponsors expected up to half a million people but during the four days that we headlined it was closer to a million. Opening night was fantastic. There were more than 25,000 people pressed against the stage, rocking back and forth. We were no longer the one-hit-wonder kids. The release of our second record seemed to give us real star status. We got screams that night like we’d never heard before.

  When the show was over, we were surrounded by the Chicago police, all grimly determined to see us safely to our dressing rooms amid thousands of screaming teenage girls. Waiting for us in the dressing rooms was another horde of reporters and photographers. Everybody was shoving microphones in our faces, asking everything from our opinions on social issues and the meaning of life to what kind of chicks turned us on.

  This heady adulation went on for the next three days, and I must say that it is awfully easy to get cocky when everybody around you is telling you how great you are. But the funny thing about this band was that every time we got to thinking we were too cool, something would always happen to bring us back down to earth. Our last night in Chicago would go down in Shondells history as the “Oh My God” show.

  Our set began as usual. We hit the stage in our green, iridescent Mod sharkskin suits and favorite gold Beatle boots. Our act was basically all the songs from our first album. We kicked off with “I’ll Go Crazy” then went into hyperdrive with “Shake a Tail Feather” followed by “Say I Am,” then we would mix things up a bit. George would put down his sax and play Mike’s bass. I would grab a tambourine and hand Mike the lead microphone and he would sing the two songs he sang on the album, “I’m So Proud” and “Love Makes the World Go Round.” What I did not know was that he had been practicing some slick new moves and had not bothered to tell anyone.

  In the middle of the second song, Mike dramatically slid on his knees to the front of the stage and grabbed the outstretched hand of one of the shrieking teenyboppers in the first row, at which point the crotch of his pants split from his rear end to his belt buckle. At that moment we all learned something else about Mike we had not known. He didn’t wear underwear. Not only us but now most of the people in the first ten rows knew it too. He gave “hanging out with the band” a whole new meaning. Whatever shortcomings Mike may have had as a singer, he more than made up for that night with, shall we say, showmanship.

  As the girls were being whisked away by their protective mothers, Mike dived behind his bass amp like Pete Rose flying headfirst into third base. And that was where he stayed for the rest of the gig.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I Think We’re

  Alone Now

  By the end of August, our summer ’66 tour was over. The Shondells went home to Pittsburgh and I flew back to New York. My first stop was Roulette. It was like walkin
g into a beehive. On my way to see Morris, I heard my name coming out of every office:

  “We’re working on the next Tommy James single now.”

  “I want a full-page ad on Tommy James by next week.”

  “No, Tommy’s not available until the middle of September.”

  I was getting the impression that Tommy James and the Shondells were not just Roulette’s new project, we were their only project. The funny thing was that through all this commotion, everyone seemed oblivious to the fact that I was standing there. Finally Red Schwartz called me into his office. “Listen,” he said, “we have to do the trade and the teen magazines this week and you have to get with Henry Glover about the next single.” Before I could answer, Henry walked in and grabbed me and pulled me into his office. “Morris wants to get the next single ready.” Henry pointed to a three-foot-high stack of acetates. “Listen to these and see if there is anything you like. If not, we’ll get you another stack.” Henry was never out of stacks.

  Next I passed Normand Kurtz’s office. Normand was Morris’s in-house lawyer for music deals. Normand told me he was putting together a foreign distribution deal to release my whole catalog overseas. My whole catalog? I didn’t even know I had a catalog. Normand had cut his teeth in the record business working for Linda Eastman’s father, Lee, whose real name was Leopold Epstein. It’s hard to figure which profession has the most characters with aliases, show business or the Mob. Normand was a perfect Roulette employee. He was as big, gruff, and street smart as any of the boys who hung out in Morris’s office.

  I walked by Gerry Cousins’s office and thought I might as well try her too. Gerry was the sales manager and struck me as far too normal and well adjusted to be working at Roulette. She was on the phone and muffled it for a second. “Tommy, we just did eight hundred thousand with ‘Say I Am.’ Isn’t that great?” I gave a thumbs-up as I walked out and marched inexorably toward the end of the hall. Just before Morris’s office was a little cubbyhole containing Howard Fisher, the comptroller. Unlike everybody else in this place, Howard always looked like a beaten hound dog, always weary, disheveled, and overburdened. His job was to collect and disperse Morris’s money. No wonder he looked so miserable. And then there was Morris.