The Album That Inspired Little Shop of Horrors
Written by Calliope Avery
In June, while out of town to see my third production of Little Shop of Horrors, I found a sealed copy of an album I've had my eye on for awhile. It's notable to me not just because it's a great album, but because it holds the foundations for most of the music written for the musical Little Shop of Horrors. This album is none other than...
He's a Rebel by The Crystals!
Released in 1963, with songs recorded between 1961 and 1963, this album was both a smash hit and very influential to music going forward, much like how many other girlgroups were! But even more importantly, this was the album that Alan Menken and Howard Ashman used as the basis for the musical identity of Little Shop of Horrors as we know it!
Well, that fact is all but confirmed. I do have extremely strong evidence to support this claim, so let's go through everything together!
According to "Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors" by Adam Abraham, Ashman was greatly inspired by the gritty sounds and detached vocals of music produced by Phil Spector in the early 60's. Here's a direct quote from the book:
Indeed, Ashman grew up listening to the girl groups of the period: the Crystals, the Ronettes, the Chiffons, the Shangri-Las. For research, he began to revisit records by Phil Spector, the Bronx-born music producer who was, according to Tom Wolfe, “The First Tycoon of Teen." Spector pioneered the "wall of sound": a dense musical tapestry that doubled, tripled, and quadrupled the guitars and rhythm and included backing vocals, handclaps, brass, and strings. In the recording studio, Spector would demand take after take from his musicians. Rather than use the first take or two, when the musicians were still fresh, he wanted the twentieth, the thirtieth. After hours in the studio, their playing lost much of its personality; the musicians merged into a single unit, machine-like.
-Adam Abraham, Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors
The book also includes a direct quite from Howard Ashman:
I heard something I hear to this day-something very dark and horrifying and scary as hell in the Phil Spector sound. There's a BUNK-BUNK- BUNK-TSCH, BUNK-BUNK-BUNK-TSCH. There are chains and whips in the background. There's real dark, nasty stuff going on under some of these very innocent lyrics. And if that doesn't sound like a horror movie, I don't know what does.
This Phil Spector sound influences both the lyrics of the songs in Little Shop of Horrors, but also the way the music itself sounds and how it's written. The entire soundtrack is deeply rooted in these 60's grilgroup pop ideas, which has rooted itself in many aspects of music today. This adds a timeless quality to LSoH's soundtrack, but by leaning even further into the unsettling aspects of Spector sound, it elevates this musical's specific type of horror. It's brilliant and very effective!
There's one more quote I'd like to share with you, one that clues us into which album specifically had the most impact on their vision and songwriting:
Ashman brought a record by the Crystals to Menken's place, in Manhattan Plaza, where they usually worked by the piano. Ashman announced that this would be the sound of their show; he called it “the dark side of Grease." "We started over again," Menken conceded.
-Adam Abraham, Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors
An album by The Crystals, you say? Hmm, I wonder which one it could be. Surely it couldn't be the one with a song that sounds nearly identical to "Skid Row (Downtown)" from LSoH's soundtrack...
The second number in the show, "Skid Row (Downtown)," is "a direct inversion of the Crystals' 'Uptown,"
-Adam Abraham, Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors
This was my first clue into "He's a Rebel" being the album in question. The aforementioned song, "Uptown", seems to be where Menken and Ashman took heavy inspiration from (if not outright stolen it) in both melody and lyrics. Take a listen for yourself!
Another notable song that they definitely pulled from has the same name as the album- "He's a Rebel." You might recognize this lyric, "He's a dentist, and he'll never ever be any good", from the song "Dentist!", but that lyric is directly pulled from the former song! It's the exact same line, they just replaced "rebel" with "dentist."
(Skip to 41 seconds in if you wanna hear the line!)
There's also a smaller reference that I discovered on one of my many relistens to the album. During the song "He's Sure the Boy I Love", our singer remarks that her boyfriend "doesn't drive a Cadillac car." In LSoH however, Audrey II tries to bribe Seymour into murder by offering to get him a Cadillac. So we can even see smaller references to the album within the musical, reinforcing just how influential it was!
It's also outright confirmed that the cut LSoH song, "The Worse He Treats Me", was directly inspired by the tone and subject matter of another song on this album. "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" is... an uncomfortable song, but you can definitely hear the lyrical inspiration. "The Worse He Treats Me" seems to be a satirical response to this song, playing up the objective absurdity of excusing physical abuse in the way it does.
Ashman and Menken wrote a song that focuses on Audrey's relationship with her abusive boyfriend, and the wellspring was yet another track by the Crystals, "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)," from 1962.
-Adam Abraham, Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors
Musically, the song takes plagiarism-level inspiration from a completely different song sung by a different girlgroup- "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las. The main melody of the song is taken directly from the guitar riff that carries the verses. Funnily enough, the music that serves as Orin's introduction theme in the stage show is the exact same riff, making it both a reference to "Leader of the Pack" and the cut song all about his horrible abuse. Pretty thematically relevant, I'd say.
There's actually a lot in LSoH that's inspired by the Shangri-Las! Their song "Leader of the Pack" proved rich in ideas to pull from and reference. Some of it ended up cut out, as described in this upcoming quote, but a good amount was kept in!
Besides the pop nightmares of Phil Spector, another influence was the New York-based girl group the Shangri-Las. "I already knew the Shangri-Las were funny in 1964," Ashman boasted. On the very first page of the first draft of Little Shop of Horrors, there is a stage direction that reads, “Shouted, a la the Shangri-La's." The line that follows, in the show's opening number, is drawn from one of the girl group's signature hits, "Leader of the Pack." Audrey, terrified by something, cries, "Lookout, lookout, lookout, lookout!" (This remained in the show, although in subsequent drafts it is assigned to someone else.) Other sly references follow. Later in the first draft, Audrey defends her dentist boyfriend: "Folks are always putting him down"; the other women on stage echo, à la the Shangri-Las, "Down, down, down." These latter two lines from "Leader of the Pack" were eventually dropped. However, when audiences finally meet Orin Scrivello, DDS, he is introduced thus: "Here he is, girls, the Leader of The Plaque." So Little Shop of Horrors recreates the popular music of the late 1950s and early 1960s and sees the world through the prism of doo-wop records and girl-group patter.
-Adam Abraham, Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors
Have you noticed that Orin keeps getting brought up? Ignoring how much it drives me insane that he manages to worm his way into everything I've ever done, there seems to be a reason for this. In the transition between Roger Corman's 1960 movie and Menken & Ashman's 1982 stage musical, the dentist character got the most substantial makeover. Orin Scrivello is almost unrecognizable from his roots as Dr. Phoebus Farb; more specifically, he seemed to have gotten a brand new coat of early 60's rebel paint. Let's take another look at the cover of the album we've been discussing.
For variety, here's a picture of my own personal LP!
Now, what do you notice about this cover? Does the man pictured look familiar at all? Does he remind you of anything perhaps? Like, oh, I don't know... a certain dentist?
So I have absolutely no way to prove this, and I don't believe that this was the only inspiration taken for Orin's reimagining, but I do firmly believe that the cover of this album played a large part in the aesthetic that Orin would adopt. I mean, look at it. And with the added context of this album having so many influential songs, it wouldn't surprise me if seeing that album cover for extended periods of time would've made some creative gears turn.
I would argue further that this album's non-music related influence even extends to LSoH's themes and ideas. While not the entire focus of the album, reoccurring themes of class and wealth can be heard in songs like "Uptown" and "He's Sure The Boy I Love." Mentions of abuse and a difficult life are found in "He Hit Me" and "No One Ever Tells You." These themes, while prevalent, take on more positive and optimistic perspectives within these songs. Little Shop of Horrors takes these themes and responds with a much more pessimistic outlook. The exception to this are the album's themes of finding love regardless of what society might expect or want for you. I'd say it's the most prevalent theme found in the album; songs such as "He's a Rebel", "He's Sure the Boy I Love", "Another Country-Anothor World", and "Uptown" all demonstrate this idea. And LSoH seems to respect this one while even elaborating further with Seymour and Audrey's relationship.
My personal favorite is only found in one song: "On Broadway." The song sings idealistically about Broadway, and the singer states that she will someday make her way out of her small town to go have a life there. Both ideas, dreaming about a idealistic place and wanting to escape your current living situation, have been split between two songs in LSoH's soundtrack: "Somewhere That's Green" and "Skid Row: Downtown" respectively. LSoH's twist is that Audrey doesn't dream of a glamorous life on Broadway, she dreams of a cozy and domestic suburban life.
To keep myself from talking for the rest of time, I will cut myself off here. I hope you found this interesting, and I highly reccomend giving the album "He's a Rebel" a listen for yourself! It's definitely become one of my top favorite albums. In the future I would also like to do research and make a post about the impact that The Ronnettes and The Shangri-Las had on LSoH, but work has me pretty busy lately, so I'm not sure when I can get that out.
Anyway, thank you for reading all of this I very much appreciate it! :]
