Me, the Mob, and the Music

by Tommy James

  When we landed in Bermuda, we were sort of half expecting a reception at the airport. Nothing big, mind you, just a few screaming girls or maybe a small press conference. After all, we were working on our third million-selling single. Nothing. No reporters. No radio stations. Not even an autograph hound. We hung around the baggage claim area posing conspicuously for photographers that would never come, waiting for a limousine and chauffeur that would never arrive. Finally, a cabdriver came over and said, “You go dis way, mon?” So the six of us with our luggage and equipment crammed into two broken-down Volkswagen Beetles and putt-putted our way to the Forty Thieves for a sound check.

  The Forty Thieves turned out to be a hole in the wall that looked like half the bars in Niles, Michigan. Each table had a candle in a glass goblet covered with plastic fishnet. There was a linoleum dance floor about ten feet square. Lenny Stogel must have called in some favors to get us booked here. My God, I played better joints with Larry Coverdale. But then we noticed dozens of pictures of big-name celebrities who had played there lining the walls: musicians, comedians, and singers. Apparently this was where the action was in Bermuda.

  During the sound check, we decided that if we wanted to try something new, this was the place. A guitar fight, like Paul Revere and the Raiders did. Who the hell would know? We figured we could insert it in the middle of a new song we were working on: “Land of 1000 Dances” by Cannibal and the Headhunters. We’d rehearsed it already and it seemed to work. Mike started by swinging the neck of his bass over Joe’s head. Then Joe swung his guitar over Mike’s head while I stood in between and ducked under both of them. All of us kept popping up and down like pistons in time to the music. We all knew this would be great.

  By 8:00 that night, the place was packed. There were more than a thousand people in this little joint and it was an exotic mixture of locals and tourists. There was no one under thirty years old, not the kind of crowd we were used to.

  From the dressing room, we could see our opening act on stage: four old island guys playing things they must have found in their backyards. One guy played a gutbucket bass, a broom handle with a single string connected to an upside-down bucket; another guy played a washboard with thimbles on his fingers; the third played a cigar box with prongs. The only store-bought instrument was a slide whistle. And if that wasn’t scary enough, the crowd loved them. We knew this could go either way: they would love us or hate us. The MC was an island guy in a Hawaiian shirt. He was half-loaded. “Here day are… Toddy Janes and de Shondell.”

  We hit the stage to nominal applause, and we had already decided to go full tilt fast. Don’t give them time to think. We played our first three songs back to back to back. There was scattered clapping but nothing like what we were used to. This was going to be a tough crowd. We barely took a breath and went right into “Land of 1000 Dances.” If the guitar fight didn’t get them, nothing would. About halfway through the guitar solo, I signaled to Mike, who then signaled to Joe. The bell had rung and round one was on. Mike swung the neck of his bass over Joe’s head while we both ducked. Joe bounced up and swung his guitar over Mike’s head as Mike went down. The audience suddenly got excited. We did it again and now the audience was really into it. We were going great. Suddenly I heard a thump and a groan. As I looked up, I saw something flying through the air away from the stage. Mike’s tuning peg had gotten caught in Joe’s toupee and flung it out into the crowd, where it landed on a table, on top of one of those fishnet candles, and burst into flames. I looked back at Joe and there he stood, frozen like a snowball and just as bald, watching his wig burn. I had not even known he wore a toupee. Somebody grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused the burning rug, finally stomping it out on the floor. The crowd went crazy. They thought it was part of the act. We pretended it was and somehow got through the set. Afterward, the club owner came up to us and said, “You guys were great. Do you do that thing with the hair every night?” “No,” we said. “Just the first night. It sort of creates a buzz.”

  * * *

  As soon as we got back from Bermuda, Ritchie Cordell and I had a meeting in Henry Glover’s office. That was the day I met Bo Gentry. Bo, like Ritchie, had been a staff writer and producer for Artie Ripp at Kama Sutra. Because of a recent falling-out with Artie, Bo was now unemployed, and Ritchie had grabbed him, thinking he would be perfect for our new team. Bo was a wiry, cadaverous twenty-four-year-old musician with a real wise-ass attitude and a scathing, sometimes vicious sense of humor that complemented Ritchie’s charming, mad scientist demeanor. Bo did not waste time on pleasantries but sat down at the piano. Ritchie grabbed my arm and said, “Listen to this. We’ve been working all night.” Bo played single notes on the bass keys, an octave apart, while Ritchie sang:

  “Children behave…

  That’s what they say when we’re together.”

  And then they played me a hook that blew me away.

  “I think we’re alone now.

  There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

  No matter how badly Bo played the piano, no matter how off-key Ritchie sang, this was a smash. They played it again, and again and I liked it more every time. “You guys wait here.” I ran to Morris’s office. He was on the phone but he hung up and waved me right in. “So what’s up, kid? You got the next single?” “Morris,” I said, “Ritchie and his new partner just played me a fucking number one record.” “Well, get them in here,” said Morris.

  I brought Ritchie and Bo into the office, and the first thing Morris said was, “Who’s got the publishing?” Bo said that he was still signed to Artie Ripp. “Fuck Artie Ripp,” said Morris. “We’ll put it in Ritchie’s name.”

  So Ritchie and Bo made a private deal with Morris to split the royalties and we were in business. Ritchie booked time at Allegro Studios in the basement of 1650 Broadway. We met around noon and I was introduced to the owner and head engineer, Bruce Staple. This was a completely different world from Bell Sound Studios. The control booth looked like the console in a spaceship. Indirect light on the walls gave the place a futuristic feel, but above all, it had a hip, creative atmosphere that made everything look and sound great.

  Bo sat down at a beautiful Baldwin grand piano that was miked in stereo. Ritchie sat behind the drums in a semienclosed, acoustic drum bay with each drum and cymbal separately miked and perfectly tuned. Next to the drum bay was a row of guitar and bass amplifiers with acoustic baffling between each. I picked my old favorite, an Ampeg Gemini II, and plugged in my Fender Jazzmaster guitar. We put on matching stereo headphones with separate volume controls and we were ready. I was not sure if the three of us together could play more than a dozen chords but we sure looked cool.

  First we raised the key from G to A and then started toying with the arrangement. Ritchie and Bo originally wrote the song as a mid-tempo ballad. I said no way and started speeding it up. I began playing the staccato eighth notes on the bass strings just like Larry Coverdale and I did in the old days. Bo began pounding out quarter notes on the piano. Ritchie grabbed some drumsticks and did the best he could. I then put on a nasally, almost juvenile-sounding lead vocal, and without realizing it, we invented “bubblegum” music. Bruce threw together a rough mix on a 7½ -inch tape and Bo, Ritchie, and I ran the three blocks back to Roulette. We played it for Morris and Red Schwartz, and they both flipped out. Morris wound up playing it for everybody in the office, including the secretaries. The whole place went nuts for the song. At first, Morris wanted to release the demo as the single but we emphatically nixed that idea, and he refreshingly and surprisingly acquiesced. The following week, we booked time at Allegro to finish the record and make a master.

  Henry Glover’s secretary asked me if I wanted to hire an arranger or were we going to do everything ourselves? I thought a good arranger might not be a bad idea. The only name that came to me was Jimmy Wisner. I had seen his credits on a record I loved from the previous year, called “1—2—3” by Len Barry. Henry’s secretary said, “No problem,” and we
met with Jimmy the following day at Roulette.

  Jimmy turned out to be a very straight-laced, middle-aged professional. He was a sophisticated, well-schooled musician and loved the idea of highbrow arrangements over simple three-chord rock and roll. The Beatles may have had George Martin, but we had Jimmy. When we all met at Allegro the next week, we were astonished to find that Jimmy had booked a small symphony orchestra complete with cellos, chimes, and an ondioline. All I kept thinking was What the hell am I going to tell Morris when he gets the bill for all this?

  Bo, Ritchie, and I went into the control booth and listened as the musicians ran it down for the first time. There was something almost comical about an orchestra playing this little ditty-bop tune as if it were Beethoven. It sounded great but it was too much, too big. We did about eight takes and sent the players home. We then sifted through this mountain of music in a process we went on to call “finding the record,” which meant throwing out 90 percent of what we created until we found something we liked. We continually switched tracks on and off and in some spots we left nothing but the bass and drums. Two days later, on Christmas Eve 1966, I laid down the vocal track and, thank God, we had our record.

  With what was to become my standard practice, I took the record up to Morris and handed it in like a schoolboy handing in a term paper. “Is that the next single? Let’s hear what you got.”

  “I Think We’re Alone Now” was released the first week of January 1967. Radio loved it and it exploded. Within two weeks, we had virtually every major station in the country playing the record. It climbed the charts steadily through February, March, and April in jumps of eight to ten points a week. From Roulette’s point of view this was the perfect way to have a hit, slow and relentless. It ensured we would keep our bullet in the trade papers, which in turn kept radio playing the record, which in turn kept the record selling. This also gave us the time we needed to come up with a follow-up and put the album together. As usual, we had the hit before we had the album.

  One night at Bo’s apartment during a writing session, a tape of “I Think We’re Alone Now” was accidentally put on the reel-to-reel upside down. When it was played, it came out backward. When we heard the chord progression in reverse, our jaws dropped. The song sounded just as good backward as it did forward. Ritchie jumped up and said, “That’s great, let’s write it.”

  Bo and Ritchie banged out a new set of lyrics and called the song “Mirage,” which we recorded along with the rest of the album, using Jimmy Wisner’s approach of overkill orchestration and our own technique of “finding the record,” and on the heels of “I Think We’re Alone Now,” “Mirage” was quickly released as the follow-up single. In a glutinous feeding frenzy, Morris then put out a third single, “I Like the Way,” a mere eight weeks later. This was an unheard-of release schedule, forcing radio on to the next single before the previous one peaked. Incredibly, they did it. All three singles went gold, and by June, the album went platinum.

  The success of the I Think We’re Alone Now album and the hit singles that came from it really changed us. Tommy James and the Shondells were no longer the garage band with the fluky hit. We now had a new sound that was uniquely ours. The tight rhythms and the staccato eighth notes that we pioneered and used throughout the album became our signature sound. Because of this, the band changed too. Not only was Morris not paying me, he wasn’t even paying the band their promised weekly salary. This got to be such an issue that, one night, half my band went to the promoter before I did and took all the money. I could understand their frustration, but they should have come to me first and I would have done what I could to correct the problem. Later that week, because of the way they handled this situation and because there now was so much bad feeling that it had created two separate camps, I had to fire Joe, George, and Vinnie. What I thought was just Morris’s negligence turned out to cause a severe disruption in the band. Thank God we found Pete Lucia on drums and Eddie Gray on guitar to come on board and pick up the slack. Tommy James and the Shondells was now a crisp five-piece guitar-oriented pop band. There were other changes too.

  Somewhere during the frenzy of recording, we all started popping pills. Amphetamines, to be exact. Somebody always seemed to have a pocket full of them, but I was the worst offender. By the end of the album, the control booth looked like a pharmacy. There were yellow ones before doing the lead vocals; blue and pink ones to help us write. Dexedrine, Eskatrol, black beauties, Desbutal, and on and on. No wonder we were crisp. The pills and the grinding schedule just seemed to work together. And when you are nineteen years old, you think you are indestructible.

  Morris, by the way, was the happiest I had even seen him. Roulette had not had a creative team like this since the George Goldner—Alan Freed glory days of the late fifties. Things were really humming until one day, in late May, a squadron of IRS agents paid Morris a visit. It seems there was something not quite kosher about Morris’s books and they were there to get to the bottom of it. Morris treated them with the same contempt he had for every other authority figure and told them, “Get the fuck out of my office.” They were turned over to poor, beleaguered Howard Fisher. We all took bets on which of the twelve sets of books he was going to show them. The IRS boys would continue on their expedition to nowhere for the next two and a half years.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gettin’ Together

  In the spring of 1967, just before the Summer of Love would embrace America, the Shondells and I were riding high. “I Think We’re Alone Now” was our fourth monster hit and it seemed like it stayed on the charts forever. That was followed by “Mirage” in April, while “I Like the Way” was getting ready for release and would also go gold. But we were ecstatic when we learned another of the songs from the album, “(Baby, Baby) I Can’t Take It No More,” would be our first song to be covered by another artist, an R&B singer named Verdelle Smith on Capitol Records. When I first heard the record I was thrilled, of course, but I also felt strangely self-conscious and even a little embarrassed, but nothing else says you’ve arrived more than someone else covering one of your songs. There was some silliness as well. It seems incredible now, but there was some initial resistance to “I Think We’re Alone Now.” A lot of radio DJs and programmers thought it was dirty. We even had to change the cover of the I Think We’re Alone Now album because it showed a boy’s and girl’s bare footprints in the sand going off together into the distance side by side until they turn and face each other in a way that seemed very suggestive. And this, at a time when the Rolling Stones had the number one record in the country with “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” Red worked very hard to smooth all the ruffled feathers and eventually wore down the opposition.

  We toured everywhere that year, which was great because we made money. It was the only part of the financial arrangement that Morris seemed to have no control over. I guess he was content with his near monopoly on record sales, royalties, and publishing. Early in May, which was sort of a prelude to our big summer tour, we did a gig at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. I rode down in a limousine to meet the band, who were coming in from Pittsburgh. The whole idea of the boardwalk just blew me away. Even though school hadn’t let out yet, there were thousands of people walking or riding on jitneys up and down the boardwalk, munching on cheese dogs and chewing saltwater taffy. It was like seeing the Monopoly board game come to life. They had nothing like this in Michigan. We pulled up to the Steel Pier by a colossal pavilion with a gigantic marquee that you could have seen a mile away. The lettering was huge, nearly twenty feet tall, and it said RICK NELSON AND TOMMY JAMES! (After Ricky turned twenty-one in 1961, he was always billed as “Rick.”) Ricky had always been a special hero of mine because he was part of the first generation of rockers, he’d been a TV star ever since he was six years old, and I loved his music.

  There were two venues at the Steel Pier. Ricky was playing the theater, which was an older crowd, and we were performing in a large geodesic dome, another gigantic concert space
at the end of the pier for the younger set. We had to walk all the way around this dome to get to the back of the stage. There was no back entrance so we were led around the crowd by security guards while all the kids screamed and cheered. The opening act was already on stage. It was an instrumental group, and as I listened to the music, it sounded like a small big band with a nice-sized horn section. The one thing I noticed before I got backstage was that the drummer was in a sharp-looking, iridescent gray sports coat and that he was dressed differently from the band. By the time we got to the dressing rooms, they were just finishing.

  In the dressing room, we started to change clothes and get ready for the show. As I was talking to the promoter, I felt hot and stuffy so I decided to open a little window to get some fresh air. The window opened onto a cement terrace with a large water tank and a big bleacher section jammed with people, where still more entertainment was going on. I might as well have opened a porthole. Just as I raised the window, a gush of water, about ten gallons, came through, splashing me and drenching the dressing room floor. This was my introduction to the diving horse, which went on between the acts to keep the crowd entertained. The dressing room looked like it had been hit by a tsunami.

  After everybody dried off, we started out toward the stage, but first I wanted to meet the opening act, which was something I always tried to do. One of the stage managers took me over to their dressing room, and as I walked in I could see, asleep on two straight-back folding chairs, the gray-haired drummer who was still in his shiny suit. I realized it was Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman’s old drummer from the glory years of the swing era. During the 1930s and ’40s, he was the most famous drummer in the world. Without realizing it, I was on the same bill with two of my heroes, even though one of them looked like a fallen hero. When I looked at the stage manager, he just shrugged his shoulders and made a motion with his hand as if he were shooting a needle into his arm. “He stays passed out like this until they wake him up for the next show.” It seemed even the musicians from my parents’ generation had their drug of choice: heroin. Thank God, I didn’t fool around with that stuff. Of course, I then popped two black beauties and the Shondells and I went on stage.