Caught in the Carousel

Tommy James

By Don Ciccone

Tommy James

Tommy James is a true rock n' roll icon who's been making music since he was in his teens. In the 1960's, backed by his band, The Shondells, he scored hit after hit: "Hanky Panky,” "I Think We're Alone Now,” "Mony Mony," "Crimson and Clover,” "Crystal Blue Persuasion" and "Sweet Cherry Wine" to name a few. All of these records have stood the test of time quite well. But behind the hits was an untold story of organized crime as the band's record label, Roulette, was essentially a front for the mob. You can read all about it Mr. James's recent book, Me, The Mob And The Music. CITC talked with him by phone, mainly to discuss this very entertaining and revelatory book (which it turns out, looks like it's headed for Broadway and Hollywood) but what we got was a lengthy conversation about everything from guitar tunings to studio tricks to his predictions for where the music business is headed today.

Caught in the Carousel: Hi from San Francisco. Are you in New York?

Tommy James: I'm actually across... I'm over in Jersey.

CITC: I'm from New York and when you mentioned John's Bargain Store in your book that really took me back.

TJ: My greatest nightmare!

CITC: That was quite a turning point.

TJ: Yes indeed, it was.

CITC: I was thinking as I was reading that, "this guy has balls... he's got a wife and kid and he's turning down a straight job to try and make it in music."

TJ: (laughs) Yeah that guy has balls -- all those Preparation H tubes and coat hangers...Yeah, man.

CITC: But you were like 18 or 19?

TJ: 18

CITC: You did the right thing. I mean you must've thought, "Well that's it. I gotta get a job."

TJ: Well, that was a real moment--one of those revelation-type moments where you really have to decide which direction you're going. That was a real fork in the road.

CITC: Did you have a back-up plan?

TJ: I really didn't. I just knew what I wasn't going to do. But that's how the good Lord has been all these years. It always seems like, "When a door shuts, a door opens.”

CITC: And that's how you started?

TJ: Yes, indeed.

CITC: Were you still with the Tornadoes then?

TJ: No, the Tornadoes was a group I had when I was young teen -- 13-14. When I was a "much older" individual of 16 we started The Shondells.

CITC: Well, I gotta tell you, the book is tremendous.

TJ: Thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed it. It's the first time I've ever been an author. You think you wrote it with a lot of feeling and so forth but you never really know until people tell you.

CITC: What I love about it is that there's no bitterness.

TJ: I really had the time to write it and be honest about how I felt. Sort of like: we're sitting across the table from one another in the kitchen, talking. Very conversational. And that's how I wanted it to read. I wanted it to feel that way.

CITC: And I gather that you started it way before.

TJ: Years before. I actually started this thing with Martin Fitzpatrick (co-author), eight years ago. We were gonna call it Crimson and Clover and write a book about the hits, and the road and all that stuff. We got about a third of the way into it and we just looked at each other and said, "You know, if we don't tell the Roulette story, we're cheating everybody, including ourselves.” But I was very uncomfortable. This was a story I've been waiting to tell for a long time but never could.

CITC: Morris Levy (head of Roulette Records) was gone though, right?

TJ: Morris was gone but a lot of these guys were still walking around. So we basically had to put the book on the shelf for a couple of years and pick it up when... actually it was in December of '05 when Gigante, "Vinny The Chin" died in prison. He was head of the Genovese family and he was one of the regulars up there. So we felt that the major players were gone. There were still a couple of 'em left but they were pretty old and on walkers and we felt we could outrun 'em!

CITC: One thing I didn't understand in the book was when Roulette shuts down after Vito Genovese dies.

TJ: Well, they didn't shut down. What happened was this: He died on Valentine's Day, 1969. And Tommy Eboli who had been the acting boss of the family was Morris's real life partner. He was always up at Roulette and was the central connection. When Vito Genovese died nobody knew if Tommy Eboli was gonna be his successor -- which probably was going to happen-- or if there was gonna be a challenge. And if there was a challenge, what was it gonna be? Was it gonna be violence? As it turns out there was no violence.

CITC: But why were you, all of a sudden, introduced officially to all these Mafia guys? That was a heavy scene.

TJ: It was very heavy. The funny part was that Morris's office was used for a great many of these meetings. And all these characters, the various heads of the Family that you saw on TV and newspapers were suddenly gathered in one place at one time. That really had never happened before. You might see one or two, but never all of them together. And "Crimson and Clover" had just gone number one, like the week before. And we had just done the Sullivan show. It was a very interesting moment. Morris brings me into the office and there were a couple of them that I knew from every day like Tommy Eboli and Vastola. But I had not met Gigante before, officially. He'd been there before, sort of looming in the background. But I'd never talked to him before that. And there was Tony Salerno. All these guys ended up being heads of the family at one time or another. We didn't realize at first who we were rubbing shoulders with up there. We had to piece it all together. But Tony Salerno who was head of the family in the ‘80s was the model for Tony Soprano. And Morris, who they called "Moishe" was the model for Hesh Rabkin, the old Jewish record producer on The Sopranos. Morris was a lot less friendly than Hesh Rabkin! Morris was a lot different! But the point is that, Roulette, in addition to being a functioning record company, was a front for the Genovese family. They used it as everything from a social club to illegal funds, bank accounts, cleaning money and god knows what else was going on up there. And the whole gist of the book, of course, is us trying to have a career in pop music with this very dark and sinister story going on behind us.

CITC: Do you think these guys all of sudden wanted to meet you after seeing you on the Ed Sullivan Show?

TJ: Well, I'm sure part of that's true. Morris wanted to show me off a little, I guess. Everything was going our way at that moment. But I felt excited and dirty at the same time. It was very weird.

CITC: In the book you ended one chapter with "I had a new family, alright.”

TJ: (laughing) - Right! This was my new family. By the way, the book is going to be made into a movie.

CITC: Sounds like it's made for Scorsese.

TJ: He was the first one who called us. But we're talking with several people right now. And also, it's gonna be a Broadway show.

CITC: Which comes first?

TJ: Broadway. Next year. As a matter of fact, we'll start in San Francisco -- your town-- then go to New York. You know, they gotta work out the bugs first. The Neiderlanders are bringing us to San Francisco. They have theaters there and across the country. And they've got nine Broadway theaters. But they're gonna open it up in your backyard.

CITC: And then a movie.

TJ: Yes, and one of the scenes in the movie is going to be this really amazing scene which was absolutely the truth. It was Christmas of 1967 at the Roundtable. Morris owned a bunch of clubs...he owned Birdland, he owned The Roundtable and several others. Karen, his secretary, would put on these huge Christmas bashes. And Morris was Jewish on top of it!

CITC: The Roundtable was in Manhattan?

TJ: Yes. And it would go on for days. There would be city officials and guys from the Mayor's office hanging out with the mob guys, laughing and carrying on. And you know, that's just how it went in New York. And we're gonna have that scene. We actually play at this thing. It's gonna be quite a scene.

CITC: Do you have anyone in mind that you'd like to see play you?

TJ: Well, the time span reflected in the book means it's probably gonna have to be two actors--probably a young kid and an older guy. The one that's being most seriously looked at for the older Tommy is Val Kilmer, who is a friend and he's also a musician and he did such a great job as Jim Morrison.

CITC: Sounds like it's gonna be huge.

TJ: It's gonna be an all-star cast.

CITC: Did any of this enter your mind when you were writing the book?

TJ: No. I mean-- back of my mind-- I'm thinking, "Oh, this would make a great movie.” But I never expected this kind of reaction. What happened was, as soon as the book was released, the minute it came out, we got swallowed up for a movie. Barry Rosen and Mary Gleason are going be the executive producers. And immediately the Broadway thing came because of the connection...because of, frankly, Jersey Boys, which has done so well.

CITC: The guy that did Jersey Boys is doing your show.

TJ: Right, John Osher. And he did a blurb on the book, as you can see.

CITC: The mob thing reminded me of my first band, and how once during practice, we were asked to come upstairs to meet somebody. And we met this Italian guy and I wasn't sure what he wanted. So I asked him what he did. And he looked around the room and said, "He wants to know what I do." And everyone laughed. And then he looked at me and said, "I'm in business." And I guess the idea was he could help us. But I said no. Reading your story almost made me feel like...you know... the road not taken.

TJ: It's funny...when my first record ("Hanky Panky"), took off, and we came to New York, we had no plans to be with Roulette. In fact, Roulette was the last place we took the record to. We had gone to all the other labels and got a yes from everybody. Columbia, RCA, Atlantic...And so I went to bed that night feeling great. The next morning, one by one, all the companies that had said "yes" the day before called and said, "We gotta pass." And I said, "What do you mean you gotta pass? I thought we had a deal." Finally, Jerry Wexler of Atlantic leveled with us. He told us that Morris Levy, of Roulette Records, had called all the record companies and scared everybody off. Morris said, "Dis is my record!!" So we were apparently gonna be on Roulette whether we liked it or not. That should have set off red flags.

CITC: But you were pretty young.

TJ: Yes. I had just turned nineteen the week before. Talk about culture shock. I'm a kid from a little town in the Midwest. But gradually we realized who we were dealing with. We'd hear things, but we'd also meet people in Morris's office and a few weeks later we'd see 'em taken off a warehouse in New Jersey, doing the perp walk--busted by the cops on TV news! "Hey, isn't that the guy we just met up in Morris's office?" And it was. That kind of thing kept happening over and over.

CITC: But isn't your story the story of many a rock n' roll act? I guess none of them have come out and said it before. That's the heavy thing.

TJ: True enough. Although Roulette really was ground zero for this direct kind of activity. A lot of other companies like Atlantic and RCA were affiliated, and had connections. But the mob guys were not executives in the companies. They weren't sitting up there at the record company every day. Roulette was quite an exception to that rule.

CITC: Roulette had the old doo-wop groups, right?

TJ: Yes. The first generation of record company moguls were mostly street guys. That doesn't mean they were mob guys, it just means they were street guys. They were not terribly sophisticated. It was sorta like when Vegas was run by the mob guys out there, and then gradually it became corporate. That's kinda what happened with the record companies,

CITC: Did any of the old school Roulette acts sort of take you by the hand and advise you?

TJ: The funny part was, when I went up there they were still kind of stuck in the fifties. They had had artists like Jimmie Rodgers, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, Jimmy Bowen and Buddy Knox and Dale Hawkins and things like that. They really were not in the sixties. You know, I keep saying this: If we had gone with one of the corporate labels that we almost went with, especially with a record like "Hanky Panky" as our first record, we would have probably been handed to a producer, lost in the numbers, and that probably would've been the last time anybody would've heard from us. At Roulette they actually needed us, because they hadn't had a hit --really--in three years since The Essex back in '63 with "Easier Said Than Done" and "A Walkin' Miracle." They really hadn't scored big time. They had Lou Christie back in '63 but then he switched to MGM. So they really needed us. At a creative level we probably couldn't have done better because they left us alone. They really didn't know that much about the product they were selling. Morris could hear hits --he had pretty good ears-- but there was nothing artist-oriented about Roulette Records, other than the fact that they had pretty good distribution set up. But the truth is that they were not musical people. So they left us alone and allowed us to morph into whatever we could become. Producing ourselves, writing for ourselves eventually, and even getting involved in marketing and album design. We really got an education there that we wouldn't have had at any other label.

CITC: And you could pick whoever you wanted. Like Jimmy Wisner who did your arrangements. It was like, "You want Jimmy Wisner? No problem."

TJ: That's right. And he's still making records with me today. He was head of A & R at Columbia. Really an amazing guy. By the way, I've got the original Shondells -- not for my touring band -- but the original Shondells and I are back in the studio making music for the movie.

CITC: Mike Vale, the bass player?

TJ: Mike Vale on bass.

CITC: And Pete?

TJ: Pete Lucia, our drummer, passed away in '87.

CITC: He wrote some songs with you didn't he?

TJ: We wrote "Crimson and Clover" together. But the other guys and I are back in the studio and it's really magic.

CITC: And they actually played with you back then. I mean you didn't really use studio musicians did you?

TJ: Right. Well, we had some players on top. We would get a bari sax and a harp every now and then. One of the things that Jimmy Wisner added -- he was sort of our George Martin -- was this bizarre feel to our records of having these sort of diddy-bob little songs, that we'd get from Bo Gentry and Ritchie Cordell, with these big orchestrations. And there was a kind of bizarreness to it. We would use studio players like a harp player out of the clear blue sky!

CITC: Was it Jimmy Wisner’s idea to put those 8th notes on "I Think We're Alone Now"? The "8th note pegging" as you call it in the book.

TJ: I came up with the 8th note pegging, which really became part of the rock n' roll landscape. But we weren't thinking of that at the time. You know what that was? Back in the old days with the Tornadoes, we had no bass player. We had two guitars, drums and keyboard. Larry Coverdale and I ...when one guy was playing lead, the other guy would play these muted bass strings and we would sorta make up for not having a bass. That's how it came about and then I just used it when we did the demo of "I Think We're Alone Now.”

CITC: Wisner put in the crickets and whatever else?

TJ: Yeah. And cellos and things. But you know, all the music and the mob thing...and all this stuff... was all going on at the same time. And that became our life and it was really schizophrenic.

CITC: I gotta ask you some guitar questions.

TJ: Sure! Why not?

CITC: It really surprised me to learn that you were playing in open E tuning.

TJ: Open E, yes.

CITC: And you still do?

TJ: Yep. Which means I can't learn anything and I can't teach anything!

CITC: Open tuning is great but it can be tricky to play a minor chord.

TJ: Yeah, you play it with your nose and your elbow! Well, you know, I've learned how to make my minors, obviously. And my sevenths, my ninths and all. I can pretty much play any chord. But the thing I love about the open tuning is that you can play these great suspended chords.

CITC: Like the Stones did.

TJ: Yes! And I love songwriting like that because you don't just play a root chord. You're playing these wonderful suspended chords with ninths and sixths, and you can do it by a little finger here or there.

CITC: What made you pick E instead of open G?

TJ: Because E is the first note on a normal guitar. E is the first chord you learn.

CITC: Dylan used open E a lot.

TJ: Yeah. I didn't know that.

CITC: I didn't either until recently.

TJ: Richie Havens did, too. And Jimmie Rodgers.

CITC: You mentioned Jimmie Rodgers getting beat up by the mob. You weren't there were you?

TJ: No.

CITC: Were you scared when you found out stuff like this was going on with labelmates? I mean, your manager got thrown out of Levy's office and was threatened.

TJ: Yeah, I was scared. You better believe it. We were lucky to make it out of there in one piece. When you're young you're pretty dumb and gradually, as you learn who you're rubbing shoulders with, you realize how explosive this could've been. We'd go up there for our money and that's really where the rubber met the road.

CITC: I guess the first scare was when you were signing with Roulette and those guys came in and told Morris they took care of that bootlegger.

TJ: Oh yeah.

CITC: But then the one that was close to home was when your manager got kicked out of the office.

TJ: Bob Mack. Yeah. Well, you know, it probably was that I was so young and these guys were middle-aged men. You almost feel that parental thing where you're just automatically respectful. And you think of these older guys--I did--as sorta square and sorta silly. I thought of them like a young kid looking at older guys. You didn't think of them as people you were making a challenge to. Because we weren't really challenging them. And we were treated like kids. So there was not that in-your-face challenging thing. It was almost like we thought it was funny. I don't feel that way now. But I felt that way then. That's just the arrogance of youth.

CITC: Did you also feel like you were really "in" with Morris. Like a son?

TJ: Yes!

CITC: Like: "Nothing will happen to me"?

TJ: Absolutely. I felt like I was being protected. And if I wanted something, all I had to do was throw a tantrum and I got my way. I'll never forget when I wanted to do a song that Gene Pitney had. I can almost hear myself whining, "I wanna do that song!!" And Morris said, "Get that fuckin' record up here!".

CITC: Yeah, he's like, "Fuck Gene Pitney!" I love that story.

TJ: And guess who did the record? I mean that's kinda how I always felt.

CITC: It comes across in the book like Morris really did love you.

TJ: He got me out of the draft! He probably saved my life.

CITC: You were saved from the draft but nearly offed by the mob! Double edged sword there.

TJ: Right! That's exactly the truth. There was this... I really mean it, schizophrenic relationship.

CITC: You ended up having to hide out in Nashville for fear of your life.

TJ: Yep. That really happened.

CITC: I couldn't sleep the night I read that chapter. But you know, it's a funny thing, the Mafia--and you see this in the Scorsese movies and stuff, and you touched on it in your book--that Morris and these mob guys always feel like, "Well, the government is just like another mob".

TJ: Ohhhh yeah. I had talks with Morris about that.

CITC: And in a way it's true because here they are, drafting you into this war that's just for their own self-interest.

TJ: Right.

CITC: Kinda makes you think, "What's really the difference here?"

TJ: Morris told me--no shit-- he told me that the feds are the biggest criminals in the world.

CITC: And he oughta know.

TJ: Yes! And that they truly run the country like a criminal enterprise. I didn't put that in the book but we had a lot of talks about that. The power structure of planet earth is nothing like people think it is. We have these two sets of books, as it were. These two sets of realities: what we learn in school--textbooks--we learn the constitution, we learn how government works and stuff like that. It's nothing like that! That's what the book says. But they don't live by the book. That's merely the propaganda that's put out. That is not how the power structure really works. And one of the things that I guess you could say I learned, or accepted--and admired--about Morris was the fact that he was, in many ways, a very noble guy. And balls of steel. I could not believe the balls this guy had. And the people around him. These are some of the bravest people I've ever seen. Although they are criminals.

CITC: You cancelled some shows in the UK to join Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail, which cost you airplay on the BBC. What did Morris say about that?

TJ: Morris was real impressed with Humphrey.

CITC: He didn't say, "Hey, I'm losing all this money in Britain?"

TJ: Well, he was really impressed and he never quite figured out how I hooked up with Hubert Humphrey. The truth is, I wasn't about to tell him that I didn't have a clue either. This just sort of fell out of the sky. Humphrey ended up doing the liner notes for my Crimson and Clover album. I was never about to tell Morris that I hadn't planned the whole thing! The funny part is, every time I say something bad about Morris, I feel kinda guilty. Because if it hadn't been for Morris Levy, there wouldn't have been a Tommy James. That's the truth. Now having said that, getting paid was like getting a bone from a Doberman. But that's just the way it was. We were making money from other things-- from the road, from the commercials, from BMI, and so forth. But we just were not going to get mechanical royalties from Roulette Records. They were not going to pay. And it became very clear, very early, that if you pushed it too far you could end up like Jimmie Rodgers.

CITC: Wow. You knew how far you could go.

TJ: Yeah.

CITC: Let's go back to guitars. You had that Gibson 335...

TJ: Ha ha ha! This is funny. One minute we'll be talking about the Genovese family and the next...

CITC: That's me. I'm sorry.

TJ: No, but that's exactly how it was. Your interview is exactly how life was: "So tell me about that 335 Gibson..."

CITC: You know why? Because I'm thinking, "Oh, if I keep going on this, I'll never ask him about the guitars and I'll be really sorry.”

TJ: Hahahaha!

CITC: We can go back again.

TJ: No, that's fine. The way this is going is how it really was.

CITC: One minute you were worried about your guitar, one minute you were...

TJ: Worried about writing a book!

CITC: Ha ha! Okay, you had that beautiful Gibson.

TJ: Yes.

CITC: Was that your main guitar?

TJ: For a while. That was in the '70s. My favorite rock n' roll guitar is the Fender Jazzmaster. Always has been.

CITC: So that's what you used in the '60s?

TJ: Yes, and it's what I use now. And in 1980, I bought a '59 Jazzmaster that I always use. The Fender Jazzmaster, to me, is the best all-around rock n' roll guitar I ever played; for the way I play.

CITC: Did you use flatwound strings in the early days?

TJ: Yeah, in the early days. I don't use 'em now, but I used flatwounds back in the early ‘60s.

CITC: Is that you playing the tremolo guitar on "Crimson and Clover"?

TJ: Yep.

CITC: What are you going through? A Fender amp?

TJ: No, it's an Ampeg Gemini II.

CITC: Incredible trem.

TJ: Yeah, the tremolo unit on there is far better than the Fender.

CITC: And you played the acoustic guitar too on that?

TJ: Yes.

CITC: Gibson Hummingbird?

TJ: No, that was a Martin.

CITC: You laid down the acoustic and then overdubbed the trem?

TJ: Actually, I played the acoustic after. I played the electric first. When we laid down "Crimson and Clover" it was myself, Mike Vale on bass and Pete Lucia on drums. That was the basic track. Then we built everything around that. I would always like to get the basics right.

CITC: So you knew you were gonna have that crazy trem going?

TJ: Yeah. But we didn't know we were gonna use it on the fade. It was the very last thing we did.

CITC: And then you sang through the amp?

TJ: Sang through the amp.

CITC: The same amp -- the Gemini II?

TJ: Yep.

CITC: Wow. What gave you that idea?

TJ: I don't know. We were always coming up with ideas in the studio and I was very grateful that Roulette, you know, just gave us the studio.

CITC: Whose voice is that we hear on the album version saying, "We'll get it in the mix"?

TJ: That's our engineer, Bruce Staple. He became, believe it or not, a multi-millionaire over in the Philippines. He married somebody in the government or something.

CITC: And he was part of your whole crew, wasn't he?

TJ: Yes. Big time.

CITC: You used him over and over.

TJ: Yeah.

CITC: Wisner was out of the picture by then?

TJ: No, Wisner, basically, would always kinda come back for things. I would use him... for example, in the record "She" I used him for the strings and the voices. But I didn't use him for basic tracks anymore.

CITC: How did you get the background vocals in "Crimson in Clover"? They sound so weird to me.

TJ: We actually did them through the Gemini as well, but without the tremolo. That "ba-da-da-da-da-da"…

CITC: That's going through a guitar amp!?

TJ: It's going through a guitar amp!

CITC: To me, that song is like pre-glam rather than psychedelic.

TJ: Yeah! You're right. In many ways, you're right. You know, we didn't have a name for it. The thing that was so great about Allegro Studios was that we had a little research department over there. A guy by the name of Bob Leaf, who was an incredible... he was a Thomas Edison. He would create these circuit boards of things. This was before synthesizers. If we liked the way something worked...,we'd have a female jack plug around the wall. We had this band, about 3 feet high--a strip of wood that went around the entire wall with--about every six or eight inches--a female jack. And every one of them did something different. One would go through the Leslie, one would go through a guitar amp, one would go directly into the board...we would have all kinds of different things. It took us a while to realize that we could do anything we wanted to do that we could think of. And there were no rules back then. The technology was just good enough, but not good enough. It was just good enough so that it passed a threshold where you could do things. We would use Pultec amps. I don't know if you're familiar...

CITC: Sure.

TJ: Well, we ended up making our entire mixing console: 24 tracks of Pultecs.

CITC: But you only had 8 tracks of tape, right?

TJ: The tape was only 8 track but gradually, while we were at Allegro, we went from 4 track to 8 track to 16 to 24-- in about three years. That's how fast everything was moving. We actually had 12 track in there at one time. That was pretty awful.

CITC: And you were producing at that point?

TJ: Yeah. Bo and Ritchie taught me my craft. Once I got in the studio, I realized I was a studio junkie. I loved making records just about more than anything in the world. I loved being able to take an idea and make it real. That was a wonderful thing to me. And one of the great revelations that hit us was that we were not writing songs anymore; we were writing records. And that changed our perspective on everything. We started thinking in terms of two and a half-- three minutes. We started thinking: "verse”, we started thinking formula. No matter what the tempo was, it was basically a formula. And when I say formula, I mean basically you wanted to have at least two verses, at least two hooks. There was a rhythm to the record that superseded the tempo. There was a rhythm to the record that made it whole. Intro, two verses, hook, one verse, hook, bridge, solo, hook, fade. That's basically how a pop record...I mean you can have different variations on that.

CITC: You get trippy later on with the Crimson and Clover album but you always seemed to rock out. Like with the song, "Do Something To Me.”

TJ: Yeah!

CITC: That kind of brings it back to..."I'm still Tommy James."

TJ: Ha ha!

CITC: You know what I mean? Or, "We're still the Shondells."

TJ: Yeah, that's true. That is true.

CITC: What about that song "Do Something To Me"? That was the only song on that album that wasn't an original.

TJ: That was written by Bo Gentry for ? Mark and the Mysterians. I actually liked their version--I can't say better than mine--but almost. He produced it for them, and it barely broke the charts, but I loved it. I knew that that was a hit record.

CITC: Did you release that as a single?

TJ: Sure. And with us it went top ten.

CITC: So, that album-- Crimson and Clove--had three hits on it at least: "Crimson and Clover,” "Do Something To Me" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion.”

TJ: Yes and then of course "Sugar On Sunday" went top ten for The Clique.

CITC: The other thing about that album is that it has the signature Tommy James vocal sound: slapback echo. You used that a lot.

TJ: Yes, indeed. I found it really enhanced my voice. It expanded it just enough. I'd sometimes use 7 1/2 (ips) rather than 15. But that was back in the old days when we had no digital stuff and we had to do it all with tape. Gradually a lot of the technology from the space program found its way into the studios in the '60s. Variable frequency oscillators--the VSO--came in pretty fast. We could do things with that. We were basically able to have slave machines. We would take a varispeed and we created a very crude analog version of SYMPTE. Which they would use later...

CITC: To synch up things?

TJ: Yeah. What we would do is--we did it with 16, too--but we started with an 8 track. There was no way, mechanically, that you could get two machines to run in synch. They just couldn't do it--each machine would function slightly different. So, inevitably, a minute or two into the recording, your second machine would drift. You couldn't keep 'em in synch. We couldn't keep 'em in synch mechanically, but we could do it electronically. We would use an 8 track and record tracks 1 through 7, for example, and then on track 8, we'd run a white noise and hook it up to track 1 of a slave machine...the second machine. We could only use 7 tracks because we had to take one and hook it up electronically to a second machine. But with the varispeed in between the two machines, they could even run at 7 1/2 or 15, and you would have the exact same signal.

CITC: Because you're matching the pitch of the noise with the speed thing?

TJ: Exactly. Yes. So we were able to suddenly have 14 tracks. And we could do the same with the 16 track machine and get 30 tracks.

CITC: In your book you mention wrapping tape around the capstan to vary the speed.

TJ: Yes.

CITC: Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders was telling us about this--how they did the capstan trick until the varispeed came in.

TJ: Well, before the varispeed that's all you could do was wrap the capstan. And when you would put a piece of tape around the capstan you had to do it very carefully and evenly so that it didn't bump. You actually then increased the size of the capstan and therefore would speed up the tape that it was bringing through.

CITC: Was this in the mix?

TJ: We would do that when we were mastering.

CITC: There was one song--an early one--where it sounded too sped up to me. And then in your book you said you didn't like the fact that it was so sped up.

TJ: "Gettin' Together". Yeah. I didn't do that. That was Bo Gentry. I was never happy with that. But you know, it's funny...I was so blessed and fortunate to be in the midst of all this as it was happening. This has become sort of historical now. I've been doing this for forty-four years in the major leagues. This is a business that maybe gives you two or three years and we've been doing it for forty-four. I have been able to see all the changes and see the landscape in a panoramic way. And I must tell you, this is a fascinating business and an amazing view of the 20th century.

CITC: I was reading an interview with you recently where you talked about how the business has changed and about how there needs to be a new delivery system for music.

TJ: Yes, indeed. But I have great faith that it's being reinvented.

CITC: You said something very interesting. You said, "You don't type into your computer what you don't know about.”

TJ: Right.

CITC: That really says it all. I mean you walk into a record store... I would walk into Tower Records and see what record label was on sale that week and that's what I would buy.

TJ: Yeah, and we'd listen on the radio. The radio was this mass communicator. When you look at the numbers back in the 1960's...let's just take the 60's: when you look at AM radio, you had, basically, a fifty thousand watt station in every major market. And usually you had more than one, depending on how big the market was. But at least one 50,000 watt station in every major and secondary city. Each one of these stations serviced five to eight million people. You're talking about a network of gargantuan stations across the country. Anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty million people over the course of a record would hear your song. That's astonishing! Nothing ever took the place of that. Even FM didn't. FM basically goes from horizon to horizon.

CITC: And you could have regional hits back then. That's what happened with "Hanky Panky."

TJ: Correct. And you could literally break out of a market. You can't do that anymore. My point is that nothing has ever replaced those numbers. I guess you could say it was the disc business. We're at the end of that. The disc business doesn't exist anymore. Neither does radio. There's this sort of cartoon version of it right now. It doesn't exist. And the numbers aren't there yet with downloading to really make up for it. And there's really no payday either. You can have a career on YouTube but you can't get paid for it. There's little incentive to make music other than your ego. So the record companies have disintegrated.

CITC: I guess the only payday is live.

TJ: Correct. Now that's gonna change. I believe that once we truly have hi-def tv as part of our lives instead of a novelty, once we really have computer technology and television technology glued together in hi-def tv, then things are gonna pick up. I think the whole industry's gonna move to television.

CITC: You did one of the first music videos.

TJ: Yes.

CITC: Was that "Crimson and Clover"?

TJ: It was…"Mony Mony."

CITC: Oh, "Mony Mony”--even earlier.

TJ: Yeah.

CITC: And I'm told you possibly did the very first infomercial.

TJ: We did one of the first. Morris started a bunch of companies. He started K-tel, Adam Eight... he started a lot of what are called "cut out" industries. And we did one of the first cut out albums. This was back in '72. He started the whole cut out industry.

CITC: And so you did one of his infomercials?

TJ: Yes. It was a 15 minute commercial.

CITC: It was for your stuff?

TJ: My stuff, yeah.

CITC: So you were selling your catalog.

TJ: My catalog.

CITC: Did you ever do the Joe Franklin show? Do you remember that show?

TJ: I sure do. He asked me to do it but for one reason or another we never did his show.

CITC: Now, I have to ask...How does a guy write a line like, “Hello banana/ I am a tangerine...”?

TJ: Very high!

CITC: Having never done acid?

TJ: Ha ha! There are lots of other things to get high on. Ha ha ha! You don't have to do acid. In fact, I was always terrified to do acid. With me the biggest monster can come from the smallest crack anyway. I didn't need any help.

CITC: So you did all those records with...other substances?

TJ: Other substances, that's right. And in 1986 I just ended all chemicals. I'm so glad I did. It saved my life. But back in the day we were doing a lot of pills. Uppers, downers, booze. And it was all mixed together.

CITC: And Morris would give you lectures about that?

TJ: Oh, absolutely.

CITC: But he was doing crystal meth.

TJ: Well, he did it one time. Morris was pretty straight laced. He could smoke a joint and walk away and go, "Yeah, go fuck yourself." He never got high. I mean, he would never let you know that he was high. He got happy occasionally, but I never saw him wasted.

CITC: In the book it seems like he became like a father figure. Did you still have a relationship with your parents?

TJ: Oh sure. In fact my dad and Morris died of the same thing in the same year.

CITC: So all through that time with Morris you were still talking to your folks?

TJ: Oh sure.

CITC: How did they feel about it? Or did they even have any inkling about the mob connections or anything like that?

TJ: No. Well...yes. I can't say that they did. But it was...you know, the funny part is that it was just sort of fanciful. It seemed like a fanciful dream. It really wasn't something I talked about or discussed. Our involvement with it was the fact that this was going on around us and we were trying to stay out of the way. So it wasn't like we had any knowledge or anything of what was going on, other than the fact that these people were... who they were.

CITC: It seemed like you had this other life. Your wife and kid, your parents...

TJ: Yes. That is true.

CITC: And meanwhile you're in New York City...

TJ: I did learn to compartmentalize.

CITC: So you didn't burn your bridges?

TJ: Well, I went through two marriages. But I also did a lot of chemicals and there were moments when I was real fucked up. I'm not proud of that but it just was the truth. But that didn't seem like such a huge thing in the middle of all the other things we were going through.

CITC: You must have been thought of as one of the cleaner ones for Hubert Humphrey to pick you.

TJ: True enough. But you know, I got him high.

CITC: Ha ha!

TJ: I did! Oh god--I can't believe it. I'm amazed that somebody didn't put me in jail. I handed him a couple of black beauties one night. He had been up and he came back the next night and he says, [perfect Hubert Humphrey imitation] "By God, those things worked! They kept me up all night. I couldn't believe it! "

CITC: I thought that was a heavy story in your book about Humphrey's referendum plan to end the Vietnam war.

TJ: Ohhh, big time. If the media had known that...So many things happened at that moment and I really felt like I was in the thick of things, in the middle of my generation. The whole meeting with Humphrey came about in a very weird way and then it had a lot to do with the Crimson and Clover record. He ended up doing the liner notes for the Crimson and Clover album. But anyway, I had done a couple of rallies for RFK and one of them was in Manhattan, down at Union Square. So we got put on a list of those that were willing to get involved. That was the first year that political figures got involved with rock acts. That had never happened before. We were asked to be at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. where Bobby Kennedy was shot. It was the primary. But we turned it down because we had to be in--of all places--Dallas, Texas to do a gig. We played the gig--it was called "The World Teen Fair.” I got one of the ladies from the newspaper to take me to Dealey Plaza. And I was really devastated by that. I was amazed at how tiny an area it was, and I was feelin' real creepy. I go home that night and I turn on my television just in time to hear there's been a shooting in Robert Kennedy's headquarters.

CITC: The same day that you'd been standing in Dealey Plaza.

TJ: The same day. So I'm just devastated by the whole thing and I go into a funk for...oh I guess...three or four weeks. Because that was back when we thought a politician could really do something. The ‘60s, if you really want to boil it down politically, was all about trying to get "that Kennedy thing" back that we lost when JFK was killed. So when Robert Kennedy was killed, that just sorta ended it. I couldn't get enthused about anybody again. All of a sudden, we got a call up at Roulette from Hubert Humphrey’s office. They asked us if we would consider coming out and playing at some rallies. We said, "Yes, we'd be honored." So we were to meet him in August right after the convention. He was gonna be nominated--they knew it--and we were to meet him the following week in Wheeling, West Virginia. We're up in my apartment in New York watching the convention...and of course that's when all the kids got beat up and it just exploded. And we're going, "My God, what have we got ourselves into? Is every rally gonna be like this?" We met him the following week and things couldn't have been nicer. He just took us under his wing immediately. Started doing airplane hangars, puddle jumps--stuff like that, they call them. We became his opening act. We would play, and then he'd come on and do a speech and we would sit on the podium and I would sit right next to his wife. He wanted to show the world that he was...

CITC: Hip?

TJ: Yeah, that he was hip and that he had rock n' rollers with him and that we supported him. And we did. He was so nice to us and before it was over I was asked to be the President's Advisor on Youth Affairs.

CITC: Wow.

TJ: And he told us how he was gonna end the Vietnam war. And by the way, the reason it happened that way is because Johnson never endorsed him until the very end. And it almost didn't matter by the time he did. I don't know what made Johnson do that--or not do that. But Humphrey always felt that he owed Johnson loyalty and he would not go against him on the war.

CITC: So Humphrey swore you to secrecy on that.

TJ: Absolutely.

CITC: That would've given him an excuse to end it. He told you that his plan was to have a referendum and since most people were against the war at that point...

TJ: Oh, let me tell you something: He told us, "We do it this way, we show the world what a democracy really is, and we save thirty thousand kids. And that's almost the number that ended up dying after he lost.

CITC: Wow.

TJ: We did the whole campaign with him and he almost pulled it off. Daly cost him the election in Chicago. But at any rate, he didn't have a recount. But some interesting things happened. First of all, we stayed friends right up until the day he died. But musically, when we left on the campaign in August, all the acts that were big at that time were singles acts. It was us, the Rascals, Gary Puckett, the Buckinghams, the Association--I'm leaving out a bunch of people, but you get the idea. When we came back, 90 days later, it was all album acts. It was Blood Sweat & Tears, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Led Zeppelin, Joe Cocker, Neil Young--all album acts. In that period of time--90 days--the whole world turned upside down. Suddenly we went from singles to albums. And we knew that if our career was going to continue, we were going to have to sell albums. We knew it. And it was something that Roulette had never done. They had been, almost exclusively, a singles label. They sold albums but it was always after the single. So this was really a very important moment and we knew it. We also were gonna have to burn all our bridges and produce ourselves. We were gonna have to get rid of Ritchie and Bo, we were gonna have to really change the way we did things. What ended up happening was that we were working on "Crimson and Clover" at that moment and I'm so grateful that we were, because "Crimson and Clover"--that one single--allowed us to make that move from AM top 40 singles to FM progressive album rock. And I can't think of another record that we worked on that would've done that in one shot.

CITC: And the next album, Cellophane Symphony is downright prog. It's pre-prog. That holds up next to any prog album.

TJ: Well, you know, that had the very first Moog synthesizer that was in New York City. Whitey Ford from the Yankees owned it. Is that wild?

CITC: That is wild. What about the last song on that album? "On Behalf Of The Entire Management." How did that come about?

TJ: Oh, I don't know. We were just crazy.

CITC: I think it's an underrated album.

TJ: Well, thank you.

CITC: That's not part of this new batch of reissues that Collector's Choice did.

TJ: It's out on Rhino.

CITC: Yeah, it's paired with Crimson And Clover. But to me those two albums deserve to be out separately.

TJ: I agree. Probably as a result of the movie and everything--probably the entire catalog will be re-released. The truth is though that the political campaign and the new technology and the FM market all came about at the same moment.

CITC: You went from a singles act to an album act.

TJ: Yeah. And that allowed our career to go on. So many people's careers ended right there. There was this mass extinction of singles acts.

CITC: That's what happened to Paul Revere and the Raiders. The Raiders couldn't make the jump.

TJ: No. We were very fortunate.

CITC: It's funny how your careers paralleled in ways. They did tv commercials, too. You did that Coty ad. And they did that one for the doll.

TJ: Well, we were friends. We were great friends.

CITC: There's a funny story in your book about when you did that show where you had your band do one of their routines.

TJ: I told Paul about that and he died laughing. Fang came to my concert out in Vegas this last year.

CITC: Fang's a great guy!

TJ: He's great. We had a nice talk. We're great buds. I love those guys. They were really the shit! They were great. For that moment in time, I thought, they had the greatest gimmick in the world. Remember the high steps and the guitar fights?

CITC: And standing on top of their amps.

TJ: Oh, they were great! The whole thing with the clothes. I think probably the Rascals and Paul Revere and the Raiders were two of the greatest acts that ever were.

CITC: And the Raiders had a little influence on you as far as the stage act, right?

TJ: Absolutely.

CITC: After seeing them you thought "Well, I gotta put on a little bit of show."

TJ: Ha ha ha! Yeah! "I can't just stand here. I gotta do something."

CITC: I was listening to the Travelin' album and I could've sworn I heard a song that mentioned "My head, my bed and my red guitar."

TJ: You did! You sure did.

CITC: And then you picked that for the title of your first solo album.

TJ: Very good! You noticed that!

CITC: But I can't remember what song it was.

TJ: "Gotta Get Back To You." "I'm singin' my song cause I got my head my bed and my red guitar." I loved that line so I used it for the next album.

CITC: Was that the album that you kinda did on the lam from the mob war?

TJ: On the sly. "On the lam" as it were, down in Nashville with Elvis's guys.

CITC: It's funny how bad circumstances...

TJ: Turn into good. Well, you know something? I always felt that God was lookin’ out for me. I really did. I look at my whole career as a series of little miracles.

CITC: Like that kid that sent you a poem...

TJ: Yes!

CITC: ...with "crystal blue persuasion."

TJ: That's right. I know! "Crystal persuasion." I stuck "blue" in there, from the Book of Revelation.

CITC: Was he inspired by the Book of Revelation too?

TJ: I don't think so. What I remember was this really great title and a bunch of very esoteric lyrics. And that just stuck with me in my head--the word "crystal".

CITC: Were you reading the Book of Revelation at the time?

TJ: Yes. And then the whole song just became about becoming a Christian. A lot of people thought it was about drugs. You know, if you didn't understand it, it had to be about drugs. Of course we didn't think about being politically correct back then because the term didn't exist. We just figured it was a snapshot of what we were feeling at the moment.

CITC: I want to ask you about the bubblegum thing.

TJ: Sure.

CITC: You kinda...

TJ: Accidentally invented it. Ha ha! I invented bubblegum.

CITC: Kasenetz and Katz kinda took your sound...

TJ: And bastardized it. Jeff and Jerry were talented guys. And Joey Levine was great. They created a cartoon of "Mony Mony" and "I Think We're Alone Now" and that became bubblegum. And that, in a sort of retro way, affected us. We were sort of there for a few records and then moved on. I'm actually very proud to have done that. I love pop music. I'm a pop nut.

CITC: You've described it as pre-punk rock n' roll in a way.

TJ: Yes, it was. I think so. I think if you add crunch guitar to bubblegum you get a punky kind of sound.

CITC: Talking Heads used to do "1,2,3 Red Light.” A lot of bands from that era did bubblegum stuff.

TJ: I did Marky Ramone's show on Sirius and we talked about that at length.

CITC: You were pre-bubblegum and then you were pre-glam. Some stuff reminds me of T. Rex but it's before T. Rex.

TJ: Thanks. We just did what came natural. The problem was--maybe it wasn't a problem; I don't think it was in the end--that we just never had time to think about what we were doing because Morris was always cracking the whip for a new record. And I think if he hadn't, we'd never have had the kind of success we had. Even though we resented it sometimes, we had to get another record together. Our whole lives became getting the next record in the can. So we didn't think about it. We just sorta did what ever fell out of our face.

CITC: You had that pressure.

TJ: Yes. And I know that that pressure was what allowed us to have 23 gold singles.

CITC: And you started writing songs. At first it's all Ritchie Cordell writing them.

TJ: Yeah. Did you know Ritchie at all?

CITC: No. I'd never heard of him before.

TJ: Ritchie and Bo were both from Kama Sutra. Kama Sutra was a very interesting label.
Artie Ripp had Kama Sutra. Basically Morris Levy started him out.

CITC: Is that why Morris could call up Artie and ask for whatever?

T: Yes! Artie owed him all kinds of favors. Artie Ripp owned Kama Sutra. Kama Sutra was fascinating. It seemed to be a magnet for all the great songwriters at that moment. They all gravitated towards Kama Sutra. It was a very artist-oriented label. He had a staff of writers that was just out of this world. Like Pete Anders and Vinnie Poncia.

CITC: Who were they writing for?

TJ: They created a group themselves called The Trade Winds.

CITC: "New York's a Lonely Town.”

TJ - Yeah. And remember "Mind Excursion"? [sings] "Takea mind excursion..." It's about doing acid. It got banned. But at any rate, Bo and Ritchie [Bo Gentry and Ritchie Cordell] worked for Artie and they came to me with "I Think We're Alone Now." Actually Ritchie came to me with "It's Only Love" before that. I gotta tell ya: Bo and Ritchie saved my ass. They came to me at a moment when I really needed some help. Morris really didn't know how to help at all, musically. I remember going up to talk to Morris one day expecting some grown up advice and for him to walk me through all this and tell me what was gonna happen. This is right after we signed. And I go up to him and he says to me [adopts gruff New York voice], "So, what's next?" He's asking me! I was really concerned that I didn't have a clue what was next. I didn't know how "Hanky Panky" happened. So I was feeling very low and all of a sudden I hear Ritchie's demo over at this girl's house --this girl I was taking out. Ritchie Cordell was her roommate's boyfriend. And she said, "He writes for Artie at Kama Sutra--want to meet him?" And I said, "YES! I want to meet him." So the next night Cordell comes up and I meet him and he and I hit it right off. And he introduces me to this whole writing team over there. Then a whole bunch of their stuff comes to me. And that saved Roulette's ass. The first things they come to me with are "It's Only Love" and "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Mirage"...one right after another. And we went from Bell Sound Studios to Allegro Studios and we really created our own little world. That saved my ass. That was what I needed to get me through 1967 and 1968 til I could start producing my own records. They taught me my craft. I learned it from them.

CITC: You went from not writing anything at all, really, for a couple of albums, to writing almost everything.

TJ: Yeah. True enough.

CITC: How did that happen?

TJ: On I Think We're Alone Now we started with "Baby, Baby I Can't Take It No More." That's the first song Ritchie and I wrote. And all of a sudden it got gobbled up by Capitol Records who had Verdelle Smith who was a great R & B artist. She did it, and it was my first cover record.

CITC: What about "Wish It Were You"?

TJ: That was on Gettin' Together, which was the next album.

CITC: One cut I love is "Baby Let Me Down."

TJ: That's Ritchie.

CITC: That could've been a single.

TJ: A lot of that stuff is gonna get listened to again. A lot of very interesting ideas. If you listen to how Ritchie constructed the lyrics, the last word of one line is the first word of the next line. Really amazing!

CITC: And you learned your craft from him?

TJ: From Ritchie and Bo together. I call these guys the Kings of 4 Track. They taught me how to layer my records. When we were at Bell Sound, when we first started out, Bell was 4 track but they were still doing records like they were mono records. The drums would be on one track, the keyboards on another and the guitars would be on another--but they were all done at the same time. Over at Allegro we started doing the drums and getting the drums and bass just the way we wanted them and then working on the rest. We stated layering our records.

CITC: That leads me to another question I want to ask. Stereo or mono? Was most of your stuff meant to be heard in mono? Is that how they were originally mixed?

TJ: Well, 4 track stereo is the worst. 4 track stereo is horrible. Everything back then was left, right, center. You didn't have pan pots. That came in the following year. 1967 was very frustrating because everything was 9 o'clock, 3 o'clock, or 12 o'clock. There was very little in between. You had to really force things to happen in between. What I loved the most was 4 track mono. Mixing mono for AM radio was such a different animal than mixing stereo for FM radio. I loved 'em both but they were two different animals.
Mono mixing is so fascinating because you're dead center in the middle and the only way you can differentiate one instrument from another is through EQ. You can't pan them out of each other's way. All you can do is EQ them out of each other's way. So you had to find the frequencies for every instrument and they had to fit in this little niche. We used to actually start mixes by doing the drums, bass and the lead voice. Those three elements had to come first and everything else just kind of clothed...you'd wrap the other instruments around those three things.

CITC: Were the singles mixed in mono and the albums in stereo?

TJ: Yes. And you know, the new album that we have out this year, the 40 year package?

CITC - The Singles Collection? [on Collectors Choice]

TJ: Yeah. 14 of those mixes are mono mixes that haven't seen the light of day since they were first heard.

CITC: Were the albums mixed in mono as well?

TJ: Well, back in the day they basically did both. They mixed in mono and stereo. And I think they charged a buck more for stereo!

CITC: Were you there for the mixes?

TJ: Oh yeah. I was involved in most of the mixes. From the It's Only Love album on, I was involved in the mixes, but particularly with I Think We're Alone Now. That was our third album.

CITC: I wish they'd put out more mono stuff.

TJ: The mono stuff is so much more powerful. It just kicks you in the center of your gut, which is the way it was supposed to be. You're supposed to feel it as well as hear it. Stereo diffuses that. I love stereo for other reasons--don't get me wrong. I love angelic, ambient mixes in stereo.

CITC: Well sure, when you get to Cellophane Symphony.

TJ: Yeah! But those early singles that would just kick your ass...I love that.

CITC: On this new cd of I Think We're Alone Now, the title cut sounds like rechanneled stereo.

TJ: Well, what they did is they remastered stuff. For "I Think We're Alone Now" we never had a stereo mix. It was always mono. Morris never wanted to mess with that.

CITC: Now you've just recorded something that might be used in the movie? The movie hasn't even been started yet and you're already working on the music for it?

TJ: Yes, we have. And we've done what's going to be the closing credits. A brand new recording with the Shondells.

CITC: It's a slower version?

TJ: It's slow and it's so totally different. It's "I Think We're Alone Now" with no drums. Silky and smooth and slow and angelic sounding.

CITC: But it was kind of mid-tempo when it was first written wasn't it?

TJ: It was actually down tempo. It was presented to me as a ballad. But a rhythm ballad. And I didn't like it. And we ended up going into the studio and redoing it. But this version, which is going to be the closing credits for the movie, completely changes the meaning of the song because the last scene in the movie is when Morris dies. And then: "I Think We're Alone Now."

CITC: So you're hoping they do the movie with the framing story that's in the book?

TJ: Yeah.

CITC: It's so cinematic.

TJ: I think so. And I think it's such a poignant moment, that, with "I Think We're Alone Now” it completely changes the meaning of the lyrics.

CITC: I see what you mean. So this is a very exciting time for you.

TJ: I love it! I'm havin' a ball.

CITC: And you're still playing. Cleveland next?

TJ: We did Cleveland--we did the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. And last week I received a Favorite Son Award from the State of Michigan. From the Michigan Senate.

CITC: Ha ha! Wow!

TJ: I couldn't believe that. And here we are rolling along.

CITC: Still playing.

TJ: All the time. Just come to the website. [www.tommyjames.com]

CITC: And what amp do you use these days?

TJ: To this day the amp that I like to use onstage--and I have two of them hooked up side by side --is the Fender Twin Reverb. That's the finest and cleanest, and it's the best amplifier, I think, you can possibly use with the Jazzmaster.

CITC: And you use two? One going into the other?

TJ: Yes, one going into the other.

CITC: And are these the new reissues?

TJ: Well, I like the old ones with the master volume.

CITC: Oh really? The silver-faced ones?

TJ: Yes. Those are my favorites. With the master volume.

CITC: So that you get a little beef out of the pre-amp.

TJ: Yes! Exactly right. Very good!

CITC: No pedals?

TJ: No. My lead guitar player is great. His name is John Golden and he does all the pedals. The flanging, and the crunch and everything. I play a real clean guitar like I've always played and it works with the whole sound.

CITC: Your bass guy has a Fender Precision?

TJ: Yes he does. Mike (Vale of the Shondells) played a Fender Jazz bass for a long time. But the Fender Precision, when it's played really right is a magnificent instrument.

CITC: And you're still writing songs?

TJ: Oh yeah.

CITC: Do you write on guitar?

TJ: I write on keyboards and guitar.

CITC: Do you sit down and write? Or do ideas come to you as you walk around or whatever?

TJ: All different kinds of ways. More recently I have been using a lot of jazz chords. And I can't believe I've been sort of naturally falling into that. A few years ago something happened to me with my writing. I got tired of the normal chords. I just got tired of hearing a three-chord progression and I started adding things. Like on the bass string, I'd suddenly find an inflection. I'll play an A major and I'll play a third up on the bass string.

CITC: This is in open tuning?

TJ: Open tuning, but I'll also do a lot of sorta jazzy suspended chords and I'm finding new melodies inside there. And new chord progressions.

CITC: And this is in open E?

TJ: In open E. But of course I don't just play in the one key, I play in a whole lot of different keys. But I'll have the open E tuning.

CITC: You'll capo it?

TJ - No, I don't capo it. I just do it. I also have a lot of...for example, I'll do something in fourths. Like a C and an F chord together. It's amazing when you start really looking for inflections and new grooves. I'm very much into new grooves.

CITC: Well this is stuff you wouldn't discover in concert pitch, regular tuning.

TJ: No. That's true. What I've found is that most of the audience feels the same. I mean we've been doing the same chords for a long, long time. But people love the pop structure with new chords and new grooves.

CITC: Do you drive your bandmembers crazy? Do they look at you in the middle of show, as if to say, "What are those chords?"

TJ: Well, some. But you know, I feel that part of my job as an artist is to do that sort of thing. You know, that's why they pay me to be an artist. I try to follow my own tastes. Every time I try to be too cool, I get caught. You just have to be in your own little universe. I have a new song that I'm dying to get out called "Moondrops" and it is just what I'm talking about. It's part jazz and part pop. And it's a little slow and even down tempo a little bit. Part jazz and part pop, and it just works. Our new "Crystal Blue" I guess you could call it.

CITC: Wow!

TJ: I'm probably not gonna have it in the movie but it's very frustrating today because releasing music on the radio is sort of non-existent. In '06, we had three top-five adult contemporary records. One of them went number one forty years to the week after "Hanky Panky.” It was called "Love Words.” But you can have a number 1 record and people don't know you've got anything out.

CITC: Right. When you write by yourself, do you look for a collaborator for lyrics or whatever?

TJ: Every now and then I write with people. I like writing with Jimmy Wisner. He's a jazz musician...

CITC: You still work with Jimmy?!

TJ: Yes.

CITC: Wow, that's fantastic.

TJ: Yeah, we're still writing. You know, he started out as Mel Torme's keyboard player.

CITC: Is that right?

TJ: He's amazing. Jimmy the Wiz. He's the last of the schooled arrangers. The last of the schooled orchestrators.

CITC: Did he ever re-arrange your songs in terms of..."Well, let's start with the chorus"?

TJ: Er...no. Well, he gave me a lot of ideas, actually. He'd basically stick to the script but the main thing he used to do was take these almost nursery rhyme melodies that Bo and Ritchie would write, and orchestrate them. It was amazing. "Mirage" is a good example. Listen to what he did on the I Think We're Alone Now album, for example. And the Gettin' Together album. I've really started listening to the Gettin' Together album after years of not listening to it. Jimmy just did some amazing orchestrations on there.

CITC: You co-wrote with people back then, like "Crimson and Clover”...

TJ: Yeah, I did a lot of writing with the group of course. I don't do a lot of writing with my group any more. One of the things that I have found is that I really like writing by myself. I can write faster. One of the things that happened to me when I got sober in '86, was that I just went on this musical rampage. I'll write with certain guys--don't get me wrong. Every now and then I'll write with somebody. But I really like writing by myself because I feel more self-contained.

CITC: And back then when you wrote with them, was it basically your song, and they helped you finish it?

TJ: Well, sometimes they would come up with it. It was always kind of my responsibility to see that we came up with something. I used to have these two guys off in a corner writing and these other two guys...and mix and match. And different guys would come up with different kinds of songs. Back then we had to have a constant supply of new material so we were always-- I mean, I used to get song titles off of matchbook covers.

CITC: Do you find yourself with a melody in your head while you’re outside?

TJ: Yes!

CITC: And you rush home and ya gotta figure it out.

TJ: Not only a melody, but with me a weird thing has happened. First of all, there's no such thing as albums anymore. So there's no filler. It's all first class singles. The bar of excellence is so high now that everything has to be great. Not just good. Because basically we're putting things in movies now. I've got a great deal with EMI music who bought the old Roulette catalog and they're now working with me in movies, getting songs on television...places where people only hear 'em once. That's the great frustration, by the way, there's really no place to get new music in front of the fans anymore.

CITC: Well, we really hope you find a way. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

TJ: It's been wonderful talking with you.

CITC: Thank you Tommy.

TJ - Thank you my friend.

Internet:
www.tommyjames.com