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Leader of the Pack: Shangri-Las

I hope you weren’t expecting Whistle a Happy Tune!

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This entry was posted on July 30, 2011 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Music. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

9 Comments on “Leader of the Pack: Shangri-Las”

  2. greg mpls's avatar greg mpls Says:

    July 30, 2011 at 12:53 pm

    “you get the picture?’
    “yes we see…”
    i love these Shadow Morton produced songs.
    this month had two new moons. this one is known as the’black moon
    .tonight you should invent a drink with that name.

    ,

    • katry's avatar katry Says:

      July 30, 2011 at 12:59 pm

      Greg,
      That would be a perfect title for my mood or is it moon?

      I’m happy to say my hand feels better, and my iPod is loading. The only new bad thing is my cat threw up on my spread, twice. It is now in the wash.

  3. annulla's avatar annulla Says:

    July 30, 2011 at 1:32 pm

    Perfect song for today. I’m getting ready to head out to a tribute to Ellie Greenwich being held at Lincoln Center this afternoon. I’ll be singing this on the way there (but singing it silently, so I don’t annoy everyone else on the subway).

  4. sblake's avatar sblake Says:

    July 30, 2011 at 9:35 pm

    A young Billy Joel played the piano on this song – probably. He explained to Uncut in 1998: “I know I played piano on a session. The girls themselves weren’t at the session, but that kinda happens all the time, the singers come in later. I played note for note what is on the record, but I wasn’t in the musician’s union – I was about 14 or 15 – so for all I know they may have got a union guy in to do it later. I never got paid, never got a form to show it was me on the record, so I can’t say for sure it’s me, but I like to think it was. Actually, it was my very first recording session – a guitar player friend got me in. I also did ‘Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand)’.The producer, Shadow Morton, was a strange guy. He had a very theatrical way of producing, he used to wear a cape in the studio. I don’t know if he’d been taking any intoxicating substances – what did I know at that age? – but he was very intimidating to a young kid like me. I just kept my head down hoping no one would find out I wasn’t in the union, but I never got paid, so maybe someone squealed on me.”
    This is a tale of young love, parental disapproval and death by motorbike. Mary Weiss, the lead vocalist of the Shangri-Las, said in Telegraph magazine, April 14, 2007, “I don’t think I would be able to put feeling into the song unless I had really thought about the lyrics. I put a lot of my own pain into that song. I don’t think teenage years are all that rosy for a lot of people-they certainly weren’t for me. They are the most confusing time of people’s lives and there is a tremendous dark side to the record, which I think teenagers related to. The studio was a great place to let the pain out.”
    I also remember it actually was banned in the UK because of its mod and rocker connotations

    • katry's avatar katry Says:

      July 30, 2011 at 10:47 pm

      sblake,
      That’s a great story from Billy Joel. I love his description of Shadow Morton, and I know Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand).

      It was a big hit here for quite a while. I loved The Shangri-Las, and this was a great teenage angst song which seem to be fairly common for a while.


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