A Shout-Out For the Immortal Shangri-Las

I get it. Some people just never learned to dig the Shangri-Las.

Maybe you know only one of their songs, “Leader of the Pack.” It’s generally seen as a novelty record with those motorcycle sound effects, the big crash and the weeping girlfriend. Oh, but there’s so much more to the Shangs!

Listen, I can’t even play my Shangri-Las records in my own house. And that’s called sad.

My wife hates them so much that I’ve got to go down to my Man Cave in the basement to play my Shangs. I was blasting them down there earlier this week.

Why, you ask, was I blasting them? In tribute, of course, to Mary Weiss. She’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. The eternally troubled girl who at age 15 sang the lead on “Leader of the Pack” died last Friday at her home in Palm Springs, CA. She was 75. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease killed her.

“Leader of the Pack,” a No. 1 hit in 1964 (Beatles? What Beatles?), is the story of a young girl who falls in love with a tough motorcycle-riding dude. “They told me he was bad,” she sings of her parents. “But I knew he was sad.”

You see, Jimmy came from “the wrong side of town.” And so, obeying her parents’ order to “find someone new,” she tells Jimmy “we’re through.” The Weiss voiceover: “He sort of smiled, and kissed me goodbye. The tears were beginning to show. As he drove away that rainy night, I begged him to go slow…Look out, look out, look out, look out!”(Squealing tires, loud sustained crash).

“I felt so helpless, what could I do? Remembering all the things we’d been through. In school they all stop and stare. I can’t hide my tears, but I don’t care. I’ll never forget him, the leader of the pack.” (More motorcycle peel-outs).

Wow! You can see why it topped the charts. And how could we ever forget it? Two decades later, at a party where New Haven Register reporters acted out their favorite songs, I was ready. Singing along with “Leader,” I tumbled into a corner during the motorcycle crash. There, kneeling with my back to the crowd, I tore open with my teeth a packet of catsup I’d taken from some fast food joint, and smeared the contents all over my face. I turned back to face my friends and sang the final words: “Gone! Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone!” Stunned silence in the party room. People gaping, asking themselves: Did Beach hurt himself? Is he OK? Is he really bleeding?

My future bridge, not yet my girlfriend, was there, watching open-mouthed with her former college roommate. Her roomie nudged her and said, “Who is that guy? He seems — interesting.”

So, yes! Maybe if it hadn’t been for “Leader of the Pack,” we never would have started going out and gotten married. There you have it: our two kids owe their lives to the Shangri-Las. Not that my wife would ever admit it.

Who were the Shangri-Las? The very long (of course!) New York Times obituary for Weiss informed us that she and her sister Betty befriended twin sister Marge and Mary Ann Ganser at their high school on Long Island and they started harmonizing at the local playground. They went on to sing at local dances and attracted the attention of George (Shadow) Morton, a cocky street tough and gang member from Brooklyn. He brought them into a studio to record a demo of a melodramatic song he had written: “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” Backed by a loud flock of seagulls, Weiss describes getting a letter from “my baby ‘cross the sea,” announcing “we were through.” She flashes back to them walking in the sand, hand in hand. “Softly, softly we’d meet with our lips.”

“Whatever happened to the boy that I once knew?”

Shazam! They had their first hit! Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Fun fact: that’s a young Billy Joel playing the piano.)

You oughta know that the Shangri-Las had six — six! — Top 40 singles between 1964 and 1966, all produced with great bombast by Morton. Phil Spector had nuthin’ on Shadow Morton!

Get a load of the call-and-response lines on “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” which kicks off with Weiss announcing: “When I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love, L-U-V!”

“What color are his eyes?” her friends ask.

“I don’t know, he’s always wearing shades.”

“Is he tall?”

“Well, I’ve gotta look up.”

“Yeah? Well I hear he’s bad.”

“Hmm, he’s good-bad, but he’s not evil.”

The song ends with her friends asking: “Is he a good dancer?”

“Whaddyamean, is he a good dancer?”

“Well, how does he dance?”

“Close. Very, very close!”

Now for sheer pathos, you can’t possibly do better than “I Can Never Go Home Anymore.” In the spoken intro, Weiss recalls when “Your life is so lonely/ Like a child without a toy/ Then a miracle, a boy/ And that’s called glad.”

But her mom tells her she’s “too young to be in love/ And the boy and I would have to part…and that’s called bad.”

The girl doesn’t listen to her mom; she packs and takes off with that boy. But it doesn’t work out. Can the girl go back home? Remember the song’s title. Here’s Weiss’ voiceover at the end:

“Don’t do to your mom what I did to mine.

She grew so lonely in the end

Angels picked her for a friend.

And I can never go home anymore.

And that’s called sad.”

You never hear songs like this anymore!

And — did you know the Shangri-Las had a ground-breaking song about a rape victim? It’s “Past, Present and Future.” Weiss is the lone narrator, accompanied by Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14; she agrees to walk along the beach with a new would-be lover. However, she sternly adds: “But don’t try to touch me. Don’t try to touch me. ‘Coz that will never happen again.”

What happened to the Shangri-Las? After several heady years riding the charts (they had become a trio), the hits stopped coming. In 1968, they broke up.

But sometimes they got back together to join oldies revues on tour — and that’s how I got to see them perform, live, on stage! This was sometime in the early ‘70s, either in Boston, when I was at B.U., or it could have been in Brooklyn. I wish I could remember more about that night. But something does stick in my mind — it happened during the intro to “Leader of the Pack,” when the other singers say “Gee, it must be great riding with him” and ask “Is he picking you up after school today?” On the record Weiss replied “Uh uh.” But on stage that night she told them: “No. He’s dead!”

Anyway, you best believe that show was a hoot!

I’m glad attention was paid to Weiss at her passing. The Times noted she always objected to the term “girl group” (also used for the Ronettes, the Shirelles, etc.), regarding it as a symptom of the music industry’s sexism.

The obituary ended with this shocker: The Shangri-Las have never been inducted into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. Shame! Shame on the Hall of Fame! The Shangs are long overdue. I’m sure you now agree.