Scotsman Obituaries: Mary Weiss, Shangri-Las star who sang Leader of the Pack

Mary Weiss (centre) flanked by fellow Shangri-Las Margie and Mary Anne Ganser - Mary's sister Betty missed their 1964 London trip due to illness (Picture: Ron Case/Getty Images)

Mary Weiss was the coolest singer in the most badass girl group. As lead vocalist of New York girl group The Shangri-Las, she was the sage and sassy big sister ready to share her romantic misadventures for your benefit. Don’t even think about telling her who to date but please believe her when she recounted her regrets. She had been there, done it and survived to tell the tale, emerging battered, bruised but resolute. Then just like that, Weiss, who has died of COPD aged 75, was gone from the scene, returning briefly in 2007 to release her only solo record.

The Shangri-Las catalogue was a dating handbook. Their best-known song, Leader of the Pack, a Billboard No.1, lionised bad boy appeal but was ultimately a cautionary tale about living fast and dying young, a pocket melodrama complete with the sound of a crashing motorbike, lavishly produced more than a decade before Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman tapped into its pop bombast for the Bat Out of Hell album. Leader of the Pack was a classic of the teen tragedy genre so potent that ITV were reluctant to screen The Shangri-Las’ Ready Steady Go! appearance in case it stoked further Mod v Rockers aggro.

There was more drama, sheer drama where that came from. Cult favourite I Can Never Go Home Anymore spoke of a runaway daughter whose mother “grew so lonely in the end/the angels picked her for their friend”. The fatalistic Past Present and Future featured Weiss’s rueful narration to the tune of Moonlight Sonata, and was later covered by Marianne Faithfull and ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog, neither a stranger to romantic turbulence.

The Shangri-Las were also beloved of the Jesus & Mary Chain, Amy Winehouse, The Runaways and The Slits, and their meme-able lyrics have been widely cribbed. The Damned lifted Leader of the Pack’s hushed, incredulous opening line “is she really going out with him?” for Britain’s first punk hit, New Rose. Sealing the girls’ proto-punk credentials, “when I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love, L-U-V!” from Give Him A Great Big Kiss was pinched by The New York Dolls on Looking For a Kiss, and adapted by Julian Cope and The Replacements, while the “tell me more, tell me more” call-and-response surely inspired the same refrain in Grease’s Summer Nights.

Image-wise, The Shangri-Las were more girl gang than girl group. Exuding more of a rebel stance than their soul sisters The Supremes, The Shirelles and The Crystals, they eschewed floaty gowns and sequinned shift dresses for PVC pantsuits and waistcoats. Their kinky boots were made for walking and they rocked a stylistic combination of eyeliner, beehives and girl power as righteously as their New York peers The Ronettes, even though Weiss herself poured cold water on their bad girl reputation, saying “I’ve heard we were tough, and I just find that so hilarious. Maybe it was the boots.”

Mary Louise Weiss was born in Cambria Heights in the borough of Queens. Her father Harry died when she was just six weeks old, leaving her mother Elizabeth to scrape by in bringing up Weiss, older sister Betty and brother George.

As a child, Weiss soaked up the doo-wop sounds of the neighbourhood street musicians and found an escapist outlet in school choirs and plays. At Andrew Jackson High School, she and Betty made friends with twin sisters Mary Ann and Margie Ganser, forming The Shangri-Las in 1963.

The group were named after a restaurant in Queens rather than a state of utopia, and were discovered gigging locally by New York music mogul Artie Ripp.

Their first single Simon Says, with Betty on lead vocals, failed to chart but their fortunes changed when Ripp secured the mentoring services of Brill Building stalwarts Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry and a couple of trailblazing teen angst songs by George “Shadow” Morton.

Remember (Walking In The Sand), released on Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller’s label Red Bird Records, became The Shangri-Las debut hit. Billy Joel recalls playing piano on the session, contributing to a seven-minute epic, which was faded out at just over two minutes to make it palatable to Top 40 radio.

Follow-up Leader of the Pack became their signature tune and was later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Weiss sang lead on both songs. She was 15 years old and played her role to the hilt, encouraged by Morton to act as much as sing.

Despite US tours with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and James Brown and Top 20 hits in the UK, The Shangri-Las’s success was short-lived and the band split in 1968, victims of poor care (Weiss even bought a gun for her own protection) and contractual wrangles born of the same naivety, exploitation and bad judgment of which they sang.

“I truly believe a lot of men were considered artists, whether or not people wrote for them, where women were considered products,” Weiss said on reflection. “I could probably have survived it, but the litigation was thicker than the music.”

In the late Sixties, Weiss relocated to San Francisco for a dose of hippie freedom, then back to New York, forging a career as a purchasing agent, interior designer and furniture consultant. She reunited with the remaining Shangri-Las in the mid-Seventies (Mary Ann Ganser died of a drug overdose in 1970) and signed to Sire Records, but album recordings from the time were shelved.

Weiss released a solo album, Dangerous Game, in 2007, singing for the first time in two decades, backed by Memphis garage band The Reigning Sound, and had been collaborating with writer David Stenn on a stage musical about The Shangri-Las – what a teen melodrama that would have been.

She is survived by third husband Ed Ryan and sister Betty, the only extant member of The Shangri-Las.

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