I enjoyed this memoir by Tommy James, written with Martin Fitzpatrick. All the “Mob” portions were interesting, I suppose—a key reason James waited so long to write it was waiting for certain figures to die. Most notably that included his kinda sorta mentor Morris Levy, who died in 1990, operated the Birdland nightclub, ran the Roulette label, and never paid James a fraction of the royalties he owed him. I was more interested in Tommy James the teenybop star because he was an absolute favorite of mine in junior high days. He played his first gig (a high school talent show) at the age of 12 and was playing professionally a year later with his own band. For many years he had to worry about being underage in the venues he played. The amazing story of “Hanky Panky” is told here, one with many twists and turns that broke open his career. In retrospect, he was at his rock ‘n’ roll purest with “Hanky Panky” and, later, “Mony Mony”—raw blasts of infectious power. But as a kid I was more infatuated first with the hothouse teen drama of “I Think We’re Alone Now” and then with the faux mellow psychedelia of “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” which I had not thought of for years and then played six times in a row the other day. Beauty! I know it’s plastic, inauthentic, and all that, but I just love it. The stories of all James’s hits and more are covered here, along with his three marriages, drug adventures (mostly speed and booze, he may never have taken a hallucinogen), and eventual substance abuse recovery and turn to Christianity. I could have done with a little less of the latter, though he never goes overboard. For me he’s not that likable, more of a hypocritical hedonist and general opportunist. But there’s no question of his talent. He got his break in 1966 and rode it into the ‘70s and beyond. He wrote and/or recorded some great songs I will probably never stop liking. The organized crime angle of this memoir is interesting and no doubt part of his success. He indulges a little “I’m cool because I hung out with gangsters” attitude, but reading between the lines it’s apparent it caused him a good deal of pain. When he hired a lawyer at some point who used forensic accounting to uncover Levy (and/or the Roulette label) owing James $40 million in royalties, Levy threatened their lives and they backed off. Full of strange and harrowing anecdotes, James’s memoir is thoroughly enjoyable, informative, and compulsively readable.
In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.
I still can't get past the scam Levy was running with Roulette. Warehousing records, many of them fake, as a write-off against his profits, thereby evading taxes and covering up how much he was making off James. Very Trumpy. Gives the lie to any notion that horse race activities like the music industry, the arts, are better suited to capitalist free enterprise. In a narrow sense, perhaps; competition is good in the arts. But as soon as they get into some real money the industry guys are all about finding ways to rip-off and/or squeeze the artists and producers; the labor. Levy, with his mobster ties, was just a particularly colorful caricature of this truism. And my favorite bit about him in this book was James' sardonic summation that Levy would rather make $10 dishonestly than make $100 honestly.
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