Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Setts Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Owen Elliott Kogle, who has a
Speaker 1: new book, My Mama Cass Owen. Why the book? Why now?
Speaker 2: Well? I wanted to tell my mom's story because she
Speaker 2: didn't live long enough to tell it herself. Why now
Speaker 2: I finished it. I've been working on her off and
Speaker 2: on for about fifteen years. It wasn't really intended to
Speaker 2: come out at any special time or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's just happened to me when it's finished, and it
Speaker 2: is coinciding with, unfortunately, the fiftieth anniversary in air quotes
Speaker 2: of my mother's passing. So I guess in life there
Speaker 2: aren't any accidents, right.
Speaker 1: So you wrote the book without a publishing deal, and
Speaker 1: when you finished it you got a deal.
Speaker 2: No, I actually did get a publishing deal, and I
Speaker 2: was hooked up with it with a wonderful agent who
Speaker 2: helped me figure out how to put it in some
Speaker 2: kind of a proposal format. And then we then got
Speaker 2: the deal with Hashet, And at that point I hired
Speaker 2: a collaborative editor named Hope Edelman, who wrote a fabulous
Speaker 2: book called Motherless Daughters, enjoying its thirtieth year in publication
Speaker 2: this year, and Hope and I worked together for just
Speaker 2: about half the book, and then I did the second
Speaker 2: half without her, and she and I worked together in
Speaker 2: the fashion that I would write a bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: and it was like a live Google doc, and she
Speaker 2: would correct it like a teacher. It was like going
Speaker 2: back to school. It was great.
Speaker 1: Okay. One of the points you make in the book
Speaker 1: that the rumor that your mother died because she choked
Speaker 1: on a ham sandwich is untrue. What is the true
Speaker 1: story and how did you uncover the truth story?
Speaker 2: Well, the truth is that she had a heart attack.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely what the autopsy report states. I found
Speaker 2: out the truth sort of on the by and by
Speaker 2: because I had been friendly with and kept in touch
Speaker 2: with a few of my mom's friends, and one of
Speaker 2: them was a woman named Sue Cameron, who is a journalist.
Speaker 2: And I was at lunch with Sue in like two thousand,
Speaker 2: I guess, and I remember saying to her, somewhat offhandedly, Gosh,
Speaker 2: you know, I really wish I knew who wrote that
Speaker 2: rumor about my mom. And she stopped eating and put
Speaker 2: her fork and knife down and looked at me and
Speaker 2: she went, I did it? I said what? And she
Speaker 2: told me that when my mom had passed, that she
Speaker 2: had spoken with my mom's manager, who didn't really know
Speaker 2: what to do or what to say, and whose main
Speaker 2: concern was that people weren't going to lump her in
Speaker 2: with so many of her contemporaries who had passed, you know,
Speaker 2: due to drug overdoses, and we didn't know what had happened,
Speaker 2: you know, And it really was about giving the family
Speaker 2: and everybody else a little bit of a moment to
Speaker 2: figure out exactly what had happened, which is that she
Speaker 2: had a heart attack due to some really bad eating
Speaker 2: habits and perhaps, you know, some damage from having a
Speaker 2: lot of fun and partying and questionable substances. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was the sixties and the seventies. You know, it
Speaker 2: would be stupid to think otherwise, So okay.
Speaker 1: Her manager was Alan Carr, who has really kind of
Speaker 1: been forgotten in the sands of time, but was a
Speaker 1: very flamboyant manager movie producer at the time subsequent to
Speaker 1: your mother's death. Did you have any contact with Alan
Speaker 1: Carr discuss any of this.
Speaker 2: I never discussed it with him, although I did meet
Speaker 2: him a couple of times in the mid eighties late eighties,
Speaker 2: when I first came back out to California, I had
Speaker 2: reached out to him and he was, you know, a
Speaker 2: flamboyant man, and I went and hung out with him
Speaker 2: at his house a little bit, and we didn't talk
Speaker 2: about that stuff. Maybe I should have discussed it with him,
Speaker 2: but I was just trying to find my feet and
Speaker 2: meet as many people as I knew, knew my mom,
Speaker 2: and I almost I didn't always have like my questions prepared,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, But I was trying.
Speaker 1: So in your research for the book, other than the
Speaker 1: ham Sandwich story, what were the most surprising things you
Speaker 1: found out?
Speaker 2: Well, I keep reverting back to the discovery realization that
Speaker 2: my mom had been really fighting a weight problem most
Speaker 2: of her life, and that it had really begun during
Speaker 2: a period of time where she had been staying with
Speaker 2: her grandparents because her new little baby sister was about
Speaker 2: to be born, and my mom had contracted some ringworm
Speaker 2: in some way and that's really really contagious. So she
Speaker 2: was sent to live with her grandparents, who did the
Speaker 2: categoric thing and just fed her all the time, and
Speaker 2: she did what she thought, you know, made them happy,
Speaker 2: and so when she returned home a couple of months later,
Speaker 2: she was noticeably heavier, and her parents did what they
Speaker 2: believed to be the right thing, and it took her
Speaker 2: to the doctor, and in turn, he did what he
Speaker 2: believed to be the right thing, which was put her
Speaker 2: on amphetamine. That discuss was pretty shocking to me, although
Speaker 2: I hesitate to do a lot of blaming, because it's
Speaker 2: all they knew. They didn't have any way of knowing
Speaker 2: that that was going to have a negative effect on someone,
Speaker 2: and I think it did have a negative effect on
Speaker 2: my mom, besides not being able to pay attention in school,
Speaker 2: you know, being like all hyper whatever. It really planted
Speaker 2: the seeds of some really negative stuff. You know, first
Speaker 2: of all, if you're being taken to the doctor, something's
Speaker 2: wrong with you, right, And then to be given this
Speaker 2: message of something's wrong with you. Here, take this pill,
Speaker 2: it's going to fix you. Those are all really super
Speaker 2: dangerous thoughts to be giving an eight year old child.
Speaker 2: So in a nutshell, yeah, that was some of the
Speaker 2: stuff I think that that shocked me, slash surprised me.
Speaker 2: I think the most.
Speaker 1: Okay, I certainly knew your mother's real name was not
Speaker 1: cast but in the book, you explain where can came from?
Speaker 1: Can you tell my audience.
Speaker 2: My grandfather, Philip was the sort of guy who gave
Speaker 2: nicknames to everybody, and he had given my mother the
Speaker 2: nickname Cassandra, after the wild mad Greek goddess Cassandra, So
Speaker 2: he would call her Cassandra all the time, and so
Speaker 2: she adopted that as her stage name and then with
Speaker 2: her as far as her last name was concerned, what
Speaker 2: she told me was that she had that she'd had
Speaker 2: a friend with the last name of Elliott who had
Speaker 2: passed away in a car accident, and that she had
Speaker 2: used that name in order to pay tribute to that person.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's true or not, but that's
Speaker 2: what that's what she told me.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're born and your last name is Hendrix with
Speaker 1: an icks, not like the guitarist, and explain where that
Speaker 1: came from.
Speaker 2: Well, one of my mom's first groups that she was
Speaker 2: in was a group called the Big Three. And as
Speaker 2: the name would suggest, there were three people in the band,
Speaker 2: two general, two men, and my mom. And uh, this
Speaker 2: was you know, in the early sixties, around the time
Speaker 2: of the draft of the Vietnam War, and they were
Speaker 2: singing together and one of the members, Jim Hendrix, got
Speaker 2: the draft notice and it was at a point where
Speaker 2: single men were the number one that were being being
Speaker 2: drafted and if you were married, you were probably going
Speaker 2: to be okay. And my mom and James Hendrix aka
Speaker 2: Jim Hendrix were married and a platonic It was a
Speaker 2: platonic move, you know, was to keep him out of
Speaker 2: the draft and it you know, Jim says that they
Speaker 2: had a lot of fun with being quote unquote married,
Speaker 2: that they would you know, go places and my mom
Speaker 2: would buy him clothes, and you know that they had
Speaker 2: a great friendship, you know, and remained really really good friends.
Speaker 2: When my mom first came out to California, after the
Speaker 2: moms and papa's had been in the Caribbean Islands and
Speaker 2: really kind of begun to come together, my mom came
Speaker 2: out to California and she stayed with Jim and his
Speaker 2: then wife Vanessa. That's the first place she went, so
Speaker 2: she stayed really close to him. So, yeah, Jim Hendricks,
Speaker 2: I will tell you, growing up with the last name
Speaker 2: of Hendricks, even with the icks ending, the amount of
Speaker 2: times that people would say to me, oh, I bet
Speaker 2: Jimmy Hendricks is your dad, I would go, yeah, see
Speaker 2: the resemblance, right, I mean we look exactly alike. Mean,
Speaker 2: come on, people's stupidity knows no bounds, zero bounds.
Speaker 1: I believe that I deal with the public all day long.
Speaker 1: When did you decide to change your last name? And why.
Speaker 2: I started using the name Elliot as my middle name
Speaker 2: when I got married, because people had a very hard
Speaker 2: time understanding why my last name was different than my mom's.
Speaker 2: So really, purely for ease, I just kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: put it in my on my driver's license and started
Speaker 2: using it so it's not my legal name, which, which
Speaker 2: did you know, prove to have some challenges when I
Speaker 2: went to go get a US passport, because I will
Speaker 2: tell you that my passport does not say Owen Elliott
Speaker 2: Google on it. Thank you US Government. So it was
Speaker 2: for ease. I didn't want to explain every time. Oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, my mom she married this guy, and you
Speaker 2: know in.
Speaker 1: The derivation of your middle name, Vanessa.
Speaker 2: Jim Hendrix's wife, Vanessa, she she she named me after her.
Speaker 1: Okay, with decades of experience, is it a plus or
Speaker 1: a minus? Being the daughter of Cass Elliott.
Speaker 2: Hmm. I will say that it's a double edged sword,
Speaker 2: that's for sure. I it certainly gets you in the door.
Speaker 2: I know that it's certainly, you know, gotten me places
Speaker 2: that other people probably wouldn't be able to get to
Speaker 2: as easily. But I also know that when you are
Speaker 2: a well, in my case, a second generation performer singer,
Speaker 2: if you choose to go into that same line of
Speaker 2: work that you're that your parent went into, you feel
Speaker 2: a little bit more judged. I think I think you
Speaker 2: that you feel, or I would feel, that you have
Speaker 2: to be as good as your predecessor or even better,
Speaker 2: and then it's almost harder to prove yourself. I think
Speaker 2: so in that way, it's a double ed sort. It
Speaker 2: gets you in the door, but you have to prove
Speaker 2: it even harder. I think.
Speaker 1: So you got in the door. What was your experience
Speaker 1: in terms of proving your talent?
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't have too much time before the before
Speaker 2: MCA was bought out by Panasonomy.
Speaker 1: Not everybody knows the story. Let's roll back a lot
Speaker 1: for it. Let's roll back to the beginning. At what
Speaker 1: point did you realize your mother was cass Elliott and
Speaker 1: she was famous and had fans other than yourself.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly by the time I was four or five,
Speaker 2: and definitely by the time that I described in the
Speaker 2: book of going to the airport to pick her up
Speaker 2: and seeing her coming out of the doors and just
Speaker 2: running really fasting and and see her and she's waiting
Speaker 2: for me, and in between us someone stepped to and
Speaker 2: to ask her for her autograph, and I knew that
Speaker 2: that was my mom's job, and I knew just to
Speaker 2: hang back that, you know, this was part of her job,
Speaker 2: and this was her work, and then if I was
Speaker 2: just patient, it would be my turn. So I guess
Speaker 2: that was one of the first moments that I can remember,
Speaker 2: like really knowing that she had this extraordinary job, you know,
Speaker 2: that required her to you know sometimes, you know, I
Speaker 2: had that that would have to be her priority over
Speaker 2: over us. But we'd get there.
Speaker 1: And of course she was a legendary connector. And you
Speaker 1: write about your experience living in Laurel Canyon. To what
Speaker 1: degree do you remember that experience?
Speaker 2: Honestly, not a whole lot. I mean I remember, I mean,
Speaker 2: if if we remember, remember that I was seven years
Speaker 2: old when my mom passed and had had endured my
Speaker 2: share of you know, I hate to use this work
Speaker 2: because I feel like everybody uses it all the time.
Speaker 2: But there had been some trauma in my early life,
Speaker 2: and U when you have that, some of those levels
Speaker 2: of trauma, your memories become. You know, you don't really
Speaker 2: have very much of them, but the ones I have.
Speaker 2: I remember watching The Wizard of Oz with her. I
Speaker 2: remember watching football with her. I remember asking her why
Speaker 2: her name why my name was different than hers, Like
Speaker 2: I have sort of these, you know, little bits and pieces.
Speaker 2: As far as being in Laurel Canyon. I remember driving
Speaker 2: down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, you know, I remember doing that
Speaker 2: stuff and going into Hollywood with her, and you know,
Speaker 2: being in the back seat and hearing her sing top
Speaker 2: of the world. You know, like those are all really
Speaker 2: strong memories of mine. But it was it was a
Speaker 2: great place to grow up, you know. And and when
Speaker 2: my mom died, I moved in with her sister and
Speaker 2: her sister's husband, russe In Leacunkle, and they lived just
Speaker 2: at the top of Nichols Canyon, so they were we
Speaker 2: were very close in terms of how where we lived.
Speaker 2: And it was adyllic, you know, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: like all those memes we see about, you know, kids
Speaker 2: and Generation X. We were out until the street lights
Speaker 2: came on. True, true, you know, riding our dirt bikes
Speaker 2: and getting into trouble. That's what I remember about growing
Speaker 2: up in rural Canyon is just you know, being on
Speaker 2: my dirt bike with my friends.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're talking about trauma at a young age. Obviously
Speaker 1: your mother died, that's the most significant trauma. Were you
Speaker 1: referencing trauma before that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Unfortunately I had suffered some physical abuse from from
Speaker 2: one of the nanny's. I don't have too much of
Speaker 2: a memory of it, but had some pretty wacky dreams
Speaker 2: over my life, That's that's for sure. And it definitely
Speaker 2: I can see now how that that trauma affected me
Speaker 2: even as an adult. You know, she she made a
Speaker 2: real good practice, this particular woman of telling me how
Speaker 2: how what a bad little kid I was, and that
Speaker 2: that stuff sticks. It just does. Unfortunately, now in.
Speaker 1: The book, you reference the bruises on your legs being noticed,
Speaker 1: and that was the turning point with that nanny. Can
Speaker 1: you amplify that story a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know too much more about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, all I know is that my aunt Liah
Speaker 2: had been staying up in above my mom's garage. There
Speaker 2: was an apartment up there. I wasn't totally finished, but
Speaker 2: Leah and her new husband Russ were living in this apartment.
Speaker 2: She was pregnant with her son, and she had all
Speaker 2: the windows open because it was really warm, and she
Speaker 2: heard this nanny bringing me home from preschool just be
Speaker 2: rating me, you know, And this story came from Leah.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I don't physically remember this stuff, but
Speaker 2: when Leah told me it, it told me this story
Speaker 2: it definitely and you know, rings a little thing in
Speaker 2: the back of your brain. But this nanny was telling
Speaker 2: me what a terrible kid I was, how bad I was,
Speaker 2: I got my dress dirty, and she was just being
Speaker 2: really nasty and really mean. And so Leah said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, you can take an extra day off
Speaker 2: this weekend. So she got the nanny out of there,
Speaker 2: and Leah gave me a bath, and she's the one
Speaker 2: that discovered the bruises. And then I just, you know,
Speaker 2: did what what kids do with in a scenario like that?
Speaker 2: You know, it's nothing I fell, Yeah, I don't think so,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So, okay, you got that story from your aunt Leah
Speaker 1: and you get all these stories. Did the stories tend
Speaker 1: to line up or were their contradictions?
Speaker 2: Well, that particular story, I when I said I had
Speaker 2: a couple of like pretty intense dreams, I should go
Speaker 2: to therapy for some of the dreams, I had hit
Speaker 2: some of the some of the things that I think
Speaker 2: that I worked out in the in those dreams. So
Speaker 2: so in that way, I feel like they did ring
Speaker 2: true and a lot of times, especially with a painful memory,
Speaker 2: when you hear it again, like I make this comment
Speaker 2: about like it like the memory like ringing true in
Speaker 2: the back of your brain. That's that's how I know
Speaker 2: a memory is true if I like have some identification
Speaker 2: with it, you know. And and with that particular memory
Speaker 2: I did, unfortunately, because she also did things like I
Speaker 2: used to suck my thumb a lot, and she wasn't
Speaker 2: having it. So she was putting like tabasco sauce on
Speaker 2: my thoe. But I'm not a dummy, I know, I
Speaker 2: just you know, wash it off in the in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: I remember that, you know.
Speaker 3: So if that was happening, it makes sense that Stuffy
Speaker 3: the other stuff was happening and talking to the other
Speaker 3: members of the mamas and Papa's relatives and friends.
Speaker 1: Was the narrative pretty consistent or do you find one
Speaker 1: person saying one thing and another person saying another thing.
Speaker 2: The narrative was always consistent, always, and not one person
Speaker 2: ever had anything negative to say. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know how easy it would be to say something negative
Speaker 2: to somebody's kid. But in spite of that, everybody's memory
Speaker 2: of hers so Christine. And perhaps it's because she was
Speaker 2: thirty two when she passed away. That's still really really young,
Speaker 2: you know. So she kind of died in this on
Speaker 2: this pedestal if you will, you know, it's you're frozen
Speaker 2: in time at a certain age. You know.
Speaker 1: So what with all being her daughter and talking to
Speaker 1: so many people writing the book, what do you think
Speaker 1: your mother's magic was?
Speaker 2: My mother was the great connector. She was sort of
Speaker 2: one of those people that people wanted to be around,
Speaker 2: had a magnetism about her, and she was funny and
Speaker 2: she was smart, and people wanted to be around her.
Speaker 2: So I think that was part of her secret sauce,
Speaker 2: is that, you know, people just wanted to hang out
Speaker 2: with her, you know, and she was relatable, she was approachable,
Speaker 2: you know, and she was honest. She was always honest
Speaker 2: and down to earth and like I said, relatable and approachable.
Speaker 1: Now, something you touched earlier on her weight and is
Speaker 1: also in the book. Conventional wisdom is that she had
Speaker 1: this unrequited love affair with Denny Denny Doherty, one of
Speaker 1: the papas and the mamas and the papas. To your knowledge,
Speaker 1: did she ever have a satisfying love relationship.
Speaker 2: No, no, she didn't. And that's one of the greatest
Speaker 2: tragedies of my mother's life, is that she never got
Speaker 2: to appreciate or be in a relation relationship with another
Speaker 2: human being. That's that's an equal, loving relationship. I just
Speaker 2: I do believe that most of the gentleman callers were
Speaker 2: there for you know, the fame and the money and
Speaker 2: the you know whatever. They weren't there for the for
Speaker 2: the right reasons. And she was. She was lonely, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I wrote in the book, she's here, she is sitting,
Speaker 2: you know, on the on the stage apron at Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 2: with all these people yelling her name, you know, but
Speaker 2: she's checking into her hotel room by herself. Everybody else
Speaker 2: had somebody, but she didn't, you know, And and therein
Speaker 2: lies the reason that she decided to get pregnant and
Speaker 2: have a kid, because I wasn't going to go anywhere,
Speaker 2: you know, she she'd always she would always have me,
Speaker 2: you know, or a baby, whoever that person would have been.
Speaker 1: But so when did you metabolize the fact that your
Speaker 1: mother was not coming back?
Speaker 2: Probably like three or four years after she died. You know,
Speaker 2: I was really really used to her traveling for her
Speaker 2: work because that's what she did, so I kind of
Speaker 2: would console myself, you know those when you're falling asleep
Speaker 2: at night and you have all those thoughts that go
Speaker 2: through your through your brain. One of them for me
Speaker 2: was she'll be home. She'll be home soon, because she
Speaker 2: always is. I guess probably a few years. It sure
Speaker 2: wasn't right away. It's definitely a few years later.
Speaker 1: Okay. You mentioned the fact that your mother had you
Speaker 1: to have a companion, so there wasn't a biological father
Speaker 1: on the scene. Jim Hendrix wasn't on the scene. Then
Speaker 1: he dies. How much anger do you have about all that?
Speaker 2: Then? Who dies my mom? Well?
Speaker 1: The fact that you know, in retrospect, yes, about your mom,
Speaker 1: and then you were ultimately left, you know, alone, I mean,
Speaker 1: you have your aunt and her husband, but you look
Speaker 1: back and you say, well, this was a performer. She
Speaker 1: had me as a companion and that was good for her,
Speaker 1: and now she's gone.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess I never looked at it like that particularly,
Speaker 2: but I do remember feeling very much alone when she
Speaker 2: died because she was my solo only parent. But I mean,
Speaker 2: she was my friend, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: it was just her and I a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: And I do remember feeling very very much like I
Speaker 2: was going to have to just have a whole new life.
Speaker 2: I remember there being a moment at the funeral when
Speaker 2: we were leaving the funeral, remember, and I don't remember
Speaker 2: who it was that asked me with somebody that said, well,
Speaker 2: what car do you want to ride in? You know,
Speaker 2: do you want to ride with your grandmother or do
Speaker 2: you want to ride with your aunt and uncle? And
Speaker 2: I knew that my aunt and uncle were going to
Speaker 2: be my new family. And I remember thinking to myself,
Speaker 2: and let's remember this seven year old kid having this thought, well,
Speaker 2: this is going to be your new family, so you
Speaker 2: better start getting used to it. I mean, what a
Speaker 2: scary thought to realize at that age. And that's really
Speaker 2: truly how I felt.
Speaker 1: You know. So you ultimately go to live with Leah
Speaker 1: and Russ, who end up having their own child. Did
Speaker 1: they feel like your mother and father are in the
Speaker 1: back of them in your mind? Did you always know
Speaker 1: they were rising to the occasion.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what, It's interesting because I had to
Speaker 2: kind of at an early age make a distinction between
Speaker 2: these four individuals. Okay, so stinks about it like that.
Speaker 2: So the mother, the biological mother, and father were my
Speaker 2: mom and the guy who fathered me. So that takes
Speaker 2: what five, ten, fifteen minutes, that's all that takes. And
Speaker 2: then I have a mom and a dad. Leah and
Speaker 2: Russ are my mom and my dad because they did
Speaker 2: the work, they did the job of parenting me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So I had to really make those those distinctions, you know, mother,
Speaker 2: biological mother, and father and a mom and a dad,
Speaker 2: four completely separate people in my ridiculously complicated family tree.
Speaker 1: But ultimately Russ and Leah get divorced.
Speaker 2: I know, Russ and Leah then get divorced seven years later.
Speaker 2: So I have this weird identification with the number seven.
Speaker 2: So the first seven years I'm with my mom, and
Speaker 2: then the second seven years I'm with Leah and Russ,
Speaker 2: and then after that I'm shipped off to boarding school.
Speaker 2: So you know, all that's are off. But yeah, they
Speaker 2: Leah and Russ, we had a we had a good
Speaker 2: you know, a few years. We were all. It was wonderful.
Speaker 2: We were all it was. We were a family. Russ,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure you know, is like a rock
Speaker 2: and roll star. I just realized that, like twenty minutes ago.
Speaker 2: He's like one of the best drummers in the world,
Speaker 2: you know. And he was on the road all the
Speaker 2: time in the summers. Like we would finish our our
Speaker 2: you know, school year, and he's gone. He was out
Speaker 2: with Crosby Stills and Nash, He's out with Jackson Brown,
Speaker 2: he's out with James Dale, or he's just gone.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And that's when Leah had found that the farm in
Speaker 2: the Berkshires really close to Tanglewood, So when all those
Speaker 2: tours were coming through Tanglewood, we'd get to go see
Speaker 2: them at Tanglewood like in the summertime. And so I
Speaker 2: have a lot of really great memories of that. So
Speaker 2: it was kind of neat to go from one musical
Speaker 2: household to another, right and get to kind of have
Speaker 2: this pretty rounded experience, you know, it was it was
Speaker 2: really cool.
Speaker 1: So you're living in La.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we go to Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Right, So as a young person, that's traumatic.
Speaker 2: What the move to Massachusetts. Yes, you know, it was
Speaker 2: an adventure. I didn't see it as being traumatic at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was really like, this is a new
Speaker 2: adventure for us. And growing up in Los Angeles certainly
Speaker 2: was way different than growing up in Massachusetts, and it
Speaker 2: would give us an opportunity to sort of have a
Speaker 2: semi normal, you know life as opposed to being raised
Speaker 2: in this really you know, privilege overprivileged, you know, LA
Speaker 2: private school scene, which is still just as bad, if
Speaker 2: not worse. I'm grateful that we that we got out
Speaker 2: of got out of Dodge for for four years, you know,
Speaker 2: and I love I love our town in Massachusetts. It's
Speaker 2: still it's still my home. Leah lives there, it's still
Speaker 2: my home. I still have my bedroom there. Well, I
Speaker 2: mean I don't have my stuff there, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's still a big part of who I am. So
Speaker 2: I'm super grateful that that we left. I didn't see
Speaker 2: it as being traumatic at all. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 2: did leave some of my friends in a in a
Speaker 2: pre internet, you know, really high long distance phone call era.
Speaker 2: It was pretty bad, but you know, I made new friends.
Speaker 1: How do they end up sending you to what you
Speaker 1: call a boarding school, but when you read the book,
Speaker 1: it sounds more like a lot institution.
Speaker 2: Well, it actually wasn't locked, but they did threaten you.
Speaker 2: You know that particular school was. It turns out it
Speaker 2: was actually in the same campus at the school that
Speaker 2: Leah had gone to in the sixties where she'd been
Speaker 2: friends with Arlo Guthrie and Chevy Chase had gone there
Speaker 2: and all these It was this very progressive boarding school
Speaker 2: at that point, and we drove by it and she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: what's this? You know, And I had had a hard time,
Speaker 2: you know, losing my mom was not an easy thing
Speaker 2: for me, and I had a really hard time in school.
Speaker 2: Really didn't like school, really couldn't concentrate in school. I
Speaker 2: was floating out the window. I just wasn't I wasn't
Speaker 2: able to pay attention at all. And I barely got
Speaker 2: through school. And I really in our first year in
Speaker 2: Northampton in Massachusetts, I didn't really attend a lot of
Speaker 2: classes and at the end of the year. Lee was like, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: some got to change here, and she had been told
Speaker 2: about this school. Turned out it was on the same
Speaker 2: campus this her old school. Haha, isn't that funny? And
Speaker 2: we went up there and she enrolled me. It was
Speaker 2: It was like an institution in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: although like I said, the doors weren't locked. The consequences
Speaker 2: were so severe if you if you left that they
Speaker 2: might as well have been locked. But you get you
Speaker 2: get into a little bit of a little bit of
Speaker 2: what are they called not munch housing bi proxy when
Speaker 2: you just feel like you're it was cultish. It was
Speaker 2: cultish for sure. It was a very weird uh school.
Speaker 2: And I was there for almost three years. And you
Speaker 2: didn't get to go home. You didn't go home for Christmas,
Speaker 2: you didn't go home for any of those things. So
Speaker 2: you were really like locked down, like he said, in
Speaker 2: that way. And that school stayed opened for quite quite
Speaker 2: a long time. It would fall under the category of
Speaker 2: the trouble teen industry. Now when that one that you know,
Speaker 2: there's schools in Utah, there's schools all over the place
Speaker 2: that are markedly worse than than than the school that
Speaker 2: I went to. There's that there's a show on Netflix
Speaker 2: right now, the program that's pretty close. It's pretty scary
Speaker 2: that that series has been really bothering a lot of people.
Speaker 2: I know, we're all still in touch that went to
Speaker 2: that school, and we're all like, oh my god, that's
Speaker 2: exactly what it was like. But it was it was
Speaker 2: nice not being in a house where I was Leah
Speaker 2: and I had a really hard time when I was
Speaker 2: a teenager. I was probably not the easiest teenager to raise,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot of yelling and a lot
Speaker 2: of screaming and a lot of just bad stuff. And
Speaker 2: I was I was actually really happy to not have
Speaker 2: that anymore, and it and it I got to really
Speaker 2: grow up at that point, and I never really went
Speaker 2: I did go back and live with her for like
Speaker 2: six months, but I mean, really, I left home when
Speaker 2: I was fourteen, if you really want to think about it,
Speaker 2: I was fourteen in boarding school, and when I got out,
Speaker 2: I was almost eighteen.
Speaker 1: And you leave and then you ultimately drop out of
Speaker 1: high school.
Speaker 2: I dropped out of high school, yes, because the school
Speaker 2: that I had then attended for three years was completely unaccredited.
Speaker 2: So every class that I had taken, even though the
Speaker 2: grades had been bad. Every class that I had taken,
Speaker 2: none of them transferred. So I went back to my
Speaker 2: normal high school and they were like, yeah, you got
Speaker 2: to go back to another year, another year of school
Speaker 2: at least. And I was eighteen, and I went, I
Speaker 2: am not doing another year of high schools. I watched
Speaker 2: everybody that I had known getting ready to walk down
Speaker 2: and graduate. I was like, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 2: not happening. And so yeah I did. I went down.
Speaker 2: I signed myself out of high school on my eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 2: Leah wasn't pleased in.
Speaker 1: The ensuing decades not having a high school degree? Is that?
Speaker 1: Have you gotten any penalties as a result of that?
Speaker 1: Any roadblocks?
Speaker 2: No? And they actually let me write a book. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean it's funny because I did
Speaker 2: a book signing last night here in La at Diesel
Speaker 2: Books in West LA and I had my old childhood
Speaker 2: friend moon Zappa come in and interview me, and she
Speaker 2: she had just read the book and she said to me,
Speaker 2: she said, so, when did you know that you were
Speaker 2: a writer? And I went today, It's like this is
Speaker 2: so out of the you know, out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 2: I've you know, it's it's all new to me. You know,
Speaker 2: it's beautiful though, it's so fulfilling. It's just everything that
Speaker 2: you hear people say about writing memoir that it's fulfilling,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, cathartic, and it's all of that.
Speaker 2: It's just it's all of the fields. It really is.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're going to prep school in the eighties, it's
Speaker 1: insanely expensive sixty plus thousand dollars today. It was not
Speaker 1: that expensive back then, but it was far from cheap,
Speaker 1: at least the cost of going to college. Where'd the
Speaker 1: money come from?
Speaker 2: Well, I know my tuition was about a third of
Speaker 2: that sixty if that gives you any indication there there
Speaker 2: began to be smaller amounts of money that came through
Speaker 2: the estate, and Leah was able to pay some of
Speaker 2: it out of her out of her pocket. When this,
Speaker 2: and you'll appreciate this, when the CD was invented and
Speaker 2: labels were forced to have their artists, most of them
Speaker 2: resign agreements because they were new there were new product,
Speaker 2: right that, all of those new CDs that came out,
Speaker 2: they saved my mom's estate because everybody rebought every bit
Speaker 2: of anything they'd ever had because of this new sound,
Speaker 2: everything was so great and CDs just made huge, huge
Speaker 2: leaps and bounds. And because of all that, we were
Speaker 2: able to finally get the estate closed in like nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven. So, you know what, I don't know how
Speaker 2: she got the money, but she did it, and she
Speaker 2: made it and she I know, there was a couple
Speaker 2: of years that I had a scholarship, you know, one
Speaker 2: of those things.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about the renegotiation. When the music comes
Speaker 1: out on CD, most of the revenue from recording goes
Speaker 1: to the writer, and your mother was not the writer
Speaker 1: of those hits, right, So over these ensuing decades, have
Speaker 1: the royalties been small significant? What are they like?
Speaker 2: The royalties are respectable and they and they've been they've
Speaker 2: been even more respectable in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: Streaming isn't killing us yet, but it's close, you know.
Speaker 2: It's just streaming is actually the only way that people
Speaker 2: are listening to music nowadays. It's just kind of killer
Speaker 2: streaming and licensing. Licensing is the other thing that is
Speaker 2: our bread and butter commercials, you know, anything that we
Speaker 2: can that we can get. I mean, it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of a it's a bit of a dance, because back
Speaker 2: in the old days, the whole idea that you were
Speaker 2: going to allow your music to be used for commercial
Speaker 2: usage was just like you were selling out. You never
Speaker 2: did that. Now it is absolutely the bread and butter
Speaker 2: of the majority of these legacy artists is you know,
Speaker 2: oh my god, we got a we got an Adobe commercial,
Speaker 2: We've got to you know whatever. So in that way,
Speaker 2: it's it is, it's respectable, it's I mean definitely when
Speaker 2: the CDs came in, that's what started to make everything
Speaker 2: really happen again. And then you know, as as you know,
Speaker 2: formats change, and now with streaming, we had to adapt
Speaker 2: a little bit to that. But you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: sort of paying us on streaming correctly. I get really
Speaker 2: into it. I'm I'm really into the contracts. I'm really
Speaker 2: into the business side of it. I just fight it fascinating.
Speaker 2: It absolutely ruined my attitude about ever being an artist
Speaker 2: because I just went, oh my god, they're doing what
Speaker 2: did they do? Oh my god? So but yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 1: Okay, is there enough money to take care of your bills?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, so that's good. I'm really lucky. I'm really lucky.
Speaker 2: I may have suffered a lot of losses in my life.
Speaker 2: Wish I have, but I'm not going to be ashamed
Speaker 2: of the fact that things are okay for me and
Speaker 2: I can live a comfortable life.
Speaker 1: Right right, Okay, we've in the last decade a lot
Speaker 1: of people have sold those rights. You can sell your
Speaker 1: royalty interest. Have you been approached and would you sell?
Speaker 2: I was sort of approached maybe ten years ago, and
Speaker 2: it was and it was at a point in time
Speaker 2: when I was really, really really broke. So the way
Speaker 2: the person that approached me, I think was sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, knowing that, and they I think they offered
Speaker 2: me what when they offered it by the royals, I'm
Speaker 2: asking my my husband over here three times a three
Speaker 2: time multiplier, and we didn't take it, thank God. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I would ever take it. I don't
Speaker 2: think I would. I don't think it would because it's
Speaker 2: everything is so fluid that it's really really hard to
Speaker 2: make it a judgment as to, you know, well, if
Speaker 2: I sell now, is it going to be good? And
Speaker 2: then something really amazing happens in a year and you're like,
Speaker 2: damn it, I sold that. Now we have that lottery
Speaker 2: commercial or whatever. It is that. You know, you go, well,
Speaker 2: I really wish I would have had something to do
Speaker 2: with that, because then you see this, Then you see
Speaker 2: all these artists songs and music that are on commercials
Speaker 2: that you just know that these artists would have never
Speaker 2: agreed to. It's just a lot. There's a lot lot
Speaker 2: of taking advantage of those of those catalogs that I
Speaker 2: just I can't imagine that everyone feels good about. But
Speaker 2: you lose that control when you sell it.
Speaker 1: So you know, your mother made solo albums, some more
Speaker 1: successful than others. Her main success was with the Mom
Speaker 1: is in the Papas. John Phillips wrote most of the songs,
Speaker 1: and that's its own vertical and revenue. But there are
Speaker 1: four people in the act and three of them have
Speaker 1: passed away. So when it comes for a licensing approval,
Speaker 1: how does that work?
Speaker 2: Well, that always goes through the label. That always goes
Speaker 2: through Universal. Universal is the one that approves that stuff
Speaker 2: as far as the songwriters are concerned. You know, for
Speaker 2: a songwriting license, right, I think it's got to be
Speaker 2: licensed by that. For publishing, that gets handled through their
Speaker 2: estate and through their like for instance, John Phillips estate
Speaker 2: has you know they handle things through them. They have
Speaker 2: an attorney that handles things. It's it's a bit complicated,
Speaker 2: but you.
Speaker 1: Know, all these performers have children. How do you get
Speaker 1: along with your generation?
Speaker 2: I all my crazy brothers and sisters, mamas and Papa's
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters. We all get along great. It's you know,
Speaker 2: we all have this really strange background together. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm very close with with with most of them. You know,
Speaker 2: China and Biju were at my book signing last night,
Speaker 2: causing all kinds of trouble in the audience. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we're all. We're all really close, you know, Mackenzie, we're all.
Speaker 2: We're all. We're like I said, we're all part of
Speaker 2: this weird kind of family, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay Mackenzie certainly you know they're different mothers for John
Speaker 1: Phillips's children, but she came out and said some pretty
Speaker 1: horrific fixed stuff. In your research, what's your take on
Speaker 1: Papa John?
Speaker 2: Well, the only research I did on Papa John is
Speaker 2: just the stuff that I knew for myself, and my
Speaker 2: experience with John was that he was he was a
Speaker 2: sweet guy, you know. I you know, I think I
Speaker 2: met John and had conversations with him. I can count
Speaker 2: it on one hand. You know, that's it. I really
Speaker 2: didn't know him very well at all. Mackenzie's assertions or
Speaker 2: McKenzie's assertions, and it's not my business. I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about it.
Speaker 1: You talk a lot about his wife, Michelle, who was
Speaker 1: in the group and of course kicked out and then
Speaker 1: comes back. What's your relationship with Michelle?
Speaker 2: Michelle? Michelle was there last night too. There was a
Speaker 2: great moment when one of the women in the audience
Speaker 2: asked made a comment about the mamas and Papa's not
Speaker 2: knowing that Michelle was sitting right there, and she was
Speaker 2: talking about how you know how great my mom's voice was,
Speaker 2: that was better than anybody else's, and the whole mom
Speaker 2: is in paposita. She's I'm going like this, And then
Speaker 2: as I finished, I went, well, well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe you want to ask her yourself, Michelle, why don't
Speaker 2: you answer that question right now? So she's she is totally,
Speaker 2: she loves it. She's she's enjoying all of it. She's
Speaker 2: kind of like the I mean, yes, she was the youngest,
Speaker 2: so I guess it makes sense that she's the last
Speaker 2: one alive, right, But she's she's now kind of in
Speaker 2: this position where she's she's kind of looking out after
Speaker 2: all of us, you know. I mean, China's obviously her child.
Speaker 2: She's she keeps an eye out on all of the kids,
Speaker 2: and I think that's kind of a neat place for
Speaker 2: her to be at this point in her life. And
Speaker 2: she'll be turning well. I don't know if I should
Speaker 2: say it, but she has a Mileston on birthday coming
Speaker 2: up in the next couple of weeks, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: all of us will be there to help her celebrate it.
Speaker 2: But she she's she's a really good person.
Speaker 1: Michelle.
Speaker 2: Michelle is somebody who's been very, very important to me
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 1: What was your relationship with Denny before he passed? Oh?
Speaker 2: God, I love Denny so much. I Uh, I think
Speaker 2: I was probably the closest to him Denny. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: Denny had done his play in New York City and
Speaker 2: he had been off Broadway for six months. And when
Speaker 2: he went back to Canada and he got his requisite
Speaker 2: Canadian check up, the doctor went, uh, what have you
Speaker 2: been doing the last six months? He could believe that
Speaker 2: that Denny's Denny. This aneurysm they had found around his
Speaker 2: heart hadn't exploded, Like he couldn't believe the guy was
Speaker 2: like still walking around, you know. And so he had
Speaker 2: surgery and he was recovering, and then they had to
Speaker 2: go back in and he was home recovering and he
Speaker 2: didn't make it. And before he went in for the
Speaker 2: second surgery, I was speaking with him on the phone.
Speaker 2: We talked all the time. We probably talked, you know,
Speaker 2: three or four times a week, anytime anything was going
Speaker 2: on for me, if it was mamas and Papa's related.
Speaker 2: On the phone. I had trouble in my love life.
Speaker 2: My boyfriend broke up with me. I was calling him,
Speaker 2: so he was he was that person in my life.
Speaker 2: And so he was gonna have to go back in
Speaker 2: and have the second surgery. And it was the first
Speaker 2: time I'd ever heard any any bit of fear in
Speaker 2: his voice. It's the first time I could ever identify
Speaker 2: any like trepidation. And our relationship sort of shifted in
Speaker 2: that moment, and I sort of realized I was going
Speaker 2: to have to be the grown up, right And I
Speaker 2: was like, don't worry about anything. I'm I'm a young,
Speaker 2: healthy person. I'm going to beat around for a really
Speaker 2: long time. Your kids are not going to be able
Speaker 2: to get rid of me. I will take care of everything.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, you know. And I think that I hope
Speaker 2: that that helped ease his mind a little bit, you know,
Speaker 2: because he has he still had kids that were in
Speaker 2: their twenties. I mean they weren't you know, they weren't
Speaker 2: babies or anything, but they were in their twenties, you know.
Speaker 2: And actually I remember being in Canada and reading your
Speaker 2: post that you wrote about him.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 2: You know that that one hurt. That that one hurt.
Speaker 1: Now musically, after the group broke up, your mother had
Speaker 1: the most success of all four.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah she did.
Speaker 1: You know, it's tough to be in the spotlight. Ultimately
Speaker 1: Michelle had an acting career, but it's tough to be
Speaker 1: in the spotlight and then you're not Could you feel
Speaker 1: any of that from them.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily, And certainly, like I said, John, I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know him, so I can't even really speak
Speaker 2: to that at all. Denny was Denny. Denny just kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, did his own thing. He had so many
Speaker 2: different projects that he worked on over the years, a
Speaker 2: lot of projects in Canada. He was he worked on
Speaker 2: the show called Theodore Tugboat, the kids show for for
Speaker 2: the Canadian Broadcasting System up there, and and he sent
Speaker 2: me on the hat when I had my little boy,
Speaker 2: he sent me a big box of tugboat tugboat toys.
Speaker 2: I think he was disgrateful for everything that, you know,
Speaker 2: he was able to do. I don't think there was
Speaker 2: any you know, jealousy or bad you know vibes about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess when you're the lead singer in
Speaker 2: a band, it kind of makes sense that you go solo, right,
Speaker 2: isn't that kind of the story of everybody?
Speaker 1: Right? But that was sixty years ago, so these were progenitors,
Speaker 1: whereas everything happens now.
Speaker 2: Well then then then she set the pace.
Speaker 1: What can I say, Well, I mean, you were seven
Speaker 1: years old. One of the things you do in the book,
Speaker 1: which is very interesting, is you go through all the
Speaker 1: TV appearances which not everybody saw. But your mother was
Speaker 1: constantly in the print news. You reference when she lost
Speaker 1: an extreme amount of weight. She would be in the
Speaker 1: people's section of Time magazine. She was someone who continued
Speaker 1: to be in the news where the other three didn't.
Speaker 2: On well, she wanted to continue to have a career,
Speaker 2: you know, and she was also a single parent. She
Speaker 2: had a reason to be out there, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to make a living because there wasn't anybody else that
Speaker 2: was doing it, you know. And by that time she
Speaker 2: was I was a baby, and she knew she had
Speaker 2: to take care of things that needed to be cared for.
Speaker 2: You know. That's when she started doing a lot of
Speaker 2: more television appearances, you know, that would kind of keep
Speaker 2: her close to home. You know, all of the Carol Burnett,
Speaker 2: I mean, she did so much great stick on television.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I love all that stuff. I wish I could say
Speaker 2: I think I've seen all of it, but I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's a couple of things I haven't seen, which is
Speaker 2: very weird.
Speaker 1: But do you listen to your mother's music.
Speaker 2: I do listen to my mother's music. I started to
Speaker 2: really get into the stuff that she recorded after she
Speaker 2: left Dunhill, mostly because this is a brand new deal.
Speaker 2: It was just her. She was going to get to
Speaker 2: pick out everything that really she was being, that really
Speaker 2: she was she was into, and so those records I
Speaker 2: think speak to me a little bit more. When she
Speaker 2: was able to do some more covers, I mean, the
Speaker 2: RCA years were some pretty pretty good, pretty good records.
Speaker 2: At one point. One of the last records my mom
Speaker 2: made for RCA was a record called The Road Is
Speaker 2: No Place for a Lady. And that record was recorded
Speaker 2: in England at Trident Studios, and I remember her taking
Speaker 2: me on that trip. That's when my nanny took me
Speaker 2: to the Buckingham Palace to watch the guards change and
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, this is boring, We're out of here.
Speaker 2: So she so she recorded The Road is No Place
Speaker 2: for a Lady in at Trident and the record was
Speaker 2: was mixed over there. And when everybody got back to
Speaker 2: the States and and the Lou Merenstein, who was the producer,
Speaker 2: went to go and play the record for the label.
Speaker 2: He was horrified at at what the mixes sounded like.
Speaker 2: They sounded terrible, and he said, you gotta wait. I
Speaker 2: gotta go back to England. I gotta go remix these
Speaker 2: these songs. The masters are over there. I'll be back
Speaker 2: in a week. Promise me, you're not gonna You're not
Speaker 2: gonna release the record. Okay, we promised. They were. They did.
Speaker 2: They they released the record and it's terrible mixed, or
Speaker 2: you know, terribly mixed fashion. That's what the first pressing
Speaker 2: of that of that record sounded like. And what what
Speaker 2: Berenstein found out when he went back to London is
Speaker 2: that in the interim between the recording of right before
Speaker 2: they started recording the records, that tape head were misaligned
Speaker 2: and they hadn't been adjusted. So the entire record was
Speaker 2: recorded on misaligned tape heads. So that's why it all
Speaker 2: sounds like dog duty. So in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: one of a small what's the I forget the label
Speaker 2: that so it was a retro one of the retro stations.
Speaker 2: One of the retro CD companies wanted to put out
Speaker 2: The Road is no Place for a Lady. And I
Speaker 2: had a friend who worked at Sony, and they went
Speaker 2: and looked in their vault. And the Sony vault hasn't
Speaker 2: been moved ever. It's in like some cold storage and
Speaker 2: some mountain in Pennsylvania, right, so all their masters are
Speaker 2: in the best shape they can possibly be. They went
Speaker 2: and found the original masters and they found the finished
Speaker 2: mix that was never put on the record, And when
Speaker 2: we did the remastering for this project in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, we fixed it. We took that old crappy
Speaker 2: mix off the first single and replaced it with the
Speaker 2: better mix. So it's almost like it came full circle.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of some of those things that happened
Speaker 2: I think in my life are so cool. What a
Speaker 2: great experience to get to fix what was a colossal mistake.
Speaker 1: You go deeply into your mother's history growing up in
Speaker 1: her family. What do you think was the background such
Speaker 1: that she could have the drive to ultimately get success,
Speaker 1: which was unbelievably difficult.
Speaker 2: Depression I would call it depression, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a post at World War two, Emily. You know,
Speaker 2: with many many people who have have died overseas. You know,
Speaker 2: my great grandmother's, her entire family, with exception of her
Speaker 2: and one other cousin, one of one of her other sisters,
Speaker 2: everyone died in the Holocaust. She she was, she felt
Speaker 2: very responsible, my great grandmother. She felt as though she
Speaker 2: should have been there. She had. She was severely, severely depressed.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 2: That kind of has continued, that that we have generational
Speaker 2: depression in our family and that nothing is a better,
Speaker 2: you know, like thing to get you out on moving
Speaker 2: and doing is when you're depressed, you got to go
Speaker 2: out and do it, you know. And I think that
Speaker 2: was a big part of what caused my mom to
Speaker 2: not want to give up, you know. She was. I
Speaker 2: always liken her to the little engine that could. You know,
Speaker 2: the children's book, I think I can, I think I can,
Speaker 2: I think I can. You know. And the fact that
Speaker 2: she told everyone I'm going to be the most famous
Speaker 2: fact girl that ever lived. That's the best thing I've
Speaker 2: ever heard in my life. I think that's so cool.
Speaker 2: And she was right.
Speaker 1: Now, when you read the book and you lay it
Speaker 1: all out, it almost seems amazing that she made it.
Speaker 1: There were close calls. She made a couple of records
Speaker 1: with the Big Three. They didn't want her in the
Speaker 1: Mamas and the Papas. It's just it's not exactly luck,
Speaker 1: but most people would have given up much sooner.
Speaker 2: Well. She she had this triumph over adversity thing that
Speaker 2: she constantly exhibited. And it's almost like when someone tells
Speaker 2: you no, you almost want to do it more her,
Speaker 2: you know. So I think she probably was of that,
Speaker 2: of that kind of thinking. And I think she also
Speaker 2: really knew what I think she knew what she wanted,
Speaker 2: and she was just and she just went and got it.
Speaker 2: You know, that's that's the kind of person she was.
Speaker 2: You know, I would love to have that kind of kutzba.
Speaker 2: You know, she just she just didn't give up.
Speaker 1: So what did you get from your mother?
Speaker 2: What did I get from my mother? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'd like to believe that I have some of her
Speaker 2: sense of humor. I know that our voices sound very similar,
Speaker 2: our speaking voices and singing voices, as with a lot
Speaker 2: of our family. So that's something I got from her.
Speaker 2: Is I have that connection to her, And it's a
Speaker 2: beautiful thing. I mean I I I feel very blessed
Speaker 2: by it, for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, the records were produced by Lou Adler. Do you
Speaker 1: know Lou and have you discussed this with him?
Speaker 2: I do know Lou. I have not discussed the book
Speaker 2: with him. I saw Lou the last time at at
Speaker 2: this the induction, the installation of my mom's star in
Speaker 2: the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was one of our
Speaker 2: guests that day, and he actually he pulled like the
Speaker 2: perfect Lou Adler move without like barely even trying. We
Speaker 2: had we had assembled like this big list of people
Speaker 2: who had written nice things for us to say at
Speaker 2: the at the ceremony, and we were trying to assign
Speaker 2: and we had all these we had Graham, we had Uh,
Speaker 2: we had Stephen Stills, we had and we had to
Speaker 2: a quote from Crosby. We had quotes from just everybody
Speaker 2: and their mother. And we were trying to figure out, okay,
Speaker 2: well you'll give two of these quotes to Michelle, and
Speaker 2: this person does that, and then Lou Adler goes, why
Speaker 2: don't you just have Stephen Stills read the Crosby and
Speaker 2: Nash and I went, oh my god, that's genius, And
Speaker 2: that's what we did. So Still's got up there and
Speaker 2: read quotes from his whole band, you know, and it
Speaker 2: was just like this genius moment. We would have never
Speaker 2: thought to do that take somebody like Lou Adler to go, oh, well,
Speaker 2: that's really obvious that should go there.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, okay, in the book you say you're very
Speaker 1: tight with Carnie Wilson. How is it? You know, you
Speaker 1: make it sound like it's a club and you're a
Speaker 1: member of it. You know, all the sons and daughters
Speaker 1: of the famous perform Was that just the nature of
Speaker 1: growing up in La was that because you were cass
Speaker 1: Elliott's daughter, was that your personality. How did you end
Speaker 1: up knowing everybody?
Speaker 2: I think it's growing up in LA. It's growing up
Speaker 2: in LA the child of somebody who's well known in
Speaker 2: the entertainment industry. It's all about where you were going
Speaker 2: to school, you know. I mean, I was going to
Speaker 2: school with kids whose whose parents were very well known.
Speaker 2: And also, you know, going to school with the guy
Speaker 2: who wrote the theme song from Law and Order, You
Speaker 2: know what I mean. So we all just knew each
Speaker 2: other because we were going to the same schools, same
Speaker 2: birthday parties.
Speaker 1: Just backing up, you talk about depression in the family.
Speaker 1: Are you depressed? Oh?
Speaker 2: Probably? I don't know. I think it's wearing off a
Speaker 2: little bit generation a generation. Am I prone to it? Probably?
Speaker 2: But I also know that if I have fits of depression,
Speaker 2: you know what I've had. I've had some pretty shitty
Speaker 2: things happen in my life, So I can appreciate that
Speaker 2: and and you know, get myself out of it.
Speaker 1: So you have kids. Was there any doubt about having
Speaker 1: kids because of your upbringing? And to what degree was
Speaker 1: your raising of your kids informs by your growing up experience.
Speaker 2: Well, I never had any trepidations about having children. I
Speaker 2: always knew that I that I wanted to. Uh. It's
Speaker 2: funny because one of the conversations I was having with
Speaker 2: moon Zappa in the last week or so, uh, and
Speaker 2: and also with with Ahmet I did the podcast of them.
Speaker 2: We were talking about, you know, our parents being these
Speaker 2: sixties people, right, they they let us have so much freedom,
Speaker 2: way too much freedom, and all we really ever wanted
Speaker 2: was structure. And they really thought, well, they're doing us
Speaker 2: this great favorite. Let them be free, go out do
Speaker 2: your thing, you know. And it turns out that most
Speaker 2: of us ended up creating completely fifties style homes and
Speaker 2: marriages and children and lives like really super stable, you know, structured,
Speaker 2: scheduled things because we didn't have any of that, you know,
Speaker 2: and they really thought they were, you know, doing the
Speaker 2: right thing. Probably not. Most of us really needed to
Speaker 2: have a little more structure, you know. And that's that's
Speaker 2: one thing that you know, they really, like I said,
Speaker 2: they really thought they were doing the right thing. But
Speaker 2: in the long run, I think it was we probably
Speaker 2: would have done better with more structure.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like family ties, But what are
Speaker 1: your kids up to these days?
Speaker 2: Well, my daughter is going to graduate from cal State
Speaker 2: Northridge in the winter, just two classes to to take
Speaker 2: and they wouldn't let her walk come on. So they're
Speaker 2: going to make her take two more classes in the winter,
Speaker 2: and she's going to have a degree in education so
Speaker 2: that you know, she can go get a job teaching
Speaker 2: anywhere anytime. Our son is the one kid that got
Speaker 2: bitten by the music business bug. Did I think I
Speaker 2: was going to escape it entirely? I don't know. He
Speaker 2: wants to be a recording engineer. Well, he's actually is
Speaker 2: a recording engineer, and he spends a lot of time
Speaker 2: in his studio. And I raised a studio rat. What
Speaker 2: can I say? One out of two ain't bad, you know,
Speaker 2: but they're great. My son is twenty two and my
Speaker 2: daughter is turning twenty five. I married a guy in
Speaker 2: the music business again, big shocker. My husband is a
Speaker 2: songwriter record producer. He's one of the founding members of SONA.
Speaker 2: If you know who Sona are songwriters of North America.
Speaker 2: He's you know, you marry close to what you know?
Speaker 2: I guess you know. And we all created all of
Speaker 2: us kids, China and Billie Carney and Wendy, we all
Speaker 2: you know, created kind of the homes that we didn't have, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you were in the group, which ultimately became
Speaker 1: Wilson Phillips, and then you weren't in the group.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is a pretty accurate statement. The way it
Speaker 2: worked was that when I first came to La we Are,
Speaker 2: the world had just been like that huge record that
Speaker 2: it was, and I thought, Wow, that is so cool.
Speaker 2: You know, people coming together for a common cause. That's
Speaker 2: really cool. And I thought, well, maybe we should, I said.
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, I know all these kids, you know,
Speaker 2: like we were just talking about we all went to
Speaker 2: the same schools. We know all these kids, and maybe
Speaker 2: we could, you know, do a charity record against drugs.
Speaker 2: You know, all these sixties kids talking about drug abuse.
Speaker 2: Let's do that. And I called China and she thought
Speaker 2: it was a pretty good idea. And we called a
Speaker 2: bunch of people and they turned us down. We called
Speaker 2: moon Zappas she turned us down. She doesn't remember. Donovan
Speaker 2: Leitch turned us down. IONI Sky turned us down. And
Speaker 2: the only people that wanted to do anything were Carnie
Speaker 2: and Wendy Wilson, who I had gone to school with
Speaker 2: him at Oakwood when I was still living in and
Speaker 2: so we all started singing together, and we started doing
Speaker 2: some demos for Richard Perry back in the olden days,
Speaker 2: and it just didn't work out. You know, I I
Speaker 2: don't know how to blend. I really sing really loud,
Speaker 2: and I just kind of overpower people and I don't
Speaker 2: think that's a really good thing in a harmony group.
Speaker 2: And so things just didn't work out, and they went
Speaker 2: their merry little way, and of course had the success
Speaker 2: that they had, which was huge. But it came really
Speaker 2: a full circle when they when they made their record California,
Speaker 2: which was oh no, dedicated, sorry, dedicated, which was all
Speaker 2: which was a whole record dedicated to the music of
Speaker 2: the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys. And they
Speaker 2: asked me to come in and sing on dedicated and
Speaker 2: saying the part that was kind of known for my mom,
Speaker 2: and so I did, and you know what, it kind
Speaker 2: of it really closed that circle. It really closed into
Speaker 2: a nice full circle moment. And so we're all, it's
Speaker 2: all good, we all, we're all really close.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's thirty five years thirty four. I was there
Speaker 1: at their debut at SBK Records in the Desert. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you must have. That must have been very painful to
Speaker 1: be left out.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I was so upset. I was so upset.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what I was going to do. I
Speaker 2: was so mad. I was so upset. But I just
Speaker 2: kind of went, Okay, well, now I got to figure
Speaker 2: out what I'm going to do. And eventually I was
Speaker 2: able to get a demo tape together, and uh, I had.
Speaker 2: I had been managed by a guy named Roy Silver
Speaker 2: who had actually managed my mom back in the Big
Speaker 2: Three Days, and he had he was sure he could
Speaker 2: get me a deal, and he oh, he started to
Speaker 2: be very controlling and like tell me what to where
Speaker 2: and I that was not gonna fly with me. And
Speaker 2: I really didn't like being told what to do very.
Speaker 1: Much at all.
Speaker 2: So I ended up firing him. And then a year later,
Speaker 2: Wilson Phillips comes out and they're a huge success, and
Speaker 2: so he went ahead and without checking with me, sent
Speaker 2: the tape out and got me a deal. I was like, oh, great,
Speaker 2: And so I ended up having a deal with mc
Speaker 2: A well with a production company that was tied to MCA,
Speaker 2: and I made half a record for them, and then
Speaker 2: Matt Sacheetah bought the Panasonic and just cleaned the roster,
Speaker 2: you know, just poured some chlorox on it and cleaned
Speaker 2: it up. And I was part of part of the
Speaker 2: people who they let go. And then I said, you
Speaker 2: know what fun ghoul music business. I don't need this.
Speaker 2: And then I ended up getting married and you know,
Speaker 2: living my life. I figured I'd go back to it
Speaker 2: if it was meant to be right.
Speaker 1: So how hard was it to give up the dream?
Speaker 2: Really hard. I think I probably still have it in
Speaker 2: some ways. You know, I sing like a maniac in
Speaker 2: my car, so I think I get it out that
Speaker 2: way and getting to you know, occasionally perform with the
Speaker 2: girls when they do shows around town. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not an easy one, that's for sure. And that was
Speaker 2: a big fear that I would really regret, you know,
Speaker 2: not pushing myself harder. But I also really just wanted
Speaker 2: to have a normal life, you know, and I had
Speaker 2: just gotten married, and I just wanted to have babies
Speaker 2: and be a mom and you know, have that be
Speaker 2: my life for a while. And then I figured if
Speaker 2: it was really something that I was meant to do,
Speaker 2: then you know, there would be a way at some
Speaker 2: point that I'd be able to to sing and love
Speaker 2: doing it, you know, but I get older and it's okay.
Speaker 1: Can we talk any of this up to sexism?
Speaker 2: M I don't think so, because I think if I
Speaker 2: had smelled that I would have I would have lost
Speaker 2: my mind. I'm pretty in tune with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So, now that you've finished the book and your kids
Speaker 1: are on the way, what's the plan for all your time?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I have no idea. I haven't even
Speaker 2: it's terrifying to even think of. I'm not sure yet.
Speaker 2: We actually had we'd had to put our sixteen year
Speaker 2: old dog down last week because you know, timing is everything,
Speaker 2: and my husband and I realized that we have spent
Speaker 2: the better part of the last thirty two years either
Speaker 2: taking care of a puppy or a baby or somebody
Speaker 2: or something, and we'd like to, you know, go travel,
Speaker 2: we'd like to, you know, go and do some things together.
Speaker 2: Kids are old enough we can kind of get to
Speaker 2: have a moment. So I think that's kind of what
Speaker 2: I'm what I'm going to do in the immediate future.
Speaker 2: And then I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 1: There's another theme in the book about your biological father.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us something about that Chuck Day.
Speaker 2: Well, he was certainly somebody that I felt like I
Speaker 2: would appreciate more or after he had passed away, which
Speaker 2: actually is the truth. Chuck Day was born in Illinois,
Speaker 2: in Chicago, and he was a blues guy. He had
Speaker 2: he actually had his first record put out when he
Speaker 2: was fifteen years old on a label called Federal Records
Speaker 2: under a name Underheath, his name Bang Day. His real
Speaker 2: name was Chuck Day, but his stage name was Bang Day.
Speaker 2: And he was kind of a little he was kind
Speaker 2: of a you know, protege in in that way, and
Speaker 2: his childhood and his upbringing had their own, you know story,
Speaker 2: and we don't have to get into that now. But
Speaker 2: he had a kind of a rough, a rough beginning,
Speaker 2: and he ended up coming to LA and with I
Speaker 2: think with Johnny Rivers because he was playing with Johnny
Speaker 2: Rivers and he had he says that he wrote the
Speaker 2: opening riff to Secret Agent Man and that he had
Speaker 2: based it on the TV series Tommy, on the Tommy
Speaker 2: gunn Uh TV series. He maintained till till he died
Speaker 2: that he had written that that piece and he had been,
Speaker 2: like I said, working with Johnny Rivers and Johnny Rivers
Speaker 2: had a relationship with Lou Adler in that whole camp,
Speaker 2: and so my biological father ended up playing on some
Speaker 2: Moms and Papa's records, like second Guitar, And when they
Speaker 2: were tapped to do a tour, they chose to take
Speaker 2: him out to play guitar on their tour, and it
Speaker 2: was a one night stand my mom and the bass player. Oh,
Speaker 2: I guess he was playing bass at that point. My
Speaker 2: mom and the bass player went back to her room
Speaker 2: at the hotel and had a lot of Chinese food
Speaker 2: and alcohol. And that was the night I was conceived.
Speaker 2: And I did find that out after I met him finally,
Speaker 2: in I guess it was probably eighty six or eighty seven.
Speaker 2: I met him for the first time, and Michelle Phillips
Speaker 2: was instrumental in me meeting him. I had had dinner
Speaker 2: with Michelle and John and Danny right after I had
Speaker 2: come to California in eighty six, and Michelle drove me
Speaker 2: home that night and I said to her on the
Speaker 2: drive home, g you know, I wish we could find
Speaker 2: out who my real father was because I had always
Speaker 2: wondered because my mom really didn't tell anybody. She took
Speaker 2: that secret right to the grave, or at least I thought,
Speaker 2: because Michelle said that when she and Danny and John
Speaker 2: had been in the car driving to the Imperial Gardens
Speaker 2: in LA that she had said to them, gee, you know,
Speaker 2: we never found out who Owen Vanessa's dad was, and
Speaker 2: that John and Denny like immediately shot each other a
Speaker 2: look of like knowing, like, oh, you don't know, do you?
Speaker 2: She was like, wait a minute, what do you guys know?
Speaker 2: They knew his name? So I asked her to help
Speaker 2: me find him, and she had her secretary put an
Speaker 2: ad in what was Musician magazine at the time, sort
Speaker 2: of this you know, generic ad of you know, Chuck Day,
Speaker 2: old bass player for the Mamas and Papa's call this number.
Speaker 2: Kind of made it seem like there was money or something,
Speaker 2: and like within a day one of his friends was calling, oh,
Speaker 2: is this about the kid? Well, so it turned out
Speaker 2: that he knew about me, and he had met me once,
Speaker 2: and that he had, you know, really adhere to what
Speaker 2: my mother had requested, which was don't come back and
Speaker 2: you're not her father, don't ever tell her that you are.
Speaker 2: I did find out from him after I had met him,
Speaker 2: spoken to him a couple of times that he had
Speaker 2: come to the funeral and that he had stood across
Speaker 2: the street. Oh. I got so mad, because I wondered
Speaker 2: about him for years. He had just had the balls
Speaker 2: to walk across the street, right And by the time
Speaker 2: I met him, he was pretty pretty well into his alcoholism.
Speaker 2: It wasn't pretty. And he had started talking to the
Speaker 2: press up near where he lived. He lived in Fairfax,
Speaker 2: Marine County, and he started telling the newspapers that he'd
Speaker 2: had a child with Mama Cass, Like, dude, don't do that.
Speaker 2: And it was right around the time I was pregnant
Speaker 2: with my daughter, and I just went, I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't really want to have anything to do with him.
Speaker 2: So I cut off contact for a really long time,
Speaker 2: but I did. But I did see him at the end.
Speaker 2: Towards the end of his life, the social worker from
Speaker 2: the hospital he was in reached out to my mom's website,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't help myself. I had to. I had
Speaker 2: to see him one more time, you know, and set
Speaker 2: it straight, you know, And I showed him pictures of
Speaker 2: art of his grandchildren that he was never ever going
Speaker 2: to meet over my dead body, was ever going to
Speaker 2: meet him, but I thought that he deserved at least
Speaker 2: to see them and see pictures. So I mean it
Speaker 2: was I definitely felt like we had, you know, sewn
Speaker 2: it up, you know, that I had I had said
Speaker 2: what I needed to say, and that he had said
Speaker 2: what he needed to say. And but through him, I
Speaker 2: did find out that I had I had more family,
Speaker 2: you know. So I got to have a little relationship
Speaker 2: with a woman who was my older sister, you know.
Speaker 2: I got to know her for a few years. So
Speaker 2: there were some there were some minor gifts, you know,
Speaker 2: along the way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what a trip, Okay, other than all the
Speaker 1: emotional considerations. Now, when you hear stories similar to this,
Speaker 1: people meet the biological relative and they say, oh I
Speaker 1: look like that, or I yeah like that.
Speaker 2: Oh that happened. That happened the minute, the minute he
Speaker 2: walked in and I looked at him, it's like you
Speaker 2: can feel it's almost like an electrical current. It's it's
Speaker 2: you just know that this DNA is yours. You just
Speaker 2: know it. And I got this nose from him. This
Speaker 2: is not a Jewish nose. This is my nose. It's
Speaker 2: always been my nose. It's not the work of any
Speaker 2: plastic surgeon. It's the work of having a Swedish and
Speaker 2: Scottish birth father, you know. And he had the same nose,
Speaker 2: only larger of course. And my son got this nose.
Speaker 2: Why my daughter didn't get this nose, Why she got
Speaker 2: the requisite Jewish schnas and not this. Never know why
Speaker 2: that choice was made by whomever. But yeah, my sons
Speaker 2: has this, and it's true. You just know. You feel it,
Speaker 2: whether you want to or not. I wasn't really happy
Speaker 2: about feeling like, oh yeah, that you're not the Knight
Speaker 2: in Shining Armor. I had fantasized in my brain, you know,
Speaker 2: a little bit of a disappointment. But like I said,
Speaker 2: there were a little bit of you know, silver linings,
Speaker 2: got to meet some family, got to know a little
Speaker 2: bit of history.
Speaker 1: Talking with you, you seem, despite all of these traumas,
Speaker 1: as you labeled them in ups and downs, pretty well adjusted.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that or would you say, beneath
Speaker 1: the surface you have no idea what's going on?
Speaker 2: Well, maybe a little bit of both. I had a
Speaker 2: lot of therapy in my life and I can attribute
Speaker 2: a lot of my seeming mental health to that. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm also not normal. You know, I can get completely
Speaker 2: when I get mad about something. Oh it's not good,
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty well adjusted and I'm not embarrassed to
Speaker 2: say it.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you're in Massachusetts living with your aunt
Speaker 1: and then ultimately going to this school. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: feel special and you tell people your cass Elliot's daughter
Speaker 1: or you stay silent and all of a sudden the
Speaker 1: word spreads.
Speaker 2: I stay silent. I stay silent. I don't don't. I
Speaker 2: don't usually tell people. Eventually they'll find out, but mostly
Speaker 2: I want to find out if they want to hang
Speaker 2: out with me for me or you know, want to
Speaker 2: know something about my mom, because I had experienced that
Speaker 2: a lot, so and any kid of any celebrity is
Speaker 2: going to feel the same way. You have a almost
Speaker 2: like a sixth sense. You have to sort of develop
Speaker 2: it because you just never know why somebody wants to
Speaker 2: be your friend. So keeping you know, your business to
Speaker 2: yourself is usually the first plan of attack. And eventually
Speaker 2: they're going to find out anyway, But by then I
Speaker 2: might know whether or not, you know, they actually want
Speaker 2: to hang out with me or have some kind of
Speaker 2: you know, weird ulterior motive.
Speaker 1: So how important to you is your mother's legacy and
Speaker 1: she and her music being remembered.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's hugely important to me. I think that
Speaker 2: one of the things that most people experience, or a
Speaker 2: lot of people experience when they listen to my mom sing,
Speaker 2: is they they get a little sense of hope. People
Speaker 2: people really get kind of built up, and it gives
Speaker 2: them some kind of you know, faith in humanity because
Speaker 2: she's she's she's she sounds happy. The songs that she
Speaker 2: recorded were really good, positive songs, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think she would want to be remembered like that. And
Speaker 2: I've always felt that it would be my job to
Speaker 2: make sure that that's what she would be remembered for
Speaker 2: and not the sandwich thing, you know, and that she
Speaker 2: will be remembered for, you know, her body positivity stuff,
Speaker 2: even though she didn't all the time feel so positive
Speaker 2: about it. You know, what she'd let other people see
Speaker 2: was that she was totally comfortable in her skin. You know.
Speaker 2: All of these things I think are really important part
Speaker 2: of her legacy and things that it's important to me
Speaker 2: that people remember about her.
Speaker 1: And are you passive in terms of universal does the
Speaker 1: licenses or to what degree do you actively other than
Speaker 1: the book, try to keep her memory and music live.
Speaker 2: Well, we have no rights as the artist. You don't
Speaker 2: have any rights to say yes you can license it
Speaker 2: or no you can't. I mean, sometimes labels are nice.
Speaker 2: If you meet the right person who's running that particular
Speaker 2: department and they want to be nice to you, they
Speaker 2: might tell you what's going on. But you often don't
Speaker 2: really have a choice. You have to sort of trust
Speaker 2: that the that the relationship between the person who's doing
Speaker 2: the licensing and you know that that that they know
Speaker 2: what you guys would want. So unfortunately, we don't really
Speaker 2: get too much control over it, and you just hope
Speaker 2: that they're going to make the right choice on what
Speaker 2: they're gonna, you know, sell the music for I forgot
Speaker 2: the second part of what you asked. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Well, to what degree do you actively try to keep
Speaker 1: her memory alive? Oh?
Speaker 2: God, well, this book, that's the first thing where we've
Speaker 2: just redesigned her website. I really, you know, the book
Speaker 2: is the is the big is the big thing right now?
Speaker 2: Will be you know, probably doing it some form of
Speaker 2: documentary at some point, and maybe down the line there
Speaker 2: there would be you know, some film opportunities. I just
Speaker 2: want to make sure that people know who she was,
Speaker 2: you know, and why she made some of the choices
Speaker 2: that she made. You know, I don't want people to
Speaker 2: remember her just as you know, the fat one from
Speaker 2: the Mamas and Papa's And honestly, I would like people
Speaker 2: to start to remember her by name. You know, people
Speaker 2: don't always remember her by name. It's begun, it's begun
Speaker 2: to kind of fade, you know, into the background. You know,
Speaker 2: if you ask somebody if they know who the mamas
Speaker 2: and papas are, these are young kids. They don't know,
Speaker 2: They have no idea if you ask them if they
Speaker 2: if they know California Dreaming, they will know California Dreaming.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: My goal is that they know they know my mom
Speaker 2: for who she was and some of the stuff she
Speaker 2: did after you know, the mamas and papas were. As
Speaker 2: far as the book is concerned, what were they two chapters?
Speaker 2: They weren't they weren't they weren't the whole picture, you know,
Speaker 2: So it's a lot more to the story.
Speaker 1: And you also see in the book that she wanted
Speaker 1: to shed the Moniker Mama.
Speaker 2: Yeah she did, and I do believe had she lived longer,
Speaker 2: she would have. Absolutely, she would have, I really had.
Speaker 2: I had a couple of really rough nights thinking about
Speaker 2: what were we going to put on the Star and
Speaker 2: the Walk of Fame, and I really just wanted to
Speaker 2: put cass Elliott. But I realized that most people know
Speaker 2: her as Mama Cass Elliott. And that's why I agreed
Speaker 2: to do it if we put the quotes around around Mama,
Speaker 2: because that's really what it was. It was. It was
Speaker 2: an assumed little nickname, and I think she would have
Speaker 2: agreed with that, you know. And like I said, had
Speaker 2: she lived longer, we would have known her as Cass Elliott,
Speaker 2: she would have. She would have, you know, had more
Speaker 2: time to define herself as that. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Owen, just one more thing. Owen conventionally is a
Speaker 1: male name. How was it growing up with the name Owen?
Speaker 2: Well, I got put in all the boys camps and
Speaker 2: all the boys cabins at camp because they just thought
Speaker 2: they that my parents messed up and checked the wrong box.
Speaker 2: I'm consistently, you know, on paper, mistaken for a man.
Speaker 2: I do have a deep voice, so I guess that
Speaker 2: kind of plays into a little bit. But I would
Speaker 2: tell you my credit card, my American Express card. Every
Speaker 2: time I would give a vendor my card, they would go, ma'am,
Speaker 2: we need your card. I'd be like, this is my card, No, ma'am,
Speaker 2: did you did? So? Finally I called American Express and
Speaker 2: I had them put Missus on the card so people
Speaker 2: wild leave me alone.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's funny. In any event, Owen's book My Mama
Speaker 1: Cass is a very easy quick read. Don't think just
Speaker 1: because it's a book, it's too much for you. And
Speaker 1: despite her saying there's really only two chapters on the
Speaker 1: mamas and the papas, the story of how Mama Cass
Speaker 1: makes it from the DC Baltimore area to LA is
Speaker 1: very well put out and I certainly learned things. So
Speaker 1: I want to thank you Owen for writing the book
Speaker 1: and speaking with my audience.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I'm a big fan. This
Speaker 2: was a really cool thing.
Speaker 1: Well, it's great to finally see you face to face.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob Left sets
Speaker 2: H