It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las
December 2, 1964
“Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100, November 28 – December 4, 1964
Death has long featured as one of the most potent themes in music, ranging in application from classical requiems to folk murder ballads. Rarely was it more ubiquitous, however, than in the early 1960s, when so many pop songs about death — specifically of young people dying under dramatic, often violent circumstances — came out that “teenage tragedy songs” became a sub-genre unto itself. The majority of these “death discs” relied on mawkish sentiment to do the heavy lifting in place of honest emotion or well-crafted songwriting. Records like Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” or J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers’ “Last Kiss” somehow managed to pervert one of the defining themes of human existence into something cheap and ridiculous. To modern ears, the primary source of pleasure to be derived from these songs is their kitsch factor — either from their blaring lack of subtlety and unearned self-importance, or for representing the morbid core lurking beneath the early ’60s’ squeaky-clean surface.
Yet a handful of these teenage tragedies manage to transcend their trashy brethren and strike a nerve. Perhaps the best record to emerge from the trend — certainly the best death disc to became a major hit — was “Leader of the Pack,” recorded by two pairs of sisters (Elizabeth & Mary Weiss and Mary Ann & Marge Ganser) known as the Shangri-Las. The Queens-based high schoolers had already found Top 5 success with their previous single, “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” a nearly avant-garde record that flits between seemingly unrelated bits of melody against a backdrop of seagull sound effects. The exact circumstances described in the song may be fuzzy, but the portrait of loss that it paints could not be clearer.
Like its predecessor, “Leader of the Pack” was written and produced by self-styled enigma George “Shadow” Morton and shares that record’s theatrical bent, off-kilter structure, and liberal use of sound effects. The song starts off with a bit of spoken gossip among schoolgirls. “Is she really going out with him?” asks one. “Well there she is,” another answers, “let’s ask her.” Thus the girls prod their classmate, “Betty,” into narrating the story of her relationship with motorcycle-riding bad boy “Jimmy.” (Although in the parlance of another Shangri-Las’ song, “he’s good-bad, but he’s not evil.”) They fall in love at first sight in the most cheerful and innocent place imaginable — a candy store! — before being torn apart by Betty’s snobby, disapproving parents. After their tearful breakup, Jimmy rides away into a fatal crash, horrifically detailed in real-time through the sounds of squealing tires and lead singer Mary Weiss’s desperate wails of “Look out! Look out!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNWsD0BL1SQ#t=93
Morton’s offbeat choices ensure that “Leader of the Pack” sounded like no other song on the radio, much less any other death disc. There’s no catchy chorus; instead, the soaring verses deflate into a sudden, accompaniment-free line “the leader of the pack,” much like the epic love cut short by violent death. The use of sound effects and conversational tone of the backing vocals (“Whatcha mean when you say that he came from the wrong side of town?”) bring “Leader of the Pack” closer to a radio play than a conventional pop song. Where a guitar solo or a dance break should be, there’s only the graphic noises of the fatal crash.
But if there’s one thing that stands out about “Leader of the Pack,” it’s 15-year-old Mary Weiss’s achingly heartbroken, yet also raw and kinda messy, vocals, which makes her sound simultaneously tougher and more vulnerable than her girl group peers. Unlike many teenage singers of the era, who emulated the polish of adults, Weiss never sounds anything other than adolescent. This teenage quality is reflected not only in the girlish timbre of her voice, but also in her phrasing — switching from impassioned cries (“I felt so helpless, what could I do?”) to solemn recitations (“the leader of the pack, now he’s gone”) with the volatility characteristic of the hormonal years.
The Shangri-Las never recorded another death disc quite like “Leader of the Pack” — nor did they ever again score as big a hit — but the specter of tragedy looms over much of their discography. Occasionally it’s as blatant as “Leader of the Pack,” like the runaway daughter and dead mother of “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” but more often it’s elliptical (“Past, Present and Future”) or blown into operatic proportions (“Dressed in Black,” “Never Again”). Yet as heightened as the group’s performances and Morton’s productions often are, there’s always a core of emotional authenticity that elevates the Shangri-Las’ material above the teenage tragedy pretenders.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
