by Tommy James
Mark Allen put me together with a group called Neon, and I used them to record my first solo album. I missed the Shondells very much. Although I liked these kids a lot it just wasn’t as much fun as with the Shondells. My first solo album netted me two more hits, “Come to Me” and “Ball and Chain.” Although they weren’t the monster hits that “Crimson” was, it was good to be back on the charts. You always have to prove yourself as a solo artist.
Bob King and I kept recording and we wrote “Draggin’ the Line,” another studio innovation where we recorded the track before the lyric. Bob played bass, I played guitar, and Russ Leslie from Neon played drums. We recorded a long loop but kept only sixteen bars. We had tape delay on all the instruments and we had to make sure it was running at the right speed. We had to keep it right “in the pocket” because we didn’t have the ability to vary the delay. It was hard to keep the kind of tempo we wanted for very long, at least at that time. We went through a sixteen-bar stretch, keeping the verse melody and a secondary melody for the bridge. We only had another ten bars of that until it went out of sync. So we stopped it right there. We’d then make copies of all these taped loops so it would stay in that hypnotic pocket. We wanted a sustaining and memorizing rhythm.
This was a real engineering feat because we basically glued the record together. The end result was this beautifully hypnotic track that I was in love with. We put it out as a B side with our version of “Church Street Soul Revival,” which I had recorded the previous year with Exile. We ended up getting more airtime with the B side than with what should have been the hit. We got so much airplay that I went back into the studio and made the B side the A side, and added horns with the same kind of tape delay. I ended up taking the whole horn section on the road. It was magic and they made the record come alive. It reminded me of the horns on the Beatles’ “Got to Get You into My Life.” The record broke out of Los Angeles, uncharacteristically, because L.A. didn’t break anything except L.A. acts. I would soon have another number one record.
Later that year I went out to Los Angeles to do American Bandstand and arrived just in time for the big earthquake while “Draggin’ the Line” was peaking. They had the earthquake in the morning and were still having aftershocks at night when I turned on my television at the Hyatt House to see “Draggin’ the Line” as a cutout on a Greatest Hits of 1971 album. My record, currently in the top five, was being peddled as a cutout. Morris had taken my record, our record, and in order to make a fast buck, because he would reap all the profits from a cutout, completely devalued a number one hit. I was furious. I went out to drown my sorrows. I was invited over to a friend’s house, a typical L.A. pad with very little furniture and lots of hash and booze. I was pretty high already, and when I sat on the floor an aftershock hit the building, making the floor rumble and quiver. I thought, This house isn’t built too well if my rear end hitting the floor could make it shake.
That’s when I met Gloria. She was living with the couple that owned the house, and we hit it off and stayed up all night. She was tall and had long, curly dark hair that reminded me of Cher. I asked her if she wanted to fly back to New York with me and she said yes. Neither of us knew we were walking into a firestorm.
Just as we got back to New York in the summer of 1971, a gang war broke out in New York. The Gambinos were taking over the New York Mob world and soldiers from every family were being shot and killed. The Genovese family was being hit hard. As much as I was mixed up in this world, I never felt myself a part of it. I was watching close up, but I was still the kid singing “Hanky Panky,” making records. My world was music.
One day in 1971, I walked into Roulette to see Morris. Karin told me Morris wasn’t there. “Well, when is he going to be back?” “He won’t be back for a while,” she said. “Well, then I’ll see him tomorrow.” “He won’t be back tomorrow, Tommy.” “Is he up at the farm?” “No,” she said, “I think he’s left the country.” “What!” “Do you see all the craziness that’s going on? He and Nate had to leave… quick.” “Well, when is he coming back?” “I don’t know,” she said. “Joel Kulsky’s running things for the time being.”
The cover story was that Morris and Nate had left for Spain. There was a war going on and Morris was on the wrong side. I had never heard of Morris ever running away from anything. What was I going to do? No matter how crazy things were in my private life, in my emotional, financial, and professional life, Morris was the glue that held it all together. What was I supposed to do with Joel Kulsky? The point was, he’d vanished and no one could give me a straight answer. No one knew for sure, or at least no one was saying. Were there people after Morris who wanted him dead? It was only a few weeks before that Nate had warned me again, “Don’t walk outside with me. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
About three days later, I got a call from my lawyer, Gerry Margolis, who was a partner in Harold Orenstein’s firm. Harold was one of the biggest entertainment lawyers in the country. When I arrived at Gerry’s office, I was ushered into Harold’s office, though I never really had any dealings with Harold personally. Harold said, “Tommy, we, ah, think you may be in trouble.” I thought they were talking about my career, some lawsuit, a tax issue. I was confused. “What do you mean?” “Well,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “You know about the trouble going on in the city? With the gang violence?” “I’ve been following it on TV,” I said. “What does that have to do with me?” “You know Morris, ah, left town, don’t you?” “Yes,” I said, starting to get nervous for the first time. He paused and looked right at me. “Well, Tommy, it’s like this. We think some people are after Morris and, ah, well, frankly, if they can’t get Morris, they’re going to go after what’s making Morris his money… and that’s you.”
I felt hot all of a sudden, like I was coming down with a fever. “We think you could be in real danger.” Harold lowered his voice as if he was telling me a secret. “These guys aren’t playing around.” I didn’t say anything. What could I say? Then he kind of lightened up. “Good idea to get out of town for a little while until this thing blows over.” “Where?” I said. “What are you talking about?” It was like they were saying, “Tom, you look a little tired. You need a vacation.”
“We represent Pete Drake, you know.” I did know. Pete was the greatest pedal-steel guitar player on the planet. He was the pedal steel on George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and he had done work with Ringo as well. “Pete would love to work with you. We’ve done all the groundwork. He’s in Nashville. He’s expecting you.”
I was just about ready to lose my mind. “Do you mean I should just pick up and go to Nashville?”
“Tonight,” said Harold, “if you can manage.”
I couldn’t believe it. I had just released “Draggin’ the Line” and it was climbing up the charts. I was working a hit record and had to leave town… on the lam… like some hoodlum on the run? This was a bad dream. When I left Harold’s office I kept looking over my shoulder as if someone might want to gun me down. I was too scared to be angry and too paranoid to think about anything except getting out. I went home, told Gloria to pack, and booked a flight to Nashville. I was gone by morning.
But it was true, Pete Drake wanted to work with me. I also took my writing partner, Bob King, and that afternoon Pete’s brother Jack, who was dying of emphysema at the time, met us at the airport with a fleet of Cadillacs and took us down to Music City Row. The record companies down there were all in little row houses, and his record company was called Stop. It had a stop sign out front. We stayed at the Holiday Inn on Music City Row, which was actually a famous resting stop. I kept trying to follow the news back in New York. Although the day-to-day business of New York didn’t trickle down into Nashville, one news item did. It wasn’t too long after I left that Joe Columbo, head of the Columbo crime family, was shot twice in the head at Columbus Circle during an Italian antidefamation rally. The movie The Godfather was soon to be released, and Joe Columbo’s antidiscri
mination league was making sure that the word mafia would not be used in the picture.
Pete put us together with Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana, Elvis’s old guitar player and drummer. Scotty Moore had a studio called Music City Recorders, where he was the engineer. He was excellent and was as good an engineer as he was a guitar player. King Robbins on piano, D.J. on drums, Bob King on bass, Dave Kirby on guitar, Buddy Spiker on fiddle, and we had ourselves a band. D.J. and Russ Leslie would play off each other, and Buddy Harmon came as a second drummer and did overdubs. They were the A team. Rhythmically, it was great, and we had the Nashville Addition from Hee Haw doing background vocals, with Pete, of course, on pedal steel. It was a kick-ass band. I had never made music with people like these before. They were the greatest pickers in the world. They had a number system instead of charts. You’d play the song, and if your key was C that meant you played in “one.” D was four, G was five. I never saw quicker studies. Everyone knew instinctively when to come in. It was like a different kind of dance. We knocked the album out in less than three months. It was called My Head, My Bed & My Red Guitar. It was my only country album.
Things had died down a little in New York, literally. There weren’t that many people left to kill. I gave the new album to Joel Kulsky, who was still in charge, and he said, “So, what are you, a fuckin’ cowboy now?” In the beginning, it sold about four albums and that’s counting the copy my mother bought. Ironically, the album got the greatest review in Rolling Stone magazine I ever received. Joel had hired the legendary Juggy Gayles to do promotion and sales picked up.
Morris was still gone. He wouldn’t come back for another six months and by now I had reached my darkest feelings about him. Morris had abandoned me and put me in the worst situation I had ever been in. It was literally a matter of life and death. I was afraid enough to call my parents, almost in tears. My mother said, “You come right home,” but the best thing for me to do was work on the new album. I kept moving in and out of extremes. There were times when I was actually worried about Morris. Then I would say, “How could that bastard leave me like this?” I felt intense rage and then a desperate kind of fatigue. I felt like I was going out of my mind. I knew that this was the end. I couldn’t take it anymore. And yet, all the while, there was one nagging question that I couldn’t get out of my brain. Who had called Harold Orenstein and told him to get me out of town?
Morris’s disappearance allowed me to do something I’d wanted to do for a long time. I told Aaron Schechter, my accountant, “This has got to end. I can’t be held hostage anymore. Do what you have to do but get me out of this nightmare.” Aaron put together a very ingenious scheme. Morris hadn’t paid me for years, and there were no royalty statements available. Howard Fisher, loyal as ever, could find nothing and acted just as confused as we all were. So instead of going to the pressing plants, which were also loyal, or scared to death of Morris, he went to the printing plant where Morris got his labels made—there was only one label-making plant—and he got an honest count going back for years, almost since I’d started with Roulette. The numbers were astonishing. Morris owed me upward of forty million dollars. It was just horrendous. Even with my miserable royalty rate he owed me that much. Because everything we created and pressed had sold.
It was around this time that I met Lynda. I went out one evening with a booking agent I often worked with named John Apostle. He and his partner, Jim Hudson, took me out on the town, going from club to club to listen to some bands they were promoting. We stopped by their office later that night and I struck up a conversation with their secretary. Lynda and I didn’t just hit it off, we fused. I could not take my eyes off her, and when I left that night, I could not forget her. It wasn’t just her looks, her personality, her style, her sense of humor, her eyes and lips… it was everything. The next day we had lunch, and the following weekend, I took her up to the farm after telling Gloria I had more work to do with Bob King. The next week, I told Gloria what had happened and she left, just like that. Lynda moved in later that month.
When Nate and Morris did finally come back they had grown Fu Manchu mustaches. For all I know they had spent the last year wearing nose glasses. Apparently, the crisis was over.
Within a week, Morris threw a big party for me at the Plaza hotel. It was the “Tommy James—Gold Record Bash.” Joel Kulsky was the MC. All the industry people were there. Morris honored me by presenting me with more than a dozen gold records that he had manufactured himself using the cheapest records with the tiniest holes papered over to simulate real gold records, like the ones hanging on his walls that I had won for him. My new band played and I got to introduce my new single, which turned out to be a rock song about the Prodigal Son. By the end of the night no one was sure whether it was a Tommy James party or a “Welcome Home, Morris” party.
It wasn’t long before Morris made it clear that everything was going back to normal. Aaron waited a couple of weeks and went up to talk to Morris. Why hadn’t Tommy been paid? Morris gave Aaron some lame excuse as usual, and Aaron turned over his hand, which he felt was four aces. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Levy. We have a real count.” And he showed Morris the purchasing orders for all the labels over the years. He even had it broken down to the promotion copies, which were a different color than the ones used for retail sales. It was indisputable and honest. Morris’s face froze into a kind of rigor mortis. “You owe Tommy between thirty and forty million dollars. It’s that simple and we want to get paid.” Morris then turned over his royal straight flush. “You ever fuckin’ use that against me, and they’ll fish you out of the motherfucking river. Now get out of my office.” That’s all he said. Aaron realized there was nothing he could do, because he knew Morris was serious. Whatever clashes Morris had with the Mob had apparently been settled and things were indeed going back to normal, if you could call it that. Aaron had a family. It was over.
I had nowhere else to turn and no one left to turn to. I had it in my mind to talk to Morris myself, and I intended to push buttons and make something happen.
That Saturday night, July 15, 1972, I was scheduled to play the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Paramount was one of Morris’s old stomping grounds, where he first had his rock and roll shows with Alan Freed in the fifties. Morris was still doing shows there in the early sixties when he had a famous screaming match with Little Richard, which ended when he pulled Richard’s wig off his head in the elevator at the back of the theater and told him if he didn’t shut up, “I’ll tear your fuckin’ face off.” Morris had made rock concerts at the Paramount legendary. It was a really special date for me.
Friday afternoon, the day before the show, I was up at Roulette. We were getting ready to release our new single, “Love Song.” I heard the record playing in Morris’s office and walked in. Tommy Eboli was sitting with Morris listening to the new track, and he came over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I love this record,” he said. “I love all your records. You make nice records.” Even compliments from these guys could tighten your stomach. That was just the kind of thing they would say before they shot you, but this was different. I could see he really meant it. It was just so strange because I’d never heard Tommy talk that way. As good as it was for my ego, it was totally unexpected. “Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot to me. You have to sell the guys in your corner before you can sell anyone else.” Then he smiled at me and said, “We’re all proud of you.”
The show, the next night, was a sold-out, rowdy crowd, and with me on the bill was one of my all-time favorite acts and good friends, the Grass Roots. Unexpectedly, my limo driver called the theater and said he’d been in an accident and wouldn’t be able to drive me home. Rob Grill, the bass player and lead singer, volunteered to drop me off at my place in Manhattan because “The Roots” were all staying up on Fifty-seventh Street at the Holiday Inn, a few blocks from my apartment. Before we left, we all got tanked backstage. It was a beautiful summer night smack in the middle of July. The
y had a new convertible and all I can remember is that it was red and fast. We all packed into the car, pretty well smashed, and cruised through Brooklyn, laughing and singing. One of their records, “Sooner or Later,” came on the radio and we all sang along. Two girls were walking down the street and Rob jumped up on the back of the front seat, and yelled, in his best Brooklyn accent, “Roxanne, if your mother knew it would kill her,” which cracked everybody up.
At almost that very moment, just a few blocks away, Tommy Eboli was coming out of his girlfriend’s apartment to get into his car, when somebody walked up to him and, at point-blank range, pumped six bullets into his head and chest.
That’s how so many of these guys die: fast, brutal, and without mercy. And just a day earlier, he had his hand on my shoulder telling me how much he liked my music. It almost doesn’t pay to become friends with them. I really missed him. They never did catch the guys who did it.
I found out what happened to Tommy when I went up to Roulette on Monday morning. Normally, Mondays were high-energy and loud, but this day I felt like I was walking into a funeral, everything was so quiet. Karin pulled me aside and told me what had happened to Tommy. Over the next few weeks a lot of the story leaked out. Tommy was apparently mixed up in some heroin deal with the Gambinos, which right off the bat seemed insane since it had been Carlo Gambino’s coming to power that had triggered the Mob wars that had killed so many of the Genovese people. Apparently the Gambinos had put up a lot of money. But somehow the feds got wind of it, arrested everybody, and confiscated both the drugs and the cash. When the Gambinos demanded that Tommy pay the money back, he either wouldn’t or couldn’t, and that signed his death warrant. There were even rumors that the Gambinos tipped off the feds themselves in order to get Tommy, which would have been the final nail in the coffin from the ’71 gang wars.