The Mamas & 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!
If I thought really hard, I could remember the name of that girl who sang in the assembly at Andrew Warde.
You see every Wednesday, we had an assembly, it was built into the schedule. One half the high school, then the other.
But this week, instead of taking place in the auditorium, the assembly was in the gym. For what reason, I’ll never remember. Maybe it was a pep rally of some sort. But, at one point a group took the stage, two girls and two guys, and they sang "California Dreamin’". The star was this lithe junior with long blonde hair whose visage has never left my mind’s eye.
You never knew whether the debut portended further success. Could an act entitled Simon & Garfunkel ever follow up "Sounds Of Silence"? Same deal with the Mamas & the Papas and "California Dreamin’". Both had the character of novelty hits, who knew there would be more?
Although "Monday Monday" was the biggest follow-up, and I preferred it to "California Dreamin’", my favorite was "I Saw Her Again", with its swooping Fifth Dimension intro and jangly Donovan sound. And the emotive vocal of one Denny Doherty.
There was one certified genius in the Mamas & the Papas, John Phillips. He wrote the songs. But it took all four of them to make the group work. Oh, maybe Michelle could have been replaced, vocally, anyway. But if she hadn’t been in the act, how could this song have been written? Michelle was the kind of girl we idolized back before we heard everybody talk, back before everybody was perfected by plastic surgery.
And how could a song with such pain sound so JOYFUL?
These Mamas & the Papas songs somehow had a way of penetrating you without being saccharine. They contained all the emotion of the sixties. The exploration, the wide-eyed eating up of the world.
I used to live in New York City
Everything there was dark and dirty
Outside my window was a steeple
With a clock that always said 12:30
Young girls are coming to the canyon
And in the mornings I can see them walking
My fascination with California began with TV. This was before there was production in Canada, when every show seemed to be shot in Southern California. And that was the California of my dreams, not San Francisco. Rather, I wanted to go where the sun always shined, where it was always warm, where you could always wear a t-shirt.
But although television hipped me, it was music that sealed the deal. And it all started with the Mamas & the Papas. They’d moved, and they sang of this fantastic land. God, there’s still magic in Laurel Canyon. Isn’t that where Rick Rubin set down roots? A winding street in the hills, with houses set right next door to each other. In a place that would be uninhabitable on the east coast, snow making such residences impossible. And, everybody in the rock and roll business LIVED there. Everybody in the same place. And there were all these beautiful lasses at the Country Store. Where do I sign up?
The Mamas & the Papas had many hits. But their success has no context today. After all, they’re not on the road, they’re not appearing during halftime at the Super Bowl. And they weren’t the ONLY act with success. Imagine if Kurt Cobain had compatriots JUST as talented. Not the inferior Pearl Jam, but a bunch of acts challenging him to write even better songs. Just like the Beatles challenged the Beach Boys, and vice versa. Maybe that’s why the Mamas & the Papas don’t get their due. There were TOO many acts hitting at the time!
Cass gets whatever attention there is today.  Maybe because of the ham sandwich story, maybe because she sang some of the hits solo, like "Words Of Love", a circusy number that sounded completely different from the rest of the canon, but hit nonetheless.
But it was a group. Comprised of four volatile egos. Which couldn’t stay together as a result.
Only Michelle Phillips is still walking the planet. Even though she’s been neutered by TV, even though she has succumbed to the knife, whenever you see her you get a jolt, because you remember all those years ago, when every girl grew their hair long and straight, to be just like her.
The memories are not far below the surface. Just like that girl singing her song at my high school back in ’66.
We lost a Papa last week. He got a pretty big obituary in the "New York Times". Someone still remembers. But in a world where those in power are doing their best to eviscerate the memory of the sixties, his death didn’t have that great an impact. Gerald Ford gets five days of national mourning, when the songs cut in the sixties and seventies mean more than he, more than any President. God was literally dead, MUSIC was our religion!
We lost someone important. I’ll just leave you with his message, his group’s message.
You gotta go where you wanna go
Do what you wanna do
With whoever you wanna do it with
Freedom. Choice. These are two of the main tenets of the sixties philosophy. Life is about possibilities. I’m not telling you to drop out of college, or get a divorce. Education and commitment are important. But you mustn’t sacrifice your inner spark. You’ve got to take chances. You’ve got to break the rules. You’ve got to listen to your heart, do more of what you WANT to do than what you SHOULD do. That’s the road to happiness. And, if you ever become confused, unsure if you’ve taken the right direction, fearful of the future, just put on some Mamas & the Papas music, it will inspire you, it will get you through. Hell, it helped birth an entire GENERATION of truth and joy seekers. And truth and joy are a whole hell of a lot more important to the core of man than the uptight bellicose practices of those in power today.
