THE STORY OF A SONG: ? and the Mysterians - "96 Tears"

One of the mid-1960s garage rock songs that would later help inspire punk rock, 96 Tears was written in 1962 by lead singer Rudy Martinez under the title “Too Many Teardrops” for his group then known as XYZ, the members all born in Mexico and raised in Michigan's Saginaw Valley. (The other Mysterians: lead guitarist Robert Balderrama, keyboardist Frank Rodriguez, bassist Frank Lugo, and drummer Edward Serrato. The group was named after a 1957 Japanese sci-fi film). The group’s manager Lilly Gonzalez, after seeing how well the song went over in clubs, formed a record label especially for them, and the song (recorded at a screened-in patio outside her living room in Bay City) was initially released on Pa-Ga-Go 102 in mid-1966. As the record began to sell in Michigan stores, it picked up radio airplay in Flint and then Detroit. That brought it to the attention of Neil Bogart, president of Cameo Records in Philadelphia, who bought the master and released it nationally.

Although for years the record was thought to be driven by the staccato chords of a Farfisa organ, in 1982 Rodriguez revealed in a Goldmine interview that he was actually playing a Vox organ. Martinez studiously maintained an aura of mystery, answering only to “Question Mark” or “Q” and never removing his dark glasses. Jon Savage remarks that gradually the organ “transcends relentlessness to become hypnotic, its clusters of repeated notes echoing the lyrical mantra of obsession and revenge: ‘You're gonna cy, cry, cry, cry.’” The group had three subsequent chart singles, and the uncharted B side of I Need Somebody, "8” Teen, was later remade by Alice Cooper into the hit Eighteen. Dave Marsh, ranking it #96 (of course) in The Heart of Rock & Soul, suggests half-seriously that this may have been “the first postmodern rock record,” with its droning sound and a singer “spewing lyrics that are half vision, half invective, with an almost parodistic misogyny.” 96 Tears was also ranked #36 among the best singles of the past twenty-five years by Rolling Stone in 1988. 

Chart debut on September 3, 1966 (1 week at #1 on Billboard; 1 week at #1 in Canada, #37 in England)

The Stranglers released a version that reached #17 in the UK Singles Chart in 1990.