She was the leader of the teen-trauma pack

One of my favorite bits of music commentary came from a 5-year-old.
Out of the blue one day, he said: “Isn’t it amazing that Justin Bieber is a real person?”
That comes to mind now, with word that Mary Weiss, lead singer of the Shangri-Las (shown here, with Weiss at right), died Friday (Jan. 19), at 75.
There was a neatly other-world feeling to her “Leader of the Pack.” In three minutes, it told a complete teen soap opera, from first meeting (in a candy store, no less) to a jolting motorcycle death, with the word “gone” repeated 26 times.
So it’s good to know that behind all that heightened drama was a real person – a 15-year-old who grew up poor, became briefly famous, then retreated into a life that included being an accountant, businesswoman, decorator and comeback singer.
For that brief blip of fame, the Shangri-las were incomparable.
“Their stock in trade was the teen-angst-ridden mini-melodrama,” said the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Fireside, 2001), adding: “Mary Weiss’ emotional, often overwrought delivery … perfectly suited the stories of teen runaways, parental death and good teens gone bad.”
The “Leader of the Pack” lyrics, by Ellie Greenwich, told of meeting a guy her parents didn’t like. “They told me he was bad/But I knew he was sad.”
When they made her break up with him, he promptly had a fatal motorcycle crash, complete with clanging sound-effects and the constant chant of “gone.”
This was a song that was ripe for parody. On one TV show, a guy clowned on a motorcycle right in front of the singers; on another, Olive Osmond (the mother of all those Osmonds) sang with deep dismay.
But “Leader” could also be enjoyed at face value. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, during a time (1964) dominated by the Beatles. The song is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; “Leader of the Pack” became the title of the Broadway musical based on Greenwich’s life.
Weiss was so convincing that many people painted her as a real-life bad girl.
Greenwich told the Los Angeles Times that the singers were “kind of crude” and hard to deal with at first, but singled out Weiss for praise. She had “the sweetest long, straight hair, an angelic face – and then this nasal voice come out, and this attitude.”
Weiss was a Catholic schoolgirl, working with her sister Betty and with twins (Marge and Mary Ann Ganser), who lived in their Queens neighborhood.
The twins were the sometimes-troublemakers, Weiss said in a 2007 intrview with producers at Norton Records. Their idea of a gag was to alter the sign on Marvin Gaye’s door, to read “Marvin’s Gay.”
But they all projected a sort of street-smart image of innocence mixing with trouble. They reached No. 6 with “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand)” and “I Can Never Go Home Anymore” and No. 18 with “Give Him a Great Big Kiss.”
In that last one, Weiss sang that her guy wears “big bulky sweaters to match his eyes.” Earlier in the song, when asked what color are his eyes, she said “I don’t know; he always wears shades.” Her summary: “He’s good/bad, but he’s not evil.”
It was the final hit in a two-year swirl that swept her from nowhere.
In the 2007 interview, Weiss said she was 6 weeks old when her father died. Her family was “extremely poor,” the twins were “relatively poor.”
But by 14, she was singing professionally; by 15, she had a No. 1 hit.
Things evaporated into a series of lawsuits between producers and record companies. Her sister moved in and out of the group, which soon became a trio. Her mother had signed a bad contract and Weiss was prohibited from making music for a decade.
She moved out on her 18th birthday, soon spent some time in 1960s San Francisco, then returned to New York. At a furniture company, she was an accountant and chief purchasing agent, then ran a furniture store and did interior design.
Weiss later returned to music and did her solo album and concerts in 2007. There had been a brief reunion of the trio in 1989, but neither of the twins lived to age 50. Weiss, survivor of all those fictional teen tragedies, spent most of her life being what someone might call a real person.