The 1950s are not loaded with narrative songs. At least most of the ones I’ve heard were more moments in time, usually involving some teenager seeking love, losing at love, or learning some weird named dance. It was also a decade where the parents and the entertainment code got stricter. Teen movies usually had some rebel punk either getting his horrible end or fighting giant irradiated animals and blobs. The 1950s are kind of weird.
The Shangri-Las were a quartet of two groups of sisters, Mary & Betty Weiss and Marge & Mary Ann Ganser. One of their two most well-known hits, “Remember (Walking In The Sand)”, was about a girl whose boyfriend was suddenly leaving and she couldn’t figure out why. Their most famous song, and one that was even covered by Twisted Sister of all groups, was “The Leader Of The Pack”, the title single from the 1965 album.
In this tale, Betty takes the lead and is even namedropped in the story as her friends try to learn whether or not she was dating a local bad boy, a motorcycle rider that lead…supposedly a biker gang, but isn’t stating that from what we hear in the song simply making the same mistake as her parents?
We really don’t know if the “pack” was actually a gang or just a biker club. There’s a difference. My late uncle wasn’t part of the Hell’s Angels. He was part of a biker club. Her parents stereotype him from being from “the wrong side of town”, as if everybody in the poorer section were criminals. It seems odd that a gang leader would even have a vulnerable side, nevermind expose it so easily to some goody two shoes girl from the “rich” side of town (probably just comfortably well off in a white picket fence community, but now that’s ME stereotyping).
Instead of actually trying to see what she sees, maybe invite him over to dinner or something, they immediately shut him out. We, like Betty, are left to wonder whether or not he actually killed himself, was so distraught he wasn’t paying attention, or was just a victim of circumstances. Considering she’s there going “look out, look out”, we can assume she actually witnessed the event, unless she’s somehow just “seeing” what might have happened in flashback. I’d like to think that if he was suicidal he wouldn’t do it in front of her, so I’m wagering on the second part, that he tried to put on a brave face but couldn’t make it out the parking lot or wherever to hide it. Either way, it’s very sad.
You know, now I’m curious how the Twisted Sister take on this went. This comes from the 1985 album Come Out To Play.
So he told the story from the leader’s perspective, which makes sense. He also could have recited events third person style. We’ve seen that in previous installments of this series. Then he changes the ending. It’s the girl that dies, this time in a car accident. I guess it makes it easier to talk to his friends when he isn’t dead, but it doesn’t have the same…not “level”, more “type” of sadness. When the LOTP dies in the original, it hits harder because her parents really misunderstood him, and now there’s no chance to fix that. Here, the girl dies and I’m waiting to hear how the parents blame him somehow. It’s still tragic but the fallout from his death feels slightly more tragic because he didn’t deserve any of what he got, while the girl just didn’t deserve to die. I’m not sure I’m explaining this right, but hopefully you follow along. Either way, it’s a sad ending.
So I think the version from the girl’s side works better. However, if they did one of those “answer/response songs” where either the boy or a narrator told us the story properly from his perspective, including what was going through his head when he wiped out, that might have been interesting. I didn’t see any evidence of it in my research, but if you ever hear of one let me know. I would happily do a follow-up to this one.
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