Magic Moment: Playing For Change

Music is a worldwide phenomenon, but seeing musicians from different countries virtually jamming together really brings that idea home. This montage comes from the PBS special ‘Playing For Change’ and it’s a moving tribute to the power of music, and how it can unite different cultures in true harmony…

Doubleshot Tuesday: Brazilian Girls/Hey Eugene!

[Today: Two exotic, mysterious albums...]

Here are two exotic albums that spend a fair amount of time on our turntable. Neither of these groups is exactly what they seem: Brazilian Girls are three-quarters male and 0% Brazilian, and Pink Martini sounds like an old-time orchestra with a lead singer that belts it out in ten (!) different languages, but they’re actually a contemporary group from Portland, OR. Both groups have multi-national sounds that feature relatively unusual instrumentation like tubas and trumpets. In Sabina Sciubba (Brazilian Girls) and China Forbes (Pink Martini), these groups boast two of the more gifted and unheralded singers on the scene today. And finally, both of these albums are worthy of repeated spins in spite of less than inspired cover art…

Listen: Homme [Brazilian Girls]

Listen: Tempo Perdido [Pink Martini]

Listen: Don’t Stop [Brazilian Girls]

Listen: City Of Night [Pink Martini]

Weekend Playlist

“Love one another.” ~ George Harrison’s last words

Yim Yames | Tribute To

The Beatles | Beatles For Sale

Merle Haggard | I’m A Lonesome Fugitive

The Police | Zenyatta Mondatta

Tosca | No Hassle

Wynton Marsalis | Tomasi/Jolivet: Trumpet Concertos

Johnny Cash | Sings The Songs That Made Him Famous

Randy California | Kapt. Kopter And The (Fabulous) Twirly Birds

Red House Painters | Songs For A Blue Guitar

Peace Orchestra | Peace Orchestra

The dZihan & Kamien Orchestra | Live In Vienna

Propellerheads | Decksanddrumsandrockandroll

Gang Starr | Daily Operation

Guns N’ Roses | G N’ R Lies

Fela Kuti | Up Side Down
[Album cover not pictured]

Bob Dylan | Highway 61 Revisited

Various Artists | Woodstock

Steve Miller Band | Book Of Dreams

The Rolling Stones | Emotional Rescue

George Harrison | All Things Must Pass

Bon Iver @ The Fox Theater

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” That was Johnny Rotten’s classic rejoinder at the end of the last Sex Pistols show, at Winterland in San Francisco. And come to think of it, Mr. Rotten, I have had the feeling of being cheated many times – exorbitant ticket prices and convenience charges will do that. But seeing Bon Iver at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Thursday night was one of those rare great bargains – an hour of excellent music for just 22 bucks. Seeing a band touring behind a fine debut album is usually a guarantee of a good show, and this was no exception. Imagine seeing Neil Young during the Harvest tour, if that had been his debut, and you get some idea of the power of this concert experience.

Bon Iver’s debut, For Emma, Forever Ago was the work of Justin Vernon, who recorded the album in a cabin in the wilds of Wisconsin. To create the album’s haunting atmosphere, Vernon multi-tracked his voice and guitar to infinity, so the one issue I anticipated was how Bon Iver was going to capture that atmosphere without echo-boxes and/or backtracking. But the three piece band playing with Vernon beautifully sidestepped this issue through layers of haunting harmonies that in essence put four Justin Vernons on stage at the same time. Two members of the band were behind drum kits, and for ‘Skinny Love’ all three were banging away on drums to create the driving percussion of the recorded version of the song. During ‘re: stacks’ you could almost hear a pin drop (except for the drunken idiots jabbering away on the second level). The band crowded around a single microphone for a stunning unplugged cover of The Jayhawks’ ‘Tampa To Tulsa’, and Vernon whipped the crowd into sing-along mode for a spirited take of ‘For Emma’.

But the highlight of the evening was a non-album track called ‘Back In Wisconsin’, which came close to actually rocking out. Midway through its ten-minute running time, Vernon busted out a lengthy, psychedelic-tinged guitar solo that wouldn’t have been out of place in Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ – an unexpected development that should give the casual observer much hope for the future of this band. But mostly this was an evening of haunting acoustic music – expertly rendered and rapturously received. On the backdrop behind the group was one of the best light shows I’ve seen in ages – a gently swirling field of smeared pastels that looked like a Monet painting come to life, and perfectly matched the pace of the music.

“Are you kidding me with this room?” Vernon asked the crowd midway through the show, gawking around at the luxurious venue his band was in the process of practically levitating off the ground. Later, he dropped that “This is going to be our last tour for awhile – we’re going to take some time and figure out what to do next.” If time is what Bon Iver needs to make more of this magic, I think I speak for everyone present on Thursday – take all the time you need fellas.

On The Fence: Elton John – Greatest Hits

Elton John had style, without a doubt. I loved the Donald Duck outfit, the shades, and the bling. But when it comes to the music, I’m torn…

THUMBS UP: An absolute staple of my parents’ record collection, this album is so ingrained in my childhood that it’s almost impossible for me to step back and observe it objectively. Even the songs I don’t care for (more on those later) are maddeningly catchy slices of pop perfection. I haven’t actively sought out tunes like ‘Daniel’ and ‘Honky Cat’ in more than 20 years, and yet I know every horn break and piano lick – every lyric by heart. And that says something right there. Throw in the fact that Elton was one of the most dynamic performers of his time, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a keeper album. You don’t have to love it, or listen to it very often, but you ought to have it somewhere in your collection…

THUMBS DOWN: Elton John’s Greatest Hits is one of the most perfect pieces of evidence in favor of the take-what-you-like world of MP3s. ‘Rocket Man’ and ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ are lame, overcooked songs that were WAAAAAAAY overplayed on the radio in the 70′s. I’ve also long suspected that Elton’s dynamic performances helped assist him in a triumph of style over substance. Certainly nothing here is indispensable, but there are plenty of things that are hard to take seriously – ‘Bennie & The Jets’ and ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’ being the prime examples. This has some catchy tunes and lots of nostalgic value, but as my friend Johnny Johnson said one night as he was re-filing an album, “See ya’ in five years, pal!”

[What's your take? Is Elton John's Greatest Hits a keeper, or does it belong in the crapper?]

Masterpiece: The Basement Tapes

[Today: A ticket back in time...]

On July 29th, 1966, Bob Dylan crashed his motorcycle on the country roads outside Woodstock, NY. Accounts of the accident vary, and it’s unclear if he sustained life-threatening injuries, as has been widely reported. But Dylan was laid up for many months recuperating, and during this time he started playing old folk and country songs with Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel – first in the Red Room of his house in Woodstock, and then in the basement of Big Pink, The Band’s house in West Saugerties, NY.

In late March of 1967, they began recording the music they were making together. The sound of these songs – loose and ragged, yet immensely soulful – reflected both the songs they’d been covering since Dylan’s accident and their rustic, upstate New York surroundings. As Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine, “That’s really the way to do a recording – in a peaceful, relaxed setting – in somebody’s basement. With the windows open… and a dog lying on the floor.”

It seems clear that Dylan didn’t initially intend for these songs to see general release, and therein lies the brilliance of what would become The Basement Tapes. By playing for themselves, Dylan and The Band cut loose with music that stood outside of its time, and sounded both ancient and timeless. Filled with non-sequitars, bawdy humor, and pseudo-Biblical references, this was the most non-commercial music imaginable in the psychedelia-crazed year of 1967. Songs like ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ and ‘Tears Of Rage’ sound like they were brought down from the mountaintop by Moses. ‘Reuben Remus’ and ‘Tiny Montgomery’ are but two of the songs here that play out like unmistakable but indecipherable jokes.

The lyrics on The Basement Tapes are put forth in the plainest possible language, but retain a mysterious, oblique quality that grows with each listen. ‘Ain’t No More Cane’ isn’t just a song about a sugarcane shortage, it’s a lament for the dying South. ‘Bessie Smith’ is told through the voice of a lover of the late, great Blues singer, but could be the dying words of a wise man. ‘Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread’ is a stream-of-conscious tone poem, while ‘Clothes Line Saga’ and ‘Katie’s Gone’ are short stories without beginning or end.

These songs were endlessly covered (by the likes of Peter, Paul & Mary, Fairport Convention and The Byrds) and widely bootlegged, but didn’t see commercially release as The Basement Tapes until 1975. The inside gatefold artwork shows the group down in the basement, posed in front of a reel-to-reel player with the likes of a midget, a clown, a ballerina, a fire-eater, a nun, and an eskimo. In the foreground, a lone crutch leans against a box of reel-to-reel tapes. It’s doubtful that this music can heal the lame, but it can take you to a place where myth, madness, mirth and music are swirled together into a great cosmic mystery.

Listen: This Wheel’s On Fire

Listen: Bessie Smith

Listen: Going To Acapulco

Buried Treasure: Dock Boggs – His Folkways Years 1963-1968

[Today: Out of the mines and into the spotlight...]

Dock Boggs went down into the coal mines at age 12 in 1910, and didn’t come out of them for good until 45 years later. In an effort to escape the debilitating life of a coal miner, he took his banjo and carved out a small space for himself in the fledgling music industry of the 1920s. But the Great Depression put an end to those dreams and forced him to pawn his banjo in the mid-30s – he wouldn’t pick up the instrument again for nearly 25 years. When he finally left the coal mines it was less retirement and more that he suddenly found himself out of work due to the mechanization of that industry.

With newfound time on his hands, Boggs returned to the banjo and started re-learning the vast array of songs that he’d played in his youth. A good thing, because by the early 1960s, a Folk revival was gaining momentum, and musicologists were scouring the South for the real voices of American music. In the meantime, Boggs had been immortalized on Harry Smith’s musically anthropological compilation, the Anthology Of American Folk Music. In June of 1963 Mike Seeger (brother of Pete) tracked Boggs down at his home in Norton, VA and brought him out of the shadows and back into popular music.

Boggs suddenly found himself in great demand on the coffeehouse circuit, started making new albums, and greatly influenced contemporary Folk artists of the day – among them a young Bob Dylan. Boggs’ music reflects the dire circumstance of a life spent making subsistence wages in the coal mines. As he told Seeger, “There’s so many of my buddies and my friends that I worked with that are dead, and gone… so many of them killed in the mines, several that’s been shot and killed.” Music was to be his escape from the mines, and when it didn’t happen, one can only image the discontent and self-doubt that must have eaten at his soul.

Dock Boggs – His Folkways Years 1963-1968 compiles the three albums that he recorded after he’d been rediscovered. His Brunswick sides from the late-20s display the same croak that would eventually earn him a measure of fame, but in his later music it’s impossible not to hear the degradation and disappointment of a dream deferred. “I put so much of myself into some pieces that I very nearly broke down emotionally,” he told Seeger. The grim reaper sound of songs like ‘Pretty Polly’ and ‘Oh, Death’ were undoubtedly fueled by a life spent staring death in the face. That Boggs survived to realize his aspirations is nothing short of miraculous. His music is a living connection to an older, harder America, and a blessing of the highest order.

Listen: Pretty Polly

Listen: Oh, Death

Meet The Butchers

The P and I were in Portland, OR last weekend, making our usual rounds, when I stumbled across something that I never thought I’d see in person, let alone have a chance to own – the infamous “Butcher” cover of The Beatles’ Yesterday And Today album. This has been described as “the Holy Grail of Beatles albums” but I’d go that one further and say that this is the holy grail of collectible albums, period.

This cover was released to record stores on June 15th, 1966, but withdrawn after just one day when many retailers protested about the graphic art and simply refused to stock it on their shelves. A majority of the original covers were destroyed, but others were pasted over with new artwork. Collectors later steamed the glue on these new covers and peeled off the replacement artwork to reveal the butcher artwork. The version that I purchased in Portland is a “peeled” cover. If you look closely, you can see the grooves where the glue settled on the artwork – a dead giveaway that the cover was peeled:

[click to enlarge]

Paul McCartney claimed that the visual was a protest of the Vietnam war, but it runs so contrary to their squeaky clean image at the time that it’s almost surreal. I’ve always gotten a kick out of the expression on George Harrison’s face here – he looks like a complete madman who’s having the time of his life. Needless to say, because this record was in stores for just one day, it has become extremely valuable. One mint copy was recently appraised at a value of $12,000 on Antiques Roadshow and in 2005 a sealed copy was auctioned for $39,000. Obviously, the peeled covers are worth quite a bit less than that, but for me this goes beyond dollars and cents (or dollars and sense) and into the realm of owning a piece of history.

Doubleshot Tuesday: Never Mind The Bollocks/Nevermind

[Today: Two atomic bombs...]

In the history of Rock & Roll, only a handful of albums have changed the landscape of music in a way that was both immediately obvious and historically significant. Over the last 35 years, I can come up with just five albums that fit this description. In chronological order, they are: 1) The Ramones’ self-titled debut, 2) Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols, 3) Raising Hell by Run-DMC, 4) Appetite For Destruction by Guns N Roses, and 5) Nevermind by Nirvana.

It remains to be seen if this kind of effect can still be had in popular music, but increasingly fractured genres and extensive distribution networks make it seem like a phenomenon of the past. An album like Radiohead’s OK Computer, for instance, definitely changed the way that artists approached the construction of music, but it didn’t engender the kind of scorched earth, before-and-after dynamic that the aforementioned albums brought about.

For example, Never Mind The Bollocks and Nevermind represented instant sea changes in popular music – changes that weren’t just influential on other musicians, but instantly apparent to anyone paying even an iota of attention to music at the times of those releases. It’s remarkable that Nirvana named their 1991 album in homage to the Sex Pistols only full-length LP, because Nevermind finished the job that …Bollocks had started – namely, bringing Punk music into the mainstream.

Both albums exploded on the back of unlikely hit singles – The Sex Pistols incendiary ‘God Save The Queen’ and Nirvana’s generation-defining anthem ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Both groups featured magnetic frontmen – Johnny Rotten and Kurt Cobain – who used anti-charisma to draw in fans like black holes. Both of these albums seemed like abrasive statements of anarchy on release, and only revealed their inner pop structures over time. And finally, both groups were doomed to short life spans, and collapsed under the strain of carrying the banner of change for musicians everywhere. Dropping the bomb on popular music is an act that ensures eternal fame, but it doesn’t come without casualties.

Listen: God Save The Queen [Sex Pistols]

Listen: Smells Like Teen Spirit [Nirvana]

Listen: Anarchy In The U.K. [Sex Pistols]

Listen: Come As You Are [Nirvana]

Public Failure

Back in November, I posted a teaser about a book proposal that I was working on for the 33 & 1/3 series. Well, in January I found out that not only was my proposal – for a book about John Phillips’ solo album John, The Wolfking Of L.A. – not accepted, it didn’t even make their (not so) short list of 150 titles. Bummer! At first, I was fairly crushed by this, but time has not only healed this wound, it has given me some perspective on why my proposal was likely rejected.

In light of MacKenzie Phillips’ recent revelation that she and John Phillips had a ten-year incestuous affair that began in the late-70′s, I’ve decided to scrap my previous intro to this proposal, and just let it stand on its own as testament to the environment in which such behavior took place…

“I’ve really decided that John is the Forrest Gump of his time. He finds himself at every important moment, starting with the Bay of Pigs, to Mick Jagger’s wedding, to about to write the song for [the campaign of Bobby] Kennedy. I mean, it boggles the mind.”

- Michelle Phillips, 1996 interview with AOL users[1]

*****

The ‘Sixties’ really began with John F. Kennedy’s shooting in Dallas in November of 1963, and concluded with Richard Nixon resignedly climbing into a helicopter in Washington DC in August of 1974. Calendars be damned, what happened between those two events is what really defines the mythological 1960s – an era of sex, drugs, and rock-&-roll; a time of protests, assassinations, and Vietnam.

The story of John Phillips reads like a roadmap to the patchouli-scented revolution of the late-60s and the messy, debilitating hangover of the early-70s. As founder of The Mamas And The Papas and writer of such memorable songs as ‘California Dreamin’, ‘Monday, Monday’ and ‘San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)’, Phillips created a handful of anthems that came to define their times. As co-organizer and co-producer of the Monterey Pop Festival, he helped birth the concept of the rock festival.

Along the way Phillips made loads of money, paid cash for Jeanette McDonald’s Bel-Air mansion, bought His-&-Hers Jaguar XKEs for himself and wife Michelle, and snorted a small mountain of cocaine. He hob-knobbed with Jagger and Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Gram Parsons, Elvis Presley, and all manner of rock royalty; crossed paths with Andy Warhol and the Factory scene, Princess Margaret, John Belushi and Howard Hughes; influenced the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene; and developed a heroin problem that sunk his career, put him out of commission for most of the 1970s, and eventually brought the FBI to his doorstep.

But before he became lost in his drug problems, Phillips made one remarkable solo album that captured the dark undercurrent that flowed just beneath the surface of the free and easy Sixties. Released on January 25th, 1970, John The Wolfking Of L.A. represented a fulcrum in Phillips’ professional life (his career was pretty much null and void after) and is one of several fine albums (along with Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, and Neil Young’s On The Beach) that charts the descent of the ideals of the 60s into the enveloping darkness of the 70s.

The ten songs on Wolfking tell the story of Phillips’ downward-spiraling life while acting as signposts for the era: sloppy pick-up lines, covert drug deals, stolen drum kits, subterranean miscarriages, loud parties, broken relationships, and half-hearted apologies. And at the end of it all we pass through the Holland Tunnel, and the open road unwinds ever hopeful, promising salvation and the cleansing of sins in exchange for a few gallons of gasoline.

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”[2] wondered Jack Kerouac. Phillips himself was down-shifting into long, bleak trip that would consume an entire decade of his life. His was a remarkable journey and a fantastically gruesome tale of addiction and excess. Keith Moon and John Bonham were prim and proper choir boys compared to The Wolfking.

*****

PART ONE – California Dreamin’

The Mamas & The Papas were a tapestry of harmonic voices, dueling personalities, and conflicting relationships. ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty, Michelle Gilliam (soon to be Phillips) and Papa John fucked, fought, and did too many drugs with one another while making gold records and millions of dollars. Their hits ‘California Dreamin’ and ‘Monday Monday’ became instant totems of the sound and spirit of hippie-dom.

Behind the sunshine of their four-part harmonies lay a truly dysfunctional group: Michelle Gilliam married John Phillips while she was still a starry-eyed teenager, and after becoming a rock star, she began to sow her oats, some with bandmate Doherty. Mama Cass had a not-so-secret, unreciprocated crush on Doherty, and Phillips fumed over his wife’s marital transgressions, tossing her out of the group on more than one occasion and constantly threatening to disband their hit machine and go solo.

Toss in pills, speed, cocaine, LSD, and Crown Royal – along with the healthy egos that come standard with young millionaire rock stars – and it’s little wonder that the band played less than 40 shows and released four albums of significantly diminishing returns in their three and a half years together.

In 1967, Phillips helped organize and produce the Monterey Pop Festival, which brought together some of the brightest young rock stars of the day, and introduced the world to the mega-watt talent of artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, and Janis Joplin. But as successful and ground-breaking as the concert proved to be, it had the perverse effect of starkly exhibiting how out of fashion the Mamas and Papas sound had become – almost literally overnight. Barney Hoskyns observed that “When the Mamas and the Papas came on to conclude the evening, the feeling of anticlimax was palpable. They may have been Hollywood royalty, but their performance was one of the last gasps of sixties pop.”[3]

[This chapter would include a more detailed account of:

1) Phillips' Greenwich Village folk roots,
2) the group's beginnings on the island of St Thomas,
3) the legend of Mama Cass finding her voice after getting bopped on the head with a pipe, and
4) the group's significant connection to the Laurel Canyon scene (for example, Mama Cass introduced Graham Nash to David Crosby and Stephen Stills with the express intent of having them sing together)]

*****

PART TWO – Slipping Into Darkness

The peace & love vibe that surrounded Laurel Canyon was shattered by two developments that began to take root in 1969 – the introduction of cocaine as the drug of choice, and with it, the emergence of nefarious characters with dark intentions who began showing up on the fringe of the community.

“Cocaine ruined everything because it made people who previously did not have big, egotistical ideas about themselves become too self-involved” says super-groupie Pamela Des Barres. “The infiltration of that particular drug into the rock world, the peace-and-love world, really fucked with it.”[4]

The introduction of harder drugs was also an open door to some scary people who began to take advantage of the naive, welcoming spirit of the times. One such oddball, named Charles Manson, insinuated himself in Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s mansion, while peddling his own songs around town and building up a cult of impressionable young hippies.

When members of the Manson Family murdered eight-months pregnant Sharon Tate and four of her houseguests on August 9th, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on August 10, 1969, it sent a black chill through Los Angeles. In the months between the murders and the arrest of Manson, a deep, almost hysterical paranoia settled over Laurel Canyon. John Phillips had been invited to Tate’s home that evening, and he later found himself on the defense’s witness list for the Manson trial. Before the truth emerged, Tate’s husband Roman Polanski believed that Phillips had something to do with the killings and, according to Phillips, held a meat cleaver to his throat while urging him to confess to the crimes.

“The Manson killings just destroyed us,” said Mamas & Papas producer Lou Adler. “I mean, everyone was looking at everyone else, not quite sure who was in that house and who knew about it. It was a very paranoid time, and the easiest thing to do was to get out of it. Everybody went behind closed doors, and the scene went really quiet.”[5]

But the Tate/LaBianca murders were far from the only bad news in the papers – details of the My Lai massacre began to emerge in early November, and The Rolling Stones held their disastrous free concert at Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969. “As God has been losing his percentage, the Devil has been picking up a lot of that percentage. Things have become very demonic” Phillips told Rolling Stone in 1970.[6]

Against this bleak backdrop, Phillips was putting together his first solo album. John The Wolfking Of L.A. reflects both the harmonious, Flower Power spirit of the 60s, and the mayhem and chaos – the demonic things – that seemed to be the new happening.

[This chapter would include a more thorough description of:

1) lurid tales of drug use,
2) the demise of the Mamas and Papas,
3) the secret S&M community within Laurel Canyon,
4) the Manson murders and their aftermath, and
5) Manson's connections to the Los Angeles music scene]

*****

PART THREE – The Wolfking

The Mamas and the Papas had minted a lot of cash for producer and Dunhill Records owner Lou Adler, so he had every reason to want to keep them together. In exchange for the promise of another Mamas and Papas album, Adler gave Phillips his own vanity label (Warlok) and lavishly funded the recording of Wolfking.

Phillips went about assembling the best session band money could buy, including guitarist James Burton† (played with Elvis and Ricky Nelson, among others), drummer Hal Blaine (as part of the famous ‘Wrecking Crew’ of Los Angeles session musicians, Blaine was behind the kit for a vast number of hit songs, including The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’, The Byrds’ ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs. Robinson’), pedal steel guitarists Red Rhodes and Buddy Emmons, pianist Larry Knechtel, and back up singers Darlene Love, Jean King and Fanita James.

†[Keith Richards inducted Burton into the Rock-&-Roll Hall Of Fame in part by saying "I never bought a Ricky Nelson album, I bought a James Burton album."]

This was an airtight, ultra-professional band that was well suited to bring Phillips’ compositions – part country, part rock, part soul – to life. He called them “the greatest band in the world” and in early 1969 sessions began in the studio he’d built in the attic of his Bel Air mansion. It wasn’t a typical studio session, but as Burton remembers “John pretty much had the floor. He seemed excited to do the record, and had a lot of brilliant ideas.”[7]

Much of the lyrical content of Wolfking is autobiographical – either drawn from Phillips’ own life, or those close to him. At times his candor is graphic (“Genevieve lay bleeding in my basement, misconceiving life again”) and the album is dotted with small, specific details that work together to reinforce an atmosphere of disillusionment and unraveling relationships.

Most singer-songwriters of the day wrote songs that felt personal because they tapped into universal themes of love and love lost (Carole King’s “I feel the earth move under my feet” being just one example). But on Wolfking, Phillips created songs that felt intimate because they were incredibly personal. His lyrics could be difficult to decode or relate to, but they feel more like journal entries (“those junkie bums, they’re gonna steal my black Pearl drums”) than anything else in the Laurel Canyon songbook.

“The John Phillips album is a masterpiece,” declared Rolling Stone magazine upon Wolfking‘s release. “There isn’t a boring or repetitious cut on this album… it is original without gimmickry, gadgetry, or goofery.”[8]

Phillips turns in solid vocal takes throughout Wolfking, but a trace of boredom in his voice perfectly conveys the opulent ennui of his time and place. If Phillips had been Papa John plugged in, this album would be a disaster, but his laid back vocals paired with a barnstorming band makes for an undeniable formula that works time and again. But the single ‘Mississippi’ stalled in the upper reaches of the Top 40, and the album sold miserably.

The song ‘Topanga Canyon’ reveals the duality of Phillips’ life at the time. It starts out deceptively: “Sometimes I drive out to Topanga, and I park my car in the sand.” At this point, we’re in Brian Wilson’s wholesome California of surf, sun and cruising music. Then on a dime, Phillips shifts the mood: “Watching and waiting for a pickup from my man” – he’s on a drug deal. In the first two lines he manages to combine the sunshine of The Beach Boys and the squalor of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. In the grooves of this album you can hear Papa John turning into The Wolfking.

[This chapter would also include:

1) a detailed, song-by-song analysis of the album,
2) a decoding of the identities of the characters mentioned in the songs (The Jingle Jangle Faggot = Gene Clark of The Byrds, The Easy Rider = Dennis Hopper, The Captain = Phillips’ father, etc),
3) an exploration of the continuum of albums that Wolfking belongs to, including The Gilded Palace Of Sin, Pet Sounds, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, On The Beach, Court & Spark, L.A. Woman, and There's A Riot Goin' On, and
4) a more detailed account of the sessions for this album.

Even though the chapters are equally weighted here, I believe that Parts Three and Four will comprise about 65% of this book.]

*****

PART FOUR – Churning River Of Madness

Phillips’ career didn’t fall apart with the commercial failure of Wolfking – rather, a series of bad decisions, missed opportunities, and dubious projects combined to tarnish his star. He spent more than a year working on an off-Broadway musical adaptation of the Apollo landing that ended up running for exactly three nights. He then frittered away a chance to record a solo album produced by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Meanwhile, his ego led him to damage a number of potentially beneficial connections (such as David Geffen and Mo Ostin) and sap the goodwill that his California Dreamin’ stardom had engendered.

But his biggest problem wasn’t ill-conceived musicals or misfiring solo albums – it was his increasing appetite for hard drugs. By the early 70s he was “skin-popping” cocaine through a syringe, scoring heroin on a street corner in Spanish Harlem, snorting lines with his teenage daughter (Laura McKenzie Phillips), and defaulting on every bill in sight. But that was nothing compared to what was yet to come.

As Phillips wrote in his candid 1986 autobiography Papa John: “We couldn’t see it then, but our lives were already out of control. And yet the wake of material destruction we left behind us would later seem calm and glassy compared to the cold, dark, churning river of madness ahead.”[9]

By 1977 Phillips was smuggling heroin and coke through international airports, shooting heroin into infected veins, and trading in fake prescriptions at his local pharmacy to help support his $1,000-a-day habit. “We hired a maid named Versey, an obese, sweet-natured West Indian, to help cook [and] clean. It wasn’t long before she had to scrub jagged streaks of blood from the bathroom walls and ceiling – the gruesome junkie signature scrawled by unclogging used syringes.”[10]

On July 31st, 1980 Phillips was busted by federal agents and later convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He faced up to 45 years in prison, but received an eight-year suspended sentence and five years of probation. During the trial, Phillips’ defense attorney argued that his “tortured existence during the period of [his] drug addiction… constituted a continuous course of devastating punishment.”[11]

John The Wolfking Of L.A. is a musical prelude to the “continuous course of devastating punishment” that was John Phillips’ day-to-day life in the 1970′s. Within the lines of these songs it’s possible to spot much of the sordid behavior (petty theft, drug deals, broken relationships) that would consume his creative spark, end his career, and nearly take his life. But Wolfking is a beautiful, fragile album that hides its dark side beneath a warm blanket of exquisite country rock. Midway through Papa John, Phillips is described by his daughter McKenzie as a “gorgeous, brilliant, well-mannered, rock and roll sleazeball.”[12] It was, of course, a spot on description of The Wolfking.

[This chapter would include a detailed account of Phillips’ activities in the 1970s]

*****

Bibliography:

[1] http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/3083/mpchat.htm
[2] from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road
[3] from Barney Hoskyns’ Waiting For The Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes, and The Sound Of Los Angeles – pg 146.
[4] from Michael Walker’s Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood – pg 156.
[5] from Barney Hoskyns’ Waiting For The Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes, and The Sound Of Los Angeles – pgs 180-181.
[6] from “John Phillips – The Wolfking As Lord Byron” by Michael Thomas – Rolling Stone, November 12th, 1970.
[7] from Jeffrey A Greenberg and Richard Barton Campbell’s liner notes for the 2006 re-issue of John The Wolfking Of L.A..
[8] from album review by Sylvia A. Weiser – Rolling Stone, July 23rd, 1970.
[9] from John Phillips’ (with Jim Jerome) autobiography Papa John – pg 270.
[10] from John Phillips’ (with Jim Jerome) autobiography Papa John – pg 316.
[11] from John Phillips’ (with Jim Jerome) autobiography Papa John – pg 393.
[12] from John Phillips’ (with Jim Jerome) autobiography Papa John – pg 296.