Caught in the Carousel

Tommy James (Part 1 of 2)

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.

Tommy James

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.

Tommy James

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.

Tommy James

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.

Tommy James

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.

Tommy James

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.

Tommy James

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.

Tommy James

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.

Next month: Part 2...

Internet:
www.tommyjames.com