I Think We’re Alone Now was presented to me as a slow ballad by my producers, Richie Cordell and Bo Gentry. I was 19, but I heard the hook and thought it sounded like a hit. We did a quick demo, souping it up and making it much faster. When we played it to Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records, he loved it, so we went back in the studio to record it properly. I recorded the vocal on Christmas Eve 1966, so we could get the song on the street for the new year.

Morris was right out of the movies. At first we had no idea that his Roulette label was a front for the Genovese crime family. He was a mob associate and these mafia guys would hang around Roulette like it was a social club. We soon learned to tiptoe around and not eavesdrop on too many conversations. But Morris could hear hits and if it hadn’t been for him nobody would have heard much more of Tommy James.