Thing is, it's not about drugs; it's about a spiritual awakening.
To deal with the pace of endless touring and having to constantly churn out new music, James turned to booze and pills in the mid-60s. His frenetic schedule of writing/recording amid one-nighters wasn't the only thing weighing on him, however. He also had discovered that his record label, NYC-based Roulette Records, was being run as a front for the Genovese crime family by its ruthless president, Morris Levy. James literally feared for his life on a daily basis. (To make matters worse, he would discover that Roulette was screwing him out of millions of dollars in royalties, too.)
At one particularly low, narcotic-addled point during a North American tour, James stumbled upon a Gideon's Bible in his motel room's nightstand. From that day on, he made a practice of randomly flipping through The Bible every evening and reading whatever passage he landed upon. Passages from the Book of Revelation—specifically, Chapter 21's vivid descriptions of the New Jerusalem and the crystalline light of the glory of God, were the inspiration behind the song's title and its hope-filled lyrics of peace and brotherhood.
"Crystal Blue Persuasion" marked a stylistic shift for The Shondells away from the garage rock of "Mony, Mony" and "Hanky Panky" to a more mature, somewhat experimental, sound. It also marked a personal shift for James toward a heightened sense of spirituality. (Even so, it took collapsing and nearly dying on stage in 1970 for him to finally kick his addiction demons for good.)
The spare arrangement—which makes brilliant use of light percussion, congas, bongos, Spanish acoustic and electric guitar, Hammond organ, and electric bass (plus overdubbed brass, if you're listening to Roulette's radio edit instead of the album version)—is pure sunshine and soul. It feels almost like a Smokey Robinson composition as interpreted by The Rascals.
In a 2009 interview with Songfacts.com, James discusses the recording process of "Crystal Blue Persuasion," noting that the initial mix of the song wasn't the airy, tranquil version that everyone now knows. Instead, the first version was sonically thick with copious layers of drums, percussion, guitars, keyboards, etc. James and his bandmates unanimously agreed that they had gone too far and had "overproduced" the track. So they set about the arduous task of deleting each instrument, layer by layer, until they again found the essence of the song.
“Suddenly when you emptied out the record, it sounded like 'Crystal Blue' again,” says James in the interview. “It had that light, airy sound, which it needed to be right. And it took us about 6 weeks to do all that. It really was a very intricate un-production, pulling all the things out.”
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