Tommy James & The Shondells: Cellophane Symphony (Roulette)
This article originally appeared on Fusion on November 14th, 1969
WE ALL AGREE that Gary Puckett and The Union Cap is pretty awful and we all agree that The Rolling Stones are pretty good. Those are the extremes.
There are very serious people who think the MC5 is great. There are other very serious people who don't. Led Zeppelin is one of the most successful of the "underground" groups. I can't get through a whole side of their record. Over a period of time, many groups who used to be sneered at by the cognoscenti have been taken seriously by the same evolutionary process that brought The Beatles to their attention. Thus when Crawdaddy did a piece on The Beach Boys a few years back it probably blew a few minds. But now The Beach Boys are taken for granted in the same way (although to a lesser extent of course) that The Beatles are. The latest such artist to be embraced by a "serious" critic is Elvis Presley since his performance in Las Vegas. Part of getting hip to someone is going back into his past. Thus when I was turned on to Rubber Soul. I went out and got some of The Beatles albums which I discovered were good. How could I have missed them when they came out? How could we have seen Elvis Presley only as a thug?, etc. So now, while Elvis is not loved by all (and who is except of course The Beatles?) he has to be taken seriously. Any one who says "haha Elvis" is ignorant.
One of the reasons of course that a lot of us have such high resistance to Top 40 stuff is that so much of it is contrived bullshit. We may not buy it ("I don't want anyone to force Wild Man Fisher on the people — if the people like me let them go out and buy my album — if they don't like me…" —Wild Man Fisher). Offensive is people telling us that they don't really like this but that they think we might. On a human level this is them (the bullshit plastic commercial establishment that all of us good guys hate) saying that we are stupid. Which is offensive. On a musical level, music that nobody believes in comes out pretty shitty. ("But it's commercial".) I mean what kind of man can Gary Puckett be if he sings a song like 'Don't Give In To Him'. Whew! On the other hand, many of us have discovered, a little late, that Chuck Berry was very groovy indeed. All of this brings me back to, or close to, my point of origin. Public acceptance has a strange effect on artists. For some, like Dylan, it is almost irrelevant to his art. Although it did give him freedom to expand his audience and do what he wanted. Others like Simon and Garfunkel seem to lose something with success (you may claim that they never had it but they really did have their moments) while for others like Tommy James and The Shondells, it provides the freedom to do what they want to do. This unwritten rule isn't applied to established artists like B. B. King or Chuck Berry. It's just that people don't like being conned. After all, Tommy James and The Shondells are liked by the same people who like shitty groups, like The Union Gap, The Brooklyn Bridge, et. al. The thing is that Tommy James and The Shondells peace/love/brotherhood trip just happens to be where they're at right now. Or were. Tommy James is a rock and roller and a unique one. If he had been popular in the fifties he would now be experiencing a huge revival among the rock lovers of today. Because he's original. Because his songs are good. Very good. Unfortunately for us, Tommy is very successful. He's had three Top Ten singles already this year and a fourth one coming out. And because of this, we tend to lump him in the same category with bubblegum and 'In The Year 2525'. Until very recently, I never would talk about Tommy James. I loved 'Crimson and Clover' (and his earlier stuff too like 'Mony Mony') but it just seemed low class to mention it in the same breath with, say, The Band. Then my friend Ed Ochs, who is Billboard's "underground" columnist, and is therefore super paranoid about being called Top 40 in his tastes (it is a little embarrassing for an intellect to write for Billboard even if he does write the best rock column anywhere), confessed to me that he too was turned on by The Shondells. With all the ecstasy of a 14 year old kid who has just found out that other people also jerk off, I realized that there was no reason to be ashamed of my love for the music of Tommy James.
But it's always a little confusing when an artist changes his image. When Bobby Goldsboro says 'I'm A Drifter' my response is: fuck you Bobby, you're not a drifter, you're a faggot. A lot of "image changes" come about because the assholes who run certain record companies have recently discovered a large market that they call "underground". The result of this finding is Ricky Nelson changing his name to Rick and "psychedelic" groups like The Strawberry Alarm Clock. Even Motown is starting an "underground" label.
What Tommy James did, starting with Crimson and Clover was to start producing and writing all of his own stuff. Even The Beatles and The Stones don't actually produce their own records. Besides the fact that his music is totally his, it is also totally successful. Three million dollar singles and a million dollar album make serious music people suspect his intentions. But, like The Beatles, what Tommy James wants to do happens to be what people want to hear. You can be sure that if Tommy had been a star of the fifties instead of the sixties he would be the subject of a huge revival. "Crystal Blue Persuasion ahhhh it's a new vibration." Was it ever said any better? Listen to the radio (by the time you read this it will be 'Fire In The Sky' which is even better) and see what a refresher 'Crystal Blue' is compared to the latest Motown assembly line soul or bazooka rock. If it weren't for all the anti-hype that goes with success, 'Crystal Blue' would be another 'Hey Jude', reaching everyone.
To the album. Cellophane Symphony, coming as it does, is almost a letdown on first listening. Like The Stones Aftermath coming after Out Of Our Heads, it seems at first to be a mish-mash. Which it's not. The title cut is a ten minute instrumental which takes about three listenings to get hooked. This is pretty fast for Tommy. It usually takes me about five hearings to get strung out on his songs. It is unlike anything he's ever done before, but the slow, teasing rhythm is distinctly Tommy James. He has this way of creating a climax which you wait for. 'Cellophane Symphony', with its endless bass drone is about the easiest to listen to ten minute instrumental I have ever heard. It's actually pleasant to hear. James is a perfecter. 'Crystal Blue Persuasion' was the perfection, and hence the saleable, acid song. 'Cellophane Symphony' is the perfection of the ten minute listen-to-when-you're-stoned instrumental. 'I Know Who I Am' is Broadway Tommy James throwing up at all the bullshit people he has to deal with. He hasn't quite arrived at Dylan's mellow acceptance of fame. 'Sweet Cherry Wine' which took me six times to get into, is one of the best rock songs ever produced. It alone is worth the price of the album. 'Papa Rolled His Own' and 'On Behalf Of The Entire Staff and Management' are the two cuts that I don't really like, the former is derivative freak-out-the-world Rolling Stones (a la the end of 'Something Happened To Me Yesterday'). Imperfect, Cellophane Symphony is an excellent album and one which makes me anxiously await Tommy's next one. "Crimson and clover over and over crimson and clover over and over ahhhhhhhhh."
