From my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), offered today in memory of the late Mary Weiss.
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
THE SHANGRI-LAS: Leader of the Pack
Written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and George "Shadow" Morton
Produced by Shadow Morton and Jeff Barry
Single, Red Bird Records, 1964
Is she really going out with him?
Girl groups were sweet. The Shangri-Las were the bad-girl group, tougher than the rest, hangin' out with bikers, makin' bouncy-bouncy on the beach, and regretting such transgressions a year later while [REMEMBER!] walking in the sand. Beneath their leather beat hearts of gold, more fragile than they would admit. The Shangri-Las' best records were tiny teen dramas writ large for AM radio. Radio was the ideal stage for the Shakespearean spectacle of the Shangri-Las.
The Shangri-Las--Mary Weiss, twin sisters Margie and Mary Ann Ganser, and (originally) Mary's older sister Betty Weiss--were teen girls from Queens. Their first hit was 1964's "Remember (Walking In the Sand)," followed in short order by "Leader Of the Pack" and "Give Him a Great Big Kiss," both also in '64. 1965's "I Can Never Go Home Anymore" was their only subsequent Top 20 hit in the US, though these four sides, supplemented by lesser hits like "Give Us Your Blessings," "Out In the Streets," "Long Live Our Love," and a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout," combine to create sufficient foundation for their eventual canonization by girl-group enthusiasts and seventies punks alike.
"Leader of the Pack" was the Shangri-Las' only # 1 hit, a melodrama about a girl in love with a boy who's the head of the local motorcycle gang. The girl's parents don't want their daughter to associate with this ruffian from the wrong side of town, and force her to break up with him. Dejected and rejected, heartbroken, the weeping young biker speeds away on a rainy night, the girl screaming futilely Look out! Look out! Look out! LOOK OUT! as her doomed ex-lover skids into a fatal crash. It’s Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, condensed into the compact form of a 45 rpm single. The sound of the record's motorcycle crash still brings me chills.
"Leader of the Pack" was not the first rockin' pop tragedy hit record. Even discounting the history of death songs in country music, Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” in 1959 is like the grandaddy of the genre, with J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers' "Last Kiss" beating "Leader Of The Pack" to the Billboard charts by about a month or so in '64. Twinkle's fabulous 1964 British hit "Terry" tells much the same story as "Leader of the Pack," and "Leader of the Pack" was parodied by the Detergents in the silly 1965 novelty hit "Leader of the Laundromat." One could make a case that the tracks of these tears lead to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1976, with its own tale of a young life ended, but I don't think I would make that case.
The Shangri-Las did it best. "Leader of the Pack" still feels real, conveying a sense of verisimilitude that exposes most other pop tragedy tunes as the poseurs they are. The Shangri-Las broke up by the end of the sixties. The Ganser sisters passed, Mary Ann in 1970, Marge in 1996. In 2007, Mary Weiss released her first solo album, Dangerous Game. Dangerous Game presented a then-contemporary update of the Shangri-Las sound, with Weiss backed by the surefire garage-bred prowess of ace combo the Reigning Sound. It was my favorite album of the year. I heard somewhere that when Weiss was soliciting new material to record, she insisted upon one iron-clad restriction: NO teen tragedy songs!
She made the right decision. With the Shangri-Las, Mary Weiss had already set the high mark in that category. That's why we fell for "The Leader of the Pack."
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.
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