Artist: Tommy James & the Shondells
Format: 7" 45 RPM
Title: "I Think We're Alone Now" & "Gone, Gone, Gone"
Year: 1967
Label: Roulette
Talk about a song that doesn’t out stay its welcome. Tommy James and the Shondells’ “I Think We’re Alone Now” fades out at the two minute mark. (The b-side, “Gone, Gone, Gone,” does too.) It has the feeling of a song that wove a magical hook but could only stretch it so far. Even so, I can’t help but love it as pop schlock in its pure, uncut form. In that sense, at least, it’s near perfect. Not surprisingly bands, particularly punk bands who seems to take reducing the song’s short run time as a challenge, have mined the song’s depths. (Screeching Weasel got the song down to a blistering 60 seconds and completely divested it of any pop sentimentality.) Tiffany’s 1987 take is the most well-known, hitting #1 twenty years after the song’s initial release. Strangely enough, Billy Idols’ cover of Tommy James and the Shondell’s “Mony Mony” was #2 (and later #1 as well) at the same time.
I’ve long appreciated pop’s deep scratching of musical itches. Well, at least since the late nineties. It was then that my friend Scott re-introduced me to Depeche Mode. They were just barely cool and interesting enough to start eroding my metalhead ego and open my mind. But ultimately, it was my mom’s influence that prepped me to fall hard for pop hooks. Her record collection is chock-full of pure pop acts like Tommy James and the Shondells, Herman’s Hermits, and The Turtles. Her favorite band was Sonny and Cher. I remember her blasting, on repeat, All-4-One’s “I Swear” on her bedroom’s boombox in 1994. She found value, maybe solace, in the superficial.
I don’t know that she saw depth though, but I tend to. On its face, there seems to be nothing but chorus and melody in “I Think We’re Alone Now,” and little to dig into lyrically. It feels abbreviated in almost every way. So why does it work? There’s a surprisingly clever unity between narrative and form in the song: a young couple running into the night, escaping the adult world that sees them as too young to be publicly in love. In this context, the rush of the song seems to fit. It’s as if we’re part of the paternal gaze, and just as they find their way out we’re shut out too. While a bit corny, the bass line, mimicking footsteps and heartbeats, also matches the narrative. This muted, driving eighth-note bass line -- the song’s defining feature -- was spur-of-the-moment invention by Tommy James as he and the song’s producers transformed a slower ballad into a light pop song. In his view, the bass line, along with the fourth-note piano punctuation and nasally vocals, invented bubblegum pop.
Tommy was only 20 when “I Think We’re Alone Now” was #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. My mom was 16. It’s weird to think of Tommy James and the Shondells being a boy band, but they were. They started in Niles, MI when Tommy was still in high school. He toured Michigan and the midwest, so it’s no surprise how many of his records appear in my mom’s collections. She was the bullseye of the target market.
"She found value, maybe solace, in the superficial."
When my mom was my age in 1987, Tiffany’s version of "I Think We're Alone Now" was everywhere. The following summer, my neighbors and I formed a "band." We didn't play music though; we acted it out, using tennis rackets as guitars, a keyboard cobbled together with Construx, and a toy mic. I was the drummer, and I set up shop in a large, cushioned armchair. My drum sticks were blocks, and my drums were a random assortment of buckets balanced on the chair's edges. The cymbals were frisbees. We'd lip sync and mime along to a mix tape of songs like Genesis' "Invisible Touch," The Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian," and our big closer George Harrison's "I Got My Mind Set On You."
I'm pretty sure we also played Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now."
My mom, along with the other band members' moms, put together a concert for us. It was one of those summer days that only happen when you're a kid. Summer then was a time without time when hours and days were left behind. Hot pavement gave way to crickets and back again. Life was a slowly widening expanse when it was free of school bells. Somewhere in there in 1988 this concert happened. The moms made us shirts. They were bright red with chest pockets. One mom, Mrs. D., decorated them with puffy paint and personalized them for each band member and his instrument. Everyone gathered for the big show in my neighbor's basement. We queued up the songs on a gray boom box (you know the one). We'd practiced for days ahead of time, and took it very seriously. Not long into the set the youngest kid on the block, Danny, invaded my drum set. I was so mad that he'd ruined my perfect show and taken my spotlight. It's so hard to imagine now taking anything so seriously. Still, I was proud and felt as if I’d really accomplished something. Thinking back it’s a good metaphor for my creative life: mostly half-assed simulation.
For some reason, much of my memory of that day is filtered through my mom's experience. She loved it and talked about it often. At the time, I can remember her making me feel special, as if I was actually talented, while also enjoying, without mockery or irony, how absurd and funny it was. It took me a long time to find that perspective, but I think I have.
"Summer then was a time without time when hours and days were left behind."
And yet, every similarity with her scares me. I wonder if my mind is like hers, and is doomed at 58. Are there only twenty two years left? This dread is the engine of this project, for better or worse.
She thought this way too, fearing Alzheimer’s all her life. I’m not sure why; I think there might’ve been a family member with it, but my family is so fractured it's hard to know for sure. Alzheimer's is on her death certificate, but I got the sense there wasn't much effort put into the diagnosis which is probably how dementia goes for many people with a public guardian. .
It’s just as likely that my mom's COPD starved her brain of oxygen, a kind of self-inflicted Alzheimer’s from decades of chain smoking and neglect. My sister says a doctor told my mom this was gonna happen if she didn't keep up with her meds. My mom, however, was the self-sabotaging type. When she quit smoking, she ate so many starlight mints that she destroyed her teeth. Our dentist said he’d never seen anything like it.
One of the last times I talked to her she was wheezing terribly. I asked her if she'd been taking her inhaler. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said in that way that I knew meant, "No, no, no."
Ever-nostalgic and sentimental, my mom saved my band shirt from the summer of '88. She stuffed it in the hallway closet outside my bedroom along with other odds and ends from me and my sister’s lives. Nearly thirty years later, I found the shirt -- almost good as new having only been worn once -- while digging in my grandma’s garage. I stumbled on it while searching for the records for this project.
The shirt's in my underwear drawer now.