Gary James' Interview With Jim Pilster Of
The Cryan' Shames



Jim Pilster was part of a Chicago Rock band called The Cryan' Shames. The Cryan' Shames are probably best known for a song they recorded called "Sugar And Spice". That song reached number 49 on the U.S. charts. The Cryan' Shames have quite a history, and who better to tell it than Jim Pilster.

Q - Jim, as we speak, The Cryan' Shames still perform, but only select dates?

A - Yeah. Until COVID we were playing twenty to thirty dates a year. Back before the recession, or whatever it was in 2009, all of the villages pulled out of the festivals and we were doing like thirty festivals a year. We got back together in '86 I believe, and me and (Tom) Doody and a four piece band we picked up that still are with us for thirty-eight years. It's been pretty successful. Right now Tom Doody and I do a show with Jim Peterik. It's called Cornerstone Of Rock. I call it The Tombstones Of Rock, but it doesn't go over well anymore. (laughs)

Q - I wouldn't think so.

A - It was us and New Colony Six, The Ides Of March, The Buckinghams, Jimy Sohns And The Shadows. Originally it had The American Breed with Gary Loizzo. Gary died immediately after we started it. Now Jimy Sohns died. But we're still doing shows. They're fun. Eighteen old guys in a room.

Q - There have to be not only people your age in the audience, but younger people as well.

A - There are occasionally, but generally you look out there and there's a lot of white hair and blue hair.

Q - I never did understand that one.

A - I never did either, but Peterik had purple hair up until last year.

Q - Tell him to get another hair stylist.

A - He did, and now it's grey. (laughs) He said it started falling out from dying it purple.

Q - When this band was put together was there a lot of work for The Cryan' Shames?

A - No. We were doing high school dances and then they started making teen clubs and we started working all the teen clubs. We broke in the band and then the other bands came along like REO (Speedwagon) and other ones in Illinois, the Chicago area. They started working the big barns, making the big money.

Q - What were the big barns?

A - The big rooms. I call 'em big barns, the festival sites, the United Centers, the 15,000, 20,000 seaters. We were working teen clubs that could hold like 2,000, packed.

Q - Weren't there a lot of clubs in Chicago, or were you just too young to work in them?

A - We were too young to work 'em. There were night clubs downtown, but they generally didn't pay very well and they were hard to get in and out. If you had a record out, there were so many teenagers the nightclubs didn't really want you I guess. I mean, we hardly ever worked a nightclub. We worked a lot of high schools and teen clubs. One of the disc jockeys who introduced us to our managers and the "producers", quote, unquote, he had a knack for going into a town and talking with the village fathers and making them believe their kids needed a place to go at night, and he had the place called The Wild Goose, Dex Card's Wild Goose. Dex Card was the disc-jockey on, I believe WLS radio. It was a 50,000 watt, clear channel station that we actually listened to while we were driving in Florida when we heard our record went number one. I remember one time you could hear it in Florida. You cold heart it in Arizona. We had three 50,000 watt, clear channel stations. We had WLS, WCFL and WGN. And you could hear that all over the country. That's one reason why those Chicago groups broke so quickly. We were lucky and the guys that ended up being our managers knew all these disc jockeys to the point where we recorded a song and we're driving home, back to the suburbs, and we hear it on the radio.

Q - What were you hearing? A demo tape?

A - Acetate they called it, which was something they just cut in the studio. They burned it right there. He walked it over and they played it on the radio. (laughs)

Q - The good old days.

A - Those were the good old days.

Q - They really were. I'm not just saying that.

A - They really were, where decent music could make it immediately. It was like unbelievable.

Q - You guys were influenced by the British Invasion, were you not?

A - Oh, yeah. When we first started we did three sets. One set was The Byrds. One set was The Beatles 'cause we loved them, and one set was The Stones, 'cause they rocked!

Q - Sounds like a pretty decent set list!

A - Yeah, it really was. It was excellent. We started writing our own music and we started putting that in. Pretty soon we were noticed by disc jockeys and we went in and recorded a song. We actually recorded a Beatles song, "If I Needed Someone", a George Harrison tune which was released in England, but it wasn't released in the United States. We took it and made it into a record and when we tried to get a release on it, George Harrison said, "No. It hasn't been released in the United States." The disc jockeys were ready to play it and he wouldn't release it. They said, "Hey, we got the disc jockeys all primed. We need a record." So, we found "Sugar And Spice" and reworked it and did that, and all of a sudden it was on the radio.

Q - You were the first band from Chicago to land a major record deal with Columbia. That's a big deal. So, what kind of promotion did Columbia Records do for The Cryan' Shames?

A - Nothing.

Q - Nothing?

A - They didn't know what to do with us. I'm dancing all over the stage and we're playing unbelievably good music and singing really well, and they didn't have any idea what to do with us. They'd send us around. Our live show was so energetic and so good. I mean, we rehearsed the hell out of it, I mean the music. Then Tom and I would get up in front and dance around, throw microphones and tambourines back and forth across the stage. It was wild. Kids loved it. Columbia had no idea what to do with it. They'd throw us out on the road on a promotional tour and we'd have just four guitars with us and drumsticks and show up and lip-synch in Cleveland and New Orleans and Miami and places like that. They wouldn't get the whole live show energy at all. Wherever we played, we scored with those records in those towns. We did well.

Q - Where were you lip-syncing those songs?

A - You'd be on television. You'd go to New Orleans and their record guy there from Columbia would take you around to the television shows and to the radio stations and you'd be interviewed and you'd do a television show because each town had a teenage television show. You'd go in there and they'd play your record and you'd act like you were singing it. They did a lot of that on Dick Clark, lip-synching. It got to a point where we'd just joke around. We hated it.

Q - What would have had to have happened for The Cryan' Shames to have enjoyed more success? Would you have had to have a more powerful management team behind you?

A - That wouldn't have hurt. These guys that we had, we were the first ones they had. They were not that much older than us. Most of us were close to twenty years old. Those guys were maybe twenty-six, twenty-seven. They also got all the money for producing and they didn't know shit. (laughs)

Q - They were in the studio producing you or they were supervising other people that were producing you?

A - They didn't know what to do. It was all new to everybody. Everything was new. Chicago (the city) was just breaking out. This was like 1965. They told us we should sign with Columbia. We go, "Why should we sign with Columbia?" "Columbia has a record club. The Columbia Record Club. They can lose more records than the rest of the record companies can even sell." I mean, that was their pitch. "We have a record club." They sent out records every month to people whether they order them or not. It was a scam. But they were gigantic. All of their management was in New York and we had to, according to our contract, record in a Columbia studio. The one in Chicago was real basic. So, we would fly to New York and record all night long for two or three days in a row in New York City at 30 Rock. They had great studios there. They had great engineers. They had tape men that would just handle the tapes. It was an amazing time because we were like nineteen and most of us were under the age to drink. 1967 we're stuck in New York. They had a gigantic snowstorm in Chicago in 1967, around thirty inches of snow. We got snowed in to New York. We're kids with long hair and we get to go to clubs in New York. We could go to nightclubs because eighteen was the age in New York at the time. We'd go see the bands that were playing in the nightclubs in Chicago, in New York City. Baby Huey And The Babysitters. He was a gigantic Black guy. Had a great house band. We had a couple of nights off when we got snowed in. I remember seeing The Young Rascals at a gigantic dance hall that had five thousand people. Little Anthony And The Imperials were on one stage. They had like four stages in this room. In Brooklyn I believe we took the subway and we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. We were wandering around New York City. Went down to the Village and saw Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention. They were playing in a concert hall that held about one hundred people. They would play there for like six months at a time. Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention were amazing. (laughs)

Q - The memories!

A - It was an amazing time. Kids around here could see major acts, The Buckinghams, New Colony Six, The Ides Of March and The Cryan' Shames at their local teen club or their youth center. At that time it was amazing.

Q - The admission was probably $1.⁰⁰.

A - $2.⁵⁰, and nobody over the age of twenty-one could get in. You had to be between thirteen and twenty.

Q - How did they know how old the people were? Did you have to show some sort of I.D.?

A - Maybe. I don't know. I didn't have to do that. I was in the background.

Q - The Cryan' shames opened for Jimi Hendrix and The Monkees?

A - Yeah. Different shows. There was a time he toured with The Monkees, remember?

Q - I do.

A - He got thrown off the tour 'cause he was too sexy.

Q - That's the story that was put out. I believe Hendrix wanted out. The Monkees' fans were not Hendrix fans.

A - That's for sure.

Q - Did you get to talk to Hendrix?

A - Barely. I got to talk to Janis (Joplin) more than Hendrix, backstage at the Aragon Theatre. I was like nineteen. She was back there after the show. I came back to see her and she hands me a bottle of Southern Comfort and says, "Why don't you take a hit on this?" I said, "No. You scare me!" She was like wild. Big Brother sucked. She was much better than the band.

Q - Did you ever meet Jim Morrison?

A - I got backstage with him, but I never really met him. He was running 'cause women were chasing him. He agent was one of my best buddies and he got me into show business way back when. He was a booking agent and he took me to the show. It was great. I mean, we had great seats for everything at every act that was in town. We saw Springsteen the first time he was in town. We had those beautiful seats. That was '76, maybe '75. He was young, energetic. He was great. We saw Procol Harum and The Staple Singers. The Monkees were the funniest because they had a band right behind them, behind the curtain. They were actually playing. They were on a stage that revolved. We played in Milwaukee Stadium I think, on that stage.

Q - The Monkees were lip-synching too then?

A - Yeah. The band was right behind the curtain. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. (laughs)

Q - Did you have a chance to talk with The Monkees?

A - I think we did briefly. It's hard to do that when you're playing 'cause you each have your own jobs to do. We didn't party too much with them, not like The Turtles. They were partiers. Of course we were still pretty young. It was before pot. It was before drugs. It was before i-phones and your carry around camera. That would have been so cool. We did a bunch of shows with The Lovin' Spoonful and they were fun. They had their own plane. We rode in that. That was a lot of fun. We were backstage with Tommy James. I remember we did a show with Tommy James on the Missouri River. A floating stage on the Missouri River, outside of Kansas City or someplace out there. The boaters would drive up right next to the stage. It was different. We didn't get to party with him. You would be moving immediately after the show. You'd be in your van, going to the next one. You really didn't have the time. Most of the time I don't think we even knew who we were going to be playing with.

Q - We don't hear much about Rock 'n' Roll or Rock music these days. It's all Country music, or so it seems. You were around in the Golden Years of music.

A - Yeah, the sixties. It's true. I used to love Country, but now the guys in Country are so sucky. (laughs) They really suck. They all sound alike. You know, y'all. Give me a break.

Q - You did a few things outside of music. You opened your first Deep Dish Restaurant in Los Angels. How did that restaurant go over with the people in Los Angeles?

A - Well, it went over okay. It was in Marina del Rey, right after Marina del Rey opened. The Doors' agent, that I was telling you about, called me and said, "Do you want to open a restaurant in Marina del Rey? I have some friends and one of them is one of the Walgreens company people that owns Walgreens and they say they have the mysterious, little known secret for the famous dough." It was a secret recipe. "Come down and see what happens." I went down and opened this restaurant and it was attached to a big night club, three hundred seater I think. There were bands. I brought my drums. I would set my drums up with the band and go in and make pizzas and go back out and play. I did that for about a year and a half or so.

Q - Back up for a minute. What did you know about the pizza business?

A - I worked for a pizza / beef restaurant. I learned how to make pizzas and do all the kitchen work.

Q - You were also a realtor. Did you ever sell homes to the rich and famous?

A - Not to the rich and famous so much, to the regular people. In the area where I lived and worked, the houses were pretty inexpensive. So, it wasn't the rich and famous in Chicago.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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