Mary Weiss, who has died aged 75, was the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, who created a string of unique and influential hits in the mid-1960s including Remember (Walking in the Sand), I Can Never Go Home Anymore and, above all, their US chart-topper Leader of the Pack, the acme of tragic teenage angst. Mary’s voice brought a streetwise yet vulnerable timbre to their sound, which was exploited to full effect by their inspired songwriter and producer George “Shadow” Morton.
Remember (Walking in the Sand), from 1964, was their first collaboration with Morton. Even though it was supposedly the first song he ever wrote, his skills were evident not just in the song’s doomed-romance lyrics but also in its sepulchral piano, panoramic vocal harmonies and twittering seagull sound effects. Weiss later commented that Morton “used to be very difficult to get into a room at a scheduled time, but a brilliant man”. When Aerosmith released their version of the song in 1980, Weiss contributed uncredited backing vocals.
Remember reached No 5 in the US (where the chart was now being colonised by the Beatles and other British invaders), and 14 in the UK. The group followed it up with their biggest hit and only US No 1, Leader of the Pack. Co-written by Morton, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, its unforgettable opening line – “Is she really going out with him?” – launched a heartstring-tearing mini-opera which told the story of Betty’s tragic love affair with Jimmy, the leader of a motorcycle gang.
The sound of a revving motorbike engine and squealing tyres added to its aura of romantic intensity. It also reached 11 in the UK, despite being banned by several radio stations. The song would be frequently covered by other artists, and featured in Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas.
Give Him a Great Big Kiss gave them another Top 20 hit in 1964, and the Shangri-Las were becoming a major attraction. They shared a bill with the Beatles and toured with the Rolling Stones, visited the UK (where they joined in a food fight at Dusty Springfield’s apartment), and were hired by James Brown for a major show in Texas, at which Brown was staggered to discover that the group were not black, as he had assumed.
It was also there that Weiss was involved in an altercation with a police officer, who pulled a gun on her when she entered the washroom reserved for “coloured women”.
Life on the road was not easy, often playing cattle-call shows on gruelling package tours such as Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. That was especially true for female acts, though as street-smart New Yorkers, the Shangri-Las were perhaps better prepared than some of their contemporaries. Greenwich said of them: “They were kind of crude, with their gestures and language and chewing gum and the stockings ripped up their leg.” After an intruder tried to break into her hotel room, Weiss bought herself a Derringer pistol for protection, but handed it over to the authorities after a warning from the FBI.
However, the group’s success was not destined to last. Out in the Streets and Right Now and Not Later did not break into the Top 50, though they did reach No 6 with I Can Never Go Home Anymore (1965). This was another of Morton’s overripe emotional bombshells, this time casting Weiss as a heartbroken teen describing how her mother had forbidden her to see the boy she loved. After she left home, her mother was so lonely that “angels picked her for a friend”.
But perhaps Morton overdid the anguish in Past, Present and Future (1966), in which, over a ghostly rendition of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata, Weiss narrated a chilling soliloquy about the death of love and, possibly, sexual abuse (though Weiss denied the latter interpretation). It was an extraordinary piece of work, but only reached No 59. Marianne Faithfull covered the song on her 2011 album Horses and High Heels.
Weiss was born in the Cambria Heights district of Queens, New York, the youngest of three children. Her father, a telephone company worker, died when she was six weeks old, leaving her cash-strapped mother, Elizabeth, to raise Mary, her sister, Elizabeth (known as Betty), and brother, George. She described her childhood as “fairly rotten”. She attended Catholic school and then Andrew Jackson high school.
At Jackson high, Mary, then 15, and Betty, two years older, joined with the 16-year-old twins Mary Ann and Marge (Marguerite) Ganser to form a singing group (an all-Jewish one) and they began performing at nightclubs and talent shows. They took their name from a Long Island restaurant called Shangri-La. They released their first single, Simon Says, on the Smash label in 1963, then moved to the Spokane label for Wishing Well.
Betty Weiss sang lead on both of these, but it was not until they had been picked up by the Red Bird label (owned by the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and their partner George Goldner) that they hit the charts with Remember (Walking in the Sand).
The Shangri-Las split in 1968, not least because of legal disputes arising from unfavourable contracts they had signed at the start of their career. “When we started, it was all about music,” Weiss commented. “By the time it ended, it was all about litigation.” She also said that “my mother kind of signed my life away when I was 14”.
She moved to San Francisco, but thanks to legal issues found that “it was hard to get into the music business and it was even harder to get out. I couldn’t go near another record company for 10 years.” She subsequently returned to New York.
In 1977 the Shangri-Las reformed and made some recordings for Sire Records, but they felt the material was not strong enough to release. In 1989 the group reunited for a final show at the Meadowlands arena in New Jersey. Weiss created a new career for herself by working for an architectural company, and became involved with interior design and building projects. She was in downtown Manhattan in 2001 when hijacked aircraft destroyed the World Trade Center.
In 2007, she recorded her solitary solo album, Dangerous Games, on Norton Records, where she was backed by the Memphis-based band Reigning Sound. “Dangerous Game is her comeback and it’s a darn good one,” commented AllMusic.
She was married three times, the first two marriages ending in divorce, and is survived by her third husband, Ed Ryan, and her sister, Betty.
• Mary Weiss, singer and interior designer, born 28 December 1948; died 19 January 2024
