Scott Shea

Original Air Date: August 6, 2023

Scott Shea’s first book “All The Leaves Are Brown” is the story of how the Mamas & Papas came together & broke apart.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Sunsteen Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three times Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I wanted to introduce
you to Scott G. Shay.He is the author of All the Leaves
Are Brown, How the Mamas andPapas Came together and broke apart? And

(00:22):
I remember growing up this was oneof my favorite groups of all time.
I mean, I was just sotaken by this group. So, Scott,
why the Mamas and Papas? Well, good morning, Shelley or a
good afternoon. I'm sorry, well, actually it's the morning seven. Ah.
Well that's right, so good morning, Shelley. Yeah, you know,

(00:46):
it's good question. I get askedthat a lot. And you know,
a few years ago, I wasreading some books on folk rock musicians
or folk musicians, and I wantedto get into writing because I had written,
or had written and produced and directeda number of documentaries for serious XM
audio documentaries, and I wanted totransition to writing. And I was kind

(01:06):
of in a mood. I hadbeen reading about Gene Clark of the Birds
and Bob Dylan and had finished upa great book on Paul Simon by Peter
Rames Carlin, and I was like, well, I'd like to read about
the Mamas and the Papas or JohnPhillips, and really couldn't find anything written
in this century. So I waslike, well, if I can't find
one to read, I'll write it. And that was how I got into
it. And you know, it'ssuch an incredible story. I've been familiar

(01:30):
with their story for years. Iremember watching The Behind the Music that came
out in the late nineties on VHone and just really being kind of captivated
by the story of them all comingtogether through various folk bands and traveling to
the US Virgin Islands together, andI thought, the story is this is
a story that needs to be told. They have a very thin bookshelf,

(01:51):
you know, John and Michelle hadput out competing autobiographies in the mid nineteen
eighties, and then there's only beenlike just like a couple of books that
have come after that. There wasan oral history and a short biography that
like a little less than two hundredpages, and I was like, this
is a story that needs to youknow, the layers need to be peeled

(02:12):
back some more and analyzed and studied, and so that's how I came by
it. Did you were you ableto talk to Michelle Phillips or anyone close
to the group. I wasn't ableto talk to Michelle, you know.
It wasn't for a lack of trying. I was. I wasn't signed to
a publisher when I started writing,and I didn't have a literary agent,
and I was really just kind ofdoing it on my own. But I

(02:34):
was able to talk to a numberof former musicians who had played with John
and Denny, including a Dick Wisemanfrom the Journeyman that was John's pre Mamas
and Papa's folk group, and PatLacroix from the Halifax Three, who played
with Denny in the early sixties,and also Joe Gibson, who had replaced
Michelle temporarily in the summer of nineteensixty six after John kicked her out.

(02:57):
When it came to life she'd beenhaving an affair with expert Jean Clark.
And there's a few others too.I spoke with the Barry Maguire and Steve
Barry and a few people who werein their circle back in those days.
You know, one of the thingsI found interesting. I mean, he
could make so many correlations to FleetwoodMac, you know, because of the
love relationships, inspired songs and thedynamic of the group, which is what

(03:22):
happened in large part with the Mamasand Papas. But it was kind of
interesting to me that John Phillips wasa philanderer in his marriages before Michelle,
and that then he had to dealwith her right on him. It was
like basically karma. And then youhad Mama Cass who was desperately in love

(03:44):
with Denny Doherty and Danny who wasdesperately in love with Michelle, and you
know, and how the group stayedtogether and John and Denny were even rooming
together, they were roommates. AfterJohn found out that Michelle had cheated on
him with Jenny, and that didn'tbreak up the group, That didn't break

(04:09):
him up, you know, Andhe didn't kick out Michelle until she was
sleeping with Jane Clark of the Birds. I mean, it was just it's
just so weird. You can't youcan't make the stuff up. Only in
rock and roll can something like thathappened? You know, It's just like
anywhere else that would be a recipefor disaster. But even with the even

(04:30):
with them and had a short shelflife. And yeah, what you said
about John really rings true. Itreally was karma. He was married to
to Susie Phillips before before Michelle,and that's the mother of Jeffrey and Mackenzie
the actress. And um, yeah, and John was true to Michelle,
you know for most of their marriage. It really wasn't until later on when

(04:51):
he just kind of saw the writingwas on the wall that he started having
an affair. But yeah, anduh, it was just a complete u
functional love triangle and the way,the way, the fact that it lasted
as long as it too, becausethis is really the and I wouldn't call
her thing with Denny an affair.It was really kind of like a fling.

(05:12):
It was just a one time thingthat we all know of. But
that happened just like weeks after itcame to light, weeks after they had
signed with Lou Adler and Dunhill Records, and you know, it really threatened
to cause the group to implode beforethey even started. But like you said,
John and Denny found some kind ofplace of healing, moved in together,

(05:34):
and there was tension between John andMichelle but they were able to get
through it and get their first albumout and their singles, and I guess
success has a way of kind ofputting a band aid on it. It's
really interesting also that had it notbeen for Michelle, despite John's many talents,
he wouldn't be the artist he wasbecause she was his muse. She

(06:00):
may be one of the greatest musesin rock and roll history. I mean,
she gave us h you know,her actions, gave us songs like
Monday Monday and Go Where You Wantto Go? And I saw her again
and she even helped co write andinspire California Dreaming, you know. So
yeah, I think that that wasone of the reasons why, you know,
bringing her back was after they hadkicked her out, like you had

(06:24):
mentioned with Gene Clark, because shewas part of that experience. The mom
was in the papas. They weren'treally like you couldn't like take one out
and replace them with somebody. Theyweren't cogs. They were kind of a
shared experience, and they, youknow, they tried with Michelle. They
brought in Jill Gibson, who wasLou Adler's girlfriend at the time. She

(06:44):
had dated Jan Barry for a numberof years of Jan and Dean, and
she was a musician and she wasa songwriter, and she was a singer,
and she was an ex model,very pretty, a blonde. So
they thought, hey, let's justput her right in, you know,
and you know, it didn't takemore than a couple of months to kind
of figure out that that didn't work, that we needed Michelle back. They
needed Michelle back. And because shewas part of that, she had been

(07:06):
with them during the folk years,she had been with them in the Virgin
Island, she traveled with them toCalifornia, wrote songs and you know,
she just had an edge to herthat Jill didn't have. And you know
it was they had to bring herback, and you know it when they
when they did, when she didcome back, it did bring kind of

(07:28):
a healing, a temporary healing intheir marriage, a bit of a marriage
renaissance, but that didn't last.I am speaking with Scott G. Sha
He is the author of All theLeaves Abround How the Mamas and Papas came
together and broke apart, And wetalked about Michelle as a muse but also
one of the greatest songs from theMamas and Papas was inspired by something John's

(07:51):
mom had told him, right,you know John's mom, you know,
her marriage was like John, theirmarriage was troubled. You know, John's
father, Claude, was you know, an alcoholic, and he was a
functional alcoholic for many years because hewas a career marine. But then his
health caused him to have to retireand he became a dysfunctional alcoholic and really

(08:15):
just put a heavier burden on analready strained marriage. And um, he
shows. You know, John's momstarted having affairs, and you know she
told John to you know, togo where you want to go, don't
be h do what you want todo, don't be pinned down. And
there was so just words of advicethat really stuck with him. And then

(08:37):
you know, he wrote that songwhen he was with the Journeyman, like
he did same with Monday Monday inCalifornia Dreaming, when Michelle had left to
go back home during a very tumultuoustime in their marriage, very early on,
where she started having an affair withRuss Titelman, who was a songwriter
and musician himself on the West Coast, and so he combined you know,

(08:58):
those acts, you know, theway he was feeling with his mother's advice,
and you know, gave us aclassic song. The Fifth Dimension had
a hit with it. I heardit on a commercial the other day.
You know, that song still resonatesand it's a it's a great song,
just an incredible arrangement. It wasactually their first single, but they pulled
it because Lou Adler and John agreedthat California Dreaming was a stronger, stronger

(09:20):
candidate for being a number one hit. It didn't hit number one, but
it came close. And uh,you know, Go Where You Want To
Go is still a favorite and hasreached legendary status. And Mama cass Elliott,
had it not been for the suddendeath of her father, she could
have been a Broadway star. Shecould have been well she was up against

(09:46):
Barbara streisand and yeah, I meanshe was that talented and that assertive,
and you know she was so tellus her story and how she came by
the name cass Elli because she wasn'tborn with it right, Well, she
came by that name because she gotinto like summer stock, which you know,
for anybody who might not know,that's kind of the off season Broadway.

(10:09):
It was where they go to doit's just kind of stay in tune
and stuff. And there was onein in uh near her, in Baltimore
or in that area, and shewould go and do that during the summers,
and that's that was her exposure.She loved Broadway even in the in
the fifties. She with the rockand roll, she liked Elvis and all
that, but she loved Broadway tunes. That would be her first thing that

(10:30):
she would go to. And yeah, she went up to New York,
you know, not long after shewell she got her geed because she dropped
out of high school and that wasa condition that her parents said on her.
And she moved in with some familyup there, and she you know,
she worked at a couple of clubs, and she did get very far
along in the auditions for I CanGet It for You Wholesale, which was
given to Barbara Streis, and thatwas her breakout role. And not bad

(10:52):
to lose to Barbara Streisan, right, I mean, if if you're gonna
and you know cast despite you know, I know, you know her unc
inventional look. She was, youknow, overweight and uh, you know,
not conventionally pretty. Um but uh, you know, got really far
along in that in that process,and she did eventually end up with a
touring group of uh of the MusicMan with Forrest Tucker and uh but yeah,

(11:16):
like you said, her father diedand she had to go home and
felt a sense of duty to gohome and take care of her mother and
her younger sister, and she didthat and then it was down there fate
intervened where she met Tim Rose andthey formed a a folk group with another
guy named John Brown, called theTriumvirate, a very very confusing name.

(11:37):
You know, it's it's I knowwhat it means. But yeah, when
you see that, it's not nowintroducing the Triumvirate. You know, it's
not something that rolls off the tongue. And they eventually changed it to the
Big Three, and uh, youknow, it became you know, they
probably added the three of them,the Journeyman, the Halifax Three, and
the Big Three probably had the mosttele television performances. They even did Carson
one time. So um, yeah, it's amazing how fate intervenes. Why

(12:01):
do I have no recollection of MamaCass being pregnant and having a baby.
Not too many people do you knowshe You know, it was during a
period of time where they were kindof stepping a little bit away because John
was busy with the Monterey Pop Festivaland um, you know, yeah,

(12:22):
Cass was pregnant. Um what wasit kept secret? Was it kept?
I mean it was different times.We didn't have social media, you know,
it was just different times something likethat could be kept. Yeah,
it was. And um, youknow, and as terrible as it maybe
to say that, her weight probablyhelped to shroud that, yeah, yeah,

(12:43):
at least early on. And itwas she was, you know,
a single woman, and uh,you know, she was very proud to
be a single woman and have ababy, which was quite uncommon back then.
But you know, the public didn'tsee it that way. And they
did they they they certainly didn't advertiseit, you know, and I don't
even think people really knew probably untileven years later, you know, publicly.

(13:05):
I'm sure in the inner circle knewand everything, but it wasn't like
really broadcast. Okay, we onlyhave about two minutes left. So what
have we not touched on that youwant our audience to know about your book?
All the leaves are brown? Howthe momas and papas came together and
broke apart. Well, it didjust drop on audiobooks. So if you
are interested in listening to reading abook that way, getting through a book

(13:26):
that way, that's that is agreat option for you. It's also been
an option for a movie or alimited edition series or Lisa Saltman, producer,
is working on trying to get thatmade. I think for my taste,
I think it's a better series,kind of like Daisy Jones and The
six I think you could probably geta lot out of this. And there's
okay, cast it, cast itfor us. Yeah right, you know

(13:48):
what. I couldn't even begin tostart catting that. I will Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift definitely, she had turneddown, I believe, doing Joni
Mitchell, but she could easily doMichelle Phillips hid. Yeah, that would
be a good one, even thoughshe's probably a better singer than Michelle was
back. Oh yeah, Michelle hadto have us voice lessons. I mean

(14:09):
she was basically hired because yeah,looks I'd like for it to go on
and go American graffiti style and getsuperstars on the verge of becoming superstars,
you know. Okay, but yeah, so uh yeah, and um so
you know, if that works out, that would be that would be fantastic.
I think it's a story that's justkind of perfectly made for television,

(14:30):
you know. I like series better. I think you can tell more,
you get more out of it thana biopic. Biopics you kind of have
to leave a lot of stuff onthe cutting room floor, but you know
you can. If you're interested inshopping for the book, you can go
to my website, Scott Shay,author dot com. Sha is spelled shea.
We'll give you all the various linksto where you can buy it at
Barnes and Noble, I mean,Amazon Books, a million wherever you go.

(14:52):
And uh also all the links toall my socials. Okay, I
thank you so much, Scott Shay. The book is All the Leaves are
Brown. Thanks Shelley, thank you. You've been listening to Sunsteen Sessions Are
I Heard Radio? A production ofNew York's classic rock Q one oh four point three