Culture Slut: The Ultimate Guide to The Shangri-Las
Make it stand out
I have been an adult for a long time now and I’m used to dealing with adult things and feelings, but some days my childhood feels closer than ever. On the 19th of January, 2024, it was reported that Mary Weiss, lead singer of 60s girl group The Shangri-Las, had died, and I cried like a baby. Now that may be because I am still in active grief over the loss of a friend, or that my emotions are a lot closer to the surface since giving up drinking, or even just the January blues - or it might be because The Shangri-Las were the voice of my childhood and every day takes me further into the unknown.
My parents were born in the early 50s, both were teens in the 60s, and moved to Brighton to become art student hipsters in 70s, where they went to parties painted silver in just underwear to look like aliens, attended lectures on conceptual art and Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree, and developed an ironic appreciation for early 60s girl bands.
They made collages on photocopy machines as invitations to their parties, art openings, happenings, using images of The Ronettes, The Ikettes, The Supremes and of course, The Shangri-Las. As a child in the 90s, their records were played every day in our house, nostalgic for my parents, a good dose of angst for my teenage sisters, and a whole new world of storytelling for me. The album I remember most is a greatest hits compilation released on CD in 1996, mainly because it became a favourite in the car for the long journeys we made across Europe on our summer holidays.
The Shangri-Las stood out to me amongst the other records my parents played because of the tone of their output. They didn’t bother too much with happy-go-lucky pop bops, or soft romantic ballads; they dealt primarily in tension, heartbreak, melodrama, and death. They sang about being left by their bad-boy biker boyfriends, running away from home, dying in car wrecks because their parents didn’t understand them, and it truly made me feel alive. Like a lot of kids (especially strange kids), I was very taken with the idea of mortality and death, of the cruelty of society past and present. I spent hours drawing pictures of the tragic heroines of Greek myths given up as sacrifices to the gods, Andromeda tied to the rock, or of witch burnings and executions, the beheading of Anne Boleyn, of Mary Queen of Scots, all the great women of history and the trials they faced. Cleopatra, Clytemnestra, Medea, Jeanne d’Arc, Xena Warrior Princess, Kimberley the original Pink Power Ranger, and now, The Shangri-Las.
So as my way of honouring their lasting legacy, and the one surviving member, Betty Weiss, this month I have collated a cultural guide to The Shangri-Las. Enjoy, learn, and listen away, so you too can become the leader of the pack! (or at least, his bereaved girlfriend.)
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Formation
Made up of two sets of sisters, the original Shangri-Las line up was Mary and Betty Weiss, and the identical twins Marge and Mary Ann Ganser, formed in a Queens high school in 1963. All the girls were teenagers at this time and when they signed their big contract with Red Bird records in 1964, Mary was only 15, the twins 16, and Betty 17. A lot of the most famous imagery of the band, the press shoots and TV appearances, feature only Mary and the twins because Betty temporarily left at the end of 1964, returning again in the summer of 1965. The group started declining in popularity after 1966, reverting back to a trio, with Marge and Mary Ann alternating as they felt, and officially disbanded in 1968.
The 1970s brought a few almost-reunions, they performed live together again in 1977 in the now iconic New York punk and new wave club CBGB, and they even recorded new material. 1976 saw a hugely successful re-release of one of their most popular records Leader Of The Pack in the UK, which, thinking about it, is probably one of the reasons that my parents got into them.
The band recorded new music with Andy Paley, but, unhappy with the sound, refused to release a record. There was some talk about them moving to another label and trying again, but the creative differences were too great. Mary envisioned them as being proto feminist punk like Patti Smith (omg sounds incredible, imagine if that had been given the go ahead), but all the producers at the time only wanted the genre-du-jour, disco (absolutely the wrong fit, but still, IMAGINE what that would have been like, I’ll take both please).
Image
The Shangri-Las may look to us now as impossibly young school girls, but at the time they read as tough, a girl gang who had boyfriends who rode motorcycles, and who kept switchblades in their beehives. They came from blue collar families and knew how to take care of themselves on the mean streets. Mary found herself in trouble with the FBI for carrying a gun across state lines, which sounds badass, but is a lot more sympathetic when you realise she was at most 17 years old, trying to protect herself after several attempts from men to break into their hotel rooms. It’s suggested that the tough girl look was initially done to tie in with the release of Leader Of The Pack, and after they saw how naturally it sat on them, they just kept it. On reflection about their image, Mary glibly said “I think it was the boots.” She also mused that it was definitely a bonus in the industry, as that persona helped to fend off unwanted advances from other musicians and producers. No one wants to get shanked by the toughest girls in Queens.
The legends around the band’s antics were in direct contrast with the other girl groups of the time, they weren’t demure, they weren’t passive, and they weren’t otherworldly. They didn’t appear in the beautiful gowns of The Supremes, or the immaculate coiffure of The Ronettes, they didn’t dance in perfect unison like The Ikettes, they were far more real. They moved awkwardly on stage, they made sulky faces when they sang sad songs, they actually fixed their hair on stage when it started coming undone (acknowledgement of the flaws of human existence, quel dommage!). They let the vivid stories their songs painted be the main focus of their performances, not the pristine image sold by the other big record labels.
Themes
Almost every Shangri-Las song tells a complete story. Each one is a two-and-a-half minute melodrama, mini operas about loss and heartbreak. The songs they are most known for are about losing bad boy boyfriends, either through callous betrayals, parental interference, or by death through misadventure. Out In The Streets talks about a girl bringing her street rat boyfriend into her world, changing the way he dresses, the people he hangs out with, but ultimately realising that this isn’t the real him, that he belongs out in the streets. Give Us Your Blessings tells us the story of a girl and her boyfriend appealing to their families to allow them to be together, but when they are told they are too young, the runaway, driving away crying to the untimely deaths in a road accident. Leader Of The Pack is the story of a girl falling for the leader of a motorcycle gang, but having to break up with him after her parents tell her he’s no good. She sees him for the last time and as he drives away, he crashes and dies instantly, leaving her more alone than ever before.
I’ve written before about the pop culture trope of human girls with demon boyfriends, and I think The Shangri Las are a perfect early example of this. These girls use their teenage angst, their feelings of isolation and loneliness to reach out into the dark and pluck out a gorgeous, dark, nihilistic boyfriend. They mount the Hell-bound stallion (a motorbike) that he arrived on and go willingly with him into the next world. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never seen his eyes. Why? Because he’s always wearing shades. But, how does he dance? Close, very, very close.
The 1950s and early 60s saw the birth of teen culture, from James Dean’s seminal performance in Rebel Without A Cause, to Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty as juvenile delinquents in Splendor In The Grass, without which The Shangri Las could not exist. This new exploration of youth, of adolescence, of early adulthood gave voice to a whole new generation so that they could speak about the trials of the modernity they faced.
The disconnect between the teens of the baby boom and their parents was chasmic, the world having been entirely changed by a second world war and the re-examination and validation of personal freedoms. I mention The Shangri Las summoning a demon boyfriend, that boyfriend is in fact Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Made in 1953, The Wild One is the original outlaws-on-motorcycles film, where a gang called The Beetles - were there any other sensation pop groups in the 60s with similar name? - take over a small town and run the locals ragged. Brando plays Johnny (the name of almost every Shangri-Las lyric boyfriend), who falls for a local girl and when asked what exactly it is that he’s rebelling against, he gives the iconic response “Whaddya got?” This film was considered so incendiary that it was banned in the UK for 14 years, lest it be copied in small towns here. It also caused controversy in America, but mainly because the motorcycle brand involved objected to them becoming synonymous with delinquency. Leave it to the yanks to be more concerned for the branding image than the safety of its citizens from hooliganism.
Influences
Because of The Shangri-Las image and their embrace of teenage angst and rebellion, they made a huge impact on the generation of musicians that followed them. 1970s punk bands the New York Dolls and the Ramones have cited them as an influence, and Blondie and the Go-Gos have been performing covers of their hits since the beginning. Ryan Adams, Twisted Sister, Aerosmith, the Jesus And Mary Chain, and the Horrors have all made direct covers, whereas other bands like Sonic Youth and Bat For Lashes have used some of the techniques made popular by The Shangri Las like spoken word and soundscapes. Amy Winehouse, Lana Del Rey and Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre have all cited The Shangri-Las as specific inspirations for certain albums and songs, and once you become familiar with their style, you truly can hear it in so much of the best music of the last couple of decades, not just in work produced by women, but men too.
One of my favourite pieces of Shangri-La history transformed into modern music is a performance by Amy Winehouse that I actually wrote about in my art school dissertation, which was a study of religious iconology in pop iconography. Winehouse is performing her hit Back To Black on stage at music festival in 2008 or 2009, after her initial global success, when the signs of her drug addiction where starting to become apparent, just before she started taking a hiatus from live appearances. She is still an incredible performer, her voice conveying deep emotion and untold yearning, but her body movements are erratic, her arms and legs shake. The uniform dancing of her back up singers only highlights her instability. But then, magic! During the music breakdown she starts reciting new words into the microphone. The audience is confused, they don’t know what she’s saying, its not on the recorded track at all, they have seen her bobbing and weaving on stage, they strain to hear the words. It’s lyrics from The Shangri-Las song Remember (Walkin In The Sand). “Then he kissed my cheek, with his finger tips…” she touches her own cheek and then reaches out to the audience, a grasping hand looking to find something to hold on to, “softly, softly, we’d meet with our lips.” I think of this as one of her best recorded performances because it’s as if she has received magic from it’s source. The Shangri-Las speak through her.
Teenagerdom and rebellion did not start with The Shangri-Las, but they perfected it in ways that have changed it forever. They gave voice to the lonely, the isolated, the lost, orphans of the storm, and for that I can only, truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank them.
Words: Misha MN