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Schizophrenia and the tragic story of Moby Grape

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Sep 162012

Recently, after several years without a turntable, I treated myself to one and started digging out LPs I hadn’t played in years. Among the delights I rediscovered was the music of Moby Grape. Moby Who? I hear you say.

Well, for 6 months or so back in 1967, Moby Grape were the ‘next big new thing’ for the record companies starting to take a serious interest in the burgeoning hippie music scene of San Francisco. Unfortunately Moby Grape’s star did not rise for very long, crashing down in a tragic welter of legal disputes, drug abuse and ‘madness’.

RCA already had an album out by Jefferson Airplane by late 1966. Warner Bros had signed the Grateful Dead but didn’t quite know what to do with them. Quicksilver Messenger Service were just getting going and Janis Joplin was beginning to find her feet in Big Brother & The Holding Company.

For most A&R men/talent scouts filtering into the San Francisco Bay Area, the local hippie bands, with to some extent the exception of the Airplane, were just weird. They didn’t understand the music business. Moreover, in their insular, stoned way, most of them didn’t want to understand that music was a business! Most of the local bands just wanted to play whatever music they and their friends fancied, without the slightest thought of whether their songs could ever be made into hit singles.

The Airplane understood – or at least some of the band’s members did! – that music was a business and that their sense of art sometimes had to be compromised if they wanted to make serious money from their music. Unsurprisingly then, the Airplane were the first of the San Francisco hippie bands to make a record and the first to have hit singles. That band’s ability to balance art with commerciality kept them on the charts for around 25 years while continuing to earn critical accolades right into the late 1970s as the renamed Jefferson Starship before they lost most of their sense of art in the pursuit of money during the 1980s.

Back in late 1966 Moby Grape had a similar ethic to the Airplane – this ethic coming in part at least from sharing one Matthew Katz as manager. (The Grape can also be seen as the first of the many Airplane/Starship spin-offs as singer/guitarist Skip Spence had previously spent around 6 months as the Airplane’s drummer.) While the Grape, with a 3-guitar attack, would jam for 20 minutes just as readily as the Grateful Dead, they understood that pop records needed shortish, hummable tunes with distinctive arrangements. Moreover, unlike some of the local bands, they polished their singing until they could produce the best male vocal harmonies this side of The Beach Boys.

The video below of the Grape performing ‘Omaha’ and ‘8:05’ live on The Mike Douglas Show in 1967 gives a little flavour of the range and quality of the band’s music. Left to right, the band are Spence, Jerry Miller (vocals/lead guitar), Bob Mosley (vocals/bass) and Peter Lewis (vocals/guitar), with singing drummer Don Stevenson behind them.

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While Warner Bros pondered just what they had signed with the Dead and Quicksilver laughed contemptuously at the men in suits who talked to them about recording deals, Columbia Records loved what they got in Moby Grape after a short but fierce bidding war.

And they thought they knew exactly what to do with them.

Too commercial for their own good…and too badly behaved!
What happened to the Grape is a legend among those who know.

What some rock critics still describe as the best of the San Francisco hippie band records, ‘MOBY GRAPE’, was sabotaged by Columbia releasing almost the entire album simultaneously as singles, thus confusing deejays as which one to push. A substantial section of the ‘underground’ press thought the album was too poppy – too commercial – and declared it ‘unhip’. Attempts to promote the album nationally were sunk by the Grape themselves who got thrown off a tour supporting The Mamas & The Papas for bad behaviour such as ‘mooning’ the teenage girls in the audience. In spite of all this, the album still made the Top 20.

The recording of the Grape’s second album was moved from Los Angeles to New York City after Columbia released the band were spending more time partying than recording. In New York, however, the band began to fracture, with Peter Lewis walking out to fly home, and some of the partying reached truly epicurean levels. After consuming large quantities of LSD with a self-declared black witch, Skip Spence decided Don Stevenson needed saving from himself and tried to chop down his hotel room door with a fire axe to kill him.

Spence was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent 6 months in Belle Vue psychiatric hospital before being released to cut an offbeat solo album, ‘OAR’, regarded by some as a ‘psychedelic masterpiece’ of sorts.

The Grape’s second album, ‘WOW’/’GRAPE JAM’ – though it certainly had its moments – was, unsurprisingly, a disjointed, indulgent affair. However, some of the underground press actually praised the psychedelic effects and the strangeness of some tracks. Still there was enough buzz about the Grape for it to do even slightly better on the charts than the debut.

With Spence incapacitated, the remaining quartet regrouped, recorded the engaging, country-oriented ‘MOBY GRAPE ‘69’ and set about some heavy touring schedules. In spite of this, the album didn’t sell well – and then Bob Mosley quit to join the Marines! At a time when American youth culture was convulsed with antagonism to American involvement in the Vietnam War, Mosley becoming a marine was seen as both bizarre and a betrayal. However, Mosley wasn’t a marine for long, being court-martialled out of the Marines after assaulting an officer and being diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic.

Lewis, Stevenson and Miller made the more than marginally-interesting ‘TRULY FINE CITIZEN’ as a contract filler before going their separate ways.

And that should have been it…but in 1971 the band reunited with all 5 members. Such was the interest in a fully-fledged Grape reunion that the band were able to spurn the Airplane’s new Grunt Records vanity label, to sign with Warner Bros. Unfortunately the resulting ‘20 GRANITE CREEK’ didn’t have quite enough killer tracks to make it a winner and the short tour to promote it was marred by uneven performances.

The band members then found themselves unable to use the Moby Grape name as Matthew Katz, ex-manager now for a couple of years, claimed ownership of the name. The band began a 30+-year battle to regain it.

Various further reunions have taken place since the early 70s and a handful of interesting but unsuccessful albums have been made for minor labels, usually using some variation of the name, to avoid Katz suing. Spence was involved in some of the reunions, usually just for a short while; sometimes Mosley has not been involved in the reunions.

It would appear Mosley coped better with having Schizophrenia than Spence did – though the latter compounded his mental health problems by significant substance abuse (alcohol, heroin and cocaine). Spence spent long periods of time in residential mental institutions or transient accommodation. Both Spence and Mosley were homeless at times in the 1990s, with Mosley homeless again in 2006 when Peter Lewis picked him up from the side of a San Diego highway to tell him the band had finally won their name back from Katz. That, however, was way too late for Spence who had died in 1999 just before his 53rd birthday.

Moby Grape reformed in 2006 partly to help Mosley but news of a new legal injunction from Katz the following year reportedly led to a partial relapse.

The story of Moby Grape is indeed a tragedy – partly self-inflicted, of course – but no less a tragedy for that. When I think of Spence and Mosley, I must confess that it does irk me that men who have made such outstanding music and given me so much pleasure should have suffered so much.

20% of a group have Schizophrenia?!?
The incidence of Schizophrenia in the general population is around 1%. Even among dizygotic (non-identical) twins who share 50% the same genes, the concordance rate found in most sample groups is less than 20% – eg: Irving Gottesman found a rate of 17% in 1991. So it is quite remarkable that Moby Grape had a 20% concordance rate among their 5 genetically-unrelated members.

It could, of course, be a huge coincidence. Or, it could be that something in the way the Grape conducted themselves precipitated the onset of Schizophrenia in Spence and Mosley.

While research in recent years has moved the emphasis away from purely psychological explanations for Schizophrenia more onto biological causes, the concept of diathesis-stress (Joseph Zubin & Bonnie Spring, 1977) is still widely accepted amongst psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. In other words, you may have a genetic diathesis or predisposition to develop Schizophrenia – in the same way some people are more likely to develop cancer or heart disease – but it still needs some kind of ‘stress trigger’. For some people with the predisposition, this can be a single, emotionally-overwhelming life event such as the death of a spouse. For others, the stress trigger is more the accumulative effect of certain, dangerous lifestyle choices.

The Grape, certainly in the first flush of money and fame, were notorious for indulging in a party lifestyle. And, in San Francisco in 1967, a party lifestyle almost certainly included vast amounts of cannabis and frequent use of LSD. While the concordance rate linking the onset of Schizophrenia with cannabis use varies from study to study – with the age of the user being a significant variable factor – the association between the 2 is now well-established and generally-accepted – see: Time to turn against Cannabis!

There is almost no available research on whether the use of LSD is linked to the onset of Schizophrenia – though a number of experts have posited, from case studies, that it looks like a connection exists. Certainly, besides Spence and Mosley, there are a number of other high profile rockers from the 1960s who appear to have had Schizophrenia triggered by LSD use – most notably Roky Erickson of The 13th Floor Elevators, Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac and The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson – though Wilson’s illness was later reclassified as Manic-Depressive Psychosis (Bipolar Disorder). (There’s enough similarity between the features of Mania and Paranoid Schizophrenia to perhaps understand how Wilson’s psychiatrist made the misdiagnosis.)

It is, of course, dangerous to generalise from case studies but it is certainly tempting to use them to link Schizophrenia with LSD. So-called ‘acid casualties’ are largely a by-product of the late 1960s. The reason for this may be that LSD declined dramatically in popularity in the early1970s. Even in San Franciso, centre of the hippie culture, the preference switched to a different type of drug. (The Dead’s Jerry Garcia and the Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen both became heroin addicts; while Kaukonen’s bandmate Paul Kantner was just one of many well-to-do rock stars who went into rehab on numerous occasions in an attempt to kick cocaine.) While LSD enjoyed some revival in popularity in the club and ‘rave’ scenes of the 1980s and 1990s, it has never regained anything like the widespread and frequent use it enjoyed in the late 1960s.

Individual differences and risk
It is probably safe to assume the almost de rigueur heavy cannabis use amongst San Francisco musicians put Spence and Mosley at risk – and frequent LSD use may have increased the risk factor. That they developed Schizophrenia and the other 3 didn’t may well be due to Spence and Mosley having the genetic predisposition while the others didn’t.

That Mosley appears to have coped better with Schizophrenia than Spence was probably due to many factors, particularly social and support networks. However, their Grape bandmates – Peter Lewis in particular – have often been credited as supporting both men, as friends and by seeking to involve them in the various reunions. Undoubtedly heavy substance abuse will almost certainly have contributed to Spence’s continued decline.

Individual temperament may well have been a factor too. Spence seems to have been more of an extravert while Mosley, offstage at least, seems to have been more of an introvert – something of a reflective loner. Lewis’ descriptions of Spence trying to lure teenage girls to his trailer in the 1980s smack of the compulsive ruthlessness of Psychoticism. A temperament high in Extraversion and Psychoticism (Spence) would, according to Hans & Sybil Eysenck (1976), be more likely to facilitate the acting out of Paranoid Schizophrenia than a temperament inclined more to Introversion and Neuroticism (Mosley).

Much of this is, of course, speculation in trying to understand how Schizophrenia could blight the lives of 2 key figures in a band who could have been a major force in rock music in different circumstances.

As I close this blog post with a video below of the 4-piece Grape miming to Mosley’s sublime ‘It’s A Beautiful Day Today’ (from the ‘69’ album), I find it poignant to note that such glad-to-be-alive lyrics came from such a troubled mind.

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Dawn to dawn a lifetime
The birds sing and day’s begun
The heaven will shine from dawn to dusk
With golden rays of sun

People on their way
Beginning a brand new day
I love (a-)hearing people say
It’s a beautiful day today

People in the streets
Rushing everywhere
Moving fast and how I know
They got to get somewhere

People on their way
Beginning a brand new day
I love (a-)hearing people say
It’s a beautiful day today

Lose a cat, lose a father….

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Aug 082011

Yesterday we – my wife, Caroline, and I – attended a service for the interment of my father’s ashes. A few hours later we picked up a new cat, a 6-week old male kitten we’re calling Basmati - ‘Basmati Rice’, geddit?! Baz, as we tend to call him, is settling in remarkably well and is a real delight after what seems to have been 6 months of loss.

Personally I would never admit to being religious or, in any sense, ‘spiritual’ beyond having a strong but rather vague conviction that there is something bigger than me ‘out there’. On the odd occasion I do think about it, I tend to think of this ‘something’ in God-the-Father/Allah-the-Compassionate terms – which I attribute to cultural memes rather than any spiritual intuition. And I certainly consider myself far too rational to entertain anything superstitious!

Yet, for several years now, I’ve had the thought that I would lose Artemis, my cat, and Ted Rice, my father, within a very short time of each other. Of course, I could rationalise this by arguing that both were approaching the end of their natural life and had already lived significantly beyond the average age of their sex and species. (Artemis was 19 years old and my father 83.) Or maybe the PURPLE vMEME’s tendency to believe in signs, omens and superstitions was simply tuning into something that rational science can’t comprehend…? Certainly, it would appear from studies of primitive peoples such as the Kalahari bushmen (eg: Richard Katz, 1982) and Australian Aborigine tribes (eg: James Cowan, 1993) that at least some of their number can ‘tune into’ and be informed by something way beyond the ken of conventional modern science.

PURPLE was certainly the dominant vMEME in terms of giving meaning to both relationships…so maybe, just maybe, there was something intuitive in that thought that I would lose them pretty much at the same time…?

Artemis
I acquired Artemis on 5 October 1991. I already had a 7-week-old black male, Merlin, I wanted company for since (just like today!) I worked long hours. My girlfriend of the time knew I was looking for another kitten and alerted me to a kitten some friends of hers had found in a barn on their farm in the hills above Keighley. When I saw this (approximately) 4-week-old kitten, apparently abandoned by her mother, I thought she was the ugliest kitten I had ever seen: a blobby belly on short stumpy legs, ears bigger than her head, bulging eyes, a coat that looked like someone had thrown a range of creams and browns over her in totally random fashion and one half of her face a totally different colour than the other. (Split straight down the middle, like the villain, Two-Face, in the Batman comics!) But, as long-time friend Linda Scurrah commented many years later: “Artemis has grown into her looks. She’s quite beautiful now she’s older.”

Merlin, sadly, didn’t last that long – getting knocked down when he was just over 6 months old. But Artemis survived illnesses, sequential girlfriends and multiple moves, to become a true companion. I talked to her and, to some degree at least, I thought she understood my mood, if not the content of my words.

Pure Behaviourists take the view that animals don’t have cognitions but I am in no doubt that Artemis had certain basic expectations – schemas. She expected stroking if she made certain noises or approached us in a certain way. If she went and sat by her bowl around about evening meal time, she was indicating clearly that she expected feeding.

Some would say I am anthropomorphsing but I am convinced something akin to the PURPLE vMEME functioned in her brain. Throughout all the moves and all the girlfriends, Artemis coped with it all as long as I was there; but, if I had to stay away overnight, I’m told she would prowl the house looking for me and acting distressed. Sometimes, if I just looked at her when I had been ignoring her for a while, she would purr – apparently pleased that I was giving her attention. It appears I mattered to her – that, from her side as well as mine, there was some kind of desire for mutual affiliation. Indeed, I would be prepared to stick my kneck out and say Artemis craved affection. Eg: as she got older, I could still tempt her to a bit of play occasionally…but then she would lick the hand she’d just pawed, look at me in what I meta-stated to be a pleading way and start purring.

Artemis, 2006

I’d also speculate that there was some degree of RED operating in her very basic selfplex. Eg: if I was eating chicken, she would howl at me until either I gave her some or she would get frustrated and try to snatch it from my plate – even though she had her own food down that she was usually quite content with. She knew what she preferred and she would try to intimidate me in to giving her what she wanted.

Artemis was also choosy as to which of my girlfriends she was prepared to associate with…or not. Around 7 years ago Caroline and I were decidedly relieved when Artemis did take to her.

Other prominent temperament traits Artemis displayed included great caution and nervousness – which may have contributed.to her longevity. Tied in with that, she was a coward and would never defend her territory. That is, until she started displaying mild signs of feline dementia and seemed to forget she was a coward, charging at much larger cats and succeeding in driving them out of the garden!

Like most higher mammal pets with their owners, Artemis would not hold my gaze for more than a second or two – indicating that she accepted I had greater power. However, in the last 6 months or so of her life, Artemis did take to holding both mine and Caroline’s gaze from time to time. But we meta-stated it was not in an aggressive way but more as though she was searching us for something.

Ted Rice
My father was proud of being a right-wing racist who thought the sun shone out of Margaret Thatcher’s backside. He considered the trade unions to be the single biggest threat to the wealth and prosperity of the British people and wanted them tamed again – like Maggie had done 25 years previously! Being a classical music man, he despised The Beatles and the long hair hippie culture of the 1960s. He thought young women should still be virgins when they married and that young men should have short back & sides and wear suits. So when my teenager self grew my hair long, wore jeans, listened to Jefferson Airplane and espoused many of the more idealistic tenets of the hippie culture….!

BLUE was so strong in his selfplex that he considered everyone should listen to the TV news every night because everyone should be informed – it was ‘the right thing to do’. My mother’s PURPLE village gossip mentality seriously irked him and they had numerous rows about her finding the housewives’ gossip on the street more interesting than the state of the British economy or the progress of the latest war in Africa.

There was some partial emergence of ORANGE in that he had ambitions to be a director of the company he worked for and was then able to reinvent himself very succesfully as a health & safety consultant after he was made redundant.

But of GREEN there appeared to be no trace. As said, he was a racist…of the England-for-the-English variety. He was a sexist in that it was understandable if men were unfaithful to their partners but women had to be totally faithful. He had no truck with the idea of human rights, believing criminals deserved to be beaten up by the police and that prisons should be such harsh places that offenders would be terrified of going back to jail. Unsurprisingly he was a staunch advocate of capital punishment and believed corporal punishment should be reintroduced to schools. His limited view of social mobility was that only those who, by virtue of intelligence and/or sheer hard work, could rise above their birth class status should be allowed to get on with it; the state should certainly not award benefits to create positive discrimination for the socially disadvantaged.

For all our cultural and political differences, I was close to my Dad…arguably closer to him than I was to my Mum. Though many of our discussions ended in rows – because of the cultural and political factors! – I could talk to my Dad about the world and what was going on. (Any time I raised anything like a problem with a girlfriend, though, it was immediately passed on to Mum – it was her job to do the emotion work!) But problems at work, too, he would listen and offer his advice. He was immensely skilled in management techniques and provided a very useful sounding board as I tried to fathom my way through various issues. My career and the social, economic and political implications of the news formed the basis of most of our conversations – though increasingly his health problems became a pressing topic of conversation after my Mum died.

Ted, celebrating his 80th birthday

My mother, Betty, died in 2000 (from cancer). For a year afterwards, my Dad was depressed, becoming a virtual hermit and dropping almost all social contacts. Then he developed Myasthenia Gravis, a neurological illness which inhibits the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from working in the synapses at the muscle platelets, effectively preventing the efferent neurons from sending messages from the motor cortex and the cerebellum to the muscles. A Bell’s Palsy-type face droop in 2001 was followed by a collapse of his lungs the following year, necessitating a 5-month stay in hospital – 3 of them in intensive care. After getting the Myasthenia under control with stupendous amounts of medication, mobility problems and excruciating arthritic pain led to 2 hip transplants. Dad then had a couple of reasonable years before gallbladder problems led to a series of collapses and stays in hospital. By January this year it was clear he was deteriorating, with kidney and liver problems eventually triggering the long, slow, downward spiral to the end. I doubt I’ll ever forget seeing him 2 days before he died, screaming in pain and the hospital staff not able to get the morphine into him fast enough.

For all my ‘psychology tricks’, as I call them, that experience has left a deep wound in me. If it was bad for me, what must it have been like for him?

The downward slope and the aftermath
Already on major medication due to her Arthritis, Artemis began fitting late last year. The fitting may have been a by-product of a botched operation to remove bad teeth that left her temporarily blind and paralysed…but it would have been very difficult to prove. With even more medication, we thought we had got the fitting under control. However, a really severe and distressing fit at Easter, with medication at maximum levels, left us with no other real choice. As Caroline said: “What would happen if she had a fit outside? She’d be at the mercy of any predator that was nearby – foxes and so on.”

Artemis hated going to the vet’s in a cat carrier. For all the steep extra cost, I got the vet out to our house. It was important to me that Artemis died in her own home, with as little pre-procedure distress as possible. As she went under, in the conservatory in which she spent so much time, with me stroking her…did it actually make the experience of her passing any less traumatic for her? If I’m honest, I have no idea…but she seemed peaceful. And it helps me…whether or not it helped her.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t give the same consideration - euthanasia – to my Dad. He took another 2 days to die. By the last few hours, they had finally gotten the morphine levels right and he did appear to die in peace…but the 48 hours before must have been a horrendous experience for him.

I was at my Mum’s death bed in 2000. I saw and heard the final intake of breath. (The first time I had seen somebody die in front of me!) Strangely I cried only once for my mother – on a misty November night in the garden 2 months later. I think my focus was so strongly on trying to hold my Dad together in the following months and years that my BLUE never really allowed my PURPLE the privilege of grieving for a loved one. When Artemis’ executioners left - because, being blunt, that’s what we did to her: execution – I sobbed inconsolably for days. My little companion – who at times had seemed unnervingly human and who I sometimes referred to as “my little furry daughter’ – was gone. Even now Caroline and/or I will break into tears, if something triggers certain memories of Artemis. She was such a huge personality and such a part of our lives….

By contrast, my Dad was much less a part of our lives. We spoke on the phone at least once a week, I travelled to see him approximately once a month – and Caroline would come with me every 2nd or 3rd visit. Christmas dinner with him was an annual ritual.

So far at least, I’ve cried less for my Dad than I have done for Artemis. Again, as with my mother’s death, it’s been all action. As my father’s only child (and the executor of his will), it’s been my responsibility to arrange the funeral, deal with Dad’s financial affairs and apply for probate, and clear out his house, ready for sale. In and amongst these processes, there have been tears but the focus has been mainly on doing rather than thinking. Certainly finding photos of Artemis amongst Dad’s possessions was a trigger for both Caroline and I to shed some tears!

Mum & Dad, 40th Wedding Anniversary

One photo that certainly brought me to tears was the one of my Mum & Dad’s 40th Anniversary in September 1991. Dad was 5 years older than I am now and Mum just 2. They look to be still in their prime, before the cruelties of old age could tarnish and diminish them. My PURPLE feels a great ache looking at that photo. The end of Summer in 1991 was a good time for my PURPLE. Just a few weeks later I would acquire Artemis.

Maybe I‘ll do more crying for Dad – and for Mum? – once everything is done and there is more time for reflection…?

A change in life
I miss my Dad in some different ways to Artemis.

Artemis was in my life every day, working through a variety of situations, ranging from her being a demanding pain to a purring pleasure. Her suddenly not being there any more left a huge emptiness in our lives. One or both of us still think we see her out of the corner of our eyes from time to time. The schematic expectation is still, to some extent, that she is there – or should be there. Caroline and I still hold each other and say we wish we could have her back, we miss her so much.

But somehow the scope of the relationship with my Dad, while lacking everyday impact, was more. Perhaps because of the greater history…? Perhaps because, according to Dale Hay & Jo Ellen Vespo (1988), parents teach us to love them from a very early age…?

Maybe it was simply the cognitive level of the relationship which made it more…? Bizarrely, at the post-funeral bash, I found myself thinking I would have to tell my Dad how pleased I was that my Mum’s relatives were mingling so well with his…when I suddenly realised he wasn’t there to tell anymore! I will miss talking to him.

Then, of course, you can sort-of replace a cat. Not that we feel we could or would want ever to replace Artemis. She will always have a unique place in our memories. But we can get a new cat. We had talked about this possibility and, after my Dad died, Caroline sourced the little kitten who is now Baz. We deliberately went for a male and one who looks nothing like Artemis because we don’t want to find ourselves drawing comparisons. We want to preserve her importance in our selfplexes.

But you can’t even begin to replace a father. (Or a mother, for that matter….)

UPDATE: 14 July 2012.
2 days ago, on the anniversary of his death, after a days’ teaching, I drove from Harrogate to Garstang, to stand by the marker which is all that remains that is tangible of my Dad (and my Mum). It was a near 5 hours round trip to spend 40 minutes with them…but I’m glad I went. On a rare (for this year!) warm and sunny evening, in the tranquil, almost idyllic graveyard of St Thomas, alone amongst the gravestones and the markers, I found that, for the first time I could remember my Dad, without being disturbed by horrendous memories of those last 3 days of his life.

I found that, for the first time, memories came easily to me of when he was younger and healthier…of things we did as a family as well as when I visited them as an adult. For the first time too, I found I could laugh again at some of the memories – at some of the more outlandish and ridiculous things he had said and done. The horrendous final days were still there if I looked for them but they were fuzzy and indistinct – as if partially repressed - so I left them alone and enjoyed my little graveyard reverie of better times.

Over the past year I’ve often moved away from thoughts of my Dad and tried not to engage with them by distracting myself with something else. Interestingly I found remembering my Mum a more easy and pleasant experience. So I’m pleased and hopeful now that I’ll be able to enjoy my memories of Dad.

My intention is to go back to Garstang every year on or around the anniversary of his death and use that trip as a way of honouring him and Mum.

I guess I’ve found for myself some truth in the old adage that pain eases with the passing of time. (For many months, it seemed like it would never ease!)

As for Artemis, we buried her ashes in a little copse on the cliffs above Robin Hood’s Bay and carved her name into the branch of an overhanging tree. As we love the Bay and usually spend a week in a cottage there most years, as long as we can still climb the cliffs, we can visit that copse.

In a strange way, there’s also a connection to my Dad in her burial place. He had always loved Artemis and often asked after her. When he was no longer well enough to visit us, we bought him a little wooden cat, which had something of her ‘look’, to symbolise her to him. As the carving was of a cat all curled up and seemingly very much at peace with itself, after Dad’s death, we took the carving and half-buried it on top of Artemis’ ashes to serve as her marker.

Of course, the world is a busy place and so often we’re too busy to give much time to remembering those we’ve lost. But it’s good for our PURPLE to remember those in our personal history who have meant so much and to honour our past.

The Mamas & The Papas: sex, drugs and rock & roll or incest, addiction and unreleased albums?

celebrity, mental health, morality, music, Psychology, schemas & memes, sex & romance, society, Spiral Dynamics, substance abuse 1 Response »

Nov 072010

Did you know The Mamas & The Papas have an album out of new material - ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ – and it’s arguably even better than the albums they made in their mid-60s heyday?

Er, hang on, I hear you say, how can The Mamas & The Papas have an album of new material out when 3 of them are dead - Mama Cass Elliot since 1974?

Well, of course, it’s not the original 4 members - though leader John Phillips (died 2001) is present throughout, had a hand in writing all the songs but one and produced and arranged all the material. Original Papa Denny Doherty (died 2007) is on many of the numbers - with Phillips’ protégé Scott Mackenzie (of ‘San Franciso’ fame) on others. The Mamas this time around are John’s daughter Mackenzie Phillips, more than surpassing stepmother Michelle Phillips in the role of soprano while the rotund contralto role of Cass is given a pretty reasonable pastiche by the nearly-as-rotund Spanky McFarlane (once of Mamas & Papas soundalikes Spanky & Our Gang). The music, which was actually recorded at various sessions in the 1980s by the touring Mamas & Papas and their backing bands, still treads the pathway between bright pop and more adventurous rock-oriented material that made the originals so appealing to so many different types of audience. The tilt of several numbers towards Caribbean and African music would have put The Mamas & The Papas in the vanguard of Western acts exploring ‘World Music’ had they been released at the time.

And those famous harmonies…? As full and as gorgeous as ever!

The Mamas & The Papas mattered to me
So why am I writing about them on a sociopsychological blog? Simple: The Mamas & The Papas mattered to me…but their story has something to teach us all.

The old wives’ adage has it that, while you may move onto far greater loves, you never quite forget your first love…and The Mamas & The Papas were my first love in music. The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Monkees had all caught my pubescent attention but it was The Mamas & The Papas I first fell in love with. I remember, as a 14-year-old in 1968, falling to my knees and thanking God when Radio 1 played the first single from the group’s fourth and final album – the one they almost failed to complete such were the tensions in the group. I think I understand something of why youngsters and not-so-youngsters-of-a-certain-age are camping out overnight and paying ludicrous prices for tickets to the Take That/Robbie Williams reunion shows!

Music can have an incredibly powerful effect on development - especially if the makers of that music have something to tell you about yourself and your development. And to a spotty 14-year-old torn between RED indulgence and BLUE conformity, yearning to find ‘me’…oh, and worrying about getting my first shag!…The Mamas & The Papas with their beatnik outfits, little beards (on the Papas!), soaring optimistic harmonies and songs of freedom and romance offered keys to identity and direction that proved irresistible.

Of course, I did move on to ‘greater loves’ – Jefferson Airplane, Fairport Convention, The Pentangle and the Crosby Stills & Nash family of bands all offered enticement into more adventurous musical and cultural spheres. Plus, they all had longevity! Apart from a very brief and messy reunion in 1971 - tainted by a generally lacklustre album - The Mamas & The Papas were gone by mid-1968, after just 2.5 years at the top.

As I explored my new, greater musical loves, though, I never quite forgot that first love. I would be thrilled to read the occasional titbit about the 4 members in the music/entertainment press; but, generally speaking, the 1970s were not kind to the ex-Mamas and Papas. Until her death in 1974, Cass struggled to find a public identity somewhere between the rocker she had been and the fluffy middle-of-the-road entertainer the variety TV show appearances called for. After a couple or forgettable solo albums, Denny disappeared into alcoholic obscurity – though in the 1990s he re-emerged in his native Canada as a minor theatrical and TV personality. Michelle also made a forgettable solo album, had a couple of stabs at movie stardom and then settled into a journeyman career as a ‘soap’ actress (Knots Landing and Beverley Hills 90210).

John’s much praised 1970 solo album ‘WOLFKING OF LA’ confirmed what many pundits had long said: that his was the genius in the group and that his career was the one to follow. The lyrics on ‘WOLFKING’ also made explicit for the first time what many insiders had known for years: that John’s personal life was highly excessive in terms of both sex (eg: many, many infidelities to wife Michelle) and drugs (conspicuous consumption – eg: pot, acid, uppers, downers…).

Of course, drug references had been slipped into a number of Mamas & Papas songs – not all of them discretely – viz: “altars of acid” in the second album’s ‘Strange Young Girls’ – while it was well known that the Phillipses’ marriage had a lot of troubles. (Michelle’s unceremonious but temporary sacking in 1966 made it impossible to hide – though it would be years later before her affairs with Doherty and Gene Clark of The Byrds were general public knowledge.) But the sheer exuberance of their harmonies and the grandma-friendly version of hippies they portrayed for the media made it possible for the most part to gloss over the worst. Post the Manson gang murders that terrorised the rich hippies in the Hollywood Hills, post the Altamont disaster that so quickly dispelled the we-can-change-the-world optimism generated by the Woodstock festival, ‘WOLFKING’ was much darker in tone. Almost a premonition of the way John Phillips’ life was going to go.

Addiction and unreleased albums
The times were the times, of course. Up the coast in San Francisco in 1966 the GREEN vMEME was liberating young RED into excesses of long, indulgent psychedelic jams, pot and acid by the truckload and free sex ‘love-ins’ – all in the name of liberating the human spirit. (What a meme!)

As hippie royalty in London, 1967

As news of what was going on in San Francisco began to leak out, in Los Angeles the music industry’s carefully-crafted empty-the-kids’-pockets pop-folk tunes suddenly looked ‘square’. Not for long. John Phillips wrote ‘San Francisco’ for Scott Mackenzie which went to number 1; and he and Mamas & Papas producer Lou Adler staged the Monterey Pop Festival (June 1967), with its ‘Love & Flowers’ motif and appearances by all the leading San Francisco bands. In a couple of moves, Phillips’ ORANGE had accommodated rebel San Francisco into the music business. Of course, the real hippies in San Francisco knew they’d been screwed but it was Scott Mackenzie at number 1 and doing the interviews, not the Grateful Dead. To the uninitiated it looked for a while as if The Mamas & The Papas were leaders of the hippie movement. From then on most of the San Francisco bands, how ever much they dissented at times, generally co-operated with the music industry as it gave them undreamt-of wealth and fame in return.

From there on it was an accelerating downhill ride for John Phillips. ‘WOLFKING’ was lauded but didn’t sell that well; and the commercial and artistic failure of the Mamas & Papas 1971 reunion album (the first without Adler) for the first time suggested not everything John did was genius. A second solo album was partly recorded and then abandoned and an attempt to launch an off-Broadway musical under the patronage of Andy Warhol ended in ridicule. Things then went from very bad to incredibly worse when he made a second attempt at his second solo album, with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones backing and producing. In his just-published autobiography ‘LIFE’, Richards admits to turning Phillips onto heroin. So much heroin and cocaine was consumed by Richards and Phillips that the sessions overran considerably and the label (Atlantic) buried the final mix delivered to them. With the Stones desperately trying to get Richards cleaned up enough to attend to their own business and John in no shape to promote the album or tour, Atlantic’s decision undoubtedly made sense at the time. When the results were finally released as ‘PAY, PACK & FOLLOW’ just before John’s death in 2001, it was clear just how good the Phillips/Stones mesh was. At the time, in 1978, a combination of drug addiction and Atlantic’s decision effectively ended John’s musical career…for then.

A little over 2 years later John was arrested as part of a complex drug-dealing conspiracy. His money gone on drugs and living in squalor, emaciated and with many of the veins in his body collapsed from repeated injections, the arrest almost certainly saved his life.

The high sex drive, the compulsive and sometimes impulsive behaviour, and the ruthlessness Phillips is all quite open about - to the point of boastful arrogance – in his autobiography ‘PAPA JOHN’ (1986), are indicators that his temperament was rather high in Psychoticism. This, in a climate of RED self-indulgence and sybaritic excess, almost made John’s addictive behaviour all but inevitable - without him having the understanding of his nature and thereby the means to limit its natural tendency to excess. Keith Richards writes: “I’ve never seen a guy become a junkie that quick.”

The RED vMEME will lock into a psychoticist temperament to form a centre of gravity. Once established, such a centre of gravity in thought and behaviour can be incredibly difficult to break. In John Phillips’ case, it destroyed his career and all but killed him.

Once his career as a drug dealer was forcibly ended and he had medical help, however, it seems a vMEME harmonic of PURPLE striving for safety and ORANGE manipulation enabled John to escape a serious prison sentence. He and daughter Mackenzie, also dealing with serious addiction problems and sacked from her role in the sitcom One Day at a Time, went into rehab together and then turned themselves into anti-drugs counsellors. The pair worked the TV talk shows where the Sanguine dimension of John’s temperament made him seem affable, charming and oh-so nice; his ORANGE vMEME manipulated this in his apparent repentance for the stupidity which had gotten him into drug hell. How could they lock away such a nice man who had suffered so much? It worked. In total John spent less than a month behind bars.

More unreleased albums…and incest?
In 1981 John took up the Mamas & Papas’ name again with Doherty, Mackenzie and Spanky. (They were sometimes billed as ‘The New Mamas & The Papas’.) With a crack backing band, initially led by ex-David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, the new group scored TV appearances and interest from record labels. Briefly it seemed Lou Adler might even work with them again.

Somehow that record deal never happened. In spite of the high quality tracks the group laid down at John’s expense – the best of which now comprise ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ - which would have given the record company album to put out…. In spite of John and Scott Mackenzie’s ‘Kokomo’ which The Beach Boys recorded and took to number one - the original (with both Scott and Denny singing) is on ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ - thus demonstrating John could still write a hit song…. In spite of excellent live reviews….The failure of The (new) Mamas & The Papas to score that record deal is inexplicable - unless, as some have speculated, John simply rubbed up too many people the wrong way. Certainly John’s psychoticist nature was working against him again as he spent a large part of the 1980s battling alcoholism - necessitating a liver transplant in 1992. His arrogance is reflected in his comment, upon being caught by a journalist drinking in a bar several months after the transplant: “I was trying to break in the new liver.”

On the back of finally getting ‘PAY, PACK & FOLLOW’ out in 2001 and the interest that generated, John was able to complete a third solo album ‘PHILLIPS 66’ just days before he died. It is perhaps best described as interesting and enjoyable - but hardly essential. Over the past few years his estate and the Varese Sarabande label have put out much of the unreleased material from the 1970s. While, a lot of it is in demo form or is clearly incomplete, there’s more than enough to justify the ‘genius’ tag…if only his Psychoticism hadn’t made sex and drugs more important to him in the moment!

It seems the final coda to the tragedy of the John Phillips’ story is Mackenzie’s claim in her 2009 autobiography ‘HIGH ON ARRIVAL’ that he raped her on the eve of her first wedding in 1979 and that they had a 10-year consensual sexual relationship which ended only when she became pregnant and wasn’t sure whether the father might be her father. (He paid for the abortion.)

These revelations have divided the Phillips’ clan bitterly. Michelle and Genevieve Waite, to whom John was married during the early years of the supposed incestuous affair, have strongly refuted Mackenzie’s claims - primarily on the bases that, for all his faults, he simply wasn’t that kind of man and that Mackenzie is a drug addict so why should anyone believe her? (Mackenzie has continued to have recurrent drug-problems - and was sentenced to drug rehabilitation in 2008 for possession of cocaine.) Michelle and John’s daughter Chynna has contradicted her mother, saying that Mackenzie had told her in 1997 of the relationship.

Unfortunately Michelle and Genevieve don’t know their Psychology very well. If that RED/psychoticist lock was in place, it’s perfectly possible John did rape Mackenzie - by Mackenzie’s own account, they were both whacked out on drugs at the time so the ‘normal’ restraints on unacceptable behaviour (the inhibitors in the dorsal area of the frontal cortex) might not have been functioning as they should have been.

Mackenzie and John in the 1980s

Mackenzie initially described the incestuous relationship that developed following her father raping her as ‘consensual’. Certainly in some of the photos of John and Mackenzie taken during the 1980s they do look incredibly close – though that doesn’t necessarily mean it was sexual. There was some kind of fall-out between Doherty and Phillips in the mid-1980s that led to Scott McKenzie taking his place in The Mamas & The Papas. Denny’s daughter Jessica Woods backed Mackenzie’s claims in 2009, saying she knew about the affair from her father. Maybe that was the reason for the fall-out which has never been otherwise explained? (Doherty did return to The Mamas & The Papas to sing alongside Scott when John was ill with liver failure – though by then McKenzie and Spanky had left the group, to be replaced by 2 new Mamas.)

John and Mackenzie in the 1990s

Working against Mackenzie’s claims are photos of her and John taken in the late 1990s when they look as close as ever - though Mackenzie was supposedly bitter about what her father had done to her. Also interesting is the fact that Mackenzie was heavily featured in the tribute show for her father in 2001. The house band for the evening was led by Shane Fontayne, The Mamas & The Papas’ back-up guitarist for much of the 1980s and Mackenzie’s on-again/off-again paramour for much of the 1980s and 1990s, with them entering into a short-lived marriage in 1996. If Doherty knew, it stands to reason Fontayne would have known…but with a much more personal interest in the affair - his girlfriend cheating on him with her father?!?!? Yet Fontayne made the John Phillips tribute evening work. Either the incest didn’t happen, Fontayne really didn’t know or else he’s a very forgiving man.

We’ll almost certainly never know for sure whether John and Mackenzie had an incestuous affair. Thanks to cognitive primacy, however, I find it hard not to listen to Mackenzie’s 2 sterling contributions to ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ - one about the heartbreak of disappointed love (“And I always thought that you’d take care of me”) and one about the faults of her lover while on the road (“Before the show you gotta have your glass of vodka/Something up your nose”) - and not read the relationship with John into them.

The depth of the hurt Mackenzie’s claims have inflicted upon the Phillips clan is perhaps best illustrated by Bijou Phillips, daughter of John and Genevieve: “When I was 13, Mackenzie told me that she had a consensual sexual relationship with our father. This news was confusing and scary, as I lived alone with my father since I was 3. I didn’t know what to believe, and it didn’t help that shortly thereafter Mackenzie told me it didn’t happen. Mackenzie’s history with our father is hers, but also clouded with 30 years of drug abuse.

The life I had with my father was very different. He was Mr Mom, encouraging and loving. The man that raised me would never be capable of doing such things, and if he was, it is heartbreaking to me to think that my family would leave me alone with him. [statement to The Oprah Winfrey Show, 25/0909]

When…my sister told me about this, it ruined my life and my relationship with my father. Up till that point, I was a normal kid. I got good grades, loved my horse, was pretty innocent. I moved out to NYC at 13. Started doing drugs, did not talk to my Dad anymore… I was deeply fucked up. I’m 29 now, I’ve talked to everyone who was around during that time, I’ve asked the hard questions. I do not believe my sister. Our father is many things; this is not one of them. My dad and I made up when I was 20, a year before he died. I’m sad I lost those years with him, and I lost those years at home.” [Bijou’s Twitter page, 29/09/09]

The Legacy of John Phillips and The Mamas & The Papas
John Phillips is often spoken of as being one of the greatest American pop songwriter/producer/arrangers of the 1960s, perhaps second only to The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson (who himself spent 30 years trapped in his sandbox more than partly due to drug abuse). It’s also been said that Phillips’ talent was squandered, sacrificed to drug abuse and a debauched lifestyle.

Now we know it’s not entirely true his talent was squandered. Thanks to ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ – which, unlike the other posthumous fragments released by Varese Sarabande, is entirely complete – we have a shining memento of Phillips’ genius and The Mamas & The Papas grown up from the optimistic hippies of 1967. The ‘darkness’ which so pervaded Phillips’ 70s solo work is still present in some of the songs of ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ but it’s more contained within the massed voices of the singers. It’s also balanced by songs of optimism, romance and even humour. As interesting as Phillips’ solo work is, it’s probably a no-brainer that the best context for him was The Mamas & The Papas.

Let’s hope ‘MANY MAMAS & PAPAS’ becomes John’s final epitaph, rather than Mackenzie’s grisly tales (whether true or not).

Early in this Blog, I justified its posting by saying: The Mamas & The Papas mattered to me…but their story has something to teach us all.

That something is that, just like we need to get better at caring for people in all contexts and walks in life, we need to get better at looking after our talented and successful artists and entertainers. By that, I don’t mean paying them more than the already-ludicrous amounts of money they get. What I mean is that we need to get better at teaching them how to handle the ’beast’ of celebrity and the resources to indulge yourself in whatever you fancy.

The history of sports and the entertainment industry since World War II is littered with stars who overindulged and fell - particularly young men high in Psychoticism. From George Best to John Terry in soccer…from James Fox to Heath Ledger in the movies…from the Stones’ Brian Jones to Pete Doherty in music….

Would John Phillips have coped better if it his nature had been explained to him, what would happen to him if he didn’t control it and what he needed to do to control it…? Possibly not. But at least we, who benefitted so much from his music, would have had a go at helping him to help himself.