Gettin’ Together With Tommy James, Onstage, Online, and On the Big Screen – Part One
If you were listening to Top 40 radio in the ’60s, there’s simply no way you could have missed Tommy James & the Shondells. From the moment “Hanky Panky” reached number one in 1966, the group became a hit-making machine, dabbling in a wide variety of musical styles and charting throughout the rest of the decade with timeless hits like”Mony, Mony,” “Crimson and Clover,” and “Crystal Blue Persuasion.”
But what’s the main man behind the band up to these days? As it turns out, a lot. We chatted with Tommy James about his many current projects, including his newest studio album, his behind-the-scenes YouTube series, and the upcoming film based on his autobiography, Me, the Mob, and the Music, about his time at the infamous Roulette Records.
REBEAT: What are you most excited to be working on right now?
TOMMY JAMES: Well, the movie, obviously. The movie and eventually the Broadway show. But the movie, right now to me, is really, totally absorbing because I’m working with the screenplay writer, and as the thing gets closer to coming out, I’m going to be the technical adviser….There’s actually going to be some songs in the movie that are new to the fans that are from back then that we just never put out before. It’s going to be a really interesting project.
Do you have an idea of when the movie might be released?
It’s going to be probably two years would be my guess. It’s basically the story of our relationship with Roulette Records, with Roulette Records being a label that was run by the Genovese crime family, and of course we didn’t know that at the time, so we learned that incrementally. [laughs] So it’s going to be essentially an autobiography with about two-thirds of the story involved with Roulette Records. Barbara De Fina is producing the movie. She produced Goodfellas, and she produced Hugo a couple years ago with Martin Scorsese. She produced Casino, The Color of Money, Cape Fear, just a whole slew of great movies.
A lot of movies in that same kind of mafia vein, it sounds like.
Right, and Matthew Stone is doing the screenplay right now, as we speak. He should be done next month. So it’s a lot going on right now, so the next two or three years are going to be real interesting. And then they’re talking about doing [the] Broadway show after the film. So it’s going to be fun.
Are there any specific people you would like to see cast in the movie?
There’s going to be guys like Gigante, who was a big mafia figure, who was the head of the Genovese family. I’d love to see Vinny Pastore from The Sopranos play Gigante. I think he’d be great at it. He even looks like him.
How long have they been working on the script so far?
Well, actually, as soon as the book came out, about four and a half years ago, we started getting calls for the Broadway rights and for the film rights.
About the Broadway show, is that still very much in the beginning stages?
Very much so. The whole idea is that it’s going to be a very different animal than the movie because it’s going to be a musical. It’s going to be much more lighthearted than the movie, where we’re talking about what happened, the mob situations, the people who were running Roulette, and some really scary moments. But in the Broadway show, you’re likely to see a mob guy suddenly breaking into song and dance. [laughs] Obviously we’re not doing the movie like that. They really are two different creations. It’s the same story but told two very different ways.
I heard you also have a new album coming out called Acoustitronics that’s all acoustic music, and I was wondering what made you want to do an acoustic album?
I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while. We’re going to be doing three of the past hits: “Draggin’ the Line,” “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” and a new version of “I Think We’re Alone Now” that’s going to be used in the movie. And the remaining eight or nine songs are going to be brand new. So this is going to be coming out towards the end of the year, and it’s going to be on our label, which is internationally distributed now. It’s going to be our first studio album in quite a while, so I’m really looking forward to it.
We’re using a new philosophy of using acoustic instruments where we would normally use electric. Like, for example, instead of a crunch guitar, we might use an acoustic piano and have the bass keys crunched real hard with a compressor, and it has that edgy sound that sort of takes the place of an electric guitar, because we want to use all acoustic instruments, and that’s the point.
So it’s not just acoustic guitar. It’s a bunch of different, non-electric instruments?
It’s a lot of different acoustic sounds. It’s not “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore.” [laughs] It’s going to be a whole lot of acoustic instruments, a lot of instruments we normally don’t use.
Do you have any outside musical influences as you’re working on that?
We’re going to have several guests come on and play, including Stevie Van Zandt and Gene Cornish from the Rascals and a lot of friends of mine. People like Kate Taylor, James Taylor’s sister, who’s a wonderful artist. But basically the songs are going to be our songs, all songs that I have written, plus the three hits that are going to be on it. So my influence basically is me. [laughs]
Are they all songs you’ve written recently or things you’ve been working on for a while?
For the last year and a half, I’d say.
So how are the covers of the old Tommy James & the Shondells songs going to fit into the movie?
Well, this new version of “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which is very slow and acoustic and very different from the original, is going to be in the closing credits to the movie.
I also heard you have a new YouTube series called “Inside Tracks With Tommy James.” How did you get started with that?
Well, the YouTube people came to me about a year ago, because we have a deep catalog that’s on YouTube, and so they asked if I would consider doing almost like a miniature TV show. And I said, “Yeah, that sounds like fun!” So with our video people, we put together several episodes, and we’ve done seven or eight episodes now, talking about some of the songs we’ve done. During the course of this album, we’re going to be shooting video and bringing people right into the studio with us and actually doing some of the live shots there. So it’s going to be taking people on the road with us and interviews from backstage and stuff like that.
Are you going to do some behind the scenes episodes with the movie?
Yes, we will, undoubtedly. As they start shooting, we’ll have some episodes that are actually on location. So it’s going to be unique.
What are some differences that you notice working in the music business today, versus back in the day when the Shondells were new?
You know, the funny part is, it’s the same in some ways and another world in other ways. From a technology standpoint, it’s another world. It really is. We would’ve died for this technology 40 years ago. You use Pro Tools now instead of tape. It’s so great to be able to go in and do things digitally. It is wonderful to be able, for example, to push a button and to service radio stations everywhere in the world with new product. When you have new product, you are able to exploit that product worldwide almost instantaneously.
From the standpoint of playing concerts, it’s almost exactly the same. There’s a few things, but basically, playing concerts is a relationship between the artist and the fans, and that really hasn’t changed. I will say, I’m so grateful to the good Lord and to the fans to have the kind of longevity that we’ve had. You know, I look out at our concert crowd, and I see literally three generations of people. That really is amazing to me. I’ve been doing this — it’s going to be 50 years next year. So honestly, it is really incredible in how little it’s changed between the artists and the fans when you’re doing a concert. I’ve been very lucky in this business to see it all, from a historical standpoint, to see the whole machine evolve and turn into what it is today. So I’m really havin
g fun.
Speaking of live shows, you recently performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony with Joan Jett and Miley Cyrus. How did you get asked to do that?
Well, we were approached by Joan, and Kenny Laguna, her manager, is an old friend of mine, a dear friend, and he’s been managing her right along. So we always wanted to do a project together, and this turned out to be it. So we did “Crimson and Clover” together. I got a chance to talk with Paul McCartney and Ringo, and we sort of hung out after the show. It was really something, too, because, as we were doing “Crimson and Clover,” the first two people to stand up and clap after the song were Paul and Ringo. So it was really quite a night.
Did you ever meet Paul and Ringo before that?
I had met John Lennon, and years ago, George Harrison wrote me a bunch of songs actually and sent them to me, back in the late ’60s. I spoke with John at a BMI dinner in 1971 when I was getting the award for “Draggin’ the Line” and he was getting it for “Imagine.” We almost sat back-to-back at these big banquet tables, and I got a chance to talk with John. But I never met Paul and Ringo, so that was really a great night.
That is really cool. Did you rehearse “Crimson and Clover” a lot before the induction?
Well, not a lot, but we rehearsed it some. I do it a little bit differently than [Joan Jett] does it, so we kind of split the difference, and it was really neat. It was really quite an adventure doing “Crimson and Clover” with four generations of people.
Do you think that Tommy James and the Shondells are going to get into the Hall of Fame anytime soon?
Yeah, I do think it’s going to be a couple years, two or three years, but my view is, when it’s our turn, we’ll go. I would love to have the movie and the Hall of Fame happen the same year. I think that would be a great one-two punch.
It’s awesome that you got to be a part of the 30th anniversary ceremony though, when it happened to be in Cleveland.
I love Cleveland. Every time we did Route 80, we called it the “Route 80 Tour,” you know. We [did] Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cleveland. It was great. Cleveland has always been a great town for rock ‘n’ roll, even before the Hall of Fame. Pittsburgh’s another one of those towns that had an amazing music business of its own. So many acts from Pittsburgh made it. I mean, pound for pound, there’s probably more Pittsburgh acts than any other town.
Were you friends with any of those Pittsburgh acts?
Well sure, there’s acts like Lou Christie, for example. Kind of made it the same way I did, through the local Pittsburgh distributor there, called Fenway Distributors. And that’s the one that had the connection with Roulette Records. Lou Christie was also on Roulette. And you also have the Jaggerz, the Vogues, oh man, you go right down the list. A lot of great acts came out of Pittsburgh: doo-wop acts like the Del-Vikings and the Skyliners…
Do you get to visit Pittsburgh or Cleveland often?
Sure, well, I don’t know if you remember the old Upbeat show that came out of Cleveland. I used to do Upbeat all the time, and we used to play places like the Agora. We played for WIXY, the radio station. I loved playing Cleveland. But yeah, we go through. We’ll play at the Quicken [Loans] Arena. We’ve played there several times in the past few years. We’re going to be playing Chicago later this year too. So we still do the “Interstate 80 Tour.” We’re still on it! We’re basically touring every weekend during this summer. Basically, I’m in the studio during the week and performing during the weekends.
Click here for part two of our interview with Tommy James!
