The Mamas and the Papas

Even without John Phillips her voice really stood out.

The Mamas and the Papas have been on my mind lately, for some reason, OP.

In fact, I never knew that Michelle was fired by John in mid-1966 and replaced with Jill Gibson. "Mama" Jill toured with The Mamas and the Papas until Michelle was re-hired by John in August 1968. Their second album cover was originally photographed with Jill, but Michelle returned prior to the album release and Michelle was edited in. I thought this was interesting.

I really like their music and harmonies but I feel like for a group that was so short lived and really not all that significant they get so much fucking AirPlay in terms of biographies and BTS and all that. It’s Michelle Phillips telling the same fucking stories for 30, 40 years. And yeah now we know John fucked his daughter . Ok we get it.

The Mamas and the Papas had 6 US top 10 hits between '65 and '67.

They are well remembered because some of those hits were massive and still are.

But they don't touch the Beatles or the Supremes.

Before the Beatles? And The Supremes and Beach Boys came after The Beatles? You may want to check your dates, OP.

John Phillips. Ugh. He was the one who kept telling Cass she was too fat. He even had her sing "No one's getting fat except Mama Cass." She took it. Even on The Carol Burnett Show, they did a sketch where she was fat-shamed.

Fun fact: Cass Elliott was one of two finalists for the role of Miss Marmelstein in the Broadway musical "I Can Get It For You Wholesale." The other finalist was Barbra Streisand.

[quote]He even had her sing "No one's getting fat except Mama Cass."

Fat back then was slang for rich. If you listen to the song with that in mind, it makes more sense.

True. In the end of the song Everyone was getting fat except Mama Cass.

I never liked Mama Cass.

R5, I think OP meant to provide context, but got the timeline a little out of order.

Denny was one of those men who was sexy when he was young and then he hit the wall and hit it hard.

I don’t know how to link youtube here but that song that goes “stars shining bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper I love you”......... can make me cry.

.... “birds singin’ in the sycamore tree”

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME

I'm still waiting for that script for her biopic.

R15. I know we crucify her here but Chrissy Metz would be awesome in that role.

Cass Elliot had a gorgeous voice. I love listening to her.

r13/r14 The original version (1931) by Ozzie Nelson and his orchestra

Michelle appeared recently with daughter Chynna on one of her podcasts. She was funny. I don't get the trash talk directed at her. She survived, and was a hands on witness to so many events of the 60's and 70's.

When Cass Elliot told John Phillips she was pregnant he said "When's the abortion?" The guy was scum.

"Dream A Little Dream" was a perfect song for Cass. But the poor woman needed a stylist.

In Ryan Murphy's reimagined, idealized version of the Mama Cass story, she'll be a 90 pound sex kitten.

I agree re Michelle. She was smart and gives a good interview.

So Cass didn't die from a ham sandwich. She died from a heart attack, right? Or was it a heroin overdose.

I've been a huge fan of the Mamas and the Papas since I was a kid. No, they weren't as "important" as the Beatles and some other groups, but they had some huge hits. "California Dreamin' is still one of the most-performed songs of all time, feeding Michelle royalties (as co-author, not as a performer). Someone whined about Michelle telling the same stories over and over again -What do you want her to do? Everyone's dead. There can't be any new stories!. The fact that she retells the same story is a good indicator that she tells the truth. She and John released autobiographies within weeks of each other, and I read them both, back to back. It was amazing how much they dovetailed. When they recounted the same events, the facts were in agreement. And neither one said, "Poor me!" The both took responsibility for their mistakes (which is why John's book was much longer than Michelle's). I recommend both to fans of the group, or anyone who wants to get a feel for the swinging sixties.

I bought there final album, People Like Us, their only one that didn't do well -in a remainder bin. Only a couple of songs were good, but they were in great voice. The sound was a bit different, though, as by that point none of them were speaking to each other and they refused to record (or rehearse) together. John had a recording studio and mixing board in his home, and they all came in one at a time to learn their parts and lay down their vocal tracks, which were then mixed together.

OP's understanding of the history of 1960s rock is as ridiculous as her statement that it took an actress playing Cass to remind her how good the group was.

Rather like:

"Seeing film clips of JFK's assassination reminded me how good Cliff Robertson was in "PT109."

I discovered them in the 00s in college and loved them. Some of the best harmonies ever featured in popular music.

Mama Cass was a thief! She was arrested in the UK for stealing towels!

I like your humorous analogy R26 but I don't see where I did what you're saying. Also, I'm a guy.

Oh, never mind. I do. The Tarantino movie. But why is that so bad? I'm so hurt but I'm writing thru the tears.

[quote]So Cass didn't die from a ham sandwich. She died from a heart attack, right? Or was it a heroin overdose.

At the time, she had been doing a lot of yo-yo dieting. The quick weight loss was a strain on her heart.

But nice Jewish girls shouldn't be eating ham sandwiches. Let that be a lesson to you, madchen.

R16 To be fair, Cass was AT MOST 1/2 the size of Chrissy.

r26 was pretty funny

[quote]But they don't touch the Beatles or the Supremes.

No, just me.

I read somewhere that Cass always knew she'd be a star. That happens a lot. People have this inherent knowledge they're going to be, um, big.

Mama Cass was also Baroness von Wiedenman, after she married a German Baron. The marriage only lasted a few months but she had a title. Maybe you’re related to her, German Gay Guy

Yeah, the heir. He was cute back then.

Cass had married a fellow musician - Jim Hendricks? - to keep him from being drafted, in the early 60's.

I had read Michelle learned who Owen's father was, and set her up to meet him.

Michelle was a witness to and survivor of the 60s/70s, but she exposed Chynna to a lot of horrible shit (Michelle shacking up with a different celebrity boyfriend every year, exposing her kid to drugs/alcohol/promiscuous sex/predators).

It's no small feat that Chynna has been able to build a normal, stable life for herself with Billy Baldwin. The fundie Christianity stuff Chynna is into now is kind of alienating to me but to each their own. She seems like a good lass. If I had been in her place, I would've been dead 20 years ago (suicide or OD).

R39 And to think whatever Michelle exposed Chynna to was probably Disneyland compared to what she would have seen in the primary custody of John!

R40 - understatement of the decade.

R41 Wasn't it someone like Keith Richards who thought that John's drug use was TOO MUCH?

Did Michelle ever get to solo on any of the songs?

She did the principal vocals in "I Wanna Be A Star" on their final album.

I love their music. I just saw a biography about Cass one late night on tv and have been a fan ever since.

Cass should have sang lead a lot more. Denny was good but Cass was better.

Cass was definitely the stand-out voice, but together they had an amazing sound!

How was Michelle's solo album?

The Mamas and Papas are good in small doses. Too much a d it starts to get depressing.

Speaking of dream a little dream...

[quote]How was Michelle's solo album?

It sank pretty fast.

I have to say it. One of the greatest soap scenes ever, was when Michelle Phillips' character on Knot's Landing tried to seduce Kevin Dobson to "Dedicated to the One I Love".

r49, I don't agree with you, but thank you for the Kate Smith. Perfectly lovely.

Here's some more Kate Smith:

Sorry, but Kate Smith has been cancelled.

"California Dreamin'" made its debut December 8, 1965. And it got endless airplay for months afterward. It's always been my favorite Mamas and the Papas song. I read that it was written by John and Michelle Phillips as a lament for spending too much time in wintry New York when they would rather have been in sunny L.A. Even in the middle of August, hearing it makes me think of snow-covered New England where I grew up.

OP's timeline is off, but the real point is that the Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles, the Supremes and the Beach Boys (and many others) were all popular at the same time. The mid-'60s were pretty amazing for music.

[quote] "California Dreamin'" made its debut December 8, 1965.

Interesting thing about that record. It was supposed to be Barry McGuire's song with the Mamas and Papas just the backup singers. Instead they deleted Barry and cranked up the background track. The record producer made the right decision but if you listen closely to the hit version especially at the start of the record you can still hear Barry's muffled vocals.

I wonder how much money that cost McGuire.

Michelle looks like she wandered in off the street and pretended to part of the group in the video at R12.

Barry McGuire was cute when he was young. Here he is in Hair with Sally Eaton and Hiram Keller.

Tell me more about Hiram Keller!

Hiram Keller on DL

Their story would make a great biopic. The music! The unrequited love! The drama! The love triangle/quadrangle within the group! The music! The timing - selling the story of a fat girl during the Obesity Epidemic! Think of the sales, if every fattie in the world sees this!

Seriously, their story would totally work as a two-hour movie, there's got to be something rattling around Development Hell right now.

I think the problem with a biopic is Cass’s daughter. She’d probably not cooperate with something that showed the truth that her mother’s loneliness caused her to abuse drugs and sex.

R24 What? The ham sandwich story was just a fuck’n myth? All these fuck’n years later, she deserves an apology and a panini

At least she didn't fuck her relatives.

Cass Trivia from Dave Mason - “One of the freakiest parts was that at Cass’s I saw a lot of Abbie Folger and Wojciech Frykowski until the Manson crew slaughtered them” and she knew all the victims well. But she also knew the murderers – in his autobiography, Michael Caine of all people recalls attending a party in Hollywood with Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate, where Mama Cass introduced him to a ‘scruffy little man’. His name was Charles Manson.

Barry McGuire getting it on with Diane Keaton and Steve Curry.

The guy who connected Cass, Sebring, Tate and every other rock star in Los Angeles was a guy named Pic Dawson, a trust fund kid from back east who supplemented his monthly income by selling drugs among the In Crowd in cool cities around the globe. He abused Cass's affection for him by fucking her and then stealing her stuff when the well temporarily ran dry. But he was kind of an adorable user, kind of like a darker version of James Dean in the mid-60s and she couldn't help it. She loved the fucking whenever she could get it from him. All sorts of interesting shit about Pic. His father was in the CIA and Pic introduced the CIA's mind control drug, MDA, to Los Angeles in the 60s (used to love MDA!). The Manson family trafficked it. Frykowski and Folger had MDA in their systems when they died. Pic Dawson OD'd in the 80s.

Dawson was also the number one suspect in the Tate murders. They believed the word written in blood on the front door was PIC, not PIG.

John and Cass are mentioned in some old "Jay Sebring Datalounge" google searches. Something to do with a witch coven which was seen by as just a freaky way to start an orgy. Sammy Davis Jr. says it was real. Everyone in it painted one fingernail red and Papa John donated oodles of money to them.

R49 I was ready to cringe on that but it was actually really good.

Her voice was so effortlessly perfect in pitch and tone. She was hampered by a lot of medical problems by 1974. She needed oxygen to perform. This is from one of her last London shows.

She also needed heroin. There were always rumors of a covered-up OD when she died. People said Pic Dawson gave her the big hot dose that did her in.

“I’m used to being around skuzzy people,” Cass Elliot told her future husband Donald von Wiederman on the day they met. “You know, guys with long, stringy hair and zits from not eating right, guys with needle marks on their arms, guys who rip me off every time I turn my back.”

[quote] Something to do with a witch coven which was seen by as just a freaky way to start an orgy. Sammy Davis Jr. says it was real.

Jayne Mansfield was also part of that crowd.

Cass and Jules

R75 Isn't Tuesday Weld the grand high witch of the Satanic Hollywood crowd?

R19 Michelle angry told them all "I will dance on all of your graves!" when she was temporarily fired in 1966. She nailed it.

This Behind the Music about them is really well done. It pretty much spills all the tea.

R78 I meant *angrily, not angry.

Gen Z thought they look like the Scooby gang.

R78 here agin, I'm not at my best tonight. Here's the correct link to The Behind the Music.

WHET BIJOU

Mackenzie's book was horrifying. John was such a monster.

R78 was that really so hard to predict though?

A drug addict, an obese drug addict, and an alcoholic.

She was pretty safe in saying that .

Cass bought Jayne Mansfield's "Pink Palace" but I've never seen a picture of her in it. I can see Cass taking a bubble bath in the heart-shaped tub. She also lived in a home that Dan Aykroyd later bought. He said he felt Cass' spirit in bed with him one night. Cass is apparently still man-crazy in the afterlife: )

Wow Cass's husband had quite the backstory. She was always trying to turn gay guys, who she felt were the more interesting among her amazing set of friends.

"Her second husband, ‘60s paparazzi journalist von Weidenman, was a German nobleman, heir to a Bavarian baron — also, after his short-lived marriage to Cass, an irrepressibly manic, multifarious Penthouse staff writer, gay porn producer (former publisher of The Advocate), Los Angeles advertising magnate for a spell, artist and novelist."

When Cass died, who took over raising the daughter?

R87 It sounds like she was raised by Cass' sister Leah.

"Cass bought Jayne Mansfield's "Pink Palace" but I've never seen a picture of her in it. "

We had a thread on the Pink Palace earlier this year, and Englebert Humperdink also bought the place!

He redid it in boring browns, and I would so fucking LOVE to see what kind of redecorating the hippie social queen of Laurel Canyon did.

Jayne's house was truly a hideous monstrosity. Even by 60s standards.

"But she also knew the murderers – in his autobiography, Michael Caine of all people recalls attending a party in Hollywood with Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate, where Mama Cass introduced him to a ‘scruffy little man’. His name was Charles Manson."

I think Michael Caine is full of shit. He must have been drunk or something if he thought he met Manson at an A-list party. I doubt Charles Manson was invited to many "Hollywood" parties, and I seriously doubt he went to one where Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were in attendance. His association with successful musicians and Hollywood types was marginal. He knew Terry Melcher (who thought he was a talentless little creep) and the very fucked up Dennis Wilson, but as far as Manson and his crew hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite...well, that's pure bullshit.

It's weird...lots of Hollywood stars WANT to be associated with the Manson family in some way, even though they weren't. I guess it makes them feel special. So many claim to have been invited to Sharon Tate's house on the night of the murders but the fact is that Sharon Tate, 8 and a half months pregnant and uncomfortable in the hot weather, was in no mood for guests that night. Hell, she didn't even want her houseguests, Folger and Frykowski, to be there. She wanted them to leave but was too nice to tell them to scam. Yes, it seems like all of Hollywood wanted a Manson connection, even if none existed.

Sharon wanted Mexican food and they went to El Coyote. They showed it in the Tarantino film and it brought back memories. We all used to go there in the 70s. The food was crap but the margaritas were generous. You always walked out of there bombed. I remember waiting for the car one night and Natalie Schafer from Gilligan's Island came out wobbling and acting all bubbly. I was like "Luvvy!!!"

I actually believe the Manson story. He had a guitar. He looked like a hippie. Nobody knew he was a killer. I think they were all interconnected for a while and I think Cass was one of the main facilitators. You never knew who would pop up at her house on Woodrow Wilson Drive.

Chynna is currently working on getting Mama Michelle into heaven by making sure she has a relationship with the Lord!

"I actually believe the Manson story. He had a guitar. He looked like a hippie. Nobody knew he was a killer."

He looked insane. And acted insane. I doubt he got invited many places.

R93 This might sound like a paradox, but I suspect that Charlie's real "connections" (even just in passing) to the celebs of 1960s Laurel Canyon/greater L.A. are simultaneously underplayed as to not tarnish the reputations of those celebrities and overplayed to make him seem (probably) even MORE sinister.

[quote] He looked insane. And acted insane. I doubt he got invited many places.

Maybe he was brought as a guest of Scotty Bowers.

Definitely agree R96.

Coincidentally reading a very good Cass bio called "Dream a Little Dream of Me." I did a search for "Manson" and this came up...

"Manson and the crew had been frequent visitors to Cass's house, taking advantage, like so many others, of the plentiful food, drugs and generally laid-back hospitable atmosphere. But Cass was not the only one who had played host to him and his acolytes, unaware of what would ensue. Although in the aftermath, few would admit to any link, many prominent figures in the LA rock community had not only socialized with Manson and his 'family' but also developed closer associations with them. As Neil Young later remembered, 'A lot of pretty well-known musicians around LA knew Manson, though they'd probably deny it now. The girls were always around too. They'd be right there on the couch with me, singing a song.'"

For a great read on Michelle, hunt down the Vanity Fair piece from the aughts. It cemented her as one of my favorite rock stars of all time.

John had a great run as a writer (until running outta gas at the end of their '65-68 reign) and their harmonies were otherworldly. Few if any have ever matched the dynamic of the male/female voices on a harmony level, plus they set the bar for messy inner-band drama so high ABBA and Fleetwood Mac had to happen.

R99 KInd of surprised (but not?) that it was Neil Young who spilled the tea about Manson.

Their music was both of the time and ahead of it.

I don't know why John made such a fuss over Cass's extra note. Would it really ruin a song if he modulated it down one step?

How did Cass and Denny get rich so quickly? Were they paid according to how many records sold? Because if John (and Michelle) were credited with writing the songs, Cass and Denny wouldn't be getting royalties. Or were they making so many appearances that they were able to rack up concert fees?

Cass only had $20K at the time of her death in '74. Denny still had a voice so toured and went back to Canada and became a TV star. It was the touring and performing that made them their money in the good times. I think Denny had about a million when he died. He sure was cute. I can see why Cass adored him.

"Cass only had $20K at the time of her death in '74. "

Well, if she spent every cent on high living and scummy associates, she wasn't the only one. And frankly, it's something that some people aspire to - spend your last dollar just before you die!

I presume her estate got enough royalties over the years to support her daughter.

I'll take the Mamas and the Papas over the Beatles any day—their male/female vocal melodies are much more enjoyable to my ear than anything the Beatles ever made. John Phillips was a creep, but he was a talented songwriter. Cass and Denny's voices were far more dynamic than John and Michelle's, but I think all of them had very beautiful voices. I love all their hits, but they also had a few deep cuts that are great, this one being a particular favorite:

R107 Why does every group from the 1960s have to be compared to The Beatles? It diminishes both of them.

Oh honey, even the groups themselves were comparing themselves to the Beatles back then. Their songwriting was amazing and the L.A. music crowd could meet them all at Cass's, if they were lucky.

When compared to the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas were small potatoes musically speaking. They only had a handful of hits, massive major worldwide hits, that made them all rich and famous, but Lennon/McCartney were on fire. Amazing output from them. Can still recognize every single hit of theirs from the first notes.

By 1968, John was so fucked up on drugs and putting out songs about how being rich and famous is a drag. No one wanted to heart that shit. He didn't have a fellow songwriter to bring him back to earth like John Lennon did. After they broke off Lennon follow Phillips into heroin and stayed there for something like ten years.

I love Mama Cass but people forget in their top three position charting songs she wasn’t the lead. Denny Doherty was the lead on ‘Monday, Monday’ and ‘California Dreaming’, and Michelle Phillips was the lead on ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’. Poor Denny always gets forgotten. My fave song of theirs is ‘Twelve Thirty’. Was thrilled with its use in ‘Once Upon in Hollywood’.

Cass sang lead on many of their hits. True, Michelle sang the intro to "Dedicated to the One I Love," but then they all came in and drowned her out, thankfully. But gawd she was gorgeous.

Sad how Cass was unable to seize the spotlight after she left the group. Everyone was rooting for her and she really needed the money. Dunhill put out her first record, which bombed. Caesar's Palace (my BF had a speech impediment and called it "Seizure's Palace") LOL. Big money. But by this time, like John, and because of Pic Dawson, Cass was shooting heroin. She couldn't get it together to rehearse and, on opening night, shot up before the show, and bombed big time in front of the hip audience who came in for her. She spent a lot of the show trashing the Mamas and Papas, never realizing John and Michelle were in the audience. And she got the worst reviews of her career for this one performance and had a hard time getting gigs afterwards.

Cass was considered monstrously obese at the time, but today you see people who are as big or bigger than she ever was everywhere you go. Funny how a person Cass's size was a freak of nature once upon a time, but now obesity is so commonplace.

I don't think the 5th Dimension were ever considered as hip at the time and did not have the song-writing genius relying on outside song writers, but they did sound good and did a decent job with this cover.

Did any of these groups have a hit TV show created about them? We think not! We ruled the 60s.

Read "Papa John" by John Phillips. It opens with Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger (!) visiting them for the Fourth of July weekend and having to rescue his young children from his care, along with wife Genevieve Waite's care, because they were too drug-addled to function. They began lighting fires and blacking out. Another anecdote focuses on John giving drugs to Mackenzie, and Jagger being like, "Why do you do drugs with your kid???" It also includes an anecdote where Keith Richards of all people kicks him out of his house because he's so out of control. If Mick and Keith are confronting you about your issues, you have problems.

Actually, r2, it's the other way around regarding the album cover. Michelle was in the original group shot - they superimposed Jill over Michelle. Jill did record an album with the group, but after Michelle got reinstated , the tracks were rerecorded with Michelle's vocals, the album was pulled and rereleased with the Michelle cover shot. Jill was really only in the group for a few months.

Michelle was so pissed when Lou Adler's girlfriend Jill got that spot. She made her prescient "I'll dance on your graves" remark and then went over to Lou's place while Jill was there and told Lou she was in love with him. He and Jill were toasting each other with champagne and Lou said nothing, just went over and dunked his head in the ice bucket. Mitchie could be witchy.

R109 Yeah fine, but in 2020 it's an unnecessary comparison.

[quote] until Michelle was re-hired by John in August 1968.

Michelle was rehired in 1966, not 1968. Jill was only there briefly.

R121 Yeah, I don't know why I wrote 1968. Oops. I didn't think it made sense!

Yes R122, please make sure to double check your facts or risk being brought before the DL Proofreading Society who will assess penalties and broadcast your mischaracterizations with an eye toward humiliation. Thank you!!

R123 I like to be accurate when I present facts on DL, but I think in this case it might be a sign I need new glasses.

After flopping in Vegas Dunhill gave her a new producer to work who was kind of the King of Bubblegum. Cass knew she had to hammer down and give up a lot of control if she was going to hit the charts. The album was called ""Bubblegum, Lemonade . . . and Something for Mama." She hated the name Mama Cass but it was plastered all over the album cover, Dunhill having never saw it as a negative. She released two singles ahead of the album in the Spring of 1969 -- "Move in a Little Closer Baby" and "It's Getting Better." Her rock friends hated bubblegum music. But "It's Getting Better" ended up staying in the top forty longer than "California Dreamin." (I don't remember it.) Then ABC offered Cass a TV show "The Mama Cass Television Program." Things were looking up for her . . . and then her friend Charlie had his Family make that trek up to Cielo Drive.

[quote]Then ABC offered Cass a TV show "The Mama Cass Television Program." Things were looking up for her . . . and then her friend Charlie had his Family make that trek up to Cielo Drive.

And that's how Cass Elliott ended up as Witchie Poo on H.R. Puffenstuff.

LOL R126 !!!!

more from the Cass bio . . .

"The openness of Hollywood society at the time had led to a previously unprecedented crossover between the film and rock communities; if you were successful and hip in either one or the other or at least good friends with someone who was, you were just as likely to end up at a film star's house for the evening as a rock star's. Cass's prominence in the upper echelons of the LA social scene therefore meant she was part of a community which as well as rock stars such as Crosby, Nash, Stills, Eric Clapton plus assorted Beatles and Stones also included Warren Beatty, Roger Vadim, and Jane Fonda. With the benefit of hindsight some have claimed that in the months prior to the murders that summer there was an atmosphere of doom and foreboding in the air."

Nothing came out in the news about the murders for weeks. Behind the scene, Cass was questioned several times by the police based on the word PIG on the door which they thought could mean PIC, Cass's friend Pic Dawson. Dawson and Billy Doyle had been kicked out of a Polanski party but were subsequently cleared of all charges.

from Cass bio:

"The other major rumor ricocheting through the Hollywood Hills, which is still cited by many all these years on concerned Billy Doyle. It was known at the time that Folger and Frykowski had a penchant for cruising Sunset Strip and bringing home young men. After drugging them, they would tie them up and film them. Some weeks before the murders, as the tale goes, they had a spectacular falling out with Doyle over a business deal gone sour and decided to exact revenge not only by doing what they usually did to their pickups but by flogging him in front of an invited audience. They apparently recorded this on film. The story then goes that when Doyle realized what had happened, he was, according to Monkee Peter Tork, 'murderous.' Raging, Doyle insisted he would kill Folger and Frykowski. Wary that he might carry out his threat, a similarly macho friend chained him to a tree in Cass's garden to calm him down, before hauling him onto a plane out of the country. "If they were gonna do that to Billy," says Tork, "they WANTED to die! That was death-provoking. It was a murderously dangerous thing to do."

Wow. It really does sound like the whole Tate house was into some weird shit, esp with Sharon and Jay doing their S&M games, Roman making "Rosemary's Baby" and Folger and Frykowski drugging hustlers and raping them.

Her daughter is married to one of the Baldwin brothers

Chynna Philips (Michelle Philips daughter) and her hubby Billy Baldwin

Sorry she's married to William Baldwin not Billy

Cass played Witch Hazel in the film version of H.R. Pufnstuf -which was made after the TV series ended. Witchiepoo was played, always, by Billie Hayes.

Michelle and Chyna did not age well; Chyna is almost unrecognizable and Michelle is almost bald.

"Manson and the crew had been frequent visitors to Cass's house, taking advantage, like so many others, of the plentiful food, drugs and generally laid-back hospitable atmosphere. But Cass was not the only one who had played host to him and his acolytes, unaware of what would ensue. Although in the aftermath, few would admit to any link, many prominent figures in the LA rock community had not only socialized with Manson and his 'family' but also developed closer associations with them. As Neil Young later remembered, 'A lot of pretty well-known musicians around LA knew Manson, though they'd probably deny it now. The girls were always around too. They'd be right there on the couch with me, singing a song.'"

Since Manson and his minion's history has been exhaustively investigated and documented, I think if any "prominent figures" had had any close "association"with Manson and "played host" to his motley family it definitely would have come out by now. I don't think it would have been anything that would have been kept hidden. In fact, lots of celebrities seemed to WANT to be associated with Manson somehow, just for the perverse publicity it would seem.

As for Cass Elliot, how could Manson end up at her house for parties? Did she invite him? That seems far fetched. Did some friend of her who knew Manson say to him "there's a party at Cass's tonight, why don't you come over and bring the girls, Charlie old buddy?" That seems very fetched, too. As for Neil Young, I don't put much stock in what HE says. He was a druggie; not exactly a credible witness. And those "The girls right there on the couch with me, singing a song", could have any any old bunch of druggie groupies. Charlie was not a well liked, sought after figure. I seriously doubt he was enjoying the company of the rich and famous, considering he was a filthy looking, wild eye, insane weirdo.

[quote]As for Cass Elliot, how could Manson end up at her house for parties?

In the Behind The Music documentary, the sister of Cass said that Cass was hanging around with a bunch of lowlifes who were milking her dry. The sister had to go over and tell them to leave. It sounded to me like Cass had a bunch of people drugging out on her sofa and floor. Plus, we know of Cass's low self-esteem and the fact that she would fuck any man who acted halfway interested. So I wouldn't rule out her at least knowing Manson.

I have it on good authority that Manson ordered Squeaky Fromme to deliver that ham sandwich to Cass's room. Think about it: what Jewish girl eats pork?

R134 Chyna has the weirdest skull /forehead/eye socket area I’ve ever seen and Michelle aged well for a while but she also got this weird chipmunk look in middle age. Now she just looks old, of course.

Manson and his ilk had the drugs.

If Mama Cass had shared that ham sandwich with Karen Carpenter, they would both be alive today.

R138 She gets it from her father.

One of the greatest pauses in all of rock music occurs at 2:46 in "I Saw Her Again," by The Mamas and The Papas.

Great song, one their best!

"I Saw Her Again" with images of the '60s. Again, the pause at 2:46.

The story behind the pause in "I Saw Her Again:"

Lou Adler produced this song, and Bones Howe was the engineer for the session. According to Bones, the part around the 2:45 mark where "I saw her" is repeated twice was a happy accident. Said Bones: "We were punching vocals in, and when we came to that part where the rhythm stops and the group goes, 'I saw her again last night,' I just punched in early. They came in early, and so we stopped. And then we went back and started again, and I punched in at the beginning of the vocal, they started two bars later or whatever it was. And when I played it back, the vocal went, 'I saw her - I saw her again.' It was a mistaken punch. And Lou said, 'I love it! Leave it in.' It was an error, it was a mistake. But Lou was wise enough, it caught his ear and he left it. And I learned something from that. You go with your gut. If something catches - they could be - there are wonderful mistakes that happen in the studio and you have to learn to catch those when they happen and use them."

Any shirtless photos of Denny?

I loved Midnight Voyage

I haven't thought about this song since Mackenzie's autiobiography came out, but I secretly liked John's first album.

I loved fucking my dad! He could always make me come.

"The openness of Hollywood society at the time had led to a previously unprecedented crossover between the film and rock communities; if you were successful and hip in either one or the other or at least good friends with someone who was, you were just as likely to end up at a film star's house for the evening as a rock star's. Cass's prominence in the upper echelons of the LA social scene therefore meant she was part of a community which as well as rock stars such as Crosby, Nash, Stills, Eric Clapton plus assorted Beatles and Stones also included Warren Beatty, Roger Vadim, and Jane Fonda. With the benefit of hindsight some have claimed that in the months prior to the murders that summer there was an atmosphere of doom and foreboding in the air." Also Cass and the others were in and out of the Celebrity Center, aka Scientology, so the whole scene was permeable to wackos of all descriptions. My brother, a COS wacko, hung out with Michelle Phillips and sent his kid to the same Montessori. I'm not surprised John turned out to be a child abuser. He didn't deserve a new liver.

r125 I love "It's Getting Better"

Chynna cut her bangs recently because of comments about her hairline.

Really R150? The production is good because they had the Wrecking Crew, best musicians in LA, backing her. But, ummmm, not for me. Nevertheless, the album was a success and put some money into the account before Cass's spending (doubled now with her gay husband Donald) soon had her in the hole again. She began to take humiliating guest star slots on TV shows, most of which came up with sketches designed to turn on the humor of her being fat. It was sad, but going into the 70s she'd do whatever she had to.

[quote]My brother, a COS wacko, hung out with Michelle Phillips and sent his kid to the same Montessori. I'm not surprised John turned out to be a child abuser. He didn't deserve a new liver.

I agree. He really didn't deserve the liver. He started ruining the new one as soon as he got it. He was never gonna learn. And it only got worse. When Mick Jagger shows up to take your kids you know it must be bad.

R143 I LOVED I Saw Her Again. But how humiliating. John wrote that for Denny to sing after finding out he was fucking Michelle. It was a kind of "gotcha" humiliation., Denny singing that song every night.

John wrote "Go Where You Wanna Go" for Michelle after he realized she was fucking Denny.

R135. Go back and read some posts. They all admitted they new Manson and he was in their homes, esp. Cass's. Her place was an open house, 24/7.

[quote]"The other major rumor ricocheting through the Hollywood Hills, which is still cited by many all these years on concerned Billy Doyle. It was known at the time that Folger and Frykowski had a penchant for cruising Sunset Strip and bringing home young men. After drugging them, they would tie them up and film them.

OMFG!!!

The whole crew up at the Tate house was fucked up . With Frykowski and Folger picking up boys on the Strip and tying them up to film them, and Jay Sebring finding women who would indulge his VERY kinky bondage fantasies, it's almost as if they asked the devil to make a house call at10050 Cielo Drive. Life with Jay Sebring from a young actress he was seeing around the time of the murders:

"Jay returned wearing a black satin hood that covered his head and shoulders. Two holes, edged in black leather enable him to see his way into the room. In his hand he carried a small whip with several thongs of leather, each tipped with a knot. I began to get frightened. "No Jay, not the whip," I said. I was helpless. The ropes were loose around my wrists but tied to the beams and the loops were too small to allow my hands to slip through. "I won't hurt you," he said and I was shocked by his voice. It was hoarse, deep and his breath came fast from behind the satin folds of his hood. "I won't hurt you -- please --" His voice was muffled, sounding of pain and unshed tears and I longed to free my arms and hold him. "It's all right," I murmured. Then, unaffected by my pleas, I began to sob. "Don't -- don't -- oh God, don't!" Jay cried and began tearing the hood from his head and clawing at the ropes on my wrists and ankles freeing me. He kicked the whip away and turned his back and wept.

"I looked at the thin stooped shoulders, wracked now with the effort of his sobbing, my eyes fell upon the discarded whip. And next to it, there on the floor, gleaming dully in the dim light, was a long, curved butcher knife!"

Actually r155 he wrote that song before she was with Denny, in 1965. He allegedly wrote I Saw Her Again Last NIght after he found out about Michelle and Gene Clark of the Byrds, not Denny. Michelle had several flings while with John.

Here's Michelle the legend, with Chynna

Michelle is funny

So Justin Bieber is both Michelle Philips and the Baldwins' family

The Mamas and the Pauses

I also thought I Saw Her Again was the song written as a dig after finding out about the affair, but Go Where You Wanna Go does make more sense.

Michelle was the WINNER for me in this whole group. She had the thinnest voice but an in with John. She had lost her Mom when she was young. Her father was nuts but had moral backbone which he passed down to her. "Clean up your own messes." Michelle would refer to that when she helped out everyone around her who needed help. She was there for so many people. She had a weekly run to feed homeless people in LA while rescuing various children from her druggie friends. "I never did hard drugs. I don't think of psychedelics as 'hard drugs.'" Michelle was classy and always stood up for Cass. She really was such a class act. Has anyone read her book?

A beautiful Michelle in 1986...

r161 Bieber is married to Stephen's daughter, not Billy and Chynna's daughter.

R161 Yup, I know, but Stephen is a Baldwin, he's Billy's brother so it's all the same family, isn't ? Billy was at the Bieber marriage, Hailey is his niece

^^ R165

R165 And If the Biebers have kids they will be cousins to Billy and Chynna's children

[quote]Actually [R155] he wrote that song before she was with Denny, in 1965. He allegedly wrote I Saw Her Again Last NIght after he found out about Michelle and Gene Clark of the Byrds, not Denny. Michelle had several flings while with John.

Actually John said "I wrote that song to punish Denny." Denny agreed. The relationship with Gene Clark is what brought about Michelle's firing from the group.

Chynna and Billy have interesting and deep talks. They seem to get along very well

Cass always had sense of humor about her weight, she even made a Scooby Doo episode where was the butt of fat jokes.

I don’t know how y’all can watch those YouTube’s of Chynna — I have to turn them off after 30 seconds. It’s one thing to be a person “of faith” (ie Joe Biden, whose faith is poignant) and other TL be a religious nut and yet ANOTHER to literally not talk about anything else. I can’t tell if Michelle is on the bandwagon or not.

As soon as I saw the name Chynna I kept going.

Agree with R172. In the clips above, Chynna references "Jesus" almost as much as Elisabeth Hasselback. Is the overboard Jesus obsession a means of rebelling against her parents' rock star ways?

This site is full of selfish killjoys. I don't think people are sharing these videos for the religious side, open your closed minds a little, you are exhausting damn!

R164 I also think Michelle gets short shrift a lot of the time. I always found her frankness and no-nonsense attitude refreshing. She was beautiful and also had a brain. Her voice might have been "thin," but it was still pretty and accented the group. I have read her book, and it is a decent read. I frankly found the details of her childhood more interesting than the stuff with the band (and after).

"Go Where You Wanna Go" was supposed to be the first released single for The Mamas And The Papas but John had a dream which told him to release California Dreamin' instead as their first single and the rest is musical history. It put them on the map big time. The Fifth Dimension eventually covered and released Go Where You Wanna Go and it turned out to be a fairly big hit for them.

I think Chynna is a nice person but I don't want to watch 20 minutes of her talking about Jesus...

...with that big, ugly forehead.

R176 The weird thing is I went looking for that book on Amazon. It's not on Kindle and the paperback is selling for something like $800 (!!)

R179 It's also on Abebooks for $49. Once you buy it, make sure to tell us the juicy parts!

"As for Cass Elliot, how could Manson end up at her house for parties? Did she invite him? "

Honestly, it sounds like anyone cool or hippie-ish could wander into Cass's parties, or her house, and eat her food and sleep wherever and take drugs she paid for.

And that's where the woman's money went, thrown away on a bunch of users who gave her the illusion of friendship and popularity, because she didn't have enough self-esteem to try for anything better. Think of that, the next time you're tempted to be mean to a fat woman.

Cass was generous and Charlie Manson was definitely at her home. The cops didn't know that yet. They knew she harbored initial suspect Pic Dawson but after they found about her connection to Manson she was subpoenaed to testify at the trial (don't know if she did). Everyone had Charlie and his girls hanging around, listening to his songs, smug in the knowledge theirs were far superior, while getting sucked off by some grungy runaway girl with hairy armpits.

Ed Sanders's book on The Family mentioned Manson's bus was spotted parked in John and Michelle's driveway circa 1968. Manson apparently crashed a New Year's Eve party at the Phillips around that time. He also knew Dean Martin's daughter. It would not have been hard for him to migrate around celebs of the era, who were not into snobbery. They were just stupid.

R172, The most disturbing thing about Chynna's YouTube videos is seeing how Billy Baldwin has aged.

"Unfortunately an open-door policy can lead to your living space and salsa dip being intoxicated by undesirables – say, for instance, one long-haired named Charles Manson, who had attended gatherings at Casa Cass because dropping in and dropping out was another thing that was a thing in the ‘60s. Free love, remember?

But it wasn’t just Mama Cass plumping cushions around Manson and interpreting talk of an uprising as nothing more than a stoned come-on. The Manson family bus, which we can only assume was carpeted, was often seen parked outside (Mamas and Papas members) John and Michelle Phillips’ house; Manson even attended a party there on New Year’s Eve, 1968 – a lazy eight months before the killings.

To his credit, John Phillips (who was actually a far, far worse human than Manson) did rebuff several suggestions from Charlie that they record together; the fact Manson brought the subject up a few times suggests the disregard of social cues that one might expect from a man with a swastika inked on his face.

After Helter Skelter in August 1969, and Manson’s subsequent arrest, John Phillips and Cass Elliot were slated to appear in court during the Manson Family’s trial…as witnesses for the defense!

It seems Manson believed that himself and the Mamas/Papas were sufficiently tight that they would totally have The Family’s back regarding these pesky murders. By this point, however, Phillips and Elliot were kinda distancing themselves from the whole scrawling-on-the-wall-in-victim-blood scene, and never showed in court."

Leah Kunkel

"Manson and his ilk had the drugs."

How could they have "had the drugs?" They were destitute, eating out of garbage cans. They weren't drug dealers, they were homeless, penniless, hippie wastrels. The only thing Manson had to offer was his harem of nasty, loony, hippie girls. I guess some people would have wanted to fuck them but many did not. When Terry Melcher was questioned by detectives they implied that maybe his association with Manson was due to his interest in Manson's girls. Melcher was deeply offended; he took out pictures of some of his former girlfriends, "real beauties" all of them, and told the detectives that with beauties like that to go to bed with why would he want to fuck Manson's "clap ridden, unwashed dogs."

"How could they have "had the drugs?" They were destitute, eating out of garbage cans. "

In groups like the Manson Family, the leader controls any funds while the followers eat crap, possibly including whatever they find in garbage cans. Or maybe they spent what little they had on drugs, and looked for free food to have more drug money. So the group's general poverty doesn't mean that Manson couldn't lay his hands on enough drugs to share with people he wanted to impress, although obviously he wouldn't need to lay anything out to get into Cass's house. Anyone with enough chutzpah to show up and take advantage of her seems to have been welcome there.

That doesn't mean that Manson actually gave out drugs instead of mooching them, I'm sure that's been documented. I just mean that then as now, poverty didn't mean zero access to drugs.

It says upthread that the Manson Family was trafficking MDA.

Why did John Phillip turn out to be such a horrible man? He had it all. Did drugs fuck up his mind? Do most people believe Mackenzie story of abuse? What a crazy freak show

Denny was very cute when he was young. Poor Cass hopelessly in love with him.

If Sharon Tate had tried to grab that ham sandwich, it's Cass who would have killed her.

As an old hippie myself, Manson being at her parties had nothing to do with Cass Elliott's low self esteem. The whole hippie thing was peace, love and inclusion. Anyone was welcome who shared the hippie ethos. Anyone "cool"( into LSD) was probably welcome at Cass's house.

[quote] the fact is that Sharon Tate, 8 and a half months pregnant and uncomfortable in the hot weather, was in no mood for guests that night. Hell, she didn't even want her houseguests, Folger and Frykowski, to be there. She wanted them to leave but was too nice to tell them to scam.

How could you possibly know that? She died before she would have had a chance to tell anyone that.

190, I know it bugs me because I LOVED TMATP and now their songs are ruined for me. Too bad so many talented people get entitled and act out their dark sides. I don't think drugs can make you do things you wouldn't do otherwise.

"How could you possibly know that? She died before she would have had a chance to tell anyone that."

Friends of hers stated that she wasn't too keen on having Gibby and Voytek around anymore, but didn't want to tell them to just get out, Sharon being a very gentle, nice person. I can understand why they would irritate her. They were both liked to get high, although Folger was nowhere near the regular drug user Frykowski was. They had frequent lover's quarrels. Voytek was a friend of Roman Polanski's, which is another reason Sharon was probably hesitant to tell him to leave, even though he was a deadbeat living off the largesse of his girlfriend and buddies like Polanski. And unbeknownst to Sharon, Frykowski had run over and killed her little dog, a Yorkie named Dr. Saperstein. Polanski told Sharon Dr. Saperstein had just "disappeared", and promptly bought her a new Yorkie that she named Prudence.

And this is from Polanski's memoir "Roman""

"The baby was due in two or three weeks time and she (Sharon) didn't want any houseguests around around when it arrived. Fond as she was of Wojtek and Abigail, she wanted them out of the house, but she didn't know how to make this clear without hurting their feelings."

The house was built in the early 1940s by a French actress named Michele Morgan and she sold the house after only living in it for a few years because of odd things happening. Voices could be heard coming from the living room, and shadowy figures were seen walking outside by the windows. It was always a very creepy place.

The house was torn down in the mid-90s and an enormous, hideous mega-mansion was built on the property by Jeff Franklin, the creator of Full House.

That house is hideous posted at r196

Why would you be so rich that you could afford to have a house like that built, but still not care enough to make it look attractive from the outside? That's what I never understand about LA mega-mansions.

Yes it totally lacks balance.

It looks like a La Quinta Inn in Arizona.

Peter, Paul, and Mary sing about the Mamas and the Papas:

I dig the Mamas and the Papas at "the trip"

Sunset strip in L.A.

And they got a good thing goin'

When the words don't get in the way

And when they're really wailing

Michelle and Cass are sailin'

Hey! they really nail me to the wall

Mama Cass had a beautiful voice and range. Unlike other "big girl" celebrities, she had talent and didn't try to make a career out of making excuses for her size or being a victim. She had real talent.

r201, here are Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence grooving to that lyric in the kinds of clothes Bob Mackie somehow thought rock fans wore in the late 60s. (The jockey outfits on the male dancers are really bizarre.)

Wow, R203. I like Carol and Vicki's version better than Peter, Paul, and Mary's.

[quote] Mama Cass had a beautiful voice and range.

Michelle had her own talent too

It completely changes the message. PPM's version is ironic--mocking rock music for being empty--while "Carol and Sis" stage it as if it actually were a real celebration of rock and roll.

All this Mama Cass chatter and over 200 posts and no mention of the young council housing chav gay boys in love movie Beautiful Thing, which extensively used her music as a back drop and as an important part of a character’s development? I still consider it one of the best gay movies ever made, where it’s actually a romance that gives hope and empowerment. The first part of this scene is them sneaking out to a gay pub and being able to be open for the first time, and then afterwards, in utter abandon, chasing each other around in a park as night as fittingly Make Your Own Kind of music plays on the soundtrack.

R193 Sharon had told her mother and closest gf she wanted Folger and Frykowski gone. One of them said she insisted the gate be shut because people were just coming to her house and she didn't know any of them. Her parents were moving at the time and she couldn't stay with them. Such bad timing.

r187 The first murder by "The Family" was of Gary Hinman and it was over bad mescaline according to Bobby Beausoleil.

Tex Watson, the murderer of all 7 victims, had a history of selling drugs.

"Melcher was deeply offended; he took out pictures of some of his former girlfriends, "real beauties" all of them, and told the detectives that with beauties like that to go to bed with why would he want to fuck Manson's "clap ridden, unwashed dogs."

That's bullshit because Melcher lied to the police. He fucked the Manson girls. Why? Because they did things (or let him do things to them) that his posh girlfriends did not want to do.

I don't think Terry Melcher would have touched Manson's nasty little hippie sluts with a ten foot pole.He dated beautiful women; his girlfriend was Candice Bergen. Why have hamburger when you can have steak? And if he wanted someone to do things his "posh girlfriends" wouldn't do he would have hired a high class hooker. Manson's women only appealed to men who would fuck anything.

Most straight men will fuck anything, R211.

"Most straight men will fuck anything."

Maybe the average "straight" guy would. But a rich guy with access to the cream of the crop wouldn't probably wouldn't want to dip his wick in the coozes of syphilitic, drug addled whores.

Wasn’t one of the Manson girls somewhat attractive?

Leslie Van Houten was attractive.

Susan Atkins looked crazy but she was the only one with large breasts

Ouisch (Ruth Ann Moorehouse) was quite striking. By Manson girl standards, anyway. By some accounts she was Terry's favorite. That's tricky, though, because prior to January 1969 she was underage. If Melcher was fucking her before then, it could have been a problem if someone had wanted to make it a problem. Given all the bullshit swirling around the case, Melcher didn't want to admit to getting his dick anywhere near those girls.

"By some accounts she was Terry's favorite. "

I know a lot about the Manson family and I never heard any reputable source claim that Terry Melcher fucked Manson's girls. He seemed to be repulsed by the very idea that he would fuck them, so I doubt any Manson girl was his "favorite." As for Moorehouse, she was batshit crazy like the rest of them. She told a biker who was friendly with Manson and his gang "I can hardly wait to get my first pig." She also attempted to kill a Manson girl named Barbara Hoyt, who was going to testify in Manson's trial by giving her a hamburger with an overdose of LSD in it. She was brought up on charges for that but fled the state and nobody bothered to extradite her. She to away with attempted murder. She faded away into oblivion like most of Manson's followers did.

R207: I loved the film of A Beautiful Thing, too. It's a gay classic. A couple of years back there was a 25th anniversary production of the original play in a fringe house. It was really well done -and the Cass Eliot music was all there (it's in the script). One of the very, very few romantic gay stories that works.

That Morehouse was batshit crazy is true, R217. That doesn't negate the fact that she and Van Houten were the best-looking Manson girls. The quite well-known You Must Remember This podcast on Manson commented that Terry may have had something going with Ouisch. The fact that he had a stunning girlfriend or girlfriends doesn't mean he couldn't be attracted to Charlie's scene or Charlie's girls. Rich boys have been slumming forever. And for someone as jaded as the hyper-privileged Melcher was, fucking a crazy Manson girl could have had real novelty and appeal.

Maybe some "rich boys" would want to fuck dirty, crazy, druggie, VD-ridden girls. But I don't think Terry Melcher was one of them. Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys was; he truly would fuck anything. But Terry Melcher? It think he preferred sex with beautiful women who weren't crazy, drugged and carrying STDs.

Are you his mom or something?

[quote]Are you his mom or something?

No, but I am!

Ahhh...that explains it. Some DD fan.

I just bought their greatest hits album from iTunes. Almost all the songs are classics. There are just 2 or 3 that sound dated.

I didn't realize that John Phillips helped write the Beach Boys 80s hit "Kokomo".

r225 and Terry Melcher

Terry Melcher was weird as fuck looking- as is his lookalike grandson... odd

For some reason, I enjoy their music in bits and pieces, but I can't listen to a full album of The Mamas and The Papas in one sitting. I can't figure out why their music, at some point, becomes "too much" for me. It's certainly not based on the quality of their music (which was pretty much excellent).

R227 Given the choice between fucking Melchor or Manson... I'd go with Manson.

R229, me too!!!!

Doris Day was a beautiful woman in her day, but Terry--yeesh. He must have looked like his father. All he got from Doris was some bone structure which looked weird on him.

Back in the 60, he was part of a group of privileged young Hollywood brats who called themselves "The Golden Penetrators." They tried to fuck as many girls as possible to live up to their name. The Manson girls were grungy and weird, but I doubt that would have stopped someone with Melcher's reputation.

*Back in the 60s.

R225 Four songwriters and still a piece of shit.

The guy in the pic at R229 looks like the lovechild of Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

r225, You evoked the demon of the Kokomo ear worm. May you burn in hell for all eternity. Bastard.

John's version of Kokomo, for anyone who's curious. Believe it or not, I think The Beach Boys' version was actually an improvement!!

🎶And the tropical breeze could blow the dress way above the knees 😨😳

"Kokomo", although a huge hit (it was played endlessly on the radio), is one of the worst songs of all time. Absolutely one of the worst.

The only thing worse than Kokomo the song is Kokomo the video.

Fuck you, r238! Now that rancid earworm is torturing me!

I lived in Laurel Canyon from 1967 until 1970. Before the murders, everyone was in and out of everyone else's houses whether you were a celebrity or not. The whole scene was very laid back. Manson was selling drugs all over the canyon and my BF at the time knew him. My BF was just a young nobody so Manson knew lots of people. After the murders things changed overnight. Celebrities locked their doors, out of fear. The murders were a wake-up call.

Wow R240. Those were like prime years in the Canyon. Did you recognize any rock singers, like Jim Morrison.

I think all these stories about Manson being a player and big time drug dealer in Hollywood are largely exaggerated or completely untrue. Manson was NOTHING. He and his bunch of misfits were living on an isolated ranch and eating out of garbage cans; some Hollywood "players!" It's truly bizarre, but there seems to be a kind of weird glamour surrounding the Manson family; Hollywood types seem to want to have some kind of association with him. It's like they think it's somehow cool to say "yeah, I knew Charles Manson" or "I knew somebody who knew him" or some such shit. It's truly creepy. And if you believe all the stories everybody in Hollywood was invited over to Sharon Tate's house the night of the murders. More bullshit.

I remember seeing an interview with Michelle many years ago. She said John woke her up in the middle of the night and handed her a piece of paper with words on it. He said, "Sign here and you will never have to work again." It was the lyrics to "California Dreaming."

R241. Funny you should mention Jim Morrison. I actually did meet him once. I had a passing acquaintance with his Girlfriend Pam. I lived about a half a block up the hill from the Country Store on Kirkwood. Those were fun years. Manson ruined the whole atmosphere.

Yeah I can imagine he did R244. Pam was kind of like the prototype canyon girl. Sad she went the way she did. That country store is like famous!! Was your father a high-ranking member of the government? There's always been this conspiracy theory about Laurel Canyon.

R207 & R218 - Beautiful Thing truly deserves a deluxe Blu Ray edition. Such a sweet film that makes great use of Cass' music. I've always loved this song.

Monday Morning!

[quote] Phillips said he would come back in the morning with "A song with universal appeal." Ignoring the sarcastic comments from the group members, Phillips came up with "Monday, Monday." It's about the lousy feeling that comes with the end of the weekend and beginning of another workweek.

R245 My dad was a radioman in the army during WW2. That whole conspiracy theory is just a stupid bullshit conspiracy theory. No basis in fact. In the book for instance he claims the cops left us alone. The cops were relentless. They busted people for pot all the time.

R242, I beg to differ. The thing about the movie and music businesses is that you can't afford to dis anyone, because how the hell do you know where the next hit is coming from? Does Coppola look like a genius to you? I've pitched ideas and people were polite, because nobody is sure of themselves enough to tell you off or dismiss you. It might come back to haunt them. Of course, opening your door to weirdos can also come back to haunt you, as it did in the case of Manson.

R245 Who would think that a bunch of children born at the tail end of WW2 would be children of fathers.... who were in the military?!?

Any lower-middle or middle-class or upper-middle class community in post- War America was stuffed to the gills with ex-military.

BECAUSE THERE HAD BEEN A DRAFT.

Don't 18 year males have to sign up for Selective Service? I remember that Carter put that into place and I don't think it has ever been changed.

R248, I agree 100% Bunch of bullshit. I wasn't serious, by the way. Those days in Laurel Canyon sounded so cool. Would love to have been around then.

R248 it was a magical time but didn't last long. Between Manson and the fact that all those local Ca bands were starting to get very famous especially after Woodstock. Most of them moved on to better and more expensive residences.

The "Behind The Music" episode about the Mamas & the Papas was one of the best (right up there with the TLC episode); the surviving members were all honest about themselves, even if it made them look bad (though, this was made before the whole Mackenzie/John story, so who knows). They treated Cass badly even though she made the group what it was