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.

Tags: 33 & 1/3 series, John Phillips, John Wolfking Of L.A.