Published Thursday, January 16, 2003
singing group
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of a series on groups inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame and Museum, Sharon.
By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer
John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas have written books about their lives, and many people encouraged Denny Doherty to write down his two cents worth.
Doherty wasn't interested in writing a book, but he did want to put his spin on the short-lived but influential career of the quartet, which also included Cass Elliott, who died in 1974 at age 30.
"I've read other books and people have gotten the story all wrong," Doherty said. "It's just bull- - - -. It's their bull- - - -, it's their point of view, it's how they think it happened."
Ms. Phillips, who wrote the book "California Dreaming," acknowledged it's difficult to come up with a definitive story of the group's history.
"It's funny because everybody's truth is slightly personalized, and how else can it not be?" she said. "After 30 or 40 years of remembering and telling the stories, it's always going to be your version of what happened."
Doherty wrote a play, "Dream a Little Dream: The Nearly True Story of the Mamas and the Papas" "to set the record straight and to give a little more indication how important Cass was to everything.
"We did not spring forth fully grown one afternoon at 2 o'clock singing f- - - - - - 'California Dreaming,' " he said. "There was a lot involved. And she, looking back and knowing what a devious female she was, arranged most of it."
The Phillipses and Doherty were singing together, but Phillips didn't want Ms. Elliott in the group, Doherty said.
"She was just too big and fat and weird," Doherty said of Phillips' opinion of Ms. Elliott.
Doherty, who sang with Ms. Elliott in the Mugwumps, implored Phillips, who died in 2001 at age 65, to listen to her voice.
"He wouldn't listen," said Doherty, 61, of Ontario, Canada.
But, when the trio ended up crashing at Ms. Elliott's California home, Phillips couldn't escape her.
"One day, we were in her apartment," Doherty said. "She just started to sing with us. And he, hearing it, said, 'Oh, yeah. OK, you sing that Cass, and then I can sing this, and Denny and I join in. Michelle? Can you sing this?'
"He's doing an arrangement and she's sitting there giggling."
Ms. Elliott called up a musician friend and asked him to give the quartet a listen.
"He comes over, hears the group and says, 'Oh, I'm recording for Lou Adler tonight, why don't you come down and sing for him?' Bingo."
Adler produced the Mamas and the Papas, who pelted the charts from 1966 to 1968 with songs like "California Dreaming," "Monday, Monday," "Creeque Alley" and "Dedicated to the One I Love."
"We did such good work in the 2è years that we were together," said Ms. Phillips, who calls herself a big fan of the group. "And that's all we were together. When you think about the work that we crammed into that amount of time, it is a miracle."
Although "Dream a Little Dream" is a one-man show, Doherty sings all the Mamas and the Papas hits, plus some early rock 'n' roll, blues, folk and incidental music that he wrote in it.
He wrote the play after quitting the road in 1987 while singing in a version of the Mamas and the Papas with Phillips and Phillips' daughter, Mackenzie, and has performed it in his hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and other parts of Canada. He opened it in New York last fall and promised to perform it wherever he can.
Ms. Phillips, a native of Long Beach, Calif., took a much different path after the group's initial demise. She went into acting, most notably in the film "Valentino" and the television show "Knot's Landing."
"I act when I can get a job," she said. "I love to act. It's fun for me. It keeps me off the streets, and I travel a lot."
Ms. Phillips, 58, of Los Angeles, said she has a number of identities from her divergent careers, and they don't always intersect.
"It's funny but some people remember me from the Mamas and the Papas, while other people remember me from 'Knots Landing' or my television work, or some people remember me from my movie work that I've done and don't have any idea that I was ever in the Mamas and the Papas. I've even had people come up to me and say, 'Oh my God, aren't you Chynna's mother?' So, I have all these lives, parallel universes, that I live in."
Her daughter, Chynna, sang in Wilson Phillips with the daughters of Beach Boy Brian Wilson.
You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at
jpinchot@sharonherald.com