Photo courtesy of Tommy James

By Paul Freeman [October 2019 Interview]

Tommy James has always had destiny on his side.

By his mid-teens, the Michigan-based James was already a road warrior, touring with his band. Hearing the song "Hanky Panky," he knew it was a tune that would drive young audiences wild. He and his group, The Shondells recorded it and the song became a regional hit. It failed to break through nationally, however. The band broke up.

Fast-forward. More than a year later, a club DJ in Pittsburgh found a copy of "Hanky Panky" in a record bin. Intrigued by the title, he played it and the song proved to be an instant sensation with the dance crowd. Radio DJs in the area began to play it. Eighty-thousand bootlegged copies were sold in 10 days and, in May 1966, "Hanky Panky" was the number one record in the Steel City.

A promoter tracked down James at his home in Niles, Michigan and informed him of this unexpected success. James rushed to Pittsburgh, enlisted a local bar band to become his new Shondells and became a sensation in the area.

He headed to New York to land a record deal. With all of the majors eager to sign him, James wound up at Roulette Records. That was due to the imposing presence of larger-than-life label head Morris Levy. A mob figure, he had frightened off the other suitors.

Finding a home at Roulette, despite the dangerous elements there, proved to be a godsend for James. In that situation, he blossomed as an artist. A long string of hits followed, including "Say I Am," "Gettin' Together," "It's Only Love" and "I Think We're Alone Now."

In the studio, hearing "I Think We're Alone Now" being accidentally played backwards, led to the chord progression that fueled another smash, "Mirage."

A rhythm track was the seed of another big hit. But James and company couldn't think of a title to fit. Then one night, at his Manhattan apartment, he happened to glimpse the neon sign above the Mutual of New York Insurance Company, flashing "MONY," "MONY." Perfect-sounding phrase. In 1968, his song of that name lit up the charts.

Other 60s acts fell by the wayside as, towards the end of the decade, catchy singles were no longer enough. Listeners sought more complex musical creations. FM radio soon became dominant, as did the album format. James managed to make the transition. The singer/guitarist/songwriter fashioned a new sound with songs like "Crimson and Clover" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion."

He tells his astonishing story in his memoir -- "Me, the Mob and The Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and The Shondells." Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll... plus gangsters! When you read it, you'll inevitably think, "Wow, this would make a great movie." Well, you're right. It will soon be hitting the big screens. Barbara De Fina ("Goodfellas," "Casino") is producing. Three-time Tony Award winner Kathleen Marshall will direct the film.

Now 72, after over half a century of performing, James continues to energetically tour. He has a new album, his first in 10 years, called "Alive." It includes exciting new versions of "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Draggin' The Line," as well as great new original tunes, plus a dynamite rendition of The Rolling Stones' classic, "The Last Time."

Tommy James has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. And that number just keeps rising.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Congratulations on the new "Alive" album. It had been a long time between studio albums. What was your mindset? Did you have a clear concept, a vision for what you wanted the new album to be?

Photo courtesy of Tommy James

TOMMY JAMES:
Well, basically, the funny part is, "Alive" is really a conglomeration of things. I started out, I was going to make an acoustic album, an unplugged album. And we got a couple of songs into it and I realized there was no way I was going to be able to do this stuff acoustically [laughs]. And so we sort of scrapped that idea and kept on going. And it was over two years, it took to make this album.

And it was just a collection of songs I'd wanted to do for a long time. Things like the "Doo Wop Shuffle," that I'd had in my head for a long time. And the album makes not a lot of sense, I guess [laughs]. It certainly isn't a theme album. It's just a collection of stuff that I've wanted to do for a long time and I wanted to get it out of my system. So anyway, we put this together over a two-year period. It was really a labor of love. I loved doing it.

PCC:
You mentioned the "Doo Wop Shuffle." It must have been a lot of fun to go back to the roots for those medleys.

JAMES:
Absolutely. But you know, the funny part is, we put some older songs on the album, like "Distant Thunder," which is going to be in the movie. So is the slow version of "I Think We're Alone Now." It's going to be during the closing credits for the movie. And the new version of "Draggin' the Line" with [rapper] T.O.N.E.-z and stuff like that. We've got the old stuff combined with the new stuff. So it was just all over the place.

It's funny, they ask me, "What were you thinking, doing this album?" I don't know what I was thinking! It was just a lot of stuff, a lot of records I'd wanted to make for a long time. So I just did it.

PCC:
And yet it all holds together quite well. The reimagining of a couple of the iconic tunes, "Draggin' the Line" and "I Think We're Alone Now" -- how did you approach those, making them very different, yet just as powerful as the original versions? "I Think We're Alone Now" takes on a new poignancy in the acoustic arrangement.

JAMES:
Well, you know something? It was really strange. I've been doing that live for a couple of years now. And the original "I Think We're Alone Now" was so different in so many ways, not just the style of it, but when you slow it down, the words sort of mean something totally different now than they did then, especially when you combine it with the movie.

It's going to be at a very somber moment in the movie, when Morris Levy, the head of the label died. If you've read the book, you know that Morris was a mobster. But, you know. I really miss the guy. It is a very strange combination of feelings I had, very mixed feelings I had about Morris Levy passing away.

And I have at the end of the book, and at the end of the movie, there's going to be this sort of imaginary conversation I have with him, because I never got a chance to really talk to him. He asked for me and I was going to go to his farm in upstate New York the next day, when I got back from Chicago. And as it turned out, he died before I could get back. And so I had this imaginary conversation with him in the back of the limo, going back to the hotel. And the camera's going to pan back and you see this clear night in Chicago, beautiful Chicago skyline, the credits start rolling. And then this new version of "I Think We're Alone Now" comes on. So it's going to be a very poignant spot in the movie.

And I don't know why I chose that song. It just came to me to do it. The song was originally presented to me as a ballad, back in 1967. They wrote it and it wasn't as slow as I did it with the acoustic guitars. But it was presented to me slower, much slower. And I always liked the slow version a lot. But I didn't feel it was right at the time, back in '67. We wanted to make a little poppier record, so we went into the studio and fooled with it and came up with the dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum, the eighth notes. As a matter of fact, I did the original vocal on the record, "I Think We're Alone Now," Christmas Eve of '66. So that's how far back that goes. And so it was such a different kind of a record, the original teeny-bop record.

And from this, I don't know what possessed me to do it like that, but I just felt that it would be good slowed down. As a matter of fact, we put it out as a single and it went Top 20, Adult Contemporary. It's the first time we'd been on the charts in a while.

PCC:
There are some great new songs on the album. Did you view it as a challenge to try to create new material that would stand up with your classics?

JAMES:
Sure. Absolutely. Well, the whole album was a challenge, because I had no direction to go in, except whatever I came up with in the studio. And the first song on the album, "So Beautiful," turned out to be a single. And we also went Top 20 AC with that in Billboard, before "I Think We're Alone Now." And so it's been great to have a couple of records on the charts. It's the first time for us on the charts since, well, since the last album, "Hold The Fire," 10 years ago.

PCC:
You had Jimmy Wisner back as your co-producer? It must have been one of his last projects.

JAMES:
Yeah, Jimmy passed away right at the end of doing the album. And that was a great loss, because he had been with me since the original "I Think We're Alone Now."

PCC:
He had an amazing list of credits. What do you think made him so special as a producer?

Photo courtesy of Tommy James

JAMES:
Well, he was really a producer and an arranger. He started out, oh God, at one time he had like five records in the Top 10. He was incredible. He was an incredible arranger. I was very lucky to get him back in 1967. Our first record together was "I Think We're Alone Now." And he just was magical.

I guess the only person I could compare him to, what George Martin was to The Beatles, Jimmy Wisner was to me. And us. And he had these sort of magical orchestrations. I don't want to get too in the weeds with it, but what it boiled down to was he just had this very magical way of putting arrangements together. He just dressed up your song. It was like putting clothes on your song [laughs].

And it did that not just for me, but for all kinds of artists. And he ended up being the head of A&R at Columbia Records, which was a big deal position, for several years. And then he went back to being a private arranger and producer again. And we just over the years, worked together, did a lot of great stuff together. We did a whole Christmas album together. In fact, our new single is going to be out for this Christmas. It's from the "I Love Christmas" album. It's called "It's Christmas Again." And you'll start hearing it on the radio in the next couple of weeks. I did that with him, the Christmas album, Jimmy and I.

PCC:
The process of writing the memoir, traveling back through your experiences, did that change your perspective on your career and other aspects of your life?

JAMES:
Well, it was very cathartic, as they say. It was very good to get a lot of this stuff off my chest. When we started writing the book, Martin Fitzpatrick [his co-author] and I, we were originally going to call it "Crimson and Clover" and we were going to write a book about the hits and being in the studio. It would have been an interesting book. But we got about a third of the way into it and realized, if we didn't tell the Roulette story, which really was the story, we were cheating ourselves and cheating everybody else.

But I was very nervous about finishing the book right then, because some of these guys were still walking around [laughs]. You've got to be a little careful. I didn't want to say too much, because we could never talk about this. This was a subject we could never talk about. So we sort of put the book on the shelf, then picked it up a couple of years later, when the last of the "Roulette Regulars," as I called them, passed on. That was Vinnie "The Chin" Gigante, who died. He was the last one of the group that hung out at Roulette. Roulette was tied in with the Genovese crime family. It was a front for the Genovese crime family in New York. We didn't know that when we signed with them. So anyway, it was good to get a lot of this stuff off my chest. For the first time, we could talk about all this stuff.

PCC:
It should make a great movie.

JAMES:
I don't think you can beat rock 'n' roll and the mob together [laughs]. It's a pretty good combination. Our director, by the way... It's funny, because it turns out our whole production crew is female. And it's going to be very interesting. I didn't necessarily plan it that way. It's just the way it worked out. Our director is Kathleen Marshall, who's tremendous. She's a brilliant director. She's going to do both the movie and the Broadway show. She comes from Broadway originally.

PCC:
So the movie is going to be first, followed by a Broadway version?

JAMES:
The movie's going to be first. They want to do that first, because, if the Broadway show bombs, the movie never gets made [laughs]. That really is the truth.

And then, of course, the producer, Barbara De Fina, is brilliant. She produced "Goodfellas," "Casino," "Hugo," a couple of years ago with Martin Scorcese, "The Color of Money," I mean, the credits she has are just amazing.

PCC:
So will it be a drama with music? Or an actual musical?

JAMES:
Well, the movie itself is going to be a drama. It's going to have music in it. It's funny you put it that way, because that's the way Barbara always puts it. It's not going to be one of these, what they call "jukebox musicals." But now the Broadway show will be a musical. The mob guys are going to dance around [laughs]. But the movie is going to be pretty intense.

PCC:
So is the film in pre-production now?

JAMES:
Yeah. They're casting right now.

PCC:
Have you thought about your dream casting -- who you would most like to see playing Tommy James on screen?

JAMES:
That's one subject I've really got to leave up to the grown-ups, because there are so many hip, young actors that are so good. And we're working also with a casting director at CAA and they know all the young talent, all the young actors.

Now, the two characters that have to be right, of course, are Morris Levy and me. They've got to be right. I've got a lot of ideas about who should play Morris Levy. I'm terrible about who should play me. I have no idea. They're going to get somebody right. But Morris Levy is such a central character to all of this. He really is the star of the show, because everybody sort of reacts to Morris.

PCC:
It's a juicy part, for sure.

JAMES:
It really is. So that's got to be right. I have some ideas about who I'd like to see, but the thing of it is, every time I talk to Barbara about it, what you have to be aware of is, not just who looks like him and who plays him right, but you have to worry about box office and marquee value and all that stuff. You've got to think of those things. So I don't know. I'm almost like a spectator.

PCC:
But will you be hands-on in some ways?

JAMES:
Oh, sure. I'm going to be co-producer. But the point is that one of the things that you really have to be careful of is, in the shots, in the scenes in the studio. We're going to have like "Crimson and Clover," the actual putting together of the record, what really happened. But you've got to be very careful of the equipment, for example. You can't use a piece of equipment that is from the 80s, when you're talking about the 60s. It's got to be the actual equipment that we made the record on, because there are so many people out there who are just sitting there, almost waiting for you to make a mistake [laughs]. As soon as you screw up, they pounce on it. "Hey, that wasn't invented until '77!" [Laughs] So you've got to be very careful to be authentic.

PCC:
Might you do a cameo in the film?

JAMES:
Yeah, I think I want to be a corpse. The lines are easy and you don't have to worry about missing your mark. I don't know. I'll be a bartender.

PCC:
Will you be doing some more new music for it?

JAMES:
Yeah, well, the song "Distant Thunder," that's on the album, it was the last song I actually played for Morris Levy. And the scene is when I go up to the office. I don't know what possessed me to talk to Morris Levy. This is like just before he was arrested, in '86. And I took "Distant Thunder" up there and I played it for him. And he had that deep, growly voice and he said, "That's a f-ckin' hit!" [Laughs]

So anyway, I'm glad we didn't end up doing a deal, because they had him on film. The FBI was after him. I'm giving you a lot of inside shit here. In real life, Morris always had a sign behind him that said, "Oh, Lord, give me a bastard with talent," this needlepoint sign, framed. And the Feds had put, in the "o" of Lord, a camera and a microphone. And that's how they got him. So my meeting with him was probably on tape or film.

But anyway, I played him "Distant Thunder" at that meeting and we were going to do something with it, and it never got released, because he got arrested. So I did it on this album. That's going to be in the movie.

PCC:
There are some funny incidents, but also many very harrowing ones described in the book. Did it seem like a great adventure, being in that whole Roulette Records scene? Was it surreal, like being in an old gangster movie? Or did it sometimes feel like a nightmare you couldn't escape from?

JAMES:
If I had been older, I probably would have been a lot more scared. Basically the absurdity of it just became normal, because we weren't getting the money we were supposed to get. You know, crime doesn't pay. But the irony is that, if I had gone with a Columbia or one of the big, corporate labels, I can tell you right now, we would never have had the kind of success we had at Roulette.

And the reason is, especially with our first record, "Hanky Panky," we would have been instantly turned over to an in-house A&R guy. And that's the last time anybody would have heard from us. Plus there was so much competition at these other labels. At Roulette, they actually needed us. They hadn't had a hit in three years. And so we got everything we wanted. And we were the biggest act on the label.

PCC:
You talked in the book about having the opportunity, at Roulette, to learn every facet of the business.

JAMES:
They left me alone in the studio and allowed me to put a really good production team together. I mean, I had guys from other record companies. We all started writing. I had a chance to really learn the record business at Roulette. I was involved in every aspect of our recording -- designing album covers, the distributors I got to know, I got to know all the radio guys, the program directors at radio stations. I got to know my craft. That would never have happened at one of the corporate labels.

PCC:
Even as he was ripping you off, you seemed to view Morris as something of a mentor or father figure.

JAMES:
Absolutely. It was a very strange relationship, because we weren't getting paid. And I knew it was, frankly, dangerous to demand your money. However, we were making money from a lot of different sources, from BMI, from touring. So it wasn't like we were broke. But yeah, I got ripped off for about 30 mil or more. But over the years, I've made most of it back. We did 110 million records at Roulette. We had 23 gold singles, nine gold and platinum albums. And from a creative standpoint, I had absolutely no problems. It would have never happened like that at a corporate label. I can tell you that right now.

PCC:
And back to the beginning, "Hanky Panky," the songwriters, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry actually recorded it themselves first?

JAMES:
Yeah, as The Raindrops. That's right. And there was another group. Shit, I can't think of the name, but there was another group that did it [The Summits].

PCC:
It became a local smash for you, but then originally kind of disappeared without going national. At that point did you wonder if things were ever going to break for you?

JAMES:
Oh,sure. It was a miracle what happened. It really was. I just thank the good Lord for the miracle that started my career and then for doing it for this long. Never in a million years did I think that 53 years later, we would still be doing "Hanky Panky" on the road for more money than we were making then. It's just incredible.

The other thing is, when we did "Hanky Panky" back in my hometown, Niles, Michigan, I was in high school. And graduated from high school in '65. The record kind of came and went. And it did okay locally, but we didn't have any distribution. So the record just kind of died. And then in '65, I took my band on the road and we played clubs throughout the Midwest. And in early '66, I'm playing this dumpy little club in Janesville, Wisconsin and right in the middle of my two weeks, the guy goes belly-up [laughs]. The IRS got him for not paying his income tax. They shut the place down. And we went back home, feeling like real losers.

As soon as I got home, I got the call from Pittsburgh that changed my life. If we hadn't gone home right then, that would never have happened. You and I wouldn't be talking. That's what a miracle it was that, at that exact moment, we got sent home from the road. If I hadn't been home to get that call, I would have never known. "Hanky Panky" would have come and gone in Pittsburgh. They called me up and told me, "Hanky Panky" was sitting up at number one in Pittsburgh. That was a major market, so that was a big deal. A week later, I'm in New York, selling the master.

We got a "yes" from everybody -- Columbia, RCA, Epic, all the places we went, Laurie Records, Kama Sutra. And the last place we took it to was Roulette. I went to bed that night feeling great, thinking we were probably going to be with Columbia or RCA or one of the majors, Atlantic.

And nine o'clock the next morning, the phone starts ringing and it's all record companies that had said "yes" the day before, saying "Look, we gotta pass." I said, "What do you mean, 'We gotta pass?' I thought we had a deal." And then Jerry Wexler at Atlantic told me the truth, that Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records, had called up all the other labels and scared them to death, threatened them. And we were apparently going to be on Roulette Records. That was the first offer I couldn't refuse.

PCC:
Then you finally get the national hit with the Roulette release of "Hanky Panky" Did you fear becoming a one-hit wonder?

JAMES:
Well, at Roulette, the thing of it is, they really believed in us. Of course, they're asking {in that deep, growly voice], "What's next?" I had no f-cking idea, because I didn't know how the first one happened. So we just basically were shooting from the hip. The second record was "Say I Am," which was another record taken from the bin in Pittsburgh, where "Hanky Panky" came from, a cover of The Fireballs' record, "Say I Am." And that became our second gold record.

And then "It's Only Love," friends from Kama Sutra, they brought me that. That became our third hit record. And they brought me "I Think We're Alone Now" [written by Ritchie Cordell] And you know the story, it was just one after another. We were so blessed, really. And whenever I needed people around me, suddenly they were there.

PCC:
And "Mirage" came out of a happy accident in the studio?

JAMES:
Yeah. It was "I Think We're Alone Now" backwards, the chords were.

PCC:
There's an edge to a lot of your big records, yet you were falsely lumped into bubblegum category at one point? Was that annoying?

JAMES:
Well, you know something? There wasn't such a thing as bubblegum, when we were doing that. That was later. That was Kasenetz and Katz who took these groups, these pre-fab groups, 1910 Fruitgum Company and stuff like that. And they would take "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Mony Mony" and just kind of make cartoons out of them. And that became known as bubblegum. So those records were heaped in. But of course, then we went into "Crimson and Clover" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion" and that all changed.

PCC:
You were just a teen when the British Invasion began. It must have been a thrill to end up playing on the same bill with some of those bands.

JAMES:
Oh, it sure was. My first concert in an arena was with Herman's Hermits and The Animals. We've been friends ever since. [Laughs]

PCC:
You mention in the book that the Hermits were good guys to hang with and The Animals lived up to their name.

JAMES:
Yeah, that's true. The Animals were really obnoxious. They were animals!

PCC:
It must have been cool to later hear The Dave Clark Five covering "Draggin' The Line."

JAMES:
Oh, yeah, sure.

PCC:
And you played some dates with The Monkees at the height of that phenomenon?

JAMES:
Oh, yeah, I did.

PCC:
Was the crowd receptive? Were they chanting for Davy? How did that work out for you?

JAMES:
Well, that was an insane crowd. The first time I worked with The Monkees was at the peak of their fame, at the Atlanta Braves' ballpark. I described in the book, the screaming and the intensity was so loud that it made you nauseous. It hit you in the stomach, all the noise. And all focused at the stage. And it was really amazing, just amazing. The Monkees were the biggest group in the world at the time, bigger than The Beatles.

PCC:
Who were some of the other artists you who made a big impression on you?

JAMES:
Well, it's hard to say, because everybody who was having hits back then was basically stealing from everybody else [laughs]. It was a free-for-all. What was great about making it in the 60s was that everybody was on the same page -- TV, radio, the fan magazines. Everybody was on same page and everybody was listening to the same records.

AM radio was so good back then, because you could cover the whole country with 12 stations, right across the country -- WABC in New York, WLS in Chicago, KFRC in San Francisco, KHJ and KRLA in Los Angeles. WLS, on a clear night, you could hear it in 38 states. So it was insane. And everybody was playing the same 20 records. So if you made it back then, you really made it.

The science of radio is interesting. With FM radio, you really only get horizon to horizon. The internet has changed all that. It's back to singles now. But of course, the delivery system is so different now. And in some ways it's great; in some ways it keeps a lot of groups from making it. But we were so lucky. I was lucky to make it right when I did and to have that many hits and to have the success we did, because it has lasted a lifetime.

PCC:
You managed to maneuver through the changing musical landscape, where 45s ruled and then it became more about albums, and innocent pop-rock gave way to more psychedelic sounds.

JAMES:
That's right. Thankfully, we had the public's attention long enough to morph into different phases of our career. You can't do that today.

PCC:
Was that thought out on your part?

JAMES:
Not really. It was another just happy accident. Although, "Crimson and Clover," for an example, was such an important record for us, because it gave us the second half of our career. "Crimson and Clover" opened the door that allowed us to go from selling basically Top 40 singles on AM radio to selling albums. And very few groups were allowed to do that. "Crimson and Clover" was sort of the middle ground point between single and albums.

As a matter of fact, we left on a presidential campaign in '68. Hubert Humphrey, the Vice-President was running for President and asked us if we would join him on the campaign. First time rock 'n' roll and politics ever joined up. And we went out on the road with him. He asked me to be President's Advisor on Youth Affairs. He was going to make it a sub-cabinet position. And it just blew my mind. He ended up writing the liner notes to the "Crimson and Clover" album, Hubert Humphrey.

The point is, when we went out on the road with Hubert Humphrey in August of '68, the biggest acts on the radio were The Rascals, The Association, us, The Buckinghams, Gary Puckett. When we got back, 90 days later, it was all albums. It was Blood Sweat & Tears; it was Crosby, Stills & Nash; it was Led Zeppelin; Neil Young; Joe Cocker. All album acts. In 90 days, the record business went from singles to albums. And it was huge. I mean, it was gigantic, the change. It was earth-shaking.

And we were so, so lucky that we just happened to be working on a little record called "Crimson and Clover" at that moment, because with the release of "Crimson and Clover," it allowed us to move into progressive album rock. We started selling albums. Roulette had never sold albums before. Suddenly, we're selling albums. And "Crimson and Clover" did that.

PCC:
And did that song's unique sound come from extensive experimentation?

JAMES:
Yes. And we began producing ourselves, writing all of our own stuff. Everything changed. The technology in the studios changed. We went from four-track to 24-track in eight months. Things were moving so fast. And then suddenly the synthesizers happened. And within a very short period of time, all the technology from the space program was ending up in the studios -- television studios and recording studios. The late 60s were just insane. And every week, new stuff was happening. Sort of like now, where what you did last week is suddenly obsolete. So that's what was happening then.

PCC:
And you turned down a chance to play Woodstock?

JAMES:
Yes, that's right. It's funny, a couple years ago, we did Woodstock. We did Bethel Park Arena up there. And I said, "Geez, traffic was f-ckin' murder!" [Laughs] "We finally got here."

PCC:
And "Mony Mony," that started out as a rhythm track?

JAMES:
Yeah, "Mony Mony" was one of those happy accidents, too, where we started making a track that was sort of a throwback, a dance track. And we just kept writing, writing and writing to it. And before we knew it, we had this record that sounded like an old Mitch Ryder record or an old Gary "U.S." Bonds record. And we actually had a hell of a time talking Roulette into releasing it. They thought, "Nah, that's old school." [Laughs]

PCC:
And the song's title came from an unlikely inspiration.

JAMES:
Yeah, that's right. I've been so blessed over the years. I really have. There have been so many happy accidents in my life that I'm very grateful for.

PCC:
And "Crystal Blue Persuasion," that title has some biblical connection?

JAMES:
Well, the imagery from the song is taken from the Book of Revelation. A kid came to me with a poem called "Crystal Persuasion." We were doing a college down in Atlanta. A kid came to me -- we were always looking for interesting word combinations for titles -- and so he brought me this poem called "Crystal Persuasion," which was about the Book of Revelation. And I said, "That's beautiful." So we ended up writing a song. The words in the song were nothing like the poem, but I loved the title. And we inserted the word "blue" and it became "Crystal Blue Persuasion."

It was one of the hardest records I ever made, because when we made "Crystal Blue Persuasion," we had had a full set of drums, we had guitars -- we just overproduced it. And one by one, we started pulling out the instruments until nothing was left but an acoustic guitar, a little flamenco line, and an organ and a guitar... and bongos. We took out the drums completely and had to let it breathe. We spent the first two weeks producing the record and the last two weeks un-producing it. So we had to let it breathe.

PCC:
Having been politically involved, working with the Humphrey campaign, were you able to get any political messages into song lyrics during that era?

JAMES:
Sure, sure, we did. Imagery was very important in the 60s. We did it with "Crystal Blue." I became a Christian during that period of time, by the way. And you can hear it in the songs we wrote -- "Ball of Fire" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion," "Sweet Cherry Wine."

Roulette Records allowed me a lot of freedom, tremendous freedom, to write and produce and make the kind of records I wanted to make, with no interference. It was really quite remarkable.

PCC:
Do you think that has something to do with why your songs sound as fresh today as they did when you first recorded them?

JAMES:
Well, I don't know. I'm very thankful for that. I guess so, although I don't know that I would have put it quite like that. But I'm very thankful that the songs are still enjoyed by people... We've had over 300 cover versions done of our songs by various artists, everyone from Prince to the Boston Pops. And we've had 63 movies that our songs have been in. This year we've had 13 films, various films about different topics. And it's just amazing how the music catalog keeps going.

PCC:
With all those covers, which ones made the strongest impression on you or pleasantly surprised you?

JAMES:
Well, Dolly Parton and Prince both did "Crimson and Clover," and you can't get much more different than that. R.E.M. did a great job on "Draggin' The Line" in the Austin Powers movie. Oh, God, we started having covers back in the 70s, really. And, of course, Joan Jett, Tiffany and Billy Idol did great jobs with their records. "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Mony Mony" went up the charts like they were holding hands.

PCC:
Surviving the substance abuse years, what gave you the strength to come out of that alive and well, when so many others did not?

JAMES:
I think it was the good Lord, plain and simple. I mean that. I think that I have just been incredibly blessed over the years, to have really wonderful people, at every level. My manager today, Carol Ross, is fantastic, best manager I ever had. We have our own company. I have my own label. I have Ed Osborne, who not only does our licensing, but he's my co-producer, we have a new show on Sirius XM.

PCC:
That must be fun to do.

JAMES:
Every week. Every Sunday from 5 to 8, Eastern time. It's called "Gettin' Together." And it is just great to have the weekly show. And tens of millions of people, from coast to coast in America and coast to coast in Canada.

PCC:
And you can showcase the music you love?

JAMES:
Yes. And they demand that I play my own music, too. I said, "Can't I go to jail for that?" [Laughs] "Nah, play it." They have just given me tremendous freedom up there.

PCC:
You've gone through a lot of Shondells over the years...

JAMES:
Yeah, I've got bodies laying all over the place [laughs].

PCC:
But you did remain friends with the original guys?

JAMES:
Yes, sure.

PCC:
Looking back, any regrets, over the course of the career?

JAMES:
Plenty of them. But it just seemed like, despite my screw-ups, things worked. What can you say? [Laughs] Wrong record company, wrong song -- "Hanky Panky," wrong everything. Where did I go right? [Laughs]

PCC:
With all you've accomplished, what's your greatest source of pride?

JAMES:
Well, I think it's several things... I just think it's the relationship with the fans, number one, because that's where it all comes from. I also think it's my relationship with the good Lord. And I think that I would have to say the fact that we've been carrying on this long and still have new ground to cover, the longevity, I guess.

PCC:
Besides the movie, what else is coming up for you?

JAMES:
We're on the road, of course, you know. I look out at our concert crowd now and I literally see three generations of people. It's just amazing. We'll see what happens with the movie. It's going to be exciting. I'd like to do some screenplay writing myself. I've got some plans. I'm working on a Broadway show. I don't know if it's Broadway, but I'm working on a musical.

PCC:
Unrelated to...

JAMES:
Yes, unrelated to what's going on now. So we're going to continue to make music and records. Of course, they're not records anymore. We're going to continue to offer some streaming, how's that? [Laughs] It's so great now with digital technology, because you can touch people all over the world at the same time.

PCC:
Well, it's an amazing career, an impressive body of work you've built.

JAMES:
I am so grateful, believe me. Every day I think of how amazing it all is and how lucky I am.

For more info, including the upcoming tour dates, visit www.tommyjames.com.