That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack: the Myth of Individuality in a Teen Coffin Song
Image 1: The Melody Haunts My Reverie (1965) by Roy Lichtenstein
Luan Lawrenson-Woods Cultural Studies BA (Hons) Wirral Metropolitan College
April 2012 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Sometimes I wonder why I spend The lonely night dreaming of a song The melody haunts my reverie And I am once again with you When our love was new And each kiss an inspiration But that was long ago Now my consolation Is in the stardust of a song
(‘Stardust’ lyrics; see Appendix 1)
None of this is silly – there’s good reason why, even on our deathbeds, we’ll know the words to ‘Leader of the Pack’.
(Douglas, 1995: 83)
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 2 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Abstract
Barthes proposes that as a metalanguage myth communicates the ideologies of the dominant power and naturalises them through the mass media and popular culture.
This dissertation examines ‘Leader of the Pack’ by the Shangri-Las as a text within the framework of Barthes’ theory of myth to propose that as a teenage romance death song, ‘Leader of the Pack’ is motivated by the concept of ‘romancism’. For the purposes of this dissertation, the neologism ‘romancism’ has been introduced to encapsulate the ideal of romantic love as “an episodic, usually short-lived, and often scorching vivid turbulence in our emotional histories ... one of life’s profoundest experiences” (Grayling, 2002: 63) as a philosophy which, it is proposed, has become embedded within narratives in Western culture. It is proposed that ‘Leader of the
Pack’ naturalises the myth that individuality is achieved through the experience of
‘romancism', and therefore may be seen as an example of “the mystification which transforms petit-bourgeois culture into a universal nature” (Barthes, 1993: 9). Jimmy had to die for Betty to achieve individuality: that’s why she fell for the leader of the pack.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 3 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Acknowledgements
This dissertation has been completed with the love and support of my family and friends, whose genuine interest and enthusiasm for my studies has helped me to keep going whenever I was ‘flagging’. A huge “thank-you” to my tutor Glen McIver for making culture studies ‘real’ and relevant to the everyday; giving me the space to explore and make mistakes; and being so patient, positive and encouraging. I’m looking forward to reading his PhD thesis!
To Vinny I owe more thanks than could possibly be expressed here; without his encouragement it is unlikely that I would have ever started out on this journey. But none of this would have been possible without Joyce, and it is to her that I owe my biggest debt of gratitude.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 4 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Contents Abstract ...... 3 Acknowledgements ...... 4 Images and tables ...... 6 Introduction: Cupid he rules us all ...... 7 Chapter 1: Is she really going out with him? ...... 13 Chapter 2: I met him at the candy store ...... 19 Chapter 3: One day my dad said “Find someone new” ...... 29 Chapter 4: I felt so helpless, what could I do? ...... 38 Conclusion: That’s why she fell for the leader of the pack ...... 49 Bibliography ...... 54 Appendices ...... 70 Appendix 1: ‘Stardust’ lyrics ...... 70 Appendix 2: ‘What is a Youth?’ lyrics ...... 71 Appendix 3: ‘Leader of the Pack’ lyrics ...... 72 Appendix 4: CD listing ...... 74 Appendix 5: DVD content ...... 75
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 5 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Images and tables
Image 1: The Melody Haunts My Reverie (1965) by Roy Lichtenstein ...... 1 Image 2: 'Remember (Walking in the Sand)' cover ...... 21 Image 3: 'Leader of the Pack' single cover ...... 22 Image 4: Shangri-Las wearing catsuit outfits ...... 25 Image 5: Pajama Party (1964) poster...... 34 Image 6: 'He's a Rebel' (1962) single cover ...... 35 Image 7: Early PR shot (not used following the success of 'Leader of the Pack') .... 45 Image 8: Leader of the Pack album cover ...... 46
Table 1: Diagrammatical representation of the myth of 'Leader of the Pack' ...... 16
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Introduction: Cupid he rules us all
Caper the caper, sing me the song Death will come soon to hush us along Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall Love is a pastime that never will pall Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall Cupid he rules us all
‘What is a Youth?’ from Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli, 1968)
To love a thing means wanting it to live.
(Confucius in Grayling, 2002: 63)
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As teenagers my best friend and I were preoccupied with romantic tragedy.
Following our introduction to the tale of woe of Juliet and her Romeo at school, we watched Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version repeatedly, fast-forwarding to the scene where the young lovers first meet to the strains of the troubadour’s song of the tragedy of adolescent love (Zeffirelli, 1968). ‘What is a Youth?’ (see Appendix 2 for lyrics), Nino Rota’s soundtrack to Zeffirelli’s film, was the theme tune to ‘Our Tune’, a
Radio One show where listeners shared their often tragic stories of lost love
(Aitkenhead, 1995, BFI, n.d.; McRobbie, 2000); this was another of our sentimental fascinations which were not limited to Shakespearean tragedy: we recited Scarlett
O’Hara from Gone With the Wind, obsessed over Charlene and Scott’s romance in
Neighbours and lulled ourselves to sleep listening to ‘sad songs’ whenever we stayed over at each other’s houses. Unsurprisingly I grew up with the impression that if one was to be in love - really, truly, properly, ‘all-consumingly’ - then things really should not run smoothly.
My parents seemed to personify the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet as they too had married against the wishes of their families. They validated their love for each other as ‘true’ because of “everything they’d been through to be together”, and nostalgically relived their courtship by listening to the songs of their youth, many of which were narrative ballads. Growing up I learnt the stories of those who had overcome adversity ‘against all odds’ in the name of love, and those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for love: death. ‘Leader of the Pack’ by the Shangri-Las (1964) was one of the most memorable of these songs, and is an example of the “teenager coffin songs – narrative ballads performed in a pseudo-operatic style of crooning”
(Denisoff, 1983: 116) that peaked in popularity in the early 60s and which ended
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 8 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
“with the death of one or both teenage lovers” (Plopper and Ness, 1993: 793). The song has been parodied since its release – ‘Leader of the Laundromat’ by The
Detergents (1965), ‘A Leader Like Barack’ by Capitol Steps (2008) – and covered by artists as diverse as Twisted Sister and Alvin and the Chipmunks (Unterberger, n.d.;
CapitolSteps, 2008; Discogs, n.d.; Amazon, n.d.), yet has become ingrained in
Western popular culture and is now established as an anthemic paean to female autonomy, independence and rebellion. In their 1993 study, Plopper and Ness find that songs about death comprised “a disproportionately popular subset of Top 40 music” (1993: 793) between 1955 and 1991, and propose that rock and roll music is
“an important influential communication source [that provides] adolescents with messages about death in our society” (1993: 793). It is interesting, however, to rephrase their proposition to consider what message a teenage coffin song communicates to young people about teenage romance in society using ‘Leader of the Pack’ as a sample text (see Appendix 3 for lyrics).
By incorporating aspects of musicology and cultural theory to examine what ‘Leader of the Pack’ signified to teen audiences at the time of its release, this dissertation aims to address the limitations often levied at the singular application of these theories: musicology’s emphasis on the technicalities of music, its disregard of social context and its previous neglect of popular music (Shuker, 2001); and the tendency of sociological analysis to focus on the words and content of the song in isolation from its performance or musical setting (Frith, 1989). Shuker suggests that a musicological approach should be accessible to those who are not familiar with music theory, and should involve “identifying those formal properties which ‘stand out’ for the listener ... [and] ... the emotional and physical response of the listeners”
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(2001: 148) to consider “how particular stylistic musical techniques serve to encourage certain responses from their listeners, and the role of genre in determining musical meaning” (Shuker, 2001: 148). This dissertation will therefore refer to the basic musical elements of ‘Leader of the Pack’ that are apparent to a listener, including lyrics and performance, in conjunction with an “extension into the more affective domains of the relationship between the text and its listeners”
(Shuker, 2001: 141): genre, context, consumption, narrative structures and representations.
The first chapter proposes that ‘Leader of the Pack’ epitomises the teen coffin songs that peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s and outlines how Barthes’ theory of myth will be used as the theoretical framework to identify the meaning that audiences appropriated from the song. The polysemic nature of such an approach is acknowledged but it is proposed that a meaning may be temporarily ‘fixed’ for analysis by identifying the cultural repertoire that is accessed by audiences.
Chapter two focuses upon the linguistic signification of ‘Leader of the Pack’ and how the music codes of genre, work idiolect, style, convention and performance idiolect create the history of the meaning and form of the song as a teen coffin song. It is proposed that the song’s themes of death and rebellion are amplified by the role of the performers, whilst its use of 1950s love song conventions firmly sets it out as a story of romance with the tragic aspects reinforced by Mary Weiss’s emotive singing style.
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The concept of the myth of ‘Leader of the Pack’ is discussed in chapter three which proposes that the notion of romantic love as a profound and often tragic experience,
‘romancism’, can be traced through the history of romance and the ideal of love which emerged during the eighteenth century, and has subsequently evolved as a belief that romantic love is defined by intensity, temporality and non-repeatability, often involving death, which permeates the narrative of love in culture. In addition, this chapter considers the representation of Jimmy as the forbidden rebel lover, and proposes that he functions as a melodramatic narrative device for the resolution of
Betty’s identity.
The final chapter examines the song’s dominant themes of death and love and argues that death is often used in narratives to ensure the non-repeatability of love, an emotion which paradoxically is driven by repetition-compulsion. This chapter goes on to contest that the pleasure of repeatability may be experienced through music and that by gaining a position within the private sphere of girls’ lives, the myth of
‘Leader of the Pack’ was consumed innocently and naturalised hegemonically. This chapter also proposes that the cultural formation of the teenage audience contributed to the construction of the myth; as adolescence is characterised by the search for a personal identity, teens incorporated individuality into the myth.
Furthermore, this chapter argues that despite Betty’s individuality and self-identity being achieved in a relation to Jimmy as the absent ‘other’, the song has created and maintained a reputation as a song of independence and rebellion. The myth is
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 11 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack therefore not hidden, and the ‘Leader of the Pack’ is the presence of individuality through ‘romancism’.
A CD (mp3 format) of the songs referred to in this dissertation can be found in the back cover along with a DVD which features footage of the performances by the
Shangri-Las that have been referred to (see Appendix 4 and 5 for a listing of each).
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Chapter 1: Is she really going out with him?
Is she really going out with him? Well, there she is. Let's ask her Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing? Mm-hmm Gee, it must be great riding with him Is he picking you up after school today? Uh-uh By the way, where'd you meet him?
In songs, words are the sign of a voice. A song is always a performance and song words are always spoken out, heard in someone’s accent. Songs are more like plays than poems; song words work as speech and speech acts, bearing meaning not just semantically, but also as structures of sound that are direct signs of emotion and marks of character. (Frith, 1989: 120)
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In their 1993 study of rock and roll death songs that had entered the US Top 40 between 1955 and 1991, Plopper and Ness identify 35 death-related songs about everyday people (who are unknown to the public) in the Top 40 in the 1960s, four of them in 1964, including ‘Leader of the Pack’, in which Jimmy, the fictitious boyfriend of the singer Betty, dies in a motorbike accident. Before 1970 nearly half of the death songs about everyday people involved a romantic relationship, particularly in the late
1950s and early 1960s, when “songs about adolescent romance ending in death were abundant” (Plopper and Ness, 1993: 799). ‘Leader of the Pack’ incorporates many of the dominant recurring themes which Plopper and Ness identify in death songs during the 1960s: the gender of the deceased is male, death is caused by an accident, and it refers to the romantic relationship between a boyfriend and girlfriend.
It may therefore be proposed that ‘Leader of the Pack’ forms part of, and indeed exemplifies, a subset of the death song genre at the height of its popularity that may be referred to as teenage romance death songs, or teen coffin songs.
Place suggests that “our popular culture functions as myth for our society: it both expresses and reproduces the ideologies necessary to the existence of the social structure” (1980: 35). Roland Barthes was concerned with the “processes of signification, the mechanisms by which meanings are products and put into circulation” (Storey, 2009: 118) and naturalised as reality through mass media and popular culture. In Mythologies (1957) Barthes sought a way in which to “track down, in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying ... the notion of myth” (1993:
11). Barthes proposes that a myth is a “system of communication, that is a message
... a mode of signification” (1993: 109) that has “a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us” (1993: 116–117)
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 14 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack and is present in anything that is “conveyed by a discourse” (Barthes, 1993: 109), including music.
Barthes’ study of myth “is a part both of semiology ... and of ideology ... [that] studies ideas-in-form” (1993: 112), where myth is studied as a “semiological schema” (1993:
113) that incorporates two levels of semiological systems, denotation and connotation, based on the tri-dimensional system of linguistics theorised by
Saussure. Denotation is a linguistic system that adopts Saussure’s theory of signifier as a sound image, signified as a concept, and sign as a combination of the two, which Barthes terms ‘meaning’ (Storey, 2009: 118–119). The resultant denotative sign, or meaning, “postulates a reading ... has a sensory reality ... has its own value
... a history” (Barthes, 1993: 117) that is related to that of the signifier and signified.
Barthes proposes that “reproductions of reality – drawings, paintings, cinema, theatre ...” (1977: 17) develop “in an immediate and obvious way a supplementary message ... commonly called the style of the reproduction” (1977: 17). It is proposed that as a lyrical narrative ‘Leader of the Pack’ constitutes a reproduction of reality, albeit with a distinctive slant that “resonate[s] with the heightened emotional state that typifies adolescent fantasy life” (Warwick, 2007: 25), and that the words and music of the song act as the denotative signifier constituting a mental “acoustic image” (Barthes, 1993: 113) that “expresses the signified” (Barthes, 1993: 113) denotation of the teen romance death song, which together signify the teen romance death song as a “concrete entity” (Barthes, 1993: 113) as the linguistic sign and denotative meaning.
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The denotative meaning forms a link in the “semiological chain” (Barthes, 1993: 114)
becoming the signifier, which Barthes terms ‘form’, in the connotative plane where
myth is consumed (Barthes, 1993; Storey, 2009). Form distances itself from the
history of the meaning but does not suppress it as it uses meaning as “an
instantaneous reserve of history” (Barthes, 1993: 118), which “drains out of the form
[to] be wholly absorbed by the concept” (Barthes, 1993: 118).
My analysis proposes that the connotative concept of the teen romance death song
appropriated by listeners to ‘Leader of the Pack’ is the “certain knowledge” (Barthes,
1993: 119) that romantic love is “an episodic, usually short-lived, and often scorching
vivid turbulence in our emotional histories ... one of life’s profoundest experiences”
(Grayling, 2002: 63), referred to here as ‘romancism’. It proposes, furthermore, that
the concept of ‘romancism’ motivates the myth that individuality can be achieved
through the experience of ‘romancism’.
Words and music Teen romance death song
Language (Denotation) Teen romance death song ‘Romancism’
Myth (Connotation) Individuality is achieved through ‘romancism’
Table 1: Diagrammatical representation of the myth of 'Leader of the Pack'
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Barthes (1977) acknowledges the polysemic nature of signs and that the message is temporarily ‘fixed’ by the reader and dependent upon their “cultural repertoire and knowledge of social codes” (Barker, 2008: 81); the codes that are “mobilized will largely depend on the triple context of the location of the text, the historical moment and the cultural formation of the reader” (Storey, 2009: 121). This is seen as an integral part of the double function of myth as “connotations are ... not simply produced by the makers of the image, but activated from an already existing cultural repertoire ... [which] the image both draws from ... and at the same time adds to”
(Storey, 2009: 121). Barthes proposes that “myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message” (1993: 109), yet it is difficult to propose a homogeneous and universal meaning for these utterances as, dialogically, meaning may be constructed through “an active, dynamic process involving signs that are able to take on a range of different meanings and connotations for different social actors in different social, cultural and historical situations” (Barker, 2004: 51) where “each utterance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account” (Bakhtin in Stam, 1992: 187). However, for the purposes of analysis a meaning may be suggested “in the dialogical context of [its] time” (Stam, 1992: 18) by reducing polysemy through processes of filiation using the “three common processes of semiotic limitation” (Payne, 1997: 6): social and historical perspective, genre contextualisation and the role of the author. Should such an approach be expanded to encompass a consideration of the role of the audience, the triple context that Storey suggests influences cultural repertoire is fully addressed.
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A content analysis of popular music may be seen as placing too much importance on what the lyrics are describing as opposed to how they are being described and performed, and how this contributes to the meaning of the song (Frith, 1989: 107;
Longhurst, 2011: 151). This may be said to be particularly important to an analysis of
‘Leader of the Pack’ as a pure content analysis could fail to consider features that define it as a teen coffin song and some of the key characteristics of the Shangri-
Las’ performance, both of which incorporate nonverbal melodramatic elements often associated with film and soap opera. Therefore this dissertation will also examine aspects of the song’s setting; the way in which audiences engage with and experience the genre; and the relationships created between the singer and audiences through their performance style, including the use of nonverbal devices
(Frith, 1989), and will comment on how these elements may be said to amplify1 the connotations of the song and the concept of ‘romancism’ (Barthes, 1977).
1 Barthes’ reference to amplification relates to the text that accompanies news photographs; however, it may be assumed that amplification is present in other forms of messages that are “reproductions of reality” (Barthes, 1977: 17–18).
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Chapter 2: I met him at the candy store
I met him at the candy store He turned around and smiled at me You get the picture? Yes, we see That's when I fell for THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine
My folks were always putting him down Down, down They said he came from the wrong side of town Whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town? Ooooooooooooooooooooo They told me he was bad Ooooooooooooooooooooo But I knew he was sad Ooooooooooooooooooooo That's why I fell for THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine
One cannot speak of a single relation of contemporary culture to music in general,
but of a tolerance, more or less benevolent, with respect to a plurality of musics.
Each is granted the ‘right’ to existence, and this right is perceived as an equality of
worth. Each is worth as much as the group which practices it or recognizes it.
(Foucault, 2000: 164)
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A denotative meaning “is already complete, it postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts, ideas, decisions” (Barthes, 1993: 117), and it is possible to identify some of the levels of musical codes (Longhurst, 2011: 155–
156) that signify to listeners that ‘Leader of the Pack’ is a teenage romance death song whilst providing a “reserve of history” (Barthes, 1993: 118) as the denotative form. The genre emerged following the pop chart success of country music songs such as Jody Reynolds’ ‘Endless Sleep’ (1958) and went on to develop its own characteristics which “left little doubt in the listener’s mind that this was unmistakeably a teenage tragedy” (Denisoff, 1983: 118; Lewis, 2008), including a
“pseudo-operatic style of crooning” and “highly pained and throbbing” (Denisoff,
1983: 116–118) delivery, and audio embellishments and the use of sound effects, all of which feature in ‘Leader of the Pack’ and for many are the most memorable audio characteristics of the song (Denisoff, 1983; Grecco, 2002b; Grieg, 1989; Warwick;
2007).
Teen coffin songs utilise a clear narrative that incorporates the “basic Romeo-Juliet theme [which became] a staple motif” (Denisoff, 1983: 118) of the genre, maintained by songs such as Ray Peterson’s ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’ (1960), and developed further as a “theme of dissent to societal impositions upon romantic relationships between adolescents... based upon social endogamy ...” (Denisoff, 1983: 119) in
Rex Allen’s ‘Don’t Go Near the Indians’ (1962) and Dickey Lee’s ‘Patches’ (1962).
These features are also apparent in ‘Leader of the Pack’: Betty’s parents believe that
Jimmy is “bad” because he comes from the “wrong side of town” and although she initially resists her “folks always putting him down”, Betty terminates the relationship when instructed by her father to “find someone new”, resulting in Jimmy’s death in a
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 20 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack motorbike crash as he speeds off into the rain blinded by tears. It therefore may be said that, in the context of the genre of teen coffin songs, ‘Leader of the Pack’ denotes at a “descriptive and ‘literal’ level of meaning” (Barker, 2004: 129) that it is a teenage coffin song; however, in order to move towards the connotative meaning it is necessary to look at other cultural codes mobilised by the listener.
The Shangri-Las were a teenage female quartet from Queens, New York City, comprising Mary Weiss, Betty Weiss, and twins Marge and Mary Ann Ganser although they often performed as a trio without “ghost member” (Grecco,
2002b) Betty, who did not perform on ‘Leader of the Pack’ (Warwick,
2007). In 1964 they signed with the
Red Bird record label and released their first single, ‘Remember
(Walking in the Sand)’, an atmospheric ‘weeper’ in which the anguished heroine grieves over a
‘dear John’ letter from her boyfriend
Image 2: 'Remember (Walking in the Sand)' cover against a soundscape of waves and seagulls, which reached number five nationally (Denisoff, 1983; Grecco, 2002b;
Grieg, 1989; Warwick, 2007). The track was “idiosyncratic to a point of absurdity, but it also had a strong teenage emotional credibility” (Grieg, 1989: 78) and established the themes of teen romance, heartbreak and sentimentality that became synonymous with the group, which, coupled with their style of delivery, earned them
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 21 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack a reputation as the “angels of angst, queens of carnage, myrmidons of melodrama”
(Greig, 1989: 69). The themes introduced in ‘Leader of the Pack’, their second single, were repeated in their 1965 hits ‘Give Us Your Blessing’ and ‘I Can Never Go
Home Anymore’, contributing to the assertion that “[much] of their repertoire presents apocalyptic narratives of teenage love and rebellion leading to death” (Warwick,
2007: 194). As such, it may be argued that the catalogue of the Shangri-Las forms part of their work idiolect which retroactively influences the denotative meaning of
‘Leader of the Pack’ (at the time of its release and subsequently) as well as the characteristics associated with the teen coffin song genre (Burton, 2010: 160;
Longhurst, 2011: 156).
The music of the Shangri-Las “centred around adolescent girls and their experiences of coming of age” (Warwick, 2007: 3) and forms part of the girl-talk style that emerged in the 1960s when Tin
Pan Alley sought to capitalise on the burgeoning female teen market who wanted to listen to songs sung by their female peers that expressed their concerns, most of which related to boys and identity (Douglas,
1995). Frith proposes that the
Shangri-Las were the “most Image 3: 'Leader of the Pack' single cover dramatic talkers [and] ‘Leader Of The Pack’ [sic] remains the classic example of how girls’ voices could be used to challenge the story-teller, to question and comment on
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 22 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack her plot” (1989: 152). Individual spoken dialogue is used in two areas: in the opening of the song it re-creates a familiar “female space, probably the ‘Ladies Room’”
(Warwick, 2007: 192) where confidences are shared that girls could relate to, and identifies Betty as a schoolgirl; and during a middle eight section Betty’s tearful reminiscence of what happened on “that rainy night” clearly spotlights Jimmy’s tragic death, underscored by the almost funereal key change (Warwick, 2007). Girl-talk
“gave a voice to all the warring selves inside [girls] struggling, blindly and with a crushing sense of insecurity, to forge something resembling a coherent identity”
(Douglas, 1995: 87), and at a time when a “woman’s sexuality and her reputation remained interconnected within social codes” (Wouters, 1998: 188), provided teenage girls with a safe space to fantasise about assuming different personas and transgressing these codes, and explore previously taboo topics of female adolescence including sex. The talk of the Shangri-Las, however, was not centred on sex, but on romance.
‘Leader of the Pack’ does not appear to reflect the “more sensual, direct, sexual, and
‘gutsy’” (Carey, 1969: 720) songs that James Carey identifies in his analysis of song lyrics in 1966, nor the “change in perspective on boy-girl relationships... [that] prizes autonomy in personal relations” (Carey, 1969: 720). The song seems to have more in common with the conventions of 1950s romantic songs in which love is decided by fate through chance meetings; people ‘fall in love’; termination is due to uncontrollable external forces; and the boy is “powerless and helpless in the face of the girl, who appears to hold the key to the relationship” (Carey, 1969: 729–730).
Betty’s encounter with Jimmy in the candy store can be seen as random as it may be supposed that Jimmy is outside of her social circle as he does not attend her school,
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 23 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack or live on the ‘right’ side of town as her family presumably does. She does not appear to have control over her feelings for Jimmy as she “fell for” him in response to him simply smiling at her: love just happened. Conversely, Betty is apparently powerless to control the destiny of the relationship when she is forced to tell Jimmy
“we’re through”, although her instigation of the break-up demonstrates that Jimmy is at the mercy of Betty in the affair.
Denisoff proposes that in ‘Leader of the Pack’ the lyric “ends not on a note of resignation but implicit accusation and internal self-righteousness” (1983: 120); however, it may be argued that Betty’s final assertion “I’ll never forget him, the leader of the pack”, followed by the haunting “wooooooo-woo-woo-woo-wooooooooo” and mournful repetition of the line “gooooone, gone-gone-gone-gone-gone, gooooone”, accompanied by screeching tyres as a reminder of what had caused Jimmy’s death, points towards the song typifying the ‘All Alone’ stage that Horton (1957) identifies in the ‘Drama of Courtship’ in 1950s popular songs where the singer “laments over lost love and the ensuing loneliness” (Carey, 1969: 724). The familiarity of this schema would have been understood by teenagers who could call upon earlier listening experiences to identify ‘Leader of the Pack’ as being part of the romance genre
(Foucault, 2000: 166–167; Green, 2000: 157–158), therefore generating meaning for
“audience[s] conversant in that particular form of communication” (Brown, 1992: 3).
In addition to the codes of genre, work idiolect, style and convention that have been discussed, music is also structured by performance idiolect (Longhurst, 2011: 156).
Barthes proposes that the signifier of the connotative plane is “a certain ‘treatment’ of
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 24 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack the image (result of the action of the creator) ...” (1977: 17) and it may be suggested that the Shangri-Las’ performance idiolect amplifies the tragedy and seriousness of the song, which is initially established with the sombre opening notes of the piano.
Frith argues that “girl-talk records mocked romance, trivialized it, pricked its pretensions ... were, after all, funny” (1989: 152), but the Shangri-Las were serious:
“... We were rock and rollers ...” (Mary Weiss in Warwick, 2007: 5); and co-writer and
Red Bird founder Ellie Greenwich maintains that “‘Leader of the Pack’ was, believe it or not, one hundred percent serious” (in Grieg, 1989: 80). The group’s earnestness is apparent on the TV quiz show I’ve Got A Secret in October 1964 (roots66, 2009) when they choose not to interact with Robert Goulet’s comedy play-acting of the role of Jimmy. Older members of the quiz panel appear baffled that a song about the death of a “kid” is the country’s number one popular song, but the group’s popularity with the teens in the audience is evident.
The outfits worn on the show of nondescript blouses and skirts demonstrate their early “image of demure suburban girlhood” (Warwick,
2007: 189–190), later replaced by the
‘bad girl’ image of skin tight trousers, spike-heeled boots and waistcoats that had proved popular with the release of
‘Leader of the Pack’, and “... presented a tough, dangerous image Image 4: Shangri-Las wearing catsuit outfits even before they sang...” (Warwick, 2007: 78; Grecco, 2002b; Douglas, 1995), which
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 25 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack within six months had developed into their “trademark ‘cat suits’” (Grecco, 2002c) as worn on Shindig! #32 which aired in April 1965 (nyrainbow, 2010 and NME, n.d.).
The contrast between their image and that of other female performers is evident on the Shindig! Groovy Girls show, which they headline performing ‘Give Him a Great
Big Kiss’ (mybestmusicvideo11, 2011), where Aretha Franklin sings the risqué line
“it’s in his kiss” whilst performing the ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ in pearls and diamantés and wearing a demure twinset2. As with their work idiolect, the evolution of the Shangri-Las’ performance idiolect and image can be said to retroactively contribute to the signification of ‘Leader of the Pack’: it was a song of rebellious adolescent independence, and it was serious.
The “identity of a group or artist is associated with sound” (Jones, 1992: 69), often the distinct vocal performance of the singer which enables fans to easily recognise the group and “stamps [a] song with its identity” (Jones, 1992: 70) giving their music, in the Barthesian sense, significance. Douglas proposes that white girl groups tried to emulate successful black girl groups and their “vibrating voices... [that] suggested a perfect fusion of naivete [sic] and knowingness ... [that] sounded orgiastic at times”
(1995: 95). Whether imitation or inherent, it may be proposed that Mary Weiss’s voice has a certain ‘grain’ to it that Barthes describes as “in the throat, [a] place where the phonic metal hardens and is segmented, in the mask that significance explodes, bringing not the soul but jouissance” (1977: 183).
2 Douglas proposes that black girl groups had less freedom to try out alternative images and countered the perceived threat of their sexuality with prim and polished images of matching outfits and charm-school manners as they sought to “look feminine, innocent and as white as possible” (1995: 95).
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 26 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
There is no direct English translation for jouissance but the term encompasses
enjoyment in the sense of a legal or social possession (enjoy certain rights, enjoy a privilege), pleasure, and crucially, the pleasure of sexual climax ... a radically violent pleasure... which shatters – dissipates, loses – that cultural identity, that ego.
(Heath, 1977: 9)
In relation to music, jouissance is experienced when “singers take us into particular forms of pleasure ... through the physical effect they have on us” (Longhurst, 2011:
162). When recording the lead of Betty, Mary Weiss was reportedly moved “... to the point that tears were coming down her face” (Grecco, 2002b), and her vocals are imbued with a suffering reverberation that resonates sincerity that may be said to express the ‘knowingness’ of the tragedy of lost love, generating in the song “an outlet for exploring anguish and torment in a highly satisfying way for many listeners”
(Warwick, 2007: 118). Warwick suggests that
Weiss’s voice, strained near the top of her vocal range, perfectly evokes the slightly smug, spoiled girl who enjoys impressing her friends with the drama and status her glamorous, dangerous, rebel boyfriend confers on her.
(2007: 192)
Yet it is proposed that although a degree of smugness is perceptible in Betty’s responses in the opening dialogue – “Betty, is that Jimmy’s ring you’re wearing? /
Mm-hmm / Is he picking you up after school today? / Uh-huh” – Weiss’s piercing delivery of “I met him at the candy store” indicates Betty’s heartache as she reminisces about her doomed romance, and may be seen as an example of her jouissance-inducing singing style. Furthermore, the heightened emotions evoked by the ‘grain’ of Weiss’s voice may provide a context-specific performance that induces
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 27 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack in female listeners the “jouissance-like loss of self” (Fiske, 1989: 55) that is experienced by women who ‘lose’ themselves in reading romances that challenge the social order and “produce a sense of empowerment and an energy otherwise repressed” (Fiske, 1989: 55), and creates a “supplementary message” (Barthes,
1977: 17) of the privilege of individuality achieved through ‘romancism’.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 28 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Chapter 3: One day my dad said “Find someone new”
One day my dad said, "Find someone new" I had to tell my Jimmy we're through Whatcha mean when ya say that ya better go find somebody new? Ooooooooooooooooooooooo He stood there and asked me why Ooooooooooooooooooooooo But all I could do was cry Oooooooooooooooooooo I'm sorry I hurt you THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine
Dur-dur-dur-dur-durrr dur-dur-dur-dur-dur-dur-dur [repeat] He sort of smiled and kissed me goodbye The tears were beginning to show As he drove away on that rainy night I begged him to go slow But whether he heard Revving of motorbike engine I'll never know Screeching brakes and crash No, no, no, no Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!
Back in the sixties, when you started making money, you’d buy a motorcycle. So we figure, ooh, we’ll take a trend that’s happening, the motorbikes, and we’ll make it a boy-girl romance – must have that – and let’s give it a little bit of a sick element. Let’s have the guy die.
(Ellie Greenwich in Grieg, 1989: 80)
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 29 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
As a concept, ‘romancism’ is appropriated by listeners and held as certain knowledge, although not reality, and is the motivation for the myth to be uttered
(Barthes, 1993). However, as with the relationship on the denotative level between signifier and signified, the signified concept of ‘romancism’ is, whilst apparently global, to a certain extent arbitrary, and “whether aesthetic or ideological, refers to a certain ‘culture’ of the society receiving the message” (Barthes, 1977: 17) as “the code of the connoted system is very likely constituted either by a universal symbolic order or by a period rhetoric, in short by a stock of stereotypes (... gestures, expressions, arrangements of elements)” (Barthes, 1977: 18).
‘Romancism’ in the West3 may be traced through the evolution of the notion of romantic love and romance, and is represented in many signifiers. Originally disseminated verbally by troubadours, romance became a dominant feature of literature, and Evans suggests that “[a]t the end of the eighteenth century there emerged, in England, two contradictory sets of ideas about the nature love” (2003:
27–28): the reasoned and rational Enlightenment morality, versus the ideals of the
Romantics who believed that “love, most often equated with sexual desire, should always be spontaneous and never controlled or structured by social norms” (Evans,
2003: 28). There is debate between essentialists and constructionists as to whether romance is intrinsic or historically constructed and Grayling proposes that “[b]oth are right; for people have always fallen in love ... but the expression of that state, the other forms of love it has been allied to, and the expectations nurtured by the parties to it, have been variously conceived” (2002: 67).
3 Giddens proposes that romantic love is a Western phenomenon which “... has never existed in most other cultures” (1993a: 8), and this dissertation is therefore focused upon romantic love within the West.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 30 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Giddens argues that “[n]either romantic love ... nor its association with marriage, can be understood as ‘given’ features of human life, but are shaped by broad influences”
(1993a: 8) and suggests that “[r]omantic love first made its appearance in courtly circles, as a characteristic of extramarital sexual adventures indulged in by members of the aristocracy ...” (1993a: 8). Giddens links the changes in intimate relationships to modernity. Prior to this, marriages were arranged for social, economic or political reasons for both the peasantry and aristocrats. The advent of industrialisation in the eighteenth century brought a change in the patterns of the family structure within the aristocracy as marriage “lost its economic basis” (Giddens, 1993a: 397), and there evolved the ideal of romantic love which “involved idealizing the object of one’s love and, for women in particular, telling stories to oneself about how one’s life could become fulfilled through the relationship” (Haralambos and Holborn, 2008: 512). As the new characteristics of the aristocratic family pattern were adopted by the petite bourgeoisie and eventually the lower classes, it was family love that dominated
(Giddens, 1993a; Gleadle, 2001; Matthew, 2000). However, against the backdrop of questions about the meaning of marriage and the role of women in society and the family, there emerged what Giddens terms “affective individualism: the belief in romantic attachment as a basis for contracting marriage ties” (1993a: 748).
Romance within relationships “acquired a greater public legitimacy” (Evans, 2003:
38) during the Victorian era, and romantic love became closely associated with individuality and self-identity.
Reason may have triumphed during the nineteenth century, but the fin de siècle saw the love philosophy of the Romantics form the basis for romantic love in the twentieth century. The Victorian ideal of “romantic-companionate love” (Grayling, 2002: 66)
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 31 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack focused on the home and, although it did not exclude sexual love, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that intimacy was given “primary emphasis”
(Giddens, 1993a: 397). Pearce suggests that it is important to acknowledge the difference between love and desire as they
originate in very different discourses even though they are often used interchangeably in everyday speech... desire is a psychoanalytical concept which understands affect as an expression of the psycho-sexual drives, while love... is a concept that means differently across a wider range of historical and cultural discourses. (2011)
However, in contemporary Western society the two are often combined:
[p]assionate, or romantic, love is characterized by strong emotions, sexual desire, and intense preoccupation with the beloved. Its onset is often rapid rather than gradual, and, almost inevitably, the fiery intensity of passionate love cools down over time. (Aronson, 1992: 378)
Pearce contests that the temporality of romantic love pervades Western history and culture, often in relation to death:
...temporality has always been a key determinant in both defining and ascribing value to love. Similarly, wherever one looks in the history of Western literature and popular culture – be it folk-songs, Arthurian Legend, or, indeed, popular romantic fiction – there are few instances of love that are not tested, to a greater or a lesser extent by time: through non-repeatability, simple longevity, or love’s capacity to survive the use, loss, or death of the beloved object. (2011)
This ideal of romantic love was promulgated in popular novels (Evans, 2003;
Grayling, 2002), and the story of non-repeatable love due to death became “the
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 32 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack story... that Western Civilization most wanted to hear” (Pearce, 2011). Medieval romantic tragedies such as Tristan and Iseult may not have been familiar to contemporary teenage audiences, but the story of Romeo and Juliet, which shares the premise of the destructiveness of romantic love, would have been more recognisable as it has become “one of the most enduring plotlines for pop depictions of romance... [in which] Romeo and Juliet have definitively become teenagers, pitted against an older generation who stands in the way of their romantic fulfilment and independence” (Bevington, Gaines and Holland, 2007: 21–23).
Teenage romance death songs may be seen as “an extension of the portrayal of young love as romantic tragedy” (Plopper and Ness, 1993: 800) depicted in popular culture. In ‘Leader of the Pack’ Jimmy is Romeo to Betty’s Juliet; however, in addition to parental disapproval because he is socially unsuitable, as a biker Jimmy also poses a sexual threat. This is Initially implied by the envious comment “Gee, it must be great riding with him”, and the revving motorbike engine that accompanies each chant of “Leader of the Pack” leaves the listener in little doubt that ‘The Pack’ that Jimmy is ‘Leader’ of is a motorbike gang of, presumably, other males. The throbbing reverberations of the sound effect may also be said to reinforce Jimmy’s sexuality, excitement and ‘badness’. Yet Jimmy is not necessarily all ‘bad’: the song’s title has connotations of the ‘alpha male’, a prime mate for a female; he does not remonstrate with Betty when she ends the relationship; and his resigned acquiescence and tears – “He sort of smiled and kissed me goodbye / The tears were beginning to show” – demonstrate that he is understanding and caring, and respects Betty.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 33 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Jimmy’s role as the threatening biker is also somewhat ambiguous. Denisoff observes that ‘Leader of the Pack’ “was a mammoth production akin to the American
International films of the time” (1983: 120) however, by the early 1960s the moral panic associated with biker gangs in the 1950s had somewhat subsided and American International Pictures’ portrayed bikers as “comic ... ‘cartoonised’, outdated”
(Osgerby, 2012) rebels in films like Pajama Party
(1964) or as “bumbling bikers” (Osgerby, 2003) in beach movies like Beach Party (1963). Ellie
Greenwich attributes the choice to use a motorbike Image 5: Pajama Party (1964) poster in the song as reflecting a trend (in Grieg, 1989); nevertheless, the threat of “macho
‘Otherness’ ... [and] unrestrained lusts” (Osgerby, 2003) associated with Jimmy as the leader of a biker gang cannot be entirely dismissed. Allegations of gang rape by
Hell’s Angels in September 1964 resulted in “sensational media coverage [that] transformed the Hell’s Angels into the bête noir of civilized society” (Osgerby, 2003), which continued through 1965, and contributed to the emergence of the gratuitously violent cycle of biker films of the late 1960s which would have impacted on the public’s perception of bikers (Rubin, 1994). The media panic surrounding biker gangs generated enough concern to warrant a governmental report into the Hell’s
Angels, however, Osgerby concedes that the US may have been more comfortable with the apparent banal and inane demands of the bikers – “We don’t want anyone telling us what to do ... We want to be free to ride ... And we want to get loaded”
(Angel leader in The Wild Angels, 1964, quoted in Osgerby, 2003) – than the more
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 34 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack profound questions raised by civil rights activists at the time, and that in comparison bikers were “moral panic lite” (Osgerby, 2012).
Indeed, it may be argued that Jimmy is depicted as a ‘lite’ biker rebel as he appears to follow in the tracks of the passive “pop
James Dean” (Grieg, 1989: 50) image of the rebel hero introduced by girl group the
Crystals in their 1962 number one ‘He’s A
Rebel’, in which the previously idolized rock
‘n’ roll idol “swap[s] his guitar for a Image 6: 'He's a Rebel' (1962) single cover motorbike ... [and is] relegated ... to the role of the cool guy who does nothing much at all, except remain on show as a status symbol so that his girlfriend can show off to her friends” (Grieg, 1989: 51). Furthermore, it may be argued that Jimmy is a ‘lite’ boyfriend to Betty. Unlike the love songs of the 1950s (Horton, 1957), Betty does not direct her song to Jimmy, instead maintaining a dialogue with her friends. Betty twice tells them that she “fell for the leader of the pack” inferring that she has ‘fallen’ in love with Jimmy. Giddens proposes that in Wesern culture “[i]t seems entirely natural for a couple who fall in love to want to set up house together, and to seek personal and sexual fulfilment in their relationship” (1993a: 8) but Betty offers no resistance to her father’s request to finish with Jimmy, and her response – “I had to tell my Jimmy we're through” – may be interpreted as a lack of commitment to their relationship.
Sternberg proposes that romantic love is comprised of intimacy and passion but lacks commitment (in Dacey, Travers and Fiore, 2009). Intimacy may be said to be evident because they appear to have shared their feelings with one another – Betty
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 35 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
“knew he was sad”; whilst passion is apparent in the instant attraction they had for each other, knowingly acknowledged by her peers – “yes, we see”. Additionally,
Betty’s failure to explain to Jimmy why they were ‘through’ – “but all I could do was cry” – may be seen as a failure to give Jimmy validation (Fromm in Dacey, Travers and Fiore, 2009: 391). Indeed, to paraphrase Greenwich, Jimmy’s death may be seen as a ‘sick’ narrative device in the song, or the ‘Despair’ element in Hayakawa’s pop music formula:
the IFD disease – the three triple-threat semantic disorder of Idealization (the making of impossible and ideal demands upon life), which leads to Frustration (as the result of the demands not being met), which in turn leads to Demoralization (or Disorganization or Despair). (in Frith, 1989: 111)
Jimmy has no voice in the song except through Betty who tells us that “he stood there and asked me why”. He is not described to the listener, allowing them to fantasize about how he may look: he is similar to the “shadowy male figure whose purpose is simply to heighten the drama between the more interesting female characters ... common to soap opera writing” (Warwick, 2007: 193).
The songs of the Shangri-Las, and in particular ‘Leader of the Pack’, are variously described as mini soap operas, mini-dramas and ‘playlets’ (Denisoff, 1983; Douglas,
1995; Grieg, 1989; Warwick, 2007). Gledhill proposes that melodrama refers “not only to a type of aesthetic practice but also to a way of viewing the world” and that it
“exists as a cross-cultural form ... [denoting] a fictional or theatrical kind, a specific cinematic genre or a pervasive mode across popular culture ... ” (2002: 1). It is suggested that ‘Leader of the Pack’ reflects the form’s institutionalisation as a ‘lower’
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 36 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack form of popular culture that is both “a point of social cohesion ... [and] fraught with tension, struggles and negotiations” (Gledhill, 2002: 37), which in the twentieth century involved contestation over gender representation and “the figure of woman
... as a powerful and ambivalent patriarchal symbol” (Gledhill, 2002: 37) that provided melodrama with socially realistic female discourses with which to attract a female audience, “discourses which negotiate[d] a space within and sometimes resist[ed] patriarchal domination” (Gledhill, 2002: 37) when female sexuality was still subordinate to male sexuality (Wouters, 1998). ‘Leader of the Pack’ may therefore be said to have more in common with the “enigma-retardation-resolution structure which marks the classic narrative” (Kuhn, 2002: 339) of the film melodrama. Betty appears to be in love with Jimmy but it is proposed that her commitment is not to
Jimmy as an individual but to his status as the leader of the pack, or, more specifically, her role as the last ever girlfriend of the leader of the pack in the eyes of her peers, defined by his death, and therefore brought about, not by her love for him, but by her rejection of him. Therefore, unlike Hayakawa’s formula, Jimmy’s death does not bring despair for Betty but enables her to realise her own individuality, which forms part of the myth of the song, as discussed in the next chapter.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 37 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Chapter 4: I felt so helpless, what could I do?
I felt so helpless, what could I do? Remembering all the things we'd been through Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo In school they all stop and stare Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I can't hide the tears, but I don't care Oooooooooooooooo I'll never forget him, THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine
Woooooo-woo-woo-woo-wooooooooooo Goooone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gooooone [repeat] The leader of the pack and now he's gone The leader of the pack and now he's gone Screeching of tyres The leader of the pack and now he's gone The leader of the pack and now he's gone
... [T]he myths of love generally determine our individual behavior, the apparent
accidents of our encounters, and the choices we imagine we are making freely.
(Denis de Rougemont in Galician, 2004: 219)
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 38 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Myth is a value that is a double system “constituted by a sort of constantly moving turnstile which presents alternately the meaning of the signifier and its form, a language-object and a metalanguage, a purely signifying and a purely imagining consciousness” (Barthes, 1993: 123). In ‘Leader of the Pack’ the myth that individuality can be achieved through ‘romancism’ traces its history from the myth’s meaning, form and concept and is therefore motivated by the themes of love (the basis for the notion of romantic love, and therefore the concept of ‘romancism’), and death (the tragic event that predicates the profound experience of ‘romancism’).
Barthes proposes that “[m]otivation is necessary to the very duplicity of myth: myth plays on the analogy between meaning and form, there is no myth without motivated form” (1993: 126). Denisoff’s study of coffin songs is based upon the premise that death is the ultimate act of adolescent rebellion, which “both negates [the] existent relationship of power – parent and child – but also finalizes the positive relationship: death at the physical level negates... Life after death, on the other hand, is permanent” (1983: 117). Thrush and Paulus argue that songs about death cater to
‘median taste’ and utilise the coping mechanisms of society in that “[m]any songs emphasize the catastrophic and destructive element of death. Death becomes an interference rather than an inevitability” (1979: 227). Cooper and Haney, however, propose that “[d]eath resulting from spectacular accidents constitutes the backbone of many heroic tales” (1999: 57), and it is argued that the death of Jimmy is heroic, as it is a result of him following the wishes of Betty but also finalises their relationship as permanent and is “invoked to vouchsafe love’s non-repeatability” (Pearce, 2011).
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 39 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Pearce proposes that romantic love is confounded by the paradox of the “need for, yet denial of, repetition” (2011). Psychoanalysis contends that there is a repetition- compulsion either from a Freudian approach, “simply for the pleasure and empowerment of repetition itself” (Pearce, 2011) or, taking a Lacanian approach,
“[b]ecause we are never going to find what we desire (since the “ideal” lover/other will always, ultimately, fail us)” (Pearce, 2011). Conversely history, theology and philosophy maintain that “love is an event defined by exclusivity and non- repeatability... inasmuch as ‘genuine love’ is expected to survive the loss or death of the other” (Pearce, 2011). Pearce hypothesises a set of theoretical models that
‘classic’ romance literature utilises to deal with repetition, including ‘Definitive Death’:
[where] the notional finitude of marriage is replaced by the absolute finitude of death. The fact that there is no possibility of death-bound lovers repeating, and hence discrediting, their UR-passion [un-repeatable passion] explains why tragedy remains the most cast-iron means of supporting the view that love is exclusive, non- repeatable, and forever. (2011)
However, Pearce suggests that “the paradoxical status of love vis-à-vis repetition is rendered a positive delight inasmuch as stories which celebrate non-repeatable love, can, themselves, be repeated” (2011), which may be especially powerful in music, the only art form that is said to activate the limbic system where the emotions of pleasure and love are produced (More 4, 2012; Levitin, 2010; Esch and Stefano:
2005) and which, through mass reproduction, “permeates both the public and private spheres” (Burton, 2010: 148). For audiences, music “represents vital, always renewed, ‘alive for the minute’ experiences, missed with a communal will to sing the chorus of a song” (Wall, 2003: 24). As the form of the myth, ‘Leader of the Pack’ is
“related to place and proximity” (Barthes, 1993: 122). By the mid-1960s music had
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 40 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack become increasingly portable through personal radios, and sales benefited from the development of stereo records (Wall, 2003). Ownership through consumer choice enabled ‘Leader of the Pack’ to gain access to the privileged and private sphere of a girl’s bedroom, a place where confidences, fears and hopes can be safely shared and fantasised about, and where music choices may be used to assert individuality
(Burton, 2010: 149). Moreover, purchase and consumption can be said to have occurred within the terrain of leisure time normally associated with freedom, where
“hegemony is sought uncoercively” (McRobbie, 1993: 268), thereby enabling the myth to be “naturalized as hegemonic... [and] act as [a] conceptual [map] of meaning by which to make sense of the world” (Barker, 2004: 129). Additionally, the level of trust the Shangri-Las were deemed to have gained from teens, as demonstrated by the fact that they were employed to give public service announcements about dating etiquette (Grecco, 2002b), added to the group’s status as imagined close friend and confidante, which may be said to replicate the safe and private all-female friendship groups formed by pre-teens before they face the anxieties associated with becoming teenagers (McRobbie and Garber, 2000) from whom the myth of the song could be innocently received and consumed.
Warwick suggests that the musical composition of ‘Leader of the Pack’ precludes it from being a dance song, and that it is “meant to be listened to” (2007: 118).
Contemporary approaches have moved on from the theory, as postulated by Adorno, that mass media acts “as a hypodermic syringe, injecting messages into the audience” (Longhurst, 2011: 199) to recognise that audiences are active, individual social beings who are involved in a two-way relationship with the text that is influenced by their everyday lives (Bennett, 2000; Butsch, 2000 and Longhurst,
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 41 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
2011: 201): teenagers play a role in the construction of the myth which is not only created by those who produce it, but also those who consume it. By the nature of its production, the majority of pop music is a collaborative process and girl groups are often charged with being the ‘puppets’ of record companies, including the Shangri-
Las (Jones, 1992: 155 and Warwick, 2007: 8). Negus, however, proposes that audiences are aware that artists are “calculated and hyped in various ways” (in
Bennett, 2000: 44) and that it does not detract from their appeal. Hall and Whannel contend that songs written by teenage songwriters utilise a cultural ethos that is both shared and informed by the teen audience, thereby the “emotions, symbols and situations drawn off from the provided teenage culture contain elements both of emotional realism and fantasy fulfilment” (1998: 64). The notion of a two-way shared cultural ethos may, however, be extended to include songs not written by teenagers, including ‘Leader of the Pack’ whose writers had produced a range of popular teenage songs (Douglas, 1995, The Telegraph, 2009). Susan Douglas’ recollection of girl group music demonstrates how the songs may have been innocently received by adolescent girls as if they had experienced the narrative personally:
This music burrowed into the everyday psychodramas of our adolescence, forever intertwined with our most private, exhilarating, and embarrassing memories... exerted such a powerful influence on us, one that we may barely have recognized, because of this process of identification. By superimposing our own dramas, from our own lives, onto each song, each of us could assume an active role in shaping the song’s meaning. (1995: 87)
It is proposed by Erik Erikson that adolescence is characterised as “the period in the human life cycle during which the individual must establish a sense of personal identity” (Muuss, 1996: 51), when an adolescent is motivated to answer existential
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 42 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack questions such as “Who am I?” and “What do I want to become?”. In attempting to resolve this ‘identity crisis’ adolescents look to establish a “meaningful self-concept in which past, present, and future are brought together to form a unified whole”
(Muuss, 1996: 51). In societies that have experienced rapid social change, there is little continuity between the family and community tradition and the individual’s peer group becomes of primary importance in the development of their identity, to the extent that adolescents become preoccupied with the perception of others whom they depend on as role models and for feedback (Muuss, 1996). This may be seen as particularly pertinent in the West during the 1960s as teens “tried to find new ways of gratifying their longing for both sex and love” (Wouters, 1998: 189).
As with many songs about death, Betty does not detail Jimmy’s demise relying instead on the melodramatic devices of the screeching of brakes and smashing of glass; supporting “the illusion that the deceased is not gone, so the memory of the deceased is allowed to live on” (Plopper and Ness, 1993: 802). Jimmy is, subjectively, immortal and, alongside those who loved him, is “inexpungeably [sic] part of the world’s history” (Grayling, 2002: 32), and none more so than his last
‘love’, Betty. It is contested that Betty’s story of “love-lost-through-death” (Cooper and Haney, 1999) maintains the tradition of narrative meditations on death as it presupposes an audience (in both listeners and the girl group dynamic) but also incorporates the writer’s experience, or in this case the experiences of the Shangri-
Las as adolescent girls, who “perform the meditation” of death (Dollimore, 2001: 87).
Furthermore, it may be argued that Jimmy’s death undermines his and Betty’s previous identity, and “cruelly transforms everything into its own opposite”
(Dollimore, 2001: 91), although not as negatively as Dollimore supposes: Jimmy is
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 43 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack immortally preserved as a caring, sensitive, misunderstood ‘good’ boyfriend – “I’ll never forget him, the leader of the pack” – who can never let Betty down, whilst
Betty’s identity as a revered and envied rebel classmate, attained by transgressing social codes to date ‘bad’ biker Jimmy, is elevated to “the honored status of heroine”
(Denisoff, 1983: 120).
Betty’s journey in the song may be said to exemplify the “period of moratorium – a
“time out” period during which the adolescent experiments with a variety of identities”
(Dacey, Travers and Fiore 2009: 296), a process which is seen as necessary to achieve a mature identity. James Marcia proposes that an individual attains a mature identity through undergoing several crises and committing to themselves or their choices (in Dacey, Travers, Fiore, 2009: 296), and it is argued that Betty has moved from an adolescent identity to a mature identity ahead of her peers as she has experienced the crises of a relationship break-up and the death of her boyfriend, and has demonstrated a commitment to social endogamy in her rejection of Jimmy as a potential husband. Furthermore, it is proposed that Betty’s commitment to her father’s wishes appears to be permanent and she has therefore, for the time being, attained ‘identity achievement’, defined as being when “numerous crises have been experienced and resolved, and relatively permanent commitments have been made”
(Marcia in Dacey, Travers, Fiore, 2009: 296).
The narrative in ‘Leader of the Pack’ is presented from Betty’s perspective and as a death manifestation the song “gains its meaning in relation to an existing cultural history, and is a form of cultural self-presentation” (Dollimore, 2001: 87). Dollimore
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 44 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack outlines de Rougemont’s theory that in Western culture passion and death are interconnected as they are based on the “idea that the individual reaches self- awareness in suffering ... [and] in romanticism, suffering – especially the suffering of love – operates a privileged mode of understanding” (2001: 65). Betty’s representation is interwoven with some of the characteristics of romantic love: the individualised personal narrative sung in the first person; the immediate ‘love at first sight’ attraction; the connection between freedom and self-realisation (Giddens,
1993b). More significantly in relation to the song’s myth, Betty’s story maintains that
“romantic love may end in tragedy, and feed upon transgression but it also produces triumph, a conquest of mundane prescriptions and compromises ... it fastens upon and idealises another, and it projects a course of future development.” (Giddens,
1993b).
Like the Shangri-Las, Betty’s identity has transformed through the song, and both are often attributed with the image of female rebellion. However, Betty’s identity may not be as independent or autonomous as the ‘rebel’ label implies and may be seen as an example of self-in-relation-to-other (Chodorow, 1978;
Radway, 1987; Storey, 2009): Betty’s individuality is viewed in relation to her standing with her female peers – “In school they all stop and stare”; however, it has been achieved Image 7: Early PR shot (not used following the success of 'Leader of the Pack') through her relation to Jimmy with whom she will have an everlasting relationship after complying to patriarchal parental control.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 45 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
This may be said to exemplify the “contradictions of being a teenage girl” (Douglas,
1995: 93) explored in girl-talk songs which played out the conflict surrounding pressure to conform to societal expectations and gender roles whilst “acquiescing to the demands of a male-dominated society, in which men called the shots but girls could still try to give them a run for their money” (Douglas, 1995: 90). Similarly, although the image of the Shangri-Las on the Leader of the Pack album cover in
1965 may be seen as a blueprint for the image of the motorbike girl that symbolised the provocative threat of female sexuality in the 1960s –
“matte pan-stick lips, an insolent expression on her eyelined eyes and an unzipped jacket... [looking] sexual, numbed and unfeeling, almost expressionless” (McRobbie,
2000: 18) – it can also be seen as the “softer more feminised
Image 8: Leader of the Pack album cover subculture of the 1960s”
(McRobbie, 2000: 17) when the female biker image became increasingly incorporated into advertising and soft pornography, moving it away from the ‘ritual of resistance’ (McRobbie, 2000: 18–19).
Stallybrass and White argue that “the body is actively produced by the junction and disjunction of symbolic domains and can never be legitimately evaluated ‘in itself’”
(1986: 192) and that “mechanisms of identity formation never operate in a neutral
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 46 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack semantic field” (1986: 198), and it may be proposed that aspects of their theory of the body and collective identity can be applied to Betty’s identity formation. Her rejection of Jimmy and his position as the absent ‘other’ result in a complex dynamic
“in which self and other become enmeshed” (Stallybrass and White, 1986: 193), and which may be seen as an extension of the “special dialogism with its own implicit principles of domination and subordination... [that] is both ‘psychological’ and
‘ideological’” (Stallybrass and White, 1986: 198). Betty constructs her self-identity both through her love and rejection of Jimmy as the ‘other’, creating a contradictory construction whereby she emerges as an individual in relation to what she has rejected – Jimmy and his status as leader of the pack – but paradoxically is elevated within her social group because he died following her rejection and he was the leader of the pack. Furthermore, because he cannot challenge Betty’s representation of their relationship, she is able to idealise and fantasise about Jimmy creating a
“symbolic material of the Imaginery [sic]” (Stallybrass and White, 1986: 194) as a marker against which she can situate her self-identity. Indeed, as she alone is in a position to remember “all the things we’d been through”, the self-identity she has constructed in relation to Jimmy cannot be undermined, but can be publicly demonstrated to her peers – “I can't hide the tears, but I don't care”.
The myth of the song therefore maintains the history of melodrama of the form as a site for conflict through which “the dual role of woman as symbol for the whole culture and as representative of a historical, gendered point of view produce[d] a struggle between male and female voices” (Gledhill, 2002: 37) as girls sought to establish their adult identity in the pre-sexual revolution era (Douglas, 1995).
Furthermore, as Barthes suggests that “[a] more attentive reading of the myth will in
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 47 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack no way increase its power or its ineffectiveness” (Barthes, 1993: 130) it is argued that because ‘Leader of the Pack’ retains its reputation as a song of individuality through rebellion despite the depiction of Betty’s self-in-relation-to-other, the intentions of the myth are not hidden and the myth is naturalised as fact; ‘Leader of the Pack’ is the presence of the myth of individuality through ‘romancism’.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 48 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
Conclusion: That’s why she fell for the leader of the pack
What we think of as the self is goaded into being by love, which also promises the
self’s realization.
(Appignanesi, 2011: 44)
The romantic love ideal – that for every girl there is a boy; that one day they will meet and fall in love and live happily ever after – is one of the powerful underlying myths which shape our lives. And the theme of its frustration by external forces has preoccupied the Western literary tradition since the time of the troubadours. From Tristan and Iseult, through Romeo and Juliet down to Zhivago and even Lolita, the formula hardly varies: a forbidden person, an impossible love, forced separations, temporary reunions and eventual tragic death.
(Kilpatrick, 1974: 25)
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 49 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
The teen coffin songs that peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s may be seen as a subgenre of songs about death, being characterised by their narrative ballad structure, adolescent ‘subjects’, themes of social endogamy, melodramatic performance style and, of course, the death of at least one person. The 1964 number one ‘Leader of Pack’ and its narrative of the accidental death of an unsuitable boyfriend performed in a highly emotive and melodramatic style by the
Shangri-Las can be said to exemplify the genre in both content and production.
The song also forms part of the girl-talk style that emerged at the beginning of the
1960s that gave girls the opportunity to hear about taboo subjects, imagine transgressing social roles and fantasise about trying out new identities through the
‘psychodramas’ of the songs. ‘Leader of the Pack’ has maintained a place in popular culture nearly fifty years later as a song of female autonomy and rebellion, influenced by the rebellious image of the Shangri-Las. The conventions of the song, however, identify it as a romance song with the focus on love, not sex, whilst leader singer
Mary Weiss’s jouissance style of singing heightens the histrionics of the tragic narrative. Yet it is argued that this jouissance may also enable listeners to ‘lose’ themselves in the narrative, and creates a supplementary message of individuality achieved through heartache. ‘Leader of the Pack’ therefore denotes on a linguistic level that it is a teen romance death song, or coffin song, whilst as the connotative form it provides a history for the concept of ‘romancism’: romantic love as a profound, passionate, temporal and emotional experience.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 50 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
It is proposed that what Western society commonly refers to as love is both an inherent, biologically and psychologically driven emotion and one that has been culturally and historically constructed. It seems, however, that what we mean by the word and what we expect from experiencing it may be influenced more by socio- dynamics than neurology. The emergence of ‘romancism’, romantic love as a life- defining, unique and deeply passionate personal experience, can be traced from the medieval aristocracy who first eschewed marriage based on economics in favour of idealised, individual love. Romantic love evolved from the companionate and family- focused love of the Victorian era to become more intertwined with desire at the beginning of the twentieth century, during which time it became closely associated with individuality, choice and self-identity. The ideal of romantic love established itself in bourgeois culture and entered the cultural narrative via the lyrics of the troubadours and formed a recurring trope in the emerging market of popular novels, and attitudes towards love were variously aligned with the rational philosophical thought of the Enlightenment, and the spontaneous ideals of movements like
Romanticism.
Teen romance death songs can be said to draw from the classic narrative tradition of the tragedy of forbidden love and the non-repeatability of love through death, which has retained a place in popular culture through stories like Romeo and Juliet.
Jimmy’s role as a threatening, ‘bad’, biker may be to a certain extent ambiguous but he fulfils the role of the forbidden love interest, albeit a safe one. Jimmy is objectified and ‘fetishised’ as a melodramatic device, and although Betty’s failure to commit to him may be seen as a characteristic of romantic love, it can also be seen as reflecting the contradictions teenage girls were experiencing in the patriarchal
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 51 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack society of the early sixties on the cusp of second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution. Against this backdrop it is proposed that Jimmy’s death ossified Betty’s status as the girlfriend of the leader of the pack, the dominant alpha male, giving her the platform to realise her individuality: the concept of ‘romancism’ therefore motivates the myth.
Myth looks towards denotative meaning and connotative form and concept for its history, and it is contested that ‘Leader of the Pack’ is motivated by the themes of love and death which dominate and define the teen romance death song genre and are absorbed by the concept of ‘romancism’. Jimmy’s death in the song may be seen as heroic and positive as it ensures the non-repeatability of love. His death also addresses the paradox of the repetition of love where we are psychologically compelled to repeat the experience yet culturally programmed to believe that ‘true’ love is a one-off, non-repeatable experience.
A Freudian pleasure may be derived from the non-repeatability of love through repetitive consumption, which girls in the 1960s could do in the privacy of their bedroom, a place where they could safely assert their individuality through music choices. The purchase and consumption of ‘Leader of the Pack’ in a girl’s leisure time gave it access to the private sphere where hegemony is sought uncoercively and the myth of the song could be consumed innocently by girls as they superimposed their own dramas and identities onto the song.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 52 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
It is argued that identity is a primary concern for adolescents and it is contended that teenagers injected ‘Leader of the Pack’ with meaning pertinent to identity and individuality. Both Jimmy and Betty are transformed through his death: he becomes immortalised as a caring boyfriend whilst Betty becomes a heroine to her peers.
Additionally, Betty achieves self-awareness through the suffering of romantic love;
‘Leader of the Pack’ is her personal narrative through which she experiences tragedy and transgression but ultimately the triumph of individuality, a connotation that is both drawn from the cultural repertoire of its times, and also adds to it. And whilst it is proposed that Betty’s transformation in the song is in-relation-to-other or others (her schoolgirl peers, her dead boyfriend and her father), this does not undermine or detract from the power or naturalisation of the myth as a myth is not hidden or denied. Betty’s maturation and individualism in the eyes of her peers is as a result of the death of her boyfriend; she has a contradictory and complex interdependence with Jimmy who, as the absent ‘other’, cannot question how she has situated her identity in relation to her depiction of their relationship, finalised by his death, which may be arbitrary and imagined. Yet ‘Leader of the Pack’ maintains the premise that individuality is achieved through the experience of ‘romancism’; that’s why Betty fell for the leader of the pack.
Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 53 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack
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Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 69 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack Appendices Appendix 1: ‘Stardust’ lyrics And now the purple dusk of twilight time Steals across the meadows of my heart High up in the sky the little stars climb Always reminding me that we're apart You wander down the lane and far away Leaving me a song that will not die Love is now the stardust of yesterday The music of the years gone by Sometimes I wonder why I spend The lonely night dreaming of a song The melody haunts my reverie And I am once again with you When our love was new And each kiss an inspiration But that was long ago Now my consolation Is in the stardust of a song Beside a garden wall When stars are bright You are in my arms The nightingale tells his fairy tale A paradise where roses bloom Though I dream in vain In my heart it will remain My stardust melody The memory of love's refrain (ST Lyrics, n.d.) Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 70 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack Appendix 2: ‘What is a Youth?’ lyrics What is a youth? Impetuous fire What is a maid? Ice and desire The world wags on A rose will bloom It then will fade So does a youth So does the fairest maid Comes a time when one sweet smile Has its season for a while, then love’s in love with me Some they think only to marry, others will tease and tarry Mine is the very best parry. Cupid he rules us all Caper the caper, sing me the song Death will come soon to hush us along Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall Love is a pasttime that never will pall Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall Cupid he rules us all A rose will bloom It then will fade So does a youth So does the fairest maid ‘ Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 71 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack Appendix 3: ‘Leader of the Pack’ lyrics Key Lead singer solo (Spoken lyrics) Chorus LEAD AND CHORUS Sound effect (Is she really going out with him?) (Well, there she is. Let's ask her) (Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing?) (Mm-hmm) (Gee, it must be great riding with him) (Is he picking you up after school today?) (Uh-uh) (By the way, where'd you meet him?) I met him at the candy store He turned around and smiled at me (You get the picture?) (Yes, we see) That's when I fell for THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine My folks were always putting him down Down, down They said he came from the wrong side of town Whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town? Ooooooooooooooooooooooo They told me he was bad Ooooooooooooooooooooooo But I knew he was sad Oooooooooooooooooooo That's why I fell for THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 72 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack One day my dad said, "Find someone new" I had to tell my Jimmy we're through Whatcha mean when ya say that ya better go find somebody new? Ooooooooooooooooooooooo He stood there and asked me why Ooooooooooooooooooooooo But all I could do was cry Oooooooooooooooooooo I'm sorry I hurt you THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine Dur-dur-dur-dur-durrr dur-dur-dur-dur-dur-dur-dur [repeat] (He sort of smiled and kissed me goodbye) (The tears were beginning to show) (As he drove away on that rainy night) (I begged him to go slow) (But whether he heard Revving of motorbike engine I'll never know) Screeching brakes and crash No, no, no, no Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out! I felt so helpless, what could I do? Remembering all the things we'd been through Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo In school they all stop and stare Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo I can't hide the tears, but I don't care Oooooooooooooooo I'll never forget him, THE LEADER OF THE PACK Revving of motorbike engine Woooooo-woo-woo-woo-wooooooooooo Goooone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gooooone [repeat] The leader of the pack and now he's gone The leader of the pack and now he's gone Screeching of tyres The leader of the pack and now he's gone The leader of the pack and now he's gone Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 73 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack Appendix 4: CD listing Track 1 ‘Leader of the Pack’, the Shangri-Las Track 2 ‘Stardust’, Billy Ward and His Dominoes Track 3 ‘What is a Youth?’, Glen Weston Track 4 ‘Leader of the Laundromat’, The Detergents Track 5 ‘A Leader Like Barack’, Capitol Steps Track 6 ‘Leader of the Pack’, Twisted Sister Track 7 ‘Leader of the Pack’, Alvin & the Chipmunks Track 8 ‘Endless Sleep’, Jody Reynolds Track 9 ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’, Ray Peterson Track 10 ‘[Son] Don’t Go Near the Indians’, Rex Allen Track 11 ‘Patches’, Dickey Lee Track 12 ‘Remember (Walking in the Sand)’, the Shangri-Las Track 13 ‘Give Us Your Blessing’, the Shangri-Las Track 14 ‘I Can Never Go Home Anymore’, the Shangri-Las Track 15 ‘Give Him a Great Big Kiss’, the Shangri-Las Track 16 ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’, Aretha Franklin Track 17 ‘He’s a Rebel’, the Crystals Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 74 That’s Why She Fell for the Leader of the Pack Appendix 5: DVD content 1. I’ve Got A Secret (October, 1964) 2. Shindig! # 32 (April, 1965) 3. Shindig! Groovy Girls (1964) Luan Lawrenson-Woods (2012) 75