Podcast appearances and mentions of Michelle Phillips

In this episode of The Nancy Levin Show, I reconnect with my dear friend Michelle Phillips — renowned celebrity makeup artist, self-confidence coach, bestselling author, and now podcast host of The Beauty Shift. Our bond began over a decade ago, rooted in our shared experiences of reclaiming our power after abusive relationships. Now, we dive deep into the evolution of beauty, self-worth, and the journey of learning to put ourselves first. Michelle shares her raw, vulnerable story of breaking free from the illusion of perfection and discovering the true essence of confidence. We talk about shedding outdated ideals, navigating midlife, and how real beauty radiates from authenticity and radical self-love — not products, procedures, or perfection. This conversation is a call to redefine what beauty means, at any age.   What we explore together: Michelle and I both shared how we used to project perfection while silently struggling, and how true healing began when we stopped hiding our pain. Real beauty begins when we reclaim who we are, instead of trying to match who we think we're supposed to be. Self-love isn't indulgence — it's boundaries, saying no, and choosing ourselves again and again. Midlife isn't a crisis; it's a chance to rewrite the rules and finally live for ourselves. The beauty industry is slowly shifting toward age and body inclusivity, and Michelle is using her platform to amplify that movement. True self-care shows up in how we sleep, eat, move, and speak to ourselves — not just what we put on our skin.   Connect with Michelle: Website: michellephillips.com Instagram: @michellephillipsbeauty LinkedIn: Michelle Phillips Podcast: The Beauty Shift   Connect with me: Newsletter  nancylevin.com Instagram Facebook  

The Creator Heals by Michelle Phillips Amazon.com Soulsawakening.com 5 Simple Keys to Living a Life of Complete Freedom. These amazing downloads from the Source of Creation will teach you to match and merge with the morphogenetic fields of your intentions, goals and desires. Learn how to tap into your DNA and turn on your Soul's divine blueprint of health, prosperity, abundance, joy, freedom and Love. Use your own heart's divine Love to easily and effortlessly heal and release old karmic ancestral belief systems, patterns, sickness and disease. These 5 DNA healing techniques are very simple easy and yet absolutely profound.

This week we're joined by Richmond, VA Circuit Court Judge Richard Campbell. No, we're not in trouble - Richard, who wrote the book "Gettin' Kinda Itchie: The Groups That Made the Mamas & the Papas", is here to talk The Mamas & the Papas and their often overlooked S/T second album 'The Mamas and The Papas' Court is in session! Songs discussed in this episode: I Saw Her Again Last Night (The Mamas and The Papas cover) - Trombones Unlimited; California Dreamin', No Salt On Her Tail - The Mamas & The Papas; Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan; Here In My Arms, Trip, Stumble and Fall, Dancing Bear, Words Of Love, My Heart Stood Still, Dancing In The Street, I Saw Her Again, Strange Young Girls, I Can't Wait - The Mamas & The Papas; 500 Miles - The Journeymen; Even If I Could - The Mamas & The Papas; No More Running Around - The Lamp Of Childhood; That Kind Of Girl, Once Was A Time I Thought - The Mamas & The Papas; Make Your Own Kind Of Music - Cass Elliot; Tempo no Tempo - Os Mutantes

Thank you to our guest musicians: Mattias Chaidez, violinRebecca Meyer and Michelle Phillips, vocalPrelude - "Carol of the Bells"Carols of Christmas - "Joy to the World"First Reading: Isaiah 40:1–5Carols of Christmas - "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"Welcome & News of the ChurchLighting of the Candle of PeaceSecond Reading: Luke 1:26–33Carols of Christmas - "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"Prayers of AdventReceiving of the OfferingOffertory - "Mary Did You Know?" - Matthias Chaidez, violinThird Reading: Luke 1:39–45Carols of Christmas - "O Little Town of Bethlehem"Fourth Reading: Jeremiah 23:5–6Carols of Christmas - "O Holy Night"Sermon - "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: Testify" (Jeremiah 23:5–6) - by Rev. Jason GrifficeCarols of Christmas - "Angels We Have Heard on High"BenedictionPostlude

Alright, buckle up, ya middle-aged maniacs. In this one, the Governor is still off the grid, so Dr. Rees and Jackson get into the real stuff—y'know, the kind of weird shit you do when no one's watchin'. You ever caught yourself in the mirror like Paul Rudd in Wanderlust? Yeah, we're talkin' about THAT level of weird. But wait, there's more! We take a detour into Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know, the pyramid thing everyone brings up when they're tryin' to sound smart. Turns out, anxiety's lurking in there somewhere like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. And speakin' of Thanksgiving, the boys remind us why it's the king of holidays. Spoiler: it's all about Arlo Guthrie and his 18-minute masterpiece, Alice's Restaurant. That song? It's a rite of passage, not just a tune. Oh, and then we wrap it up with some solid old-school rebellion. Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas? She ate a BANANA on the freakin' Ed Sullivan Show. A BANANA! Back then, that was like moonin' the Queen. So grab a drink, pop in the earbuds, and let's dive into the beautifully absurd world of middle-aged nonsense. Hey, Bud, do us a solid, will ya? Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, slap us with a 5-star rating, and maybe even toss in a quick review. Look, I'm not sayin' we've earned it yet, but c'mon—we're workin' on it! While you're at it, hit that ‘subscribe' button like it owes you money. And hey, swing by olddogpack.com and sign up for The Old Dog Pack newsletter. Is it gonna change your life? Nah. But it's free, so what're ya complaining about? Most importantly—and I mean this—tell a buddy about us. We're nothin' without you guys, and we wanna grow this thing into a whole pack of you maniacs. Help us out, huh?

Melanie and Ed love watching old movies and dishing on them. This week's movie is VALENTINO (1977), directed by Ken Russell and starring Rudolf Nureyev, Leslie Caron, Michelle Phillips, and Carol Kane. Send podcast comments and suggestions to Melanded@whothehellarewe.com Don't forget to subscribe to the show!

durée : 00:58:32 - " California dreaming " (John & Michelle Phillips) (1963) - par : Laurent Valero - "California Dreaming, le texte évoque le rêve du soleil californien, quand on vit dans l'hiver new-yorkais. C'est à New-York et en plein hiver que ce titre a vu le jour, un point commun avec la célèbre chanson de Noël Christmas song, écrite à Los Angeles pendant un été caniculaire !" Laurent Valero

durée : 00:58:32 - " California dreaming " (John & Michelle Phillips) (1963) - par : Laurent Valero - "California Dreaming, le texte évoque le rêve du soleil californien, quand on vit dans l'hiver new-yorkais. C'est à New-York et en plein hiver que ce titre a vu le jour, un point commun avec la célèbre chanson de Noël Christmas song, écrite à Los Angeles pendant un été caniculaire !" Laurent Valero

"Our brains are set up to keep us safe, not to keep us happy, says Michelle Phillips, president of Key Performance and author of Happiness is a Habit. In this conversation with CoveyClub founder Lesley Jane Seymour she shares her 23-year entrepreneurial journey and reveals how daily rituals boost energy, well-being, and joy. She discusses her shift from sales to becoming a corporate trainer for Fortune 500 companies, highlighting the role of mindset and small habits in creating big changes. Michelle's story emphasizes the power of positive psychology and supportive networks in personal and professional growth. Bio: Michelle Phillips is the president of Key Performance and the author of Happiness is a Habit: Simple Daily Rituals that Increase Energy, Improve Well-being, and Add Joy to Every Day. With over 20 years of experience, she has guided Fortune 500 companies worldwide, including TAG Heuer, Pfizer, and Verizon, in leadership and positive psychology. Time Stamps 02:15 - Michelle Phillips on her early career 06:18 - Reinvention is all about mindset - here's why 09:46 - Helping people with more than just their job has become the norm 12:35 - Tiny habits coaching helps people through transition 18:15 - Happiness gets a bad rap because people think it's fake 19:17 - Why women take themselves out of game too soon in corporate life 25:04 - Do you see any difference in how women see their future versus the men? 25:51 - Coming out of sales and to write a book   Key Points: - Mindset and tiny habits are crucial for personal and professional transformation. - Positive psychology and optimism can be learned and applied to enhance life satisfaction. - Women should embrace their value and potential, continuing to grow and contribute in their careers. - Supportive networks and mentorship can significantly impact one's journey of reinvention.   Links and Resources: Visit Michelle Phillips' Website Buy Happiness is a Habit       FREE GIFT! 31 Badass Tips for Launching Your Reinvention Connect with Lesley Jane Seymour & CoveyClub: Website Instagram LinkedIn Join CoveyClub     If you found this episode insightful, please follow the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. For more resources and community support, join us at CoveyClub.com. Until next time, keep reinventing!

En Afrique du Sud, le renflouement des entreprises publiques sud-africaines à court d'argent ont coûté aux contribuables 456,5 milliards de rands (environ 25,9 milliards de dollars) au cours des dix dernières années. C'est ce qu'a annoncé le Trésor public sud-africain ce mardi 15 octobre. L'entreprise nationale en charge du réseau ferré et portuaire, Transnet, ne fait pas exception. Renflouées à hauteur de 49 milliards de rands par l'État, les industries minières dépendantes du réseau ferré sont également appelées à aider au redressement de l'entreprise publique. De notre correspondante à Johannesburg,Au cœur de scandales de corruption depuis plusieurs années, l'entreprise publique, plombée par une dette colossale et des dysfonctionnements, fait face à une déliquescence de ses infrastructures et n'est plus en mesure de pourvoir aux besoins logistiques des industries minières. Pour le secteur minier, les contraintes logistiques sont devenues un cauchemar ces dernières années. Les défaillances du réseau ferré contrôlé par l'entreprise publique Transnet – manque de maintenance, de locomotives et donc de trains –  affectent tous les producteurs.« Tous nos produits d'exportation – le minerai de fer, le chrome, le charbon – dépendent du réseau ferroviaire. Ses limites se répercutent donc directement sur les revenus de ces entreprises et sur l'économie. Certains calculs évaluent la perte de revenus à 50 milliards de rands par an (plus de 2,5 milliards d'euros) », met en avant Bernard Swanepoel, organisateur de l'Indaba, la conférence minière de Johannesburg.« Nous devons aller sur le marché et amener le secteur privé à travailler avec nous »La situation est allée en s'aggravant depuis six ans. Endettée à près de 7 milliards d'euros, la moitié ayant été avalée par la corruption et la mauvaise gouvernance, Transnet peine à sortir la tête de l'eau. Un grand plan de redressement a été lancé à la fin l'année dernière, avec, pour la première fois, une ouverture vers des partenariats public-privé. « Transnet n'a pas d'argent. Et le gouvernement n'a pas d'argent. Donc, il faut bien qu'il vienne de quelque part », résume Michelle Phillips, PDG de Transnet. « C'est pourquoi nous devons aller sur le marché et amener le secteur privé à travailler avec nous, de manière plus formelle et plus structurée. Il y a beaucoup de choses à réparer, nous faisons face à des années de sous-investissement, donc ça va prendre du temps », analyse Michelle Phillips.Plusieurs dirigeants font désormais partie de comités mis en place par le gouvernement pour trouver des solutions. L'entreprise Kumba Iron Ore, premier producteur de minerai de fer du continent, a dû revoir à la baisse ses objectifs de production jusqu'à 2027, à cause du manque de capacité de Transnet. « Comment restons-nous compétitifs ? C'est par les volumes de production. C'est ce qui fait ou défait votre entreprise. Et c'est la raison pour laquelle nous avons décidé de travailler en partenariat, dans une perspective de collaboration », souligne la directrice générale de Kumba Iron Ore, Mpumi Zikalala. Pour elle, l'essentiel aujourd'hui est d'accélérer le processus de transformation. « Parce que ce qui fait bouger les choses, ce ne sont pas les discussions, mais la vitesse. C'est l'exécution », insiste-t-elle.Le 1ᵉʳ octobre, Transnet a annoncé sa division en deux entités, l'une dédiée aux infrastructures et l'autre à l'aspect opérationnel. Des réformes dont l'efficacité restera à évaluer au cours des prochaines années.À lire aussiMining Indaba: restreindre l'exportation de matières premières brutes pour transformer localement 

While The Mamas & The Papas were only together a few years, the iconic music that was made and the drama that ensued between this foursome in that short time is legendary. But what happened before John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot, and Denny Doherty all came together? Each had their own unique journey before ultimately heading west and making California Dreamin' a reality. My guest, author Richard Campbell, wrote a compelling book, ‘Gettin' Kinda Itchie: The Groups That Made The Mamas and The Papas.' It's a prequel to this fabulous foursome's success as a group. As a close friend to the band and the “keeper of the flame,” as Michelle Phillips affectionately calls him, Richard brings us into John, Michelle, Denny, and Cass' worlds with stories, photos, and rare album covers. In this episode, you'll hear out-of-print songs from their previous bands - The Journeymen, The Mugwumps, and The Big 3 - songs that Richard has compiled on YouTube and Spotify. We'll discuss their individual journeys as they strove to make a mark in the thriving East folk scene and how the four ultimately came together in the U.S. Virgin Islands and shortly after, found themselves in LA.  So, let's take a trip back to the early 60s when folk was thriving, Kennedy was alive and well and these 4 individuals were slogging it out on the East Coast in hopes of one day hitting it big. Songs in this episode (in order): “Creeque Alley” The Mamas & the Papas “Chase the Rising Sun” The Journeymen “The Banjo Song” - The Big 3 “Do You Know What I Mean” - The Mugwumps “Mr Tambourine Man” - The New Journeymen “California Dreamin'” - The Mamas & the Papas Links to Richard Campell's channels: www.gettinkindaitchie.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThemusicofGettinKindaItc-tb7lu/playlists Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0gCs3dADXDMlSTinWFlLop?si=21406369c83e4bee&nd=1&dlsi=f6042ae5ddc94e78 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transnet se uitvoerende hoof, Michelle Phillips, sê planne werp stadigaan vrugte af om die beleërde staatsspoorweg- en hawensmaatskappy om te keer. Dit is ondanks ʼn groter verlies van altesaam 7,3-miljard Suid-Afrikaanse rand vir die boekjaar wat in Maart geëindig het, in vergelyking met 5 miljard rand die vorige jaar. Die verlies word hoofsaaklik toegeskryf aan derdeparty-regseise van altesaam 4,8 miljard rand. Phillips bly ondanks hierdie terugslae optimisties en wys op pogings om die onderneming uit die rooi te kry.

Send us a Text Message.Unlock the secrets to navigating higher dimensions with the extraordinary intuitive healer, Michelle Phillips! Michelle, an internationally acclaimed speaker, teacher, and author. Learn how her spiritual guidance has given rise to innovative healing techniques and modalities, incorporating divine energies like Jesus, Yeshua, and Christ, Sananda. Discover the transformative potential of these energies in our current shifting timelines and dimensions, offering a fresh perspective on spiritual awakening and healing.Experience the power of activating your pineal gland in a way you've never imagined. Guided by Jesus and supported by crystal beings, Michelle leads us through this transformative practice, complete with a guided meditation designed to elevate your spiritual connection. We touch on her personal journey, including a life-altering encounter with Mother Mary's energy in Bosnia and the poignant story of her son's passing and transition into a spirit guide. From clearing Akashic records to channeling divine messages, this episode is a treasure trove of spiritual insights and profound healing practices that promise to elevate your spiritual journey.Support the Show.

A classic interview with Michelle Phillips from the Mamas and Papas, Haney is back after missing a few days due to a medical procedure and the guys talk more about Michelle and the Mamas and Papas, Grab Bag, Local Beat, Roger's Entertainment Corner, Junior's this day in history segment, a game of Stan's True or False, News Headlines, Fluffer, your emails, the Question of the Week asks about the first time you met (or heard) Stan and Haney, News, Songs Haney Introduced Us To Week continues, classic standup comedy, and more...

Dominick Dunne did write about the murders of his friends Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate on that terrible weekend in August 1969. This is a weekend that would change everything in Hollywood, and our man Nick was on the scene, and has the story from all his friends, so connected into our ongoing investigation. Included: Robert Evans, Roman Polanski, Warren Beatty, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot, Natalie Wood, Terry Melcher, Doris Day, Candace Bergen, among so many others. All sources can be found at doneanddunne.com. To advertise on this podcast, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michelle Phillips of Eau Palm Beach joins Tina to talk about how to live life to the fullest full 757 Wed, 31 Jul 2024 23:45:51 +0000 UFfVCIxWHUtgX8fdy8lNly19U2FTfazW ESPN West Palm Tonight Michelle Phillips of Eau Palm Beach joins Tina to talk about how to live life to the fullest ESPN West Palm Tonight 2021, Good Karma Brands, LLC

Set sail on Episode 2, Season 5 of the Love Boat, the worlds greatest romantic comedy drama television series of all time! In this special part 2 wrap up episode, following the season 4 finale where Julie travels to Australia to spend time with the vet she fell for, we are treated to an all star cast that includes Anthony Andrews, Delvene Delany, Donna Dixon, Patrick Duffy, Jose Ferrer, Gary Frank, Jenilee Harrison, Katherine Helmond, Harry Morgan, Michelle Phillips and Patrick Ward as they deal with a blackmail backfire, longing letters, grieving grooms, illiterate lovers, Casanova cavemen, not to be nuptials and the aquascope! We hope you enjoy this follow up to the listener suggested episode of Lovin' The Loveboat. Thanks to Chris Willis for the great choice. Do you have a favorite episode of the Love Boat? Well then contact us via our Instagram @lovin_the_love_boat and let us know. You just might end up on the show. We also encourage everyone to find our podcasts Instagram page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lovin' The Love Boat⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to enjoy the super cool video messages from Isaac himself Mr. Ted Lange! And much more. Thanks for listening to the podcast and please continue the journey as we head into the new year with a brand new approach. If you like the show please consider tipping your crew via Istvan's Venmo. It will let us know you're enjoying the podcast and help us keep things afloat. Thanks! https://account.venmo.com/u/istvansongs

Set sail on Episode 1, Season 5 of the Love Boat, the worlds greatest romantic comedy drama television series of all time! In this special episode, following the season 4 finale where Julie travels to Australia to spend time with the vet she fell for, we are treated to an all star cast that includes Anthony Andrews, Delvene Delany, Donna Dixon, Patrick Duffy, Jose Ferrer, Gary Frank, Jenilee Harrison, Katherine Helmond, Harry Morgan, Michelle Phillips and Patrick Ward as they deal with a joyful Julie, a non-reading rancher, attractive anthropologists, awful accents, wanting wives, confusing cavemen and koalas and kangaroos! We hope you enjoy this follow up to the listener suggested episode of Lovin' The Loveboat. Thanks to Chris Willis for the great choice. Do you have a favorite episode of the Love Boat? Well then contact us via our Instagram @lovin_th_love_boat and let us know. You just might end up on the show. We also encourage everyone to find our podcasts Instagram page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lovin' The Love Boat⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to enjoy the super cool video messages from Isaac himself Mr. Ted Lange! And much more. Thanks for listening to the podcast and please continue the journey as we head into the new year with a brand new approach to the show. If you have a favorite episode or a certain episode that you'd like us to talk about please message us via our Instagram page. We promise you'll be glad that you did.

In this episode, Director of DEI at Jackson Lewis P.C., Angie Cavallo speaks with one of Jackson Lewis's Principal Attorneys, Michelle Phillips, who is the founder and prior Leader of JL's OPAL (Out Professionals & Allies in Law) resource group. Angie and Michelle discuss Michelle's personal and professional journey that has led to her being one of Jackson Lewis' preeminent openly LGBTQ+ attorneys, and how the landscape for LGBTQ+ attorneys in the legal profession has changed over the last few decades.Angie Cavallo is an attorney who has been at the forefront of challenging discrimination and inequality for over 20 years. She graduated from Rutgers Law School with honors in 2010, where she held a fellowship with the National LGBTQ Task Force. Angie was a litigator for over a decade, focused on the varied needs of LGBTQ+ communities. She is also a certified mediator and routinely helped LGBTQ+ couples resolve their personal differences without litigation. Prior to her current role, Angie was a law partner and Chair of Diversity for a MidAtlantic full services law firm. In 2017, Angie was named one of the Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association and remains a member of this organization today. She has won numerous awards and accolades for her commitment to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the legal industry. Angie also taught at Rutgers Law from 2019-2021 and holds a certificate in Diversity & Inclusion Management from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She is a board member for the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group and a member of many DEI-focused legal organizations, including the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals (ALFDP) where she sits on the annual conference programming committee.Angie routinely speaks on topics including LGBTQ+ conscious inclusion, interrupting bias, and the importance of pronouns and name pronunciations. She also regularly mentors other lawyers and law students, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community. Presently, Angie is the Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Jackson Lewis P.C., a preeminent Labor & Employment law firm with 1,000+ attorneys and 60+ offices nationwide. Michelle E. Phillips is a principal in the White Plains, New York, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. Michelle handles various types of employment litigation with an emphasis on sexual, racial, and disability harassment, and LGBT matters. She also counsels clients on a variety of labor and employment matters concerning federal and state employment laws. Michelle frequently conducts and advises clients on internal investigations and leads seminars and webinars for a broad range of clients focusing on employment discrimination, diversity, sexual harassment, and LGBT issues.Michelle is a featured speaker at HRNY, NY and CT SHRM, ACC Corporate Counsel, Out & Equal Workplace Conference, and other prominent organizations. Michelle conducts training on race, ethnic, intergenerational, interfaith, LGBT & other inclusion issues. She is a national speaker on such issues as an employer's duty to accommodate the sincerely held religious beliefs of employees, sexual stereotyping in the workplace, and respecting each individual's gender identity and expression. 

Embodiment for the Rest of Us - Season 4, Episode 5: Deep Dive with Michelle Phillips   Jenn (she/they) and Chavonne (she/her) interviewed Michelle Phillips (they/them/we) for a deep dive about attending and attuning to the body, unconscious contracts with the systems that affect us, and loving accountability.   Content Warning: discussion of intentional weight loss, discussion of multiple genocides taking place at this time   Trigger Warnings: None in this episode   The captions for this episode can be found at https://embodimentfortherestofus.com/season-4/season-4-episode-5-michelle-phillips/#captions   A few highlights: 8:53: Michelle discusses the simplicities and complexities (equally) of embodiment as we go about our daily lives Links from this episode: Neurodivergence Polyvagal Theory Vagus Nerve   Music: “Bees and Bumblebees (Abeilles et Bourdons​)​, Op. 562” by Eugène Dédé through the Creative Commons License   Please follow us on social media: Website: embodimentfortherestofus.com Twitter: @embodimentus Instagram: @embodimentfortherestofus  

National Cheese day.  Entertainment from 1989.   Young Elvis Chosen for postage stamp, Shopping cart invented, Miracle at Dunkirk, ATM invented.  Todays birthdays - Clara Blandick, Bruce Dern, Freddie Fender, Michelle Phillips, Parker Stevenson, Keith David, El Debarge, Russell Brand, Angelina Jolie.  John Wooden died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard   http://defleppard.com/The cheese song - Juice MusicRock on - Michael DamianA better man - Clint BlackBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent    http://50cent.com/Before the next teardrop falls - Freddie FenderCalifornia dreamin - The Mamas & PapasWo's Johnny - El DebargeExit - Its not love - Dokken     http://dokken.net/Follow Jeff Stampka on Facebook and cooolmedia.com

First there were all the seminal, early folk outfits…then came The Mamas & The Papas…and now welcome to The Solo Years, where plenty of buried treasure and fascinating insanity awaits! (I'm lookin' at you, John.) In this special penultimate installment of Discograffiti's without-precedent 16-hour interview, Michelle Phillips guests along with band biographer Richard Campbell (@richcbart) & creator/host Dave Gebroe as we put our heads & hearts together to explore & rate Michelle's solo recording career. We talk about: Every musical gesture she made after leaving The Mamas & The Papas; What it was like working with notorious wildman Jack Nitschze on her lone solo LP Victim Of Romance; And the last time she ever stepped in a recording studio, when she provided background vocals for what turned out to be a ubiquitous #1 smash hit! Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of Discograffiti's “Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime” Series—this episode alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 7 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! Extended edits of all shows are available on either the Lieutenant (longer) or Major (longest) Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week.   Order the Digital package of our METAL MACHINE MUZAK double album (feat. Lou Barlow, Cory Hanson, Mark Robinson, & Will Cullen Hart): www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/197404 Please help support the show by ordering some choice goods from our new merch shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Order your copy of our guest Richard Campbell's incredible new book Gettin' Kinda Itchie-The Groups That Made The Mamas & The Papas right now! #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

First there were all the seminal, early folk outfits…then came The Mamas & The Papas…and now welcome to The Solo Years, where plenty of buried treasure and fascinating insanity awaits! (I'm lookin' at you, John.) In Part 6 of this without-precedent 16-hour interview, Michelle Phillips guests along with band biographer Richard Campbell (@richcbart) & creator/host Dave Gebroe as we put our hearts & minds together for the singular purpose of exploring and rating Cass Elliot's solo recording career. In this episode, we reveal: Brutal details about Cass's fumbled 1968 solo career coming-out party in Las Vegas, when she took the stage high on heroin; The confusing divide between Cass's predilection for both tin pan alley-style song selection and countercultural material; And a fact-based demystification of the details surrounding her death.  Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of Discograffiti's “Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime” Series—this episode alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 18 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! In addition, the 30-minute Denny Doherty Solo Years episode (also featuring Michelle) is for Patreon subscribers only (Major Tier & higher), and was released earlier this week! Extended edits of all shows are available on either the Lieutenant (longer) or Major (longest) Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week.   Please help support the show by ordering some choice goods from our new merch shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Order your copy of our guest Richard Campbell's incredible new book Gettin' Kinda Itchie-The Groups That Made The Mamas & The Papas right now! CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: ⁠⁠https://podfollow.com/1592182331⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Merch Shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ To Order the 2xVinyl or Digital METAL MACHINE MUZAK packages: www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

One of my fav characters on Knots Landing, Anne played by Michelle Phillips, is the spotlight of this episode! I dont own the rights to the sound clip. 

My guest this week is Trevor McShane, the musical alter ego for high-power entertainment attorney Neville Johnson, who has won more than $350 million for actors, writers and musicians who were shortchanged their fair share of royalties from both major film studios and record labels. Called “one of the most feared litigators in Hollywood” by the Los Angeles Times and named a “Legal Legend” by The Hollywood Reporter, Neville began his career working for Yoko Ono on matters related to The Beatles' catalog. He's gone on to represent many celebrities and/or their estates in a variety of contractual, accounting and intellectual property disputes, including John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Michelle Phillips, Richard Dreyfuss, Rick Nelson, Sylvester Stallone, members of Earth, Wind and Fire, Mitch Ryder, Lloyd Price and others. Neville has also written a number of books, including two about the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, that are available from his Cool Titles publishing company. As Trevor McShane, Neville has released a number of well-regarded releases that have grown his Spotify followers to 100,000 and 150,000 on YouTube. During our interview Neville and I spoke about keeping his music life as Trevor separate from his legal practice, what he learned from the legendary John Wooden, transitioning to being a litigator, AI copyright, and so much more. I spoke with Neville via zoom from his office in Beverly Hills.  On the intro I looked at UMG settling its dispute with TikTok, and how music gear retail is changing before our eyes.

Michelle Phillips – bestuurshoof, Transnet Volg RSG Geldsake op Twitter

(To win a personalized 8x10 Michelle Phillips autograph, keep reading.) Simply put, this is the best interview I've done to date.  It helps that band biographer Richard Campbell (@richcbart) and I were faced with a woman who was ready to come clean, to be so vulnerable, so funny….and SO RAW.   In Part 5 of this without-precedent 16-hour interview, Michelle burrows headfirst into some seriously traumatic territory, namely: The time John Phillips saved her from being murdered; The two horrifying images she pictures whenever she thinks of the sessions for The Mamas & The Papas' final LP, People Like Us; And a frank discussion of her most forbidden topic…her 8-day marriage to Dennis Hopper. Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of Discograffiti's “Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime” Series—Part 5 alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 29 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! Extended edits of all shows are available on either the Lieutenant (longer) or Major (longest) Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be all yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week.   Please help support the show by ordering some choice goods from our new merch shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Order your copy of our guest Richard Campbell's incredible new book Gettin' Kinda Itchie-The Groups That Made The Mamas & The Papas right now! TO WIN 1 OF 10 PERSONALIZED 8X10 MICHELLE PHILLIPS MONTEREY POP AUTOGRAPHS, JUST RE-POST THIS SHOW'S PROMO ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND TAG Discograffiti, Dave Gebroe, & @richcbart THROUGH THE DURATION OF THIS SERIES…DOING IT FOR EACH INSTALLMENT WILL ONLY IMPROVE YOUR ODDS! CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: ⁠⁠https://podfollow.com/1592182331⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Merch Shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

How does one find joy in the storm of life's uncertainties?  This intriguing question sets the stage for an insightful conversation between Linda Yates, the esteemed “Int-HER-rupt” host, and the charismatic Michelle Phillips, a renowned corporate training and coaching expert and the author of “Happiness is a Habit.”  Michelle delves into the transformative experiences that led her toward an unshakeable pursuit of happiness—even when faced with life's inevitable interruptions. Together, they unravel the compelling concept of energy transference and the role of positive psychology in shaping one's happiness, offering listeners an empowering toolkit for cultivating a fulfilling life.  Join us in exploring the profound realizations and actionable strategies unveiled in this unmissable conversation on finding and fostering happiness during the most challenging times. Michele Phillips' Background Michele Phillips is a corporate training and coaching expert, and the author of “Happiness is a Habit.”  She shares her vibrant leadership journey, emphasizing the crucial roles of energy, optimism, and positive psychology. Energy Transference: The Power of Positive Action Linda and Michele discuss energy transference, analyzing how our behavior can significantly affect circumstances around us.  They emphasize the significance of conscious effort in maintaining a positive energy flow, seeking new experiences, and continuously growing. The Ephemeral Nature of Event-Driven Happiness Research indicates that happiness derived from major life events such as promotions or personal milestones is transient, offering a boost for around three months.  Linda and Michele explore sustainability in happiness beyond these short-lived high points. The Poker Analogy: Building Happiness Daily Comparing happiness to a poker game, Michele discusses accumulating 'chips' of satisfaction through daily positive actions.  She also shares how these contribute to a resilient state of contentment in the long term. Harnessing Moments of Joy for Forward Movement Michele talks about her strategy for transforming negative circumstances by recognizing and focusing on the happiness and luck that exist even in dark times. This shift not only changes the narrative but pushes forward momentum. Embracing What Can Be Controlled Linda and Michele discuss the power of letting go of the uncontrollable and directing focus on what's within one's influence to find happiness.  Techniques such as the 'easy button' and the use of a clicker are highlighted as tools to acknowledge and celebrate positive moments. Discovering the Five Levels of Happiness Finally, the five happiness levels are discussed, with Michele sharing how happiness flourishes when contributing to someone else's joy.  She ends the episode by relaying a story that serves as a testament to the lasting influence of positive interactions. In this episode, Linda and Michele guide you through the ebbs and flows of life's unpredictable river. Learn from Michele's strategic approach to building a life 'poker chip' at a time with positive actions and shifts in perspective.  Discover the five levels of happiness and how contributing to someone else's joy amplifies your own. Listen to the full episode, connect with Michele's enriching content, and start forging your happiness habit today. Your next moment of joy could be just one play away! "You can't get to the bottom of a hole you're digging. So stop digging the dark hole. And put down the shovel." - Michele Phillips. Resources Michele Phillips on LinkedIn Michele Phillips on Instagram Key2unlock.com If this episode connected with you, reach out to Linda and let her know. This podcast is produced by TSE Studios. Check out other podcasts by TSE Studios, including this episode's sponsor, The Sales Evangelist, helping new and struggling sellers close more deals and achieve their sales goals. Subscribe to the IntHERrupt Podcast so you won't miss a single show. Find us on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and Stitcher. Audio created by Ryan Rasmussen Productions.   

(To win a personalized 8x10 Michelle Phillips autograph, keep reading.) Simply put, this is the best interview I've done to date.  It helps that band biographer Richard Campbell (@richcbart) and I were faced with a woman who was ready to come clean, to be so vulnerable, so funny….and SO RAW.   During Part 4 of this without-precedent 16-hour interview, the legendary singer and actress from The Mamas & The Papas tells it exactly like it is, in between rating everything the band's ever released.   In Part 4, Michelle reveals: A blow-by-blow of how she wound up falling in love with Mamas & Papas producer Lou Adler while she was pregnant with Chynna; The true story behind how she brought “Dream A Little Dream” to the band; And her contemptuous dismissal of their 4th album “The Papas & The Mamas,” recorded while the band fell apart. Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of the "Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime" Series—Part 4 alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 48 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! Extended edits of all shows are available on either the Lieutenant (longer) or Major (longest) Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be all yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week.   Please help support the show by ordering some choice goods from our new merch shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Order your copy of Richard Campbell's incredible new book ⁠Gettin' Kinda Itchie-The Groups That Made The Mamas & The Papas⁠ right now! TO WIN 1 OF 10 PERSONALIZED 8X10 MICHELLE PHILLIPS MONTEREY POP AUTOGRAPHS, JUST RE-POST THIS SHOW'S PROMO ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND TAG DAVE GEBROE & DISCOGRAFFITI THROUGH THE DURATION OF THIS SERIES…DOING IT FOR EACH INSTALLMENT WILL ONLY IMPROVE YOUR ODDS! CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: ⁠⁠⁠https://podfollow.com/1592182331⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw⁠ Merch Shop: ⁠https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all⁠ Web site: ⁠http://discograffiti.com/⁠ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

(To win a personalized 8x10 Michelle Phillips autograph, keep reading.) During Part 3 of this without-precedent 16-hour interview, the legendary singer and actress from The Mamas & The Papas tells it exactly like it is, in between rating everything the band's ever released.   In Part 3, Michelle reveals... A fascinating account of her participation in the origin of 1967's Monterey Pop Festival, the first rock festival of the modern era; Her harsh, gloves-off opinion of The Mamas & The Papas 3rd LP Deliver; And whether or not she felt any countercultural guilt over being the first rock group to opt for Lear Jet travel instead of vans & cars. Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of the Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime Series—Part 3 alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 34 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! Extended edits of all shows are available on either the Lieutenant (longer) or Major (longest) Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be all yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week.   Please help support the show by ordering some choice goods from our new merch shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Order your copy of Richard Campbell's incredible new book Gettin' Kinda Itchie-The Groups That Made The Mamas & The Papas right now! TO WIN 1 OF 10 PERSONALIZED 8X10 MICHELLE PHILLIPS MONTEREY POP AUTOGRAPHS, JUST RE-POST THIS SHOW'S PROMO ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND TAG DISCOGRAFFITI THROUGH THE DURATION OF THIS SERIES…DOING IT FOR EACH INSTALLMENT WILL ONLY IMPROVE YOUR ODDS! CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: ⁠⁠https://podfollow.com/1592182331⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Merch Shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

Dave Gebroe from The Discograffiti Podcast joins us to go back to the '60s to discuss the second Mamas and the Papas album. Yeah...we skip right over the previous album that has "California Dreaming" and "Monday, Monday." Fair warning...Wayne and I didn't love the album so that makes for some fun discussion because Dave LOVES this album and loves the band. Dave loves them so much so that he has Michelle Phillips from the band on his podcast for a marathon 15 hour interview. Yep. 15 hours!  Check out this episode then check out Dave's podcast as well!Check out The Discograffitti Podcast at:  https://discograffiti.com/Check out The Mamas & The Papas here: https://www.themamasandthepapasofficial.com/

(To win a personalized 8x10 Michelle Phillips autograph, keep reading.) During Part 2 of this without-precedent 16-hour interview, the legendary singer and actress from The Mamas & The Papas tells it exactly like it is, in between rating everything the band's ever released.   In Part 2, we cover:  An in-depth analysis of their first two classic records; How Gene Clark of The Byrds really felt deep down about his affair with Michelle; And a highly emotional discussion about the devastation left behind by John Phillips' rampant drug abuse. Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of the Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime Series—Part 2 alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 25 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! Longer edits are available on either the Lieutenant or Major Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be all yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week. And if that ain't your style but you enjoyed this episode, then please don't risk feeling badly about yourself by not giving: Gofund.me/d316c87c Order your copy of Richard Campbell's incredible new book GETTIN' KINDA ITCHIE - THE STORY OF THE GROUPS THAT MADE THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS right now!: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFCPBXK3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=27VWK1MC4H766&keywords=richard+campbell+books+mamas+papas&qid=1691765919&sprefix=richard+campbell+books+mamas+papas%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1. TO WIN 1 OF 10 PERSONALIZED 8X10 MICHELLE PHILLIPS MONTEREY POP AUTOGRAPHS, JUST RE-POST THIS SHOW'S PROMO ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND TAG DISCOGRAFFITI THROUGH THE DURATION OF THIS SERIES…DOING IT FOR EACH INSTALLMENT WILL ONLY IMPROVE YOUR ODDS! CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: ⁠⁠https://podfollow.com/1592182331⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Merch Shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

(To win a personalized 8x10 Michelle Phillips autograph, keep reading.) Simply put, this is the best interview I've done to date.  It helps that band biographer Richard Campbell and I were faced with a woman who was ready to come clean, to be so vulnerable, so funny….and SO RAW.  During Part 1 of this without-precedent 16-hour interview, the legendary singer and actress from The Mamas & The Papas tells it exactly like it is, in between rating everything the band's ever released.   In Part 1, we're treated to… An in-depth exploration of the group's very first acid trip together; A glimpse into Michelle's intense hatred toward one of The Mamas & The Papas' biggest ever hits; And in all likelihood, the most mythologically crazy backstory in rock history. Listen: https://podfollow.com/1592182331  If you're a Michelle Phillips & Mamas And The Papas superfan like me, you'll want the DIRECTOR'S CUT of this & the rest of the installments of the Michelle Phillips: Interview of a Lifetime Series—Part 1 alone features no ads and AN ADDITIONAL 18 MINUTES of essential material that we had to cut for time: https://www.patreon.com/discograffiti/shop/ Or subscribe! Longer edits are available on either the Lieutenant or Major Tiers. Discograffiti's 4-show-a-week release schedule can be all yours for the price of a cup of coffee a week. And if that ain't your style but you enjoyed this episode, then please don't risk feeling badly about yourself by not giving: Gofund.me/d316c87c Order your copy of Richard Campbell's incredible new book GETTIN' KINDA ITCHIE - THE STORY OF THE GROUPS THAT MADE THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS right now!: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFCPBXK3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=27VWK1MC4H766&keywords=richard+campbell+books+mamas+papas&qid=1691765919&sprefix=richard+campbell+books+mamas+papas%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1. CONNECT Join our Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: ⁠⁠https://podfollow.com/1592182331⁠⁠ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Merch Shop: https://discograffitipod.myspreadshop.com/all Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ CONTACT DAVE Email: dave@discograffiti.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hooligandave Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/davidgebroe/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveGebroe #michellephillips #themamasandthepapas #johnphillips #mamacass #themamasandpapas #casselliot #dennydoherty #mamasandthepapas #mamamichelle #gettinkindaitchie #wilsonphillips #papadenny #mamamichellephillips #montereypopfestival #scottmckenzie #knotslanding #mamasandpapas #montereypop #montereypopfestival #californiadreaming #chynnaphillips #genevievewaite #louadler #jillgibson #dennishopper #mackenziephillips #greenguccibag #discograffiti #metalmachinemuzak #soldiersofsound  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/discograffiti/support

Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas speaks about her life and time in the group. From The post Michelle Phillips – The Mamas & The Papas appeared first on The Strange Brew .

For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on "With a Little Help From My Friends" by Joe Cocker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in the first chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. The International Submarine Band's only album can be bought from Bandcamp. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we begin, a brief warning – this episode contains brief mentions of suicide, alcoholism, abortion, and heroin addiction, and a brief excerpt of chanting of a Nazi slogan. If you find those subjects upsetting, you may want to read the transcript rather than listen. As we heard in the last part, in October 1967 Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman fired David Crosby from the Byrds. It was only many years later, in a conversation with the group's ex-manager Jim Dickson, that Crosby realised that they didn't actually have a legal right to fire him -- the Byrds had no partnership agreement, and according to Dickson given that the original group had been Crosby, McGuinn, and Gene Clark, it would have been possible for Crosby and McGuinn to fire Hillman, but not for McGuinn and Hillman to fire Crosby. But Crosby was unaware of this at the time, and accepted a pay-off, with which he bought a boat and sailed to Florida, where saw a Canadian singer-songwriter performing live: [Excerpt: Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now (live Ann Arbor, MI, 27/10/67)"] We'll find out what happened when David Crosby brought Joni Mitchell back to California in a future story... With Crosby gone, the group had a major problem. They were known for two things -- their jangly twelve-string guitar and their soaring harmonies. They still had the twelve-string, even in their new slimmed-down trio format, but they only had two of their four vocalists -- and while McGuinn had sung lead on most of their hits, the sound of the Byrds' harmony had been defined by Crosby on the high harmonies and Gene Clark's baritone. There was an obvious solution available, of course, and they took it. Gene Clark had quit the Byrds in large part because of his conflicts with David Crosby, and had remained friendly with the others. Clark's solo album had featured Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, and had been produced by Gary Usher who was now producing the Byrds' records, and it had been a flop and he was at a loose end. After recording the Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers album, Clark had started work with Curt Boettcher, a singer-songwriter-producer who had produced hits for Tommy Roe and the Association, and who was currently working with Gary Usher. Boettcher produced two tracks for Clark, but they went unreleased: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Only Colombe"] That had been intended as the start of sessions for an album, but Clark had been dropped by Columbia rather than getting to record a second album. He had put together a touring band with guitarist Clarence White, bass player John York, and session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, but hadn't played many gigs, and while he'd been demoing songs for a possible second solo album he didn't have a record deal to use them on. Chisa Records, a label co-owned by Larry Spector, Peter Fonda, and Hugh Masekela, had put out some promo copies of one track, "Yesterday, Am I Right", but hadn't released it properly: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Yesterday, Am I Right"] Clark, like the Byrds, had left Dickson and Tickner's management organisation and signed with Larry Spector, and Spector was wanting to make the most of his artists -- and things were very different for the Byrds now. Clark had had three main problems with being in the Byrds -- ego clashes with David Crosby, the stresses of being a pop star with a screaming teenage fanbase, and his fear of flying. Clark had really wanted to have the same kind of role in the Byrds that Brian Wilson had with the Beach Boys -- appear on the records, write songs, do TV appearances, maybe play local club gigs, but not go on tour playing to screaming fans. But now David Crosby was out of the group and there were no screaming fans any more -- the Byrds weren't having the kind of pop hits they'd had a few years earlier and were now playing to the hippie audience. Clark promised that with everything else being different, he could cope with the idea of flying -- if necessary he'd just take tranquilisers or get so drunk he passed out. So Gene Clark rejoined the Byrds. According to some sources he sang on their next single, "Goin' Back," though I don't hear his voice in the mix: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] According to McGuinn, Clark was also an uncredited co-writer on one song on the album they were recording, "Get to You". But before sessions had gone very far, the group went on tour. They appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show, miming their new single and "Mr. Spaceman", and Clark seemed in good spirits, but on the tour of the Midwest that followed, according to their road manager of the time, Clark was terrified, singing flat and playing badly, and his guitar and vocal mic were left out of the mix. And then it came time to get on a plane, and Clark's old fears came back, and he refused to fly from Minneapolis to New York with the rest of the group, instead getting a train back to LA. And that was the end of Clark's second stint in the Byrds. For the moment, the Byrds decided they were going to continue as a trio on stage and a duo in the studio -- though Michael Clarke did make an occasional return to the sessions as they progressed. But of course, McGuinn and Hillman couldn't record an album entirely by themselves. They did have several tracks in a semi-completed state still featuring Crosby, but they needed people to fill his vocal and instrumental roles on the remaining tracks. For the vocals, Usher brought in his friend and collaborator Curt Boettcher, with whom he was also working at the time in a band called Sagittarius: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Another Time"] Boettcher was a skilled harmony vocalist -- according to Usher, he was one of the few vocal arrangers that Brian Wilson looked up to, and Jerry Yester had said of the Modern Folk Quartet that “the only vocals that competed with us back then was Curt Boettcher's group” -- and he was more than capable of filling Crosby's vocal gap, but there was never any real camaraderie between him and the Byrds. He particularly disliked McGuinn, who he said "was just such a poker face. He never let you know where you stood. There was never any lightness," and he said of the sessions as a whole "I was really thrilled to be working with The Byrds, and, at the same time, I was glad when it was all over. There was just no fun, and they were such weird guys to work with. They really freaked me out!" Someone else who Usher brought in, who seems to have made a better impression, was Red Rhodes: [Excerpt: Red Rhodes, "Red's Ride"] Rhodes was a pedal steel player, and one of the few people to make a career on the instrument outside pure country music, which is the genre with which the instrument is usually identified. Rhodes was a country player, but he was the country pedal steel player of choice for musicians from the pop and folk-rock worlds. He worked with Usher and Boettcher on albums by Sagittarius and the Millennium, and played on records by Cass Elliot, Carole King, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters, among many others -- though he would be best known for his longstanding association with Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, playing on most of Nesmith's recordings from 1968 through 1992. Someone else who was associated with the Monkees was Moog player Paul Beaver, who we talked about in the episode on "Hey Jude", and who had recently played on the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd album: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Star Collector"] And the fourth person brought in to help the group out was someone who was already familiar to them. Clarence White was, like Red Rhodes, from the country world -- he'd started out in a bluegrass group called the Kentucky Colonels: [Excerpt: The Kentucky Colonels, "Clinch Mountain Backstep"] But White had gone electric and formed one of the first country-rock bands, a group named Nashville West, as well as becoming a popular session player. He had already played on a couple of tracks on Younger Than Yesterday, as well as playing with Hillman and Michael Clarke on Gene Clark's album with the Gosdin Brothers and being part of Clark's touring band with John York and "Fast" Eddie Hoh. The album that the group put together with these session players was a triumph of sequencing and production. Usher had recently been keen on the idea of crossfading tracks into each other, as the Beatles had on Sgt Pepper, and had done the same on the two Chad and Jeremy albums he produced. By clever crossfading and mixing, Usher managed to create something that had the feel of being a continuous piece, despite being the product of several very different creative minds, with Usher's pop sensibility and arrangement ideas being the glue that held everything together. McGuinn was interested in sonic experimentation. He, more than any of the others, seems to have been the one who was most pushing for them to use the Moog, and he continued his interest in science fiction, with a song, "Space Odyssey", inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel", which was also the inspiration for the then-forthcoming film 2001: A Space Odyssey: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Space Odyssey"] Then there was Chris Hillman, who was coming up with country material like "Old John Robertson": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Old John Robertson"] And finally there was David Crosby. Even though he'd been fired from the group, both McGuinn and Hillman didn't see any problem with using the songs he had already contributed. Three of the album's eleven songs are compositions that are primarily by Crosby, though they're all co-credited to either Hillman or both Hillman and McGuinn. Two of those songs are largely unchanged from Crosby's original vision, just finished off by the rest of the group after his departure, but one song is rather different: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] "Draft Morning" was a song that was important to Crosby, and was about his -- and the group's -- feelings about the draft and the ongoing Vietnam War. It was a song that had meant a lot to him, and he'd been part of the recording for the backing track. But when it came to doing the final vocals, McGuinn and Hillman had a problem -- they couldn't remember all the words to the song, and obviously there was no way they were going to get Crosby to give them the original lyrics. So they rewrote it, coming up with new lyrics where they couldn't remember the originals: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] But there was one other contribution to the track that was very distinctively the work of Usher. Gary Usher had a predilection at this point for putting musique concrete sections in otherwise straightforward pop songs. He'd done it with "Fakin' It" by Simon and Garfunkel, on which he did uncredited production work, and did it so often that it became something of a signature of records on Columbia in 1967 and 68, even being copied by his friend Jim Guercio on "Susan" by the Buckinghams. Usher had done this, in particular, on the first two singles by Sagittarius, his project with Curt Boettcher. In particular, the second Sagittarius single, "Hotel Indiscreet", had had a very jarring section (and a warning here, this contains some brief chanting of a Nazi slogan): [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Hotel Indiscreet"] That was the work of a comedy group that Usher had discovered and signed to Columbia. The Firesign Theatre were so named because, like Usher, they were all interested in astrology, and they were all "fire signs".  Usher was working on their first album, Waiting For The Electrician or Someone Like Him, at the same time as he was working on the Byrds album: [Excerpt: The Firesign Theatre, "W.C. Fields Forever"] And he decided to bring in the Firesigns to contribute to "Draft Morning": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] Crosby was, understandably, apoplectic when he heard the released version of "Draft Morning". As far as Hillman and McGuinn were concerned, it was always a Byrds song, and just because Crosby had left the band didn't mean they couldn't use material he'd written for the Byrds. Crosby took a different view, saying later "It was one of the sleaziest things they ever did. I had an entire song finished. They just casually rewrote it and decided to take half the credit. How's that? Without even asking me. I had a finished song, entirely mine. I left. They did the song anyway. They rewrote it and put it in their names. And mine was better. They just took it because they didn't have enough songs." What didn't help was that the publicity around the album, titled The Notorious Byrd Brothers minimised Crosby's contributions. Crosby is on five of the eleven tracks -- as he said later, "I'm all over that album, they just didn't give me credit. I played, I sang, I wrote, I even played bass on one track, and they tried to make out that I wasn't even on it, that they could be that good without me." But the album, like earlier Byrds albums, didn't have credits saying who played what, and the cover only featured McGuinn, Hillman, and Michael Clarke in the photo -- along with a horse, which Crosby took as another insult, as representing him. Though as McGuinn said, "If we had intended to do that, we would have turned the horse around". Even though Michael Clarke was featured on the cover, and even owned the horse that took Crosby's place, by the time the album came out he too had been fired. Unlike Crosby, he went quietly and didn't even ask for any money. According to McGuinn, he was increasingly uninterested in being in the band -- suffering from depression, and missing the teenage girls who had been the group's fans a year or two earlier. He gladly stopped being a Byrd, and went off to work in a hotel instead. In his place came Hillman's cousin, Kevin Kelley, fresh out of a band called the Rising Sons: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] We've mentioned the Rising Sons briefly in some previous episodes, but they were one of the earliest LA folk-rock bands, and had been tipped to go on to greater things -- and indeed, many of them did, though not as part of the Rising Sons. Jesse Lee Kincaid, the least well-known of the band, only went on to release a couple of singles and never had much success, but his songs were picked up by other acts -- his "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind" was a minor hit for the Peppermint Trolley Company: [Excerpt: The Peppermint Trolley Company, "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind"] And Harry Nilsson recorded Kincaid's "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune": [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune"] But Kincaid was the least successful of the band members, and most of the other members are going to come up in future episodes of the podcast -- bass player Gary Marker played for a while with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, lead singer Taj Mahal is one of the most respected blues singers of the last sixty years, original drummer Ed Cassidy went on to form the progressive rock band Spirit, and lead guitarist Ry Cooder went on to become one of the most important guitarists in rock music. Kelley had been the last to join the Rising Sons, replacing Cassidy but he was in the band by the time they released their one single, a version of Rev. Gary Davis' "Candy Man" produced by Terry Melcher, with Kincaid on lead vocals: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Candy Man"] That hadn't been a success, and the group's attempt at a follow-up, the Goffin and King song "Take a Giant Step", which we heard earlier, was blocked from release by Columbia as being too druggy -- though there were no complaints when the Monkees released their version as the B-side to "Last Train to Clarksville". The Rising Sons, despite being hugely popular as a live act, fell apart without ever releasing a second single. According to Marker, Mahal realised that he would be better off as a solo artist, but also Columbia didn't know how to market a white group with a Black lead vocalist (leading to Kincaid singing lead on their one released single, and producer Terry Melcher trying to get Mahal to sing more like a white singer on "Take a Giant Step"), and some in the band thought that Terry Melcher was deliberately trying to sink their career because they refused to sign to his publishing company. After the band split up, Marker and Kelley had formed a band called Fusion, which Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan describes as being a jazz-fusion band, presumably because of their name. Listening to the one album the group recorded, it is in fact more blues-rock, very like the music Marker made with the Rising Sons and Captain Beefheart. But Kelley's not on that album, because before it was recorded he was approached by his cousin Chris Hillman and asked to join the Byrds. At the time, Fusion were doing so badly that Kelley had to work a day job in a clothes shop, so he was eager to join a band with a string of hits who were just about to conclude a lucrative renegotiation of their record contract -- a renegotiation which may have played a part in McGuinn and Hillman firing Crosby and Clarke, as they were now the only members on the new contracts. The choice of Kelley made a lot of sense. He was mostly just chosen because he was someone they knew and they needed a drummer in a hurry -- they needed someone new to promote The Notorious Byrd Brothers and didn't have time to go through a laborious process of audtioning, and so just choosing Hillman's cousin made sense, but Kelley also had a very strong, high voice, and so he could fill in the harmony parts that Crosby had sung, stopping the new power-trio version of the band from being *too* thin-sounding in comparison to the five-man band they'd been not that much earlier. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was not a commercial success -- it didn't even make the top forty in the US, though it did in the UK -- to the presumed chagrin of Columbia, who'd just paid a substantial amount of money for this band who were getting less successful by the day. But it was, though, a gigantic critical success, and is generally regarded as the group's creative pinnacle. Robert Christgau, for example, talked about how LA rather than San Francisco was where the truly interesting music was coming from, and gave guarded praise to Captain Beefheart, Van Dyke Parks, and the Fifth Dimension (the vocal group, not the Byrds album) but talked about three albums as being truly great -- the Beach Boys' Wild Honey, Love's Forever Changes, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers. (He also, incidentally, talked about how the two songs that Crosby's new discovery Joni Mitchell had contributed to a Judy Collins album were much better than most folk music, and how he could hardly wait for her first album to come out). And that, more or less, was the critical consensus about The Notorious Byrd Brothers -- that it was, in Christgau's words "simply the best album the Byrds have ever recorded" and that "Gone are the weak--usually folky--tracks that have always flawed their work." McGuinn, though, thought that the album wasn't yet what he wanted. He had become particularly excited by the potentials of the Moog synthesiser -- an instrument that Gary Usher also loved -- during the recording of the album, and had spent a lot of time experimenting with it, coming up with tracks like the then-unreleased "Moog Raga": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Moog Raga"] And McGuinn had a concept for the next Byrds album -- a concept he was very excited about. It was going to be nothing less than a grand sweeping history of American popular music. It was going to be a double album -- the new contract said that they should deliver two albums a year to Columbia, so a double album made sense -- and it would start with Appalachian folk music, go through country, jazz, and R&B, through the folk-rock music the Byrds had previously been known for, and into Moog experimentation. But to do this, the Byrds needed a keyboard player. Not only would a keyboard player help them fill out their thin onstage sound, if they got a jazz keyboardist, then they could cover the jazz material in McGuinn's concept album idea as well. So they went out and looked for a jazz piano player, and happily Larry Spector was managing one. Or at least, Larry Spector was managing someone who *said* he was a jazz pianist. But Gram Parsons said he was a lot of things... [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Brass Buttons (1965 version)"] Gram Parsons was someone who had come from a background of unimaginable privilege. His maternal grandfather was the owner of a Florida citrus fruit and real-estate empire so big that his mansion was right in the centre of what was then Florida's biggest theme park -- built on land he owned. As a teenager, Parsons had had a whole wing of his parents' house to himself, and had had servants to look after his every need, and as an adult he had a trust fund that paid him a hundred thousand dollars a year -- which in 1968 dollars would be equivalent to a little under nine hundred thousand in today's money. Two events in his childhood had profoundly shaped the life of young Gram. The first was in February 1956, when he went to see a new singer who he'd heard on the radio, and who according to the local newspaper had just recorded a new song called "Heartburn Motel".  Parsons had tried to persuade his friends that this new singer was about to become a big star -- one of his friends had said "I'll wait til he becomes famous!" As it turned out, the day Parsons and the couple of friends he did manage to persuade to go with him saw Elvis Presley was also the day that "Heartbreak Hotel" entered the Billboard charts at number sixty-eight. But even at this point, Elvis was an obvious star and the headliner of the show. Young Gram was enthralled -- but in retrospect he was more impressed by the other acts he saw on the bill. That was an all-star line-up of country musicians, including Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, and especially the Louvin Brothers, arguably the greatest country music vocal duo of all time: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "The Christian Life"] Young Gram remained mostly a fan of rockabilly music rather than country, and would remain so for another decade or so, but a seed had been planted. The other event, much more tragic, was the death of his father. Both Parsons' parents were functioning alcoholics, and both by all accounts were unfaithful to each other, and their marriage was starting to break down. Gram's father was also, by many accounts, dealing with what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder from his time serving in the second world war. On December the twenty-third 1958, Gram's father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Everyone involved seems sure it was suicide, but it was officially recorded as natural causes because of the family's wealth and prominence in the local community. Gram's Christmas present from his parents that year was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and according to some stories I've read his father had left a last message on a tape in the recorder, but by the time the authorities got to hear it, it had been erased apart from the phrase "I love you, Gram." After that Gram's mother's drinking got even worse, but in most ways his life still seemed charmed, and the descriptions of him as a teenager are about what you'd expect from someone who was troubled, with a predisposition to addiction, but who was also unbelievably wealthy, good-looking, charming, and talented. And the talent was definitely there. One thing everyone is agreed on is that from a very young age Gram Parsons took his music seriously and was determined to make a career as a musician. Keith Richards later said of him "Of the musicians I know personally (although Otis Redding, who I didn't know, fits this too), the two who had an attitude towards music that was the same as mine were Gram Parsons and John Lennon. And that was: whatever bag the business wants to put you in is immaterial; that's just a selling point, a tool that makes it easier. You're going to get chowed into this pocket or that pocket because it makes it easier for them to make charts up and figure out who's selling. But Gram and John were really pure musicians. All they liked was music, and then they got thrown into the game." That's not the impression many other people have of Parsons, who is almost uniformly described as an incessant self-promoter, and who from his teens onwards would regularly plant fake stories about himself in the local press, usually some variant of him having been signed to RCA records. Most people seem to think that image was more important to him than anything. In his teens, he started playing in a series of garage bands around Florida and Georgia, the two states in which he was brought up. One of his early bands was largely created by poaching the rhythm section who were then playing with Kent Lavoie, who later became famous as Lobo and had hits like "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo". Lavoie apparently held a grudge -- decades later he would still say that Parsons couldn't sing or play or write. Another musician on the scene with whom Parsons associated was Bobby Braddock, who would later go on to co-write songs like "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" for Tammy Wynette, and the song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", often considered the greatest country song ever written, for George Jones: [Excerpt: George Jones, "He Stopped Loving Her Today"] Jones would soon become one of Parsons' musical idols, but at this time he was still more interested in being Elvis or Little Richard. We're lucky enough to have a 1962 live recording of one of his garage bands, the Legends -- the band that featured the bass player and drummer he'd poached from Lobo. They made an appearance on a local TV show and a friend with a tape recorder recorded it off the TV and decades later posted it online. Of the four songs in that performance, two are R&B covers -- Little Richard's "Rip It Up" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say?", and a third is the old Western Swing classic "Guitar Boogie Shuffle". But the interesting thing about the version of "Rip it Up" is that it's sung in an Everly Brothers style harmony, and the fourth song is a recording of the Everlys' "Let It Be Me". The Everlys were, of course, hugely influenced by the Louvin Brothers, who had so impressed young Gram six years earlier, and in this performance you can hear for the first time the hints of the style that Parsons would make his own a few years later: [Excerpt: Gram Parsons and the Legends, "Let it Be Me"] Incidentally, the other guitarist in the Legends, Jim Stafford, also went on to a successful musical career, having a top five hit in the seventies with "Spiders & Snakes": [Excerpt: Jim Stafford, "Spiders & Snakes"] Soon after that TV performance though, like many musicians of his generation, Parsons decided to give up on rock and roll, and instead to join a folk group. The group he joined, The Shilos, were a trio who were particularly influenced by the Journeymen, John Phillips' folk group before he formed the Mamas and the Papas, which we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". At various times the group expanded with the addition of some female singers, trying to capture something of the sound of the New Chrisy Minstrels. In 1964, with the band members still in school, the Shilos decided to make a trip to Greenwich Village and see if they could make the big time as folk-music stars. They met up with John Phillips, and Parsons stayed with John and Michelle Phillips in their home in New York -- this was around the time the two of them were writing "California Dreamin'". Phillips got the Shilos an audition with Albert Grossman, who seemed eager to sign them until he realised they were still schoolchildren just on a break. The group were, though, impressive enough that he was interested, and we have some recordings of them from a year later which show that they were surprisingly good for a bunch of teenagers: [Excerpt: The Shilos, "The Bells of Rhymney"] Other than Phillips, the other major connection that Parsons made in New York was the folk singer Fred Neil, who we've talked about occasionally before. Neil was one of the great songwriters of the Greenwich Village scene, and many of his songs became successful for others -- his "Dolphins" was recorded by Tim Buckley, most famously his "Everybody's Talkin'" was a hit for Harry Nilsson, and he wrote "Another Side of This Life" which became something of a standard -- it was recorded by the Animals and the Lovin' Spoonful, and Jefferson Airplane, as well as recording the song, included it in their regular setlists, including at Monterey: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "The Other Side of This Life (live at Monterey)"] According to at least one biographer, though, Neil had another, more pernicious, influence on Parsons -- he may well have been the one who introduced Parsons to heroin, though several of Parsons' friends from the time said he wasn't yet using hard drugs. By spring 1965, Parsons was starting to rethink his commitment to folk music, particularly after "Mr. Tambourine Man" became a hit. He talked with the other members about their need to embrace the changes in music that Dylan and the Byrds were bringing about, but at the same time he was still interested enough in acoustic music that when he was given the job of arranging the music for his high school graduation, the group he booked were the Dillards. That graduation day was another day that would change Parsons' life -- as it was the day his mother died, of alcohol-induced liver failure. Parsons was meant to go on to Harvard, but first he went back to Greenwich Village for the summer, where he hung out with Fred Neil and Dave Van Ronk (and started using heroin regularly). He went to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium, and he was neighbours with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay -- the three of them talked about forming a band together before Stills moved West. And on a brief trip back home to Florida between Greenwich Village and Harvard, Parsons spoke with his old friend Jim Stafford, who made a suggestion to him -- instead of trying to do folk music, which was clearly falling out of fashion, why not try to do *country* music but with long hair like the Beatles? He could be a country Beatle. It would be an interesting gimmick. Parsons was only at Harvard for one semester before flunking out, but it was there that he was fully reintroduced to country music, and in particular to three artists who would influence him more than any others. He'd already been vaguely aware of Buck Owens, whose "Act Naturally" had recently been covered by the Beatles: [Excerpt: Buck Owens, "Act Naturally"] But it was at Harvard that he gained a deeper appreciation of Owens. Owens was the biggest star of what had become known as the Bakersfield Sound, a style of country music that emphasised a stripped-down electric band lineup with Telecaster guitars, a heavy drumbeat, and a clean sound. It came from the same honky-tonk and Western Swing roots as the rockabilly music that Parsons had grown up on, and it appealed to him instinctively.  In particular, Parsons was fascinated by the fact that Owens' latest album had a cover version of a Drifters song on it -- and then he got even more interested when Ray Charles put out his third album of country songs and included a version of Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Together Again"] This suggested to Parsons that country music and the R&B he'd been playing previously might not quite be so far apart as he'd thought. At Harvard, Parsons was also introduced to the work of another Bakersfield musician, who like Owens was produced by Ken Nelson, who also produced the Louvin Brothers' records, and who we heard about in previous episodes as he produced Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. Merle Haggard had only had one big hit at the time, "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers": [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "(My Friends are Gonna Be) Strangers"] But he was about to start a huge run of country hits that would see every single he released for the next twelve years make the country top ten, most of them making number one. Haggard would be one of the biggest stars in country music, but he was also to be arguably the country musician with the biggest influence on rock music since Johnny Cash, and his songs would soon start to be covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Everly Brothers to the Beach Boys. And the third artist that Parsons was introduced to was someone who, in most popular narratives of country music, is set up in opposition to Haggard and Owens, because they were representatives of the Bakersfield Sound while he was the epitome of the Nashville Sound to which the Bakersfield Sound is placed in opposition, George Jones. But of course anyone with ears will notice huge similarities in the vocal styles of Jones, Haggard, and Owens: [Excerpt: George Jones, "The Race is On"] Owens, Haggard, and Jones are all somewhat outside the scope of this series, but are seriously important musicians in country music. I would urge anyone who's interested in them to check out Tyler Mahan Coe's podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, season one of which has episodes on Haggard and Owens, as well as on the Louvin Brothers who I also mentioned earlier, and season two of which is entirely devoted to Jones. When he dropped out of Harvard after one semester, Parsons was still mostly under the thrall of the Greenwich Village folkies -- there's a recording of him made over Christmas 1965 that includes his version of "Another Side of This Life": [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Another Side of This Life"] But he was encouraged to go further in the country direction by John Nuese (and I hope that's the correct pronunciation – I haven't been able to find any recordings mentioning his name), who had introduced him to this music and who also played guitar. Parsons, Neuse, bass player Ian Dunlop and drummer Mickey Gauvin formed a band that was originally called Gram Parsons and the Like. They soon changed their name though, inspired by an Our Gang short in which the gang became a band: [Excerpt: Our Gang, "Mike Fright"] Shortening the name slightly, they became the International Submarine Band. Parsons rented them a house in New York, and they got a contract with Goldstar Records, and released a couple of singles. The first of them, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" was a cover of the theme to a comedy film that came out around that time, and is not especially interesting: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming"] The second single is more interesting. "Sum Up Broke" is a song by Parsons and Neuse, and shows a lot of influence from the Byrds: [Excerpt: The international Submarine Band, "Sum Up Broke"] While in New York with the International Submarine Band, Parsons made another friend in the music business. Barry Tashian was the lead singer of a band called the Remains, who had put out a couple of singles: [Excerpt: The Remains, "Why Do I Cry?"] The Remains are now best known for having been on the bill on the Beatles' last ever tour, including playing as support on their last ever show at Candlestick Park, but they split up before their first album came out. After spending most of 1966 in New York, Parsons decided that he needed to move the International Submarine Band out to LA. There were two reasons for this. The first was his friend Brandon DeWilde, an actor who had been a child star in the fifties -- it's him at the end of Shane -- who was thinking of pursuing a musical career. DeWilde was still making TV appearances, but he was also a singer -- John Nuese said that DeWilde sang harmony with Parsons better than anyone except Emmylou Harris -- and he had recorded some demos with the International Submarine Band backing him, like this version of Buck Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Brandon DeWilde, "Together Again"] DeWilde had told Parsons he could get the group some work in films. DeWilde made good on that promise to an extent -- he got the group a cameo in The Trip, a film we've talked about in several other episodes, which was being directed by Roger Corman, the director who worked a lot with David Crosby's father, and was coming out from American International Pictures, the company that put out the beach party films -- but while the group were filmed performing one of their own songs, in the final film their music was overdubbed by the Electric Flag. The Trip starred Peter Fonda, another member of the circle of people around David Crosby, and another son of privilege, who at this point was better known for being Henry Fonda's son than for his own film appearances. Like DeWilde, Fonda wanted to become a pop star, and he had been impressed by Parsons, and asked if he could record Parsons' song "November Nights". Parsons agreed, and the result was released on Chisa Records, the label we talked about earlier that had put out promos of Gene Clark, in a performance produced by Hugh Masekela: [Excerpt: Peter Fonda, "November Nights"] The other reason the group moved West though was that Parsons had fallen in love with David Crosby's girlfriend, Nancy Ross, who soon became pregnant with his daughter -- much to Parsons' disappointment, she refused to have an abortion. Parsons bought the International Submarine Band a house in LA to rehearse in, and moved in separately with Nancy. The group started playing all the hottest clubs around LA, supporting bands like Love and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, but they weren't sounding great, partly because Parsons was more interested in hanging round with celebrities than rehearsing -- the rest of the band had to work for a living, and so took their live performances more seriously than he did, while he was spending time catching up with his old folk friends like John Phillips and Fred Neil, as well as getting deeper into drugs and, like seemingly every musician in 1967, Scientology, though he only dabbled in the latter. The group were also, though, starting to split along musical lines. Dunlop and Gauvin wanted to play R&B and garage rock, while Parsons and Nuese wanted to play country music. And there was a third issue -- which record label should they go with? There were two labels interested in them, neither of them particularly appealing. The offer that Dunlop in particular wanted to go with was from, of all people, Jay Ward Records: [Excerpt: A Salute to Moosylvania] Jay Ward was the producer and writer of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right and other cartoons, and had set up a record company, which as far as I've been able to tell had only released one record, and that five years earlier (we just heard a snippet of it). But in the mid-sixties several cartoon companies were getting into the record business -- we'll hear more about that when we get to song 186 -- and Ward's company apparently wanted to sign the International Submarine Band, and were basically offering to throw money at them. Parsons, on the other hand, wanted to go with Lee Hazlewood International. This was a new label set up by someone we've only talked about in passing, but who was very influential on the LA music scene, Lee Hazlewood. Hazlewood had got his start producing country hits like Sanford Clark's "The Fool": [Excerpt: Sanford Clark, "The Fool"] He'd then moved on to collaborating with Lester Sill, producing a series of hits for Duane Eddy, whose unique guitar sound Hazlewood helped come up with: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser"] After splitting off from Sill, who had gone off to work with Phil Spector, who had been learning some production techniques from Hazlewood, Hazlewood had gone to work for Reprise records, where he had a career in a rather odd niche, producing hit records for the children of Rat Pack stars. He'd produced Dino, Desi, and Billy, who consisted of future Beach Boys sideman Billy Hinsche plus Desi Arnaz Jr and Dean Martin Jr: [Excerpt: Dino, Desi, and Billy, "I'm a Fool"] He'd also produced Dean Martin's daughter Deana: [Excerpt: Deana Martin, "Baby I See You"] and rather more successfully he'd written and produced a series of hits for Nancy Sinatra, starting with "These Boots are Made for Walkin'": [Excerpt: Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots are Made for Walkin'"] Hazlewood had also moved into singing himself. He'd released a few tracks on his own, but his career as a performer hadn't really kicked into gear until he'd started writing duets for Nancy Sinatra. She apparently fell in love with his demos and insisted on having him sing them with her in the studio, and so the two made a series of collaborations like the magnificently bizarre "Some Velvet Morning": [Excerpt: Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, "Some Velvet Morning"] Hazlewood is now considered something of a cult artist, thanks largely to a string of magnificent orchestral country-pop solo albums he recorded, but at this point he was one of the hottest people in the music industry. He wasn't offering to produce the International Submarine Band himself -- that was going to be his partner, Suzi Jane Hokom -- but Parsons thought it was better to sign for less money to a label that was run by someone with a decade-long string of massive hit records than for more money to a label that had put out one record about a cartoon moose. So the group split up. Dunlop and Gauvin went off to form another band, with Barry Tashian -- and legend has it that one of the first times Gram Parsons visited the Byrds in the studio, he mentioned the name of that band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and that was the inspiration for the Byrds titling their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Parsons and Nuese, on the other hand, formed a new lineup of The International Submarine Band, with bass player Chris Ethridge, drummer John Corneal, who Parsons had first played with in The Legends, and guitarist Bob Buchanan, a former member of the New Christy Minstrels who Parsons had been performing with as a duo after they'd met through Fred Neil. The International Submarine Band recorded an album, Safe At Home, which is now often called the first country-rock album -- though as we've said so often, there's no first anything. That album was a mixture of cover versions of songs by people like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known"] And Parsons originals, like "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?", which he cowrote with Barry Goldberg of the Electric Flag: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?"] But the recording didn't go smoothly. In particular, Corneal realised he'd been hoodwinked. Parsons had told him, when persuading him to move West, that he'd be able to sing on the record and that some of his songs would be used. But while the record was credited to The International Submarine Band, everyone involved agrees that it was actually a Gram Parsons solo album by any other name -- he was in charge, he wouldn't let other members' songs on the record, and he didn't let Corneal sing as he'd promised. And then, before the album could be released, he was off. The Byrds wanted a jazz keyboard player, and Parsons could fake being one long enough to get the gig. The Byrds had got rid of one rich kid with a giant ego who wanted to take control of everything and thought his undeniable talent excused his attempts at dominating the group, and replaced him with another one -- who also happened to be signed to another record label. We'll see how well that worked out for them in two weeks' time.  

From representing Yoko Ono to winning class action lawsuits on behalf of actors and musicians, Neville Johnson and his partner Douglas Johnson (no relationship) have built one of the most interesting and successful entertainment law practices in the nation, specializing in representing “talent” as opposed to the business side of the industry.  Join Rahul and Ben for a fascinating discussion with Neville and Doug, as they describe how they got their start in this practice, recount some of their most interesting cases, and talk about trends in entertainment law resulting from new technologies. About Neville Johnson - Senior PartnerWebsite: Johnson and Johnson, LLP Law Firm | Johnson and Johnson, LLP (jjllplaw.com) Professional Experience:Neville L. Johnson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley (1971).  He received his law degree from Southwestern Law School (1975), graduating near the top of his class.  He has tried over 28 civil jury trials and over 70 civil trials and arbitrations without a jury. He is a member of the invitation-only American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), and is on the Board of Governors of the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles (CAALA since 2005), the Board of Directors of the national organization Public Justice, and on the Board of Governors of the Beverly Hills Bar Association 2013-2015 and 2020-2022 (BHBA). Johnson is a long-time member of the invitation-only Los Angeles Copyright Society, and on the Board of The California Society of Entertainment Lawyers. He was nominated for Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2005 by CAALA.  He was Co-Chair of the Entertainment Law Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association from 2009 to 2011. He has been on the Planning Committee of the USC Entertainment Law Institute since 2011. He has appeared in courts in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In 2020, Mr. Johnson and his team secured a verdict in a Right of Publicity case of over 9 Million Dollars in damages, and over 7 Million Dollars in attorneys fees. Mr. Johnson has litigated and settled countless cases against a wide array of defendants concerning royalty accounting, profit participation, publicity rights, idea theft, copyright infringement, and many other entertainment law matters. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Southwestern Law School since 2012, where he teaches Entertainment and Media Litigation. However, his greatest pride has been in defending the privacy rights of all citizens against the worst malefactors in the media. His work in this field was perhaps best summarized by Professor David A. Elder, a leading expert on the law of privacy, who published the following special dedication in his treatise, Privacy Torts: To Neville L. Johnson… who has led the charge, often successfully (and always creatively and with great passion) in exposing some of the worst outrages of media newsgathering. Neville ranks with Brandeis and Warren as the great defenders of privacy. All America is in his debt. Mr. Johnson has practiced entertainment law and IP law since 1975 [except for 10 months in 1977-78 when he was a Public Defender (juvenile) in Los Angeles County and handled over 100 matters, including two murder trials and one attempted murder trial]. Mr. Johnson has represented many well-known celebrities and entertainment concerns. The firm currently represents Sylvester Stallone in net profit litigation, and many other writers, directors, actors, producers, musicians, models, and JoJo Siwa, the biggest teen star in the world. He and his firm have been lead counsel in many class actions, including pioneering class actions in the entertainment industry against the entertainment unions, major record companies and motion picture companies. The firm has also handled a number of consumer class actions. The firm handles 15 to 20 right of publicity cases a year. Mr. Johnson is a frequent lecturer and written extensively on entertainment, copyright and media and other legal topics, including in London, England  (Entertainment attorneys based in the UK, London Branch of Entertainment Section of BHBA), Cannes, France (MIDEM, the international music convention), New York (ABA Forum on Communications Section, and Entertainment Law Section and New York Bar Assn.: Entertainment Law Section), Nashville (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Las Vegas (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Miami, Arizona State University, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Loyola Law School, Southwestern Law School, USC Entertainment Law Institute annual forum (3 times) as well as the undergraduate school, California Western School of Law, California State University, Northridge, and many times to the Entertainment Section of the BHBA as a panelist or moderator), the Intellectual Property Section of Los Angeles County Bar Assn., and Berklee College of Music (Boston). Johnson & Johnson LLP, based in Beverly Hills, California, is a litigation firm that specializes in complex litigation with a particular emphasis on entertainment, intellectual property, right of publicity, privacy, defamation, consumer issues, and class actions. Mr. Johnson and the firm also negotiate business and entertainment agreements. Representative Matters:Obtained a 9.6 Million Dollar jury verdict after a seven week jury trial for claim of violation of the right of publicity, Hansen v. The Coca Cola Company, the largest verdict for a right of publicity case in the history of the United States. The trial court also awarded 7.4 million dollars in attorneys' fees.Obtained a unanimous landmark privacy ruling from the California Supreme Court in Sanders v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (1999) 20 Cal.4th 907, a decision that is included in multiple casebooks and taught in law schools across the country.Obtained a published California Court of Appeal opinion representing fitness celebrity Richard Simmons in right of privacy claims against a magazine and private eye for placing a GPS tracker on a car. Simmons v. Bauer Media (2020)Represented numerous victims (both individually and in a class action) of notorious wiretapper Anthony Pellicano and other liable parties, including obtaining a favorable partial affirmance of a significant sanctions award by the California Court of Appeal in Gerbosi v. Gaims, Weil, West & Epstein LLP (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 435, which concerned a law firm's use of Pellicano's services.Pioneered the use of class actions against studios and record labels for improperly accounting to artists regarding royalties and profit participation, obtaining multiple eight-figure settlements therefrom. Represented many individuals in profit participation claims, including Sylvester Stallone, Jack Klugman, Richard Dreyfuss and Mike Connors.Represented the heir of songwriter Gram Parsons in Parsons v. Tickner (1995) 31 Cal.App.4th 1513, defeating a statute of limitations defense and establishing a fiduciary duty claim against a music publisher.Represented numerous legendary musicians and/or their estates on a variety of contractual, accounting, and intellectual property matters, including John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Michelle Phillips, Rick Nelson, P.F. Sloan, members of Earth, Wind and Fire, Mitch Ryder, Lloyd Price and many others.Obtained a $15 million award in a jury trial business fraud case. Honors:He has been repeatedly selected by Super Lawyers as one of the top entertainment attorneys in Southern California (top 5% of attorneys as voted by peers). In 2020, 2021 and 2022 Super Lawyer and his peers named him one of the top 100 attorneys in Southern California, the only entertainment attorney on the list, he was named one of the top 100 Power Lawyers in Entertainment Law by The Hollywood Reporter every year since, 2008, and in 2020 moved to a new permanent category and designated a “Legal Legend.” He has also been designated numerous times one of the top lawyers in entertainment by Variety and Los Angeles legal newspapaer The Daily Journal. He was nominated as Trial Lawyer of the Year by the California Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. He is a fellow at the American Law Institute (only 2% of all attorneys are members).  In 2020 he was honored as Alumnus of the Year by the Biederman Entertainment Law Institute at Southwestern Law School.   A law review article about his career is Richard and Calvert, “Suing the Media, Supporting the First Amendment: the Paradox of Neville Johnson and the Battle for Privacy,” 67 Albany Law Review 1097 (2004). On June 23, 2015, the Los Angeles Times did a major profile (front page, Business Section) on his career, “Contract Sport, ‘Go-to' L.A. Lawyer Says Hollywood Studios Are Shortchanging His Clients,” noting that Johnson & Johnson is one of the few firms successfully taking on the entertainment establishment on a regular basis. The cover story of the July 2016, issue of Attorney at Law magazine is about Neville Johnson.  The Los Angeles Business Journal profiled him on its first page, “Lawyer Up,” (September 9, 2019). Speaking Engagements:He is a frequent speaker, including in London, England [Entertainment attorneys based in the UK, London Branch of Entertainment Section of Beverly Hills Bar Association (BHBA)], Cannes, France (MIDEM, the international music convention), the Intellectual Property Section of Los Angeles County Bar Assn., and Berklee College of Music (Boston); and the Los Angeles Copyright Society. New York (ABA Forum on Communications Section, and Entertainment Law Section and New York Bar Assn.: Entertainment Law Section), Nashville (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Las Vegas (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Miami, Arizona State University, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Loyola Law School, Southwestern Law School, USC Entertainment Law Institute annual forum (3 times) as well as the undergraduate school, California Western School of Law, California State University, Northridge, and many times to the Entertainment Section of the BHBA as a panelist or moderator),  SInce 2011 he has moderated the panel on ethical issues for the annual Year in Review for the Entertainment Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association. Publications: Johnson & Johnson, “Interesting New Developments About Which All Practitioners Should be Aware,” 31 New York State Bar Assn, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal 56 (2020); Johnson, Johnson, Smolla & Tweed, “Defamation and Invasion of Privacy in the Internet Age,” 25 Southwestern Journal of International Law 9 (2019) Johnson & Johnson, “Trouble in Tinseltown, Los Angeles Daily Journal (April 23, 2019); “My Big Mouth,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (March 29, 2019); Johnson & Johnson, “Entertainment Contracts with Minors in New York and California, 30 New York State Bar Assn, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal 75 (2019); Johnson & Johnson, “A New Way to Revive a Corporation?,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (October 18, 2016); Johnson & Johnson, “Hollywood Docket: One Sided World,” 27 New York State Bar Assn, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal 32 (2016); Johnson & Elder, “Maybe America Needs More Peter Thiels,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (August 8, 2016); “We've Lost Control,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (June 16, 2016); “Talent Agency Act Survives Suit, Clarity Remains Elusive,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (May 10, 2013); “The Man Who Seduced Hollywood,” 36 Los Angeles Lawyer 41(September 2013); “Remedies for Web Defamation,” California Lawyer 36 (May 2013); “To Find Employment as a Lawyer, You Must Market Yourself,” 36 Los Angeles Lawyer 12 (June 2013); “Ten Rules for Success in the Practice of Law, 31 Los Angeles Lawyer 12 (June 2008); Chapter, Johnson & Aradi, “Defamatory Tweeting and Other Name and Likeness Violations” in Building Your Artist's Brand as a Business, International Association of Entertainment Lawyers (2012) (includes a discussion of right of publicity); Chapter, Johnson & Fowler, “Litigation: How to Draft Defensively Without Killing the Deal” in Licensing of Music from BC to AD (Before the Change/After Digital), International Association of Entertainment Lawyers (2014); Elder, Johnson & Rishwain, “Establishing Constitutional Malice for Defamation and Privacy/False Light Claims When Hidden Cameras and Deception Are Used by the Newsgatherer,” 22 Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review 327 (2002); “New Developments in California Privacy and Defamation Law,” 23 California Litigation 21 (2010); Johnson & Johnson, “What Happened to Unjust Enrichment in California? The Deterioration of Equity in the California Courts,” 44 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 277 (2010); Johnson & Walsh, “The Danger of “Anti-Libel Tourism” Litigation in the United States, 32 Los Angeles Lawyer 44 (December 2009); Johnson, “Privacy and the First Amendment”, California Litigation (2006); co-author “Caught in the Act,” Los Angeles Lawyer (1998) (an analysis of trends in the right of privacy); Johnson & Lang, The Personal Manager in the California Entertainment Industry, 52 Southern California Law Review 375 (1979)(a definitive article on the regulation of talent agents, personal managers, and the interplay of entertainment unions and guilds in that nexus). He co-authored chapters on music publishing and personal managers in The Musician's Business & Legal Guide (2017 5th edition), and wrote the authorized and best-selling biography of the greatest coach in the history of sports, The John Wooden Pyramid of Success (Second Edition 2004). Since 2012, Neville and Douglas Johnson have taught a course on entertainment and media litigation as Adjunct Professors at Southwestern School of Law.  From 2011-2014, he was one of the panelists teaching the Los Angeles County Bar Association new admittees course on class actions; and since 2011 he has moderated the panel on ethical issues for the annual Year in Review for the Entertainment Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association.  Professional Associations:American Board of Trial Advocates (invitation only)Association of Business Trial LawyersBeverly Hills Bar Association Co-Chair Entertainment Section, 2009-2011Board of Governors, 2012-2015, 2020-2022Consumer Attorneys Association of Los AngelesBoard of Governors, 2005-PresentConsumer Attorneys of CaliforniaLos Angeles Copyright Society (invitation only)Los Angeles County Bar AssociationLoyola Productions [Filmmaking arm of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)]Co-Chair of the Board, 2009-PresentNational Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (Grammy organization)Voting Member (as the recording artist professionally known as Trevor McShane)Public Justice (National organization advocating for consumers and fundamental rights)Board of Governors, 2011-PresentUSC Entertainment Law InstitutePlanning Board, 2011-Present Education:J.D., Southwestern University School of Law, 1975B.A., University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, 1971 Practice Areas:Media LawEntertainment LawEntertainment Class ActionsPrivacy LawComplex Business Litigation Matters, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraudRight of Publicity (wrongful use of name and likeness)Copyright Infringement and Theft of Idea casesIssues involving the entertainment unions Admissions:CaliforniaUnited States Supreme Court  About Douglas Johnson - Managing PartnerWebsite: Johnson and Johnson, LLP Law Firm | Johnson and Johnson, LLP (jjllplaw.com) Professional Experience:Mr. Johnson is well known for handling high-profile and high-impact entertainment matters. His clients include producers, actors, directors, writers, production companies, music artists, composers, music publishers, and independent record labels. He is well-known for his successes in royalty disputes, profit participation disputes, right of publicity cases, and theft of idea cases for film and television.  Mr. Johnson also handles invasion of privacy and libel cases, business disputes, and class actions.  Mr. Johnson has been repeatedly named by Super Lawyer as a top intellectual property litigator for more than a decade, representing the top 2.5% of the profession in Southern California. Mr. Johnson also serves as outside general counsel for WorldStarHipHop.com, a popular music and pop culture website, where he deals with cutting-edge copyright, media, and right of privacy issues.  Mr. Johnson has handled numerous copyright infringement lawsuits in Federal Court for Worldstar.   Since co-founding Johnson & Johnson, Mr. Johnson has been at the forefront of developing California's right of publicity laws. He regularly represents celebrities, models, and professional athletes in litigation against defendants who have wrongfully used their images.  He has litigated cases up to the California Supreme Court, advocating for precedent to protect the rights of all Californians from those who would seek to profit from their names, images, and likenesses without authorization. Mr. Johnson's advocacy in this area of law extends to his participation on speaking panels, publication of scholarly articles, and educating law students on the importance of these rights.  Mr. Johnson recently litigated a right of publicity case that resulted in a 9.6 million jury award and an attorney fee award of 7 million against Coca-Cola and Monster Energy for building their Hubert's Lemonade brand around the name of the founder of Hansen Juices, Hubert Hansen.  Mr. Johnson also received a seven-figure jury award in a right of publicity case for an actor/supermodel.   Representative Matters:Handled profit participation disputes on behalf of Sylvester Stallone (Demolition Man, Expendables, and the Rocky Films), Glen Larson (Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Fall Guy, Battlestar Galactica), Ed Weinberger (Amen), Richard Dreyfuss (Goodbye Girl, Mr. Holland's Opus, and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and What About Bob?), Raymond Wagner (Turner and Hooch), Jack Klugman (Quincy, Odd Couple), Mike Connors (Mannix), the Estate of Charles Bronson (St. Ives, Telefon), Mort Engelberg (Hot Stuff and Smokey And The Bandit), and the owners of the Friday 13th horror franchise.  Lead counsel in a class action against Sony Music, resulting in $12.7 million settlement and 36% uplift in ongoing foreign streaming royalties in Nelson v. Sony (S.D.N.Y) benefiting thousands of legacy recordings artists; currently co-counsel in similar litigation on behalf of legacy artists signed to Warner and Universal. Lead Counsel defending RatPac inidea theft case over the 2018 Melissa McCarthy movie, Life of the Party. (case dismissed on Motion for Summary Judgment).Lead Counsel representing producer in a dispute over turnaround rights to the film Rush Hour 4.  Lead Counsel for Janet Jackson in a royalty dispute with her label.  Obtained $5.35 million in retrospective relief and an estimated $3.1 million in savings over the next three years in Risto v. AFM & SAG-AFTRA (C.D. Cal.) for non-featured performers who receive royalties from the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund.Obtained a seven-figure settlement as lead counsel in a major talent management dispute for actress Karrueche Tran after successfully freezing all her manager's assets in Tran v. Muhammad (C.D. Cal.)Currently representing the leading production music company in North America on a variety of copyright matters both in and out of litigation-see, e.g., Associated Production Music v. The Vail Corp. (C.D. Cal.)Co-counsel in class actions against major Hollywood studios alleging endemic underpayment on home video and new digital media for pre-1982 movies for writers, producers, actors, and directors.  In those cases, Mr. Johnson handled the settlement with Universal for $25 million, the settlement with Fox for $12.6 million, and the settlements with Sony and Paramount.Mr. Johnson was co-counsel in three class actions against the record industry companies over digital download royalties of underpayments to artists (Temptations/Motels/Ronee Blakely), resulting in eight-figure settlements.  The cases dealt head-on with unresolved points of law as to the classification of digital downloads, and the rights of artists to receive royalties in the face of changing technology. Mr. Johnson has litigated several high-profile libel actions against large media companies, resulting in several mid-seven-figure settlements.  Recently he represented Richard Simmons against In-Touch Magazine. In May 2020, he argued and won an Anti-SLAPP appeal for Mr. Simmons.With his partner, Neville L. Johnson, he settled three class actions against the Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America, and Screen Actors Guild of America for tens of millions of dollars of unpaid foreign levies.  Defended blues icon B.B. King in a case seeking declaratory relief regarding the right to produce a film about his life, resulting in dismissal of the lawsuit.Obtained a seven-figure jury verdict in Oregon U.S. District Court on behalf of a music artist and record company in a copyright infringement case.Represented business owner in arbitration in a partnership dispute resulting in a seven-figure award for the client.Wrongful death and civil rights case resulting in reorganization of staffing and training at a county jail. The matter was featured on the cover of the Sacramento News & Review and constituted the largest settlement in the nation at the time for such a case. Thought Leadership:Panelist, CalCPA: Entertainment Industry Conference (June 21, 2022)Panelist, Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Year in Review, Ethics (January 13, 2020)Adjunct Professor, Entertainment and Media Litigation, Southwestern School of Law, (2012 to Present)Panelist, “Backend Optics: Profit Participations Through Different Lenses,” Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2018)Panelist, “I'm a Celebrity, You Can't Do That, (Can You?), California Society of Entertainment Lawyers, (2018)Panelist, “Entertainment Year in Review: Entertainment Litigation With Stars Of The Bar,” Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2017)Panelist, “The Right of Publicity: The State of The Current Law,” Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2014)The Ever-Evolving Courtroom Drama of Net Profits, Donald L. Stone's Inn of St. Ives, (2012)Panelist, Right of Publicity: How Much Is Your Client Really Worth?, Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2012)Panelist, Current Issues in Right of Likeness, Defamation and Privacy, Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2011)Panelist, Injuries Without Remedies, Loyola Law School's Legal Symposium, (2011) Sample Publications:The Troubling Trend of Online Exceptionalism to Copyright's Separate Accrual Rule, New York State Bar Association, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2, (Summer 2023)Florida sides with California on delayed discovery in copyright cases, Daily Journal (March 3, 2023)The Second and Ninth Circuits Diverge on Copyright Law's Discovery Rule, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol 33, No. 2 (Fall 2022)The Top 3 Copyright Law Developments of 2022 (So Far), New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2, (Spring 2022)Say Goodbye to Back-End Deals, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Fall 2021)3 Music Litigation Developments in 2020-2021, Daily Journal (October 23, 2021)Contract, Fraud, and Libel Damages, Journal of Consumer Attorneys Associations for Southern California, Advocate Magazine (October 2021).  3 Music Litigation Developments in 2020-2021, Daily Journal (September 16, 2021)Recent Developments In Entertainment Law: Defamation Jurisdiction, Copyright, and Talent Contest Agreements (Summer 2021)Black Windows: Scarlett Jo vs Disney, Daily Journal, (July 6, 2021)Recent Right of Privacy Developments, Daily Journal, (July 22, 2021)Developments In Libel, Social Media, Privacy and The Right of Publicity, (Spring 2021)Copyright Developments in 2020, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Sring 2021)Pandemic-era Appellate Rulings Take on Arbitration, Los Angeles Daily Journal (April 22, 2021)Recent Interesting Cases, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2, (Spring 2020)Hollywood Docket: Trending: Data Privacy, Copyright Trolling, And A Clause To Keep In Mind, New York State Bar Association, (June 6, 2020)Recent Development In Copyright Law, Daily Journal, (August 2, 2020)COVID-19 And The Return To Film Production In California, Los Angeles Daily Journal, (July 13, 2020)Interesting New Developments About Which All Practitioners Should Be Aware Of, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1, (Winter 2020)My Big Mouth, Journal of Consumer Attorneys Association for Southern California, Advocate Magzine, (December 2019)Entertainment Contracts With Minors in New York and California, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Spring 2019)Defamation and Invasion of Privacy in the Internet Age, Southwestern Journal of International Law, Volume XXV (2019)When Will Legal Communication Result In Liability? Los Angeles Daily Journal, (Mar 29, 2019)Entertainment Contracts With Minors: Clarification Needed, Los Angeles Daily Journal, (Nov. 27, 2018)Tales and Lessons Regarding the Right of Publicity, USC Entertainment Law Spotlight, Issue 2, (2018)Hollywood Docket: Tales and Lessons Regarding the Right of Publicity, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, No. 2, (Summer 2018)Hollywood Docket: Essential Clauses for Drafting an Ironclad Release and Consent Agreement, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1, (Spring, 2018)Before You Sign That Deal At Cannes…Produced By, Producers Guild of America, (April/May 2017)Hollywood Docket: Making the Perfect Pitch, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 27, No.3, (Fall/Winter 2017)Hollywood Docket: One-Sided World, New York State Bar Association, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol 27, No. 2., (Summer, 2016)A New Way to Revive a Corporation, Los Angeles Daily Journal, (Oct 26, 2016)Hollywood Docket: Social Media, the Law, and You, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2016)What Happened to Unjust Enrichment in California? The Deterioration of Equity in the California Courts, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 44:277 (Fall 2010) Published Cases:Gerbosi v. Gaims, Weil, West & Epstein, LLP (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 435Walker v. Geico General Ins. Co. (9th Cir. 2009) 558 F.3d 1025Simmons v. Bauer Media Group USA, LLC (2020) 50 Cal App.5th 1037Education:J.D., University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, 2000, Dean's ListB.A., University of Southern California, 1996, Dean's List Practice Areas:Entertainment LitigationComplex Business LitigationClass Action LitigationIntellectual Property LitigationDefamation, Media, and First Amendment LawRights of Privacy and Publicity Admissions:California   

CBD and J.J. Sefton discuss: Abbott holding the line on the border and the potential for a disastrous miscalculation, The GOP is collaborating with the Junta to surrender on amnesty and still whoring for Ukraine bucks, Michelle Phillips and Douglas Murray are outstanding, Haley, Trump and the Veep-stakes, Paddy Chayefsky predicted all of the madness […]

For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode on "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in this chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, For future parts of this multi-episode story I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Byrds at the end of the episode on "Eight Miles High", they had just released that single, which combined folk-rock with their new influences from John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, and which was a group composition but mostly written by the group's lead singer, Gene Clark. And also, as we mentioned right at the end of the episode, Clark had left the group. There had been many, many factors leading to Clark's departure. Clark was writing *far* more material than the other band members, of whom only Roger McGuinn had been a writer when the group started, and as a result was making far more money than them, especially with songs like "She Don't Care About Time", which had been the B-side to their number one single "Turn! Turn! Turn!" [Excerpt: The Byrds, "She Don't Care About Time"] Clark's extra income was making the rest of the group jealous, and they also didn't think his songs were particularly good, though many of his songs on the early Byrds albums are now considered classics. Jim Dickson, the group's co-manager, said "Gene would write fifteen to twenty songs a week and you had to find a good one whenever it came along because there were lots of them that you couldn't make head or tail of.  They didn't mean anything. We all knew that. Gene would write a good one at a rate of just about one per girlfriend." Chris Hillman meanwhile later said more simply "Gene didn't really add that much." That is, frankly, hard to square with the facts. There are ten original songs on the group's first two albums, plus one original non-album B-side. Of those eleven songs, Clark wrote seven on his own and co-wrote two with McGuinn. But as the other band members were starting to realise that they had the possibility of extra royalties -- and at least to some extent were starting to get artistic ambitions as far as writing goes -- they were starting to disparage Clark's work as a result, calling it immature. Clark had, of course, been the principal writer for "Eight Miles High", the group's most experimental record to date: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Eight Miles High"] But there he'd shared co-writing credit with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, in part because that was the only way he could be sure they would agree to release it as a single. There were also internal rivalries within the band unrelated to songwriting -- as we've touched on, Crosby had already essentially bullied Clark off the guitar and into just playing tambourine (and McGuinn would be dismissive even of Clark's tambourine abilities). Crosby's inability to get on with any other member of any band he was in would later become legendary, but at this point Clark was the major victim of his bullying. According to Dickson "David understood when Gene left that ninety-five percent of why Gene left could be brought back to him." The other five percent, though, came from Clark's fear of flying. Clark had apparently witnessed a plane crash in his youth and been traumatised by it, and he had a general terror of flying and planes -- something McGuinn would mock him for a little, as McGuinn was an aviation buff. Eventually, Clark had a near-breakdown boarding a plane from California to New York for a promotional appearance with Murray the K, and ended up getting off the plane. McGuinn and Michael Clarke almost did the same, but in the end they decided to stay on, and the other four Byrds did the press conference without Gene. When asked where Gene was, they said he'd "broken a wing". He was also increasingly having mental health and substance abuse problems, which were exacerbated by his fear, and in the end he decided he just couldn't be a Byrd any more. Oddly, of all the band members, it was David Crosby who was most concerned about Clark's departure, and who did the most to try to persuade him to stay, but he still didn't do much, and the group decided to carry on as a four-piece and not even make a proper announcement of Clark's departure -- they just started putting out photos with four people instead of five. The main change as far as the group were concerned was that Hillman was now covering Clark's old vocal parts, and so Crosby moved to Clark's old centre mic while Hillman moved from his position at the back of the stage with Michael Clarke to take over Crosby's mic. The group now had three singer-instrumentalists in front, two of whom, Crosby and McGuinn, now thought of themselves as songwriters. So despite the loss of their singer/songwriter/frontman, they moved on to their new single, the guaranteed hit follow-up to "Eight Miles High": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] "5D" was written by McGuinn, inspired by a book of cartoons called 1-2-3-4 More More More More by Don Landis, which I haven't been able to track down a copy of, but which seems to have been an attempt to explain the mathematical concept of higher dimensions in cartoon form. McGuinn was inspired by this and by Einstein's theory of relativity -- or at least by his understanding of relativity, which does not seem to have been the most informed take on the topic. McGuinn has said in the past that the single should really have come with a copy of Landis' booklet, so people could understand it. Sadly, without the benefit of the booklet we only have the lyrics plus McGuinn's interviews to go on to try to figure out what he means. As far as I'm able to understand, McGuinn believed -- completely erroneously -- that Einstein had proved that along with the four dimensions of spacetime there is also a fifth dimension which McGuinn refers to as a "mesh", and that "the reason for the speed of light being what it is is because of that mesh." McGuinn then went on to identify this mesh with his own conception of God, influenced by his belief in Subud, and with a Bergsonian idea of a life force. He would talk about how most people are stuck in a materialist scientific paradigm which only admits to  the existence of three dimensions, and how there are people out there advocating for a five-dimensional view of the world. To go along with this mystic view of the universe, McGuinn wanted some music inspired by the greatest composer of sacred music, and he asked Van Dyke Parks, who was brought in to add keyboards on the session, to play something influenced by Bach -- and Parks obliged, having been thinking along the same lines himself: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] Unfortunately for the group, McGuinn's lyrical intention wasn't clear enough and the song was assumed to be about drugs, and was banned by many radio stations. That plus the track's basically uncommercial nature meant that it reached no higher than number forty-four in the charts. Jim Dickson, the group's co-manager, pointed to a simpler factor in the record's failure, saying that if the organ outro to the track had instead been the intro, to set a mood for the track rather than starting with a cold vocal open, it would have had more success. The single was followed by an album, called Fifth Dimension, which was not particularly successful. Of the album's eleven songs, two were traditional folk songs, one was an instrumental -- a jam called "Captain Soul" which was a version of Lee Dorsey's "Get Out My Life Woman" credited to the four remaining Byrds, though Gene Clark is very audible on it playing harmonica -- and one more was a jam whose only lyrics were "gonna ride a Lear jet, baby", repeated over and over. There was also "Eight Miles High" and the group's inept and slightly-too-late take on "Hey Joe". It also included a third single, a country track titled "Mr. Spaceman": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] McGuinn and, particularly, Hillman, had some country music background, and both were starting to think about incorporating country sounds into the group's style, as after Clark's departure from the group they were moving away from the style that had characterised their first two albums. But the interest in "Mr. Spaceman" was less about the musical style than about the lyrics. McGuinn had written the song in the hopes of contacting extraterrestrial life -- sending them a message in his lyrics so that any aliens listening to Earth radio would come and visit, though he was later disappointed to realise that the inverse-square law means that the signals would be too faint to make out after a relatively short distance: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] "Mr. Spaceman" did better on the charts than its predecessor, scraping the lower reaches of the top forty, but it hardly set the world alight, and neither did the album -- a typical review was the one by Jon Landau, which said in part "This album then cannot be considered up to the standards set by the Byrds' first two and basically demonstrates that they should be thinking in terms of replacing Gene Clark, instead of just carrying on without him." Fifth Dimension would be the only album that Allen Stanton would produce for the Byrds, and his replacement had actually just produced an album that was a Byrds record by any other name: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "So You Say You've Lost Your Baby"] We've looked at Gary Usher before, but not for some time, and not in much detail. Usher was one of several people who were involved in the scene loosely centred on the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, though he never had much time for Jan Berry and he had got his own start in the music business slightly before the Beach Boys. As a songwriter, his first big successes had come with his collaborations with Brian Wilson -- he had co-written "409" for the Beach Boys, and had also collaborated with Wilson on some of his earliest more introspective songs, like "The Lonely Sea" and "In My Room", for which Usher had written the lyrics: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "In My Room"] Usher had built a career as a producer and writer for hire, often in collaboration with Roger Christian, who also wrote with Brian Wilson and Jan Berry. Usher, usually with Christian, and very occasionally Wilson wrote the songs for several of American International Pictures' Beach Party films: [Excerpt: Donna Loren, "Muscle Bustle"] And Usher and Christian had also had bit parts in some of the films, like Bikini Beach, and Usher had produced records for Annette Funicello, the star of the films, often with the Honeys (a group consisting of Brian Wilson's future wife Marilyn plus her sister and cousin) on backing vocals. He had also produced records for the Surfaris, as well as a whole host of studio-only groups like the Four Speeds, the Super Stocks, and Mr. Gasser and the Weirdoes, most of whom were Usher and the same small group of vocalist friends along with various selections of Wrecking Crew musicians making quick themed albums. One of these studio groups, the Hondells, went on to be a real group of sorts, after Usher and the Beach Boys worked together on a film, The Girls on the Beach. Usher liked a song that Wilson and Mike Love had written for the Beach Boys to perform in the film, "Little Honda", and after discovering that the Beach Boys weren't going to release their version as a single, he put together a group to record a soundalike version: [Excerpt: The Hondells, "Little Honda"] "Little Honda" made the top ten, and Usher produced two albums for the Hondells, who had one other minor hit with a cover version of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Younger Girl". Oddly, Usher's friend Terry Melcher, who would shortly produce the Byrds' first few hits, had also latched on to "Little Honda", and produced his own version of the track, sung by Pat Boone of all people, with future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Pat Boone, "Little Honda"] But when Usher had got his version out first, Boone's was relegated to a B-side. When the Byrds had hit, and folk-rock had started to take over from surf rock, Usher had gone with the flow and produced records like the Surfaris' album It Ain't Me Babe, with Usher and his usual gang of backing vocalists augmenting the Surfaris as they covered hits by Dylan, the Turtles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "All I Really Want to Do"] Usher was also responsible for the Surfaris being the first group to release a version of "Hey Joe" on a major label, as we heard in the episode on that song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Hey Joe"] After moving between Capitol, Mercury, and Decca Records, Usher had left Decca after a round of corporate restructuring and been recommended for a job at Columbia by his friend Melcher, who at that point was producing Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Rip Chords and had just finished his time as the Byrds' producer. Usher's first work at Columbia was actually to prepare new stereo mixes of some Byrds tracks that had up to that point only been issued in mono, but his first interaction with the Byrds themselves came via Gene Clark: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "So You Say You've Lost Your Baby"] On leaving the Byrds, Clark had briefly tried to make a success of himself as a songwriter-for-hire in much the same mould as Usher, attempting to write and produce a single for two Byrds fans using the group name The Cookie Fairies, while spending much of his time romancing Michelle Phillips, as we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". When the Cookie Fairies single didn't get picked up by a label, Clark had put together a group with Bill Rinehart from the Leaves, Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, and Joel Larson of the Grass Roots. Just called Gene Clark & The Group, they'd played around the clubs in LA and cut about half an album's worth of demos produced by Jim Dickson and Ed Tickner, the Byrds' management team, before Clark had fired first Douglas and then the rest of the group. Clark's association with Douglas did go on to benefit him though -- Douglas went on, as we've seen in other episodes, to produce hits for the Turtles and the Monkees, and he later remembered an old song by Clark and McGuinn that the Byrds had demoed but never released, "You Showed Me", and produced a top ten hit version of it for the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Showed Me"] Clark had instead started working with two country singers, Vern and Rex Gosdin, who had previously been with Chris Hillman in the country band The Hillmen. When that band had split up, the Gosdin Brothers had started to perform together as a duo, and in 1967 they would have a major country hit with "Hangin' On": [Excerpt: The Gosdin Brothers, "Hangin' On"] At this point though, they were just Gene Clark's backing vocalists, on an album that had been started with producer Larry Marks, who left Columbia half way through the sessions, at which point Usher took over. The album, titled Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, featured a mix of musicians from different backgrounds. There were Larson and Rinehart from Gene Clark and the Group, there were country musicians -- a guitarist named Clarence White and the banjo player Doug Dillard. Hillman and Michael Clarke, the Byrds' rhythm section, played on much of the album as a way of keeping a united front, Glen Campbell, Jerry Cole, Leon Russell and Jim Gordon of the Wrecking Crew contributed, and Van Dyke Parks played most of the keyboards. The lead-off single for Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, "Echoes", is one of the tracks produced by Marks, but in truth the real producer of that track is Leon Russell, who wrote the orchestral arrangement that turned Clark's rough demo into a baroque pop masterpiece: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Echoes"] Despite Clark having quit the band, relations between him and the rest were still good enough that in September 1966 he temporarily rejoined the band after Crosby lost his voice, though he was gone again as soon as Crosby was well. But that didn't stop the next Byrds album, which Usher went on to produce straight after finishing work on Clark's record, coming out almost simultaneously with Clark's and, according to Clark, killing its commercial potential. Upon starting to work with the group, Usher quickly came to the conclusion that Chris Hillman was in many ways the most important member of the band. According to Usher "There was also quite a divisive element within the band at that stage which often prevented them working well together. Sometimes everything would go smoothly, but other times it was a hard road. McGuinn and Hillman were often more together on musical ideas. This left Crosby to fend for himself, which I might add he did very well." Usher also said "I quickly came to understand that Hillman was a good stabilising force within the Byrds (when he wanted to be). It was around the time that I began working with them that Chris also became more involved in the songwriting. I think part of that was the fact that he realised how much more money was involved if you actually wrote the songs yourself. And he was a good songwriter." The first single to be released from the new sessions was one that was largely Hillman's work. Hillman and Crosby had been invited by the great South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela to play on some demos for another South African jazzer, singer Letta Mbulu. Details are sparse, but one presumes this was for what became her 1967 album Letta Mbulu Sings, produced by David Axelrod: [Excerpt: Letta Mbulu, "Zola (MRA)"] According to Hillman, that session was an epiphany for him, and he went home and started writing his own songs for the first time. He took one of the riffs he came up with to McGuinn, who came up with a bridge inspired by a song by yet another South African musician, Miriam Makeba, who at the time was married to Masekela, and the two wrote a lyric inspired by what they saw as the cynical manipulation of the music industry in creating manufactured bands like the Monkees -- though they have both been very eager to say that they were criticising the industry, not the Monkees themselves, with whom they were friendly. As Hillman says in his autobiography, "Some people interpreted it as a jab at The Monkees. In reality, we had immense respect for all of them as singers and musicians. We weren't skewering the members of the Monkees, but we were taking a shot at the cynical nature of the entertainment business that will try to manufacture a group like The Monkees as a marketing strategy. For us, it was all about the music, and we were commenting on the pitfalls of the industry rather than on any of our fellow musicians." [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] The track continued the experimentation with sound effects that they had started with the Lear jet song on the previous album. That had featured recordings of a Lear jet, and "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?" featured recordings of audience screams. Those screams were, according to most sources, recorded by Derek Taylor at a Byrds gig in Bournemouth in 1965, but given reports of the tepid response the group got on that tour, that doesn't seem to make sense. Other sources say they're recordings of a *Beatles* audience in Bournemouth in *1963*, the shows that had been shown in the first US broadcast of Beatles footage, and the author of a book on links between the Beatles and Bournemouth says on his blog "In the course of researching Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth I spoke to two people who saw The Byrds at the Gaumont that August and neither recalled any screaming at all, let alone the wall of noise that can be heard on So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star." So it seems likely that screaming isn't for the Byrds, but of course Taylor had also worked for the Beatles. According to Usher "The crowd sound effects were from a live concert that Derek Taylor had taped with a little tape recorder in London. It was some outrageous crowd, something like 20,000 to 30,000 people. He brought the tape in, ran it off onto a big tape, re- EQ'd it, echoed it, cleaned it up and looped it." So my guess is that the audience screams in the Byrds song about the Monkees are for the Beatles, but we'll probably never know for sure: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] The track also featured an appearance by Hugh Masekela, the jazz trumpeter whose invitation to take part in a session had inspired the song: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] While Hillman was starting to lean more towards folk and country music -- he had always been the member of the band least interested in rock music -- and McGuinn was most interested in exploring electronic sounds, Crosby was still pushing the band more in the direction of the jazz experimentation they'd tried on "Eight Miles High", and one of the tracks they started working on soon after "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?" was inspired by another jazz trumpet great. Miles Davis had been partly responsible for getting the Byrds signed to Columbia, as we talked about in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", and so the group wanted to pay him tribute, and they started working on a version of his classic instrumental "Milestones": [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Milestones"] Sadly, while the group worked on their version for several days -- spurred on primarily by Crosby -- they eventually chose to drop the track, and it has never seen release or even been bootlegged, though there is a tiny clip of it that was used in a contemporaneous documentary, with a commentator talking over it: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Milestones (TV)"] It was apparently Crosby who decided to stop work on the track, just as working on it was also apparently his idea. Indeed, while the biggest change on the album that would become Younger Than Yesterday was that for the first time Chris Hillman was writing songs and taking lead vocals, Crosby was also writing more than before. Hillman wrote four of the songs on the album, plus his co-write with McGuinn on "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?", but Crosby also supplied two new solo compositions, plus a cowrite with McGuinn, and Crosby and McGuinn's "Why?", the B-side to "Eight Miles High", was also dug up and rerecorded for the album. Indeed, Gary Usher would later say "The album was probably 60% Crosby. McGuinn was not that involved, nor was Chris; at least as far as performing was concerned." McGuinn's only composition on the album other than the co-writes with Crosby and Hillman was another song about contacting aliens, "CTA-102", a song about a quasar which at the time some people were speculating might have been evidence of alien life. That song sounds to my ears like it's had some influence from Joe Meek's similar records, though I've never seen McGuinn mention Meek as an influence: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "CTA-102"] Crosby's growing dominance in the studio was starting to rankle with the other members. In particular two tracks were the cause of conflict. One was Crosby's song "Mind Gardens", an example of his increasing experimentation, a freeform song that ignores conventional song structure, and which he insisted on including on the album despite the rest of the group's objections: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mind Gardens"] The other was the track that directly followed "Mind Gardens" on the album. "My Back Pages" was a song from Dylan's album Another Side of Bob Dylan, a song many have seen as Dylan announcing his break with the folk-song and protest movements he'd been associated with up to that point, and his intention to move on in a new direction: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages"] Jim Dickson, the Byrds' co-manager, was no longer on speaking terms with the band and wasn't involved in their day-to-day recording as he had been, but he'd encountered McGuinn on the street and rolled down his car window and suggested that the group do the song. Crosby was aghast. They'd already recorded several songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Fifth Dimension had been their first album not to include any Dylan covers. Doing a jangly cover of a Dylan song with a McGuinn lead vocal was something they'd moved on from, and he didn't want to go back to 1964 at the end of 1966. He was overruled, and the group recorded their version, a track that signified something very different for the Byrds than the original had for Dylan: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "My Back Pages"] It was released as the second single from the album, and made number thirty. It was the last Byrds single to make the top forty. While he was working with the Byrds, Usher continued his work in the pop field, though as chart pop moved on so did Usher, who was now making records in a psychedelic sunshine pop style with acts like the Peanut Butter Conspiracy: [Excerpt: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, "It's a Happening Thing"] and he produced Chad and Jeremy's massive concept album Of Cabbages and Kings, which included a five-song "Progress Suite" illustrating history from the start of creation until the end of the world: [Excerpt: Chad and Jeremy, "Editorial"] But one of the oddest projects he was involved in was indirectly inspired by Roger McGuinn. According to Usher "McGuinn and I had a lot in common. Roger would always say that he was "out of his head," which he thought was good, because he felt you had to go out of your head before you could really find your head! That sums up McGuinn perfectly! He was also one of the first people to introduce me to metaphysics, and from that point on I started reading everything I could get my hands on. His viewpoints on metaphysics were interesting, and, at the time, useful. He was also into Marshall McLuhan; very much into the effects of electronics and the electronic transformation. He was into certain metaphysical concepts before I was, but I was able to turn him onto some abstract concepts as well" These metaphysical discussions led to Usher producing an album titled The Astrology Album, with discussions of the meaning of different star signs over musical backing: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Leo"] And with interviews with various of the artists he was working with talking about astrology. He apparently interviewed Art Garfunkel -- Usher was doing some uncredited production work on Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends album at the time -- but Garfunkel declined permission for the interview to be used. But he did get both Chad and Jeremy to talk, along with John Merrill of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy -- and David Crosby: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Leo"] One of the tracks from that album, "Libra", became the B-side of a single by a group of studio musicians Usher put together, with Glen Campbell on lead vocals and featuring Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys prominently on backing vocals. "My World Fell Down" was credited to Sagittarius, again a sign of Usher's current interest in astrology, and featured some experimental sound effects that are very similar to the things that McGuinn had been doing on recent Byrds albums: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down"] While Usher was continuing with his studio experimentation, the Byrds were back playing live -- and they were not going down well at all. They did a UK tour where they refused to play most of their old hits and went down as poorly as on their previous tour, and they were no longer the kings of LA. In large part this was down to David Crosby, whose ego was by this point known to *everybody*, and who was becoming hugely unpopular on the LA scene even as he was starting to dominate the band. Crosby was now the de facto lead vocalist on stage, with McGuinn being relegated to one or two songs per set, and he was the one who would insist that they not play their older hit singles live. He was dominating the stage, leading to sarcastic comments from the normally placid Hillman like "Ladies and gentlemen, the David Crosby show!", and he was known to do things like start playing a song then stop part way through a verse to spend five minutes tuning up before restarting. After a residency at the Whisky A-Go-Go where the group were blown off the stage by their support act, the Doors, their publicist Derek Taylor quit, and he was soon followed by the group's co-managers Jim Dickson and Eddie Tickner, who were replaced by Crosby's friend Larry Spector, who had no experience in rock management but did represent Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, two young film stars Crosby was hanging round with. The group were particularly annoyed by Crosby when they played the Monterey Pop Festival. Crosby took most lead vocals in that set, and the group didn't go down well, though instrumentally the worst performer was Michael Clarke, who unlike the rest of the band had never become particularly proficient on his instrument: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (live at Monterey)"] But Crosby also insisted on making announcements from the stage advocating LSD use and describing conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination: [Excerpt: David Crosby on the Warren Commission, from the end of "Hey Joe" Monterey] But even though Crosby was trying to be the Byrds' leader on stage, he was also starting to think that they maybe didn't deserve to have him as their leader. He'd recently been spending a lot of time hanging out with Stephen Stills of the Buffalo Springfield, and McGuinn talks about one occasion where Crosby and Stills were jamming together, Stills played a blues lick and said to McGuinn "Can you play that?" and when McGuinn, who was not a blues musician, said he couldn't, Stills looked at him with contempt. McGuinn was sure that Stills was trying to poach Crosby, and Crosby apparently wanted to be poached. The group had rehearsed intensely for Monterey, aware that they'd been performing poorly and not wanting to show themselves up in front of the new San Francisco bands, but Crosby had told them during rehearsals that they weren't good enough to play with him. McGuinn's suspicions about Stills wanting to poach Crosby seemed to be confirmed during Monterey when Crosby joined Buffalo Springfield on stage, filling in for Neil Young during the period when Young had temporarily quit the group, and performing a song he'd helped Stills write about Grace Slick: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Rock 'n' Roll Woman (live at Monterey)"] Crosby was getting tired not only of the Byrds but of the LA scene in general. He saw the new San Francisco bands as being infinitely cooler than the Hollywood plastic scene that was LA -- even though Crosby was possibly the single most Hollywood person on that scene, being the son of an Oscar-winning cinematographer and someone who hung out with film stars. At Monterey, the group had debuted their next single, the first one with an A-side written by Crosby, "Lady Friend": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Lady Friend"] Crosby had thought of that as a masterpiece, but when it was released as a single, it flopped badly, and the rest of the group weren't even keen on the track being included on the next album. To add insult to injury as far as Crosby was concerned, at the same time as the single was released, a new album came out -- the Byrds' Greatest Hits, full of all those singles he was refusing to play live, and it made the top ten, becoming far and away the group's most successful album. But despite all this, the biggest conflict between band members when they came to start sessions for their next album wasn't over Crosby, but over Michael Clarke. Clarke had never been a particularly good drummer, and while that had been OK at the start of the Byrds' career, when none of them had been very proficient on their instruments, he was barely any better at a time when both McGuinn and Hillman were being regarded as unique stylists, while Crosby was writing metrically and harmonically interesting material. Many Byrds fans appreciate Clarke's drumming nonetheless, saying he was an inventive and distinctive player in much the same way as the similarly unskilled Micky Dolenz, but on any measure of technical ability he was far behind his bandmates. Clarke didn't like the new material and wasn't capable of playing it the way his bandmates wanted. He was popular with the rest of the band as a person, but simply wasn't playing well, and it led to a massive row in the first session: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Universal Mind Decoder (alternate backing track)"] At one point they joke that they'll bring in Hal Blaine instead -- a reference to the recording of "Mr. Tambourine Man", when Clarke and Hillman had been replaced by Blaine and Larry Knechtel -- and Clarke says "Do it. I don't mind, I really don't." And so that ended up happening. Clarke was still a member of the band -- and he would end up playing on half the album's tracks -- but for the next few sessions the group brought in session drummers Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon to play the parts they actually wanted. But that wasn't going to stop the bigger problem in the group, and that problem was David Crosby's relationship with the rest of the band. Crosby was still at this point thinking of himself as having a future in the group, even as he was increasingly convinced that the group themselves were bad, and embarrassed by their live sound. He even, in a show of unity, decided to ask McGuinn and Hillman to collaborate on a couple of songs with him so they would share the royalties equally. But there were two flash-points in the studio. The first was Crosby's song "Triad", a song about what we would now call polyamory, partly inspired by Robert Heinlein's counterculture science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The song was meant to portray a progressive, utopian, view of free love, but has dated very badly -- the idea that the *only* reason a woman might be unhappy with her partner sleeping with another woman is because of her mother's disapproval possibly reveals more about the mindset of hippie idealists than was intended. The group recorded Crosby's song, but refused to allow it to be released, and Crosby instead gave it to his friends Jefferson Airplane, whose version, by having Grace Slick sing it, at least reverses the dynamics of the relationship: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Triad"] The other was a song that Gary Usher had brought to the group and suggested they record, a Goffin and King song released the previous year by Dusty Springfield: [Excerpt: Dusty Springfield, "Goin' Back"] Crosby was incandescent. The group wanted to do this Brill Building pap?! Hell, Gary Usher had originally thought that *Chad and Jeremy* should do it, before deciding to get the Byrds to do it instead. Did they really want to be doing Chad and Jeremy cast-offs when they could be doing his brilliant science-fiction inspired songs about alternative relationship structures? *Really*? They did, and after a first session, where Crosby reluctantly joined in, when they came to recut the track Crosby flat-out refused to take part, leading to a furious row with McGuinn. Since they were already replacing Michael Clarke with session drummers, that meant the only Byrds on "Goin' Back", the group's next single, were McGuinn and Hillman: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] That came out in late October 1967, and shortly before it came out, McGuinn and Hillman had driven to Crosby's home. They told him they'd had enough. He was out of the band. They were buying him out of his contract. Despite everything, Crosby was astonished. They were a *group*. They fought, but only the way brothers fight. But McGuinn and Hillman were adamant. Crosby ended up begging them, saying "We could make great music together." Their response was just "And we can make great music without you." We'll find out whether they could or not in two weeks' time.

If someone had told Harrison Ford the odds early on, about his chances of making it as an actor in Hollywood, he may have given up. But he wasn't an odds kinda guy. He was a guy who did what he had to do to make it. Sometimes that meant swinging a hammer and working as a carpenter on the houses of James Caan and Joan Didion. Other times he found work touring with the Doors as the band's photographer. He even dealt a little weed on the side to people like Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. But whether he was pulling focus on an elusive Jim Morrison, tearing ass through Petaluma in an old Chevy, or navigating a hunk of junk through an asteroid field, never tell him the odds. Harrison Ford made his own luck. To see the complete list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com/badlands. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Support our Advertising Partners: Prize Picks: Prizepicks.com/badlands Code: Badlands Factor: factormeals.com/badlands50 Code: Badlands50 Nutrisense :nutrisense.com/badlands Rocket Money: rocketmoney.com/badlands Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michelle Phillips, as a healer, facilitator, and ‘liberation strategist' shares practice as a mental and spiritual wellness practitioner joining us from the Pacific Northwest, unceded Duwamish and Coast Salish territories. Michelle is an agent of liberatory change, supporting individuals, leaders, and organizations with grief, relational, and anti-oppressive principles and strategies. As a former hospital chaplain, Michelle's practice often integrates forgotten spiritual and bodily intelligence, grief and loss, and healing wisdom from the diasporas to facilitate intergenerational healing and transformation. Michelle Links Reverence for Impulse is an unscripted, unplanned and (hopefully) unedited podcast with me, Weena Pauly-Tarr. Together with my guests, we're asking what is alive in this moment?We start each episode with a few minutes of meeting each other head-to-toe, through the language of our bodies, before we press record and bring it to a conversation. We start where we are. This is not a hard hitting agenda or getting to the bottom of things, it's about being in the bottoms of things. Finding each other in the not-knowing. I'm here for the spaciousness, the awkwardness, the silliness, the silence — From the dark insides of our bodies to the brightness of our minds, I'm excited to welcome people who's impulses I'd like to get to know. www.weenapauly.com

Street Soldiers Radio Anniversary Show. Street Soldiers Radio celebrates our 31st Anniversary of stopping the violence with conversation over the radio airwaves with our guests and audience on 106.1 KMEL/iHeartRadio. Guests: LaShara Johnson, Johnnie Dempsey, Vanessa Russell, Jamaal Kizzee, Michelle Phillips, Stan Logwood, Sadio Simon, and Llowellyn Syce.

Episode 169 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Piece of My Heart" and the short, tragic life of Janis Joplin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There are two Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two . For information on Janis Joplin I used three biographies -- Scars of Sweet Paradise by Alice Echols, Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, and Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. I also referred to the chapter '“Being Good Isn't Always Easy": Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul' in Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton. Some information on Bessie Smith came from Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay, a book I can't really recommend given the lack of fact-checking, and Bessie by Chris Albertson. I also referred to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis And the best place to start with Joplin's music is this five-CD box, which contains both Big Brother and the Holding Company albums she was involved in, plus her two studio albums and bonus tracks. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode contains discussion of drug addiction and overdose, alcoholism, mental illness, domestic abuse, child abandonment, and racism. If those subjects are likely to cause you upset, you may want to check the transcript or skip this one rather than listen. Also, a subject I should probably say a little more about in this intro because I know I have inadvertently caused upset to at least one listener with this in the past. When it comes to Janis Joplin, it is *impossible* to talk about her without discussing her issues with her weight and self-image. The way I write often involves me paraphrasing the opinions of the people I'm writing about, in a mode known as close third person, and sometimes that means it can look like I am stating those opinions as my own, and sometimes things I say in that mode which *I* think are obviously meant in context to be critiques of those attitudes can appear to others to be replicating them. At least once, I have seriously upset a fat listener when talking about issues related to weight in this manner. I'm going to try to be more careful here, but just in case, I'm going to say before I begin that I think fatphobia is a pernicious form of bigotry, as bad as any other form of bigotry. I'm fat myself and well aware of how systemic discrimination affects fat people. I also think more generally that the pressure put on women to look a particular way is pernicious and disgusting in ways I can't even begin to verbalise, and causes untold harm. If *ANYTHING* I say in this episode comes across as sounding otherwise, that's because I haven't expressed myself clearly enough. Like all people, Janis Joplin had negative characteristics, and at times I'm going to say things that are critical of those. But when it comes to anything to do with her weight or her appearance, if *anything* I say sounds critical of her, rather than of a society that makes women feel awful for their appearance, it isn't meant to. Anyway, on with the show. On January the nineteenth, 1943, Seth Joplin typed up a letter to his wife Dorothy, which read “I wish to tender my congratulations on the anniversary of your successful completion of your production quota for the nine months ending January 19, 1943. I realize that you passed through a period of inflation such as you had never before known—yet, in spite of this, you met your goal by your supreme effort during the early hours of January 19, a good three weeks ahead of schedule.” As you can probably tell from that message, the Joplin family were a strange mixture of ultraconformism and eccentricity, and those two opposing forces would dominate the personality of their firstborn daughter for the whole of her life.  Seth Joplin was a respected engineer at Texaco, where he worked for forty years, but he had actually dropped out of engineering school before completing his degree. His favourite pastime when he wasn't at work was to read -- he was a voracious reader -- and to listen to classical music, which would often move him to tears, but he had also taught himself to make bathtub gin during prohibition, and smoked cannabis. Dorothy, meanwhile, had had the possibility of a singing career before deciding to settle down and become a housewife, and was known for having a particularly beautiful soprano voice. Both were, by all accounts, fiercely intelligent people, but they were also as committed as anyone to the ideals of the middle-class family even as they chafed against its restrictions. Like her mother, young Janis had a beautiful soprano voice, and she became a soloist in her church choir, but after the age of six, she was not encouraged to sing much. Dorothy had had a thyroid operation which destroyed her singing voice, and the family got rid of their piano soon after (different sources say that this was either because Dorothy found her daughter's singing painful now that she couldn't sing herself, or because Seth was upset that his wife could no longer sing. Either seems plausible.) Janis was pushed to be a high-achiever -- she was given a library card as soon as she could write her name, and encouraged to use it, and she was soon advanced in school, skipping a couple of grades. She was also by all accounts a fiercely talented painter, and her parents paid for art lessons. From everything one reads about her pre-teen years, she was a child prodigy who was loved by everyone and who was clearly going to be a success of some kind. Things started to change when she reached her teenage years. Partly, this was just her getting into rock and roll music, which her father thought a fad -- though even there, she differed from her peers. She loved Elvis, but when she heard "Hound Dog", she loved it so much that she tracked down a copy of Big Mama Thornton's original, and told her friends she preferred that: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog"] Despite this, she was still also an exemplary student and overachiever. But by the time she turned fourteen, things started to go very wrong for her. Partly this was just down to her relationship with her father changing -- she adored him, but he became more distant from his daughters as they grew into women. But also, puberty had an almost wholly negative effect on her, at least by the standards of that time and place. She put on weight (which, again, I do not think is a negative thing, but she did, and so did everyone around her), she got a bad case of acne which didn't ever really go away, and she also didn't develop breasts particularly quickly -- which, given that she was a couple of years younger than the other people in the same classes at school, meant she stood out even more. In the mid-sixties, a doctor apparently diagnosed her as having a "hormone imbalance" -- something that got to her as a possible explanation for why she was, to quote from a letter she wrote then, "not really a woman or enough of one or something." She wondered if "maybe something as simple as a pill could have helped out or even changed that part of me I call ME and has been so messed up.” I'm not a doctor and even if I were, diagnosing historical figures is an unethical thing to do, but certainly the acne, weight gain, and mental health problems she had are all consistent with PCOS, the most common endocrine disorder among women, and it seems likely given what the doctor told her that this was the cause. But at the time all she knew was that she was different, and that in the eyes of her fellow students she had gone from being pretty to being ugly. She seems to have been a very trusting, naive, person who was often the brunt of jokes but who desperately needed to be accepted, and it became clear that her appearance wasn't going to let her fit into the conformist society she was being brought up in, while her high intelligence, low impulse control, and curiosity meant she couldn't even fade into the background. This left her one other option, and she decided that she would deliberately try to look and act as different from everyone else as possible. That way, it would be a conscious choice on her part to reject the standards of her fellow pupils, rather than her being rejected by them. She started to admire rebels. She became a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose music combined the country music she'd grown up hearing in Texas, the R&B she liked now, and the rebellious nature she was trying to cultivate: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] When Lewis' career was derailed by his marriage to his teenage cousin, Joplin wrote an angry letter to Time magazine complaining that they had mistreated him in their coverage. But as with so many people of her generation, her love of rock and roll music led her first to the blues and then to folk, and she soon found herself listening to Odetta: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] One of her first experiences of realising she could gain acceptance from her peers by singing was when she was hanging out with the small group of Bohemian teenagers she was friendly with, and sang an Odetta song, mimicking her voice exactly. But young Janis Joplin was listening to an eclectic range of folk music, and could mimic more than just Odetta. For all that her later vocal style was hugely influenced by Odetta and by other Black singers like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, her friends in her late teens and early twenties remember her as a vocal chameleon with an achingly pure soprano, who would more often than Odetta be imitating the great Appalachian traditional folk singer Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Lord Randall"] She was, in short, trying her best to become a Beatnik, despite not having any experience of that subculture other than what she read in books -- though she *did* read about them in books, devouring things like Kerouac's On The Road. She came into conflict with her mother, who didn't understand what was happening to her daughter, and who tried to get family counselling to understand what was going on. Her father, who seemed to relate more to Janis, but who was more quietly eccentric, put an end to that, but Janis would still for the rest of her life talk about how her mother had taken her to doctors who thought she was going to end up "either in jail or an insane asylum" to use her words. From this point on, and for the rest of her life, she was torn between a need for approval from her family and her peers, and a knowledge that no matter what she did she couldn't fit in with normal societal expectations. In high school she was a member of the Future Nurses of America, the Future Teachers of America, the Art Club, and Slide Rule Club, but she also had a reputation as a wild girl, and as sexually active (even though by all accounts at this point she was far less so than most of the so-called "good girls" – but her later activity was in part because she felt that if she was going to have that reputation anyway she might as well earn it). She also was known to express radical opinions, like that segregation was wrong, an opinion that the other students in her segregated Texan school didn't even think was wrong, but possibly some sort of sign of mental illness. Her final High School yearbook didn't contain a single other student's signature. And her initial choice of university, Lamar State College of Technology, was not much better. In the next town over, and attended by many of the same students, it had much the same attitudes as the school she'd left. Almost the only long-term effect her initial attendance at university had on her was a negative one -- she found there was another student at the college who was better at painting. Deciding that if she wasn't going to be the best at something she didn't want to do it at all, she more or less gave up on painting at that point. But there was one positive. One of the lecturers at Lamar was Francis Edward "Ab" Abernethy, who would in the early seventies go on to become the Secretary and Editor of the Texas Folklore Society, and was also a passionate folk musician, playing double bass in string bands. Abernethy had a great collection of blues 78s. and it was through this collection that Janis first discovered classic blues, and in particular Bessie Smith: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues"] A couple of episodes ago, we had a long look at the history of the music that now gets called "the blues" -- the music that's based around guitars, and generally involves a solo male vocalist, usually Black during its classic period. At the time that music was being made though it wouldn't have been thought of as "the blues" with no modifiers by most people who were aware of it. At the start, even the songs they were playing weren't thought of as blues by the male vocalist/guitarists who played them -- they called the songs they played "reels". The music released by people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold and so on was thought of as blues music, and people would understand and agree with a phrase like "Lonnie Johnson is a blues singer", but it wasn't the first thing people thought of when they talked about "the blues". Until relatively late -- probably some time in the 1960s -- if you wanted to talk about blues music made by Black men with guitars and only that music, you talked about "country blues". If you thought about "the blues", with no qualifiers, you thought about a rather different style of music, one that white record collectors started later to refer to as "classic blues" to differentiate it from what they were now calling "the blues". Nowadays of course if you say "classic blues", most people will think you mean Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, people who were contemporary at the time those white record collectors were coming up with their labels, and so that style of music gets referred to as "vaudeville blues", or as "classic female blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] What we just heard was the first big blues hit performed by a Black person, from 1920, and as we discussed in the episode on "Crossroads" that revolutionised the whole record industry when it came out. The song was performed by Mamie Smith, a vaudeville performer, and was originally titled "Harlem Blues" by its writer, Perry Bradford, before he changed the title to "Crazy Blues" to get it to a wider audience. Bradford was an important figure in the vaudeville scene, though other than being the credited writer of "Keep A-Knockin'" he's little known these days. He was a Black musician and grew up playing in minstrel shows (the history of minstrelsy is a topic for another day, but it's more complicated than the simple image of blackface that we are aware of today -- though as with many "more complicated than that" things it is, also the simple image of blackface we're aware of). He was the person who persuaded OKeh records that there would be a market for music made by Black people that sounded Black (though as we're going to see in this episode, what "sounding Black" means is a rather loaded question). "Crazy Blues" was the result, and it was a massive hit, even though it was marketed specifically towards Black listeners: [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] The big stars of the early years of recorded blues were all making records in the shadow of "Crazy Blues", and in the case of its very biggest stars, they were working very much in the same mould. The two most important blues stars of the twenties both got their start in vaudeville, and were both women. Ma Rainey, like Mamie Smith, first performed in minstrel shows, but where Mamie Smith's early records had her largely backed by white musicians, Rainey was largely backed by Black musicians, including on several tracks Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider"] Rainey's band was initially led by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most important men in American music, who we've talked about before in several episodes, including the last one. He was possibly the single most important figure in two different genres -- hokum music, when he, under the name "Georgia Tom" recorded "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red: [Excerpt: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That"] And of course gospel music, which to all intents and purposes he invented, and much of whose repertoire he wrote: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"] When Dorsey left Rainey's band, as we discussed right back in episode five, he was replaced by a female pianist, Lil Henderson. The blues was a woman's genre. And Ma Rainey was, by preference, a woman's woman, though she was married to a man: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Prove it on Me"] So was the biggest star of the classic blues era, who was originally mentored by Rainey. Bessie Smith, like Rainey, was a queer woman who had relationships with men but was far more interested in other women.  There were stories that Bessie Smith actually got her start in the business by being kidnapped by Ma Rainey, and forced into performing on the same bills as her in the vaudeville show she was touring in, and that Rainey taught Smith to sing blues in the process. In truth, Rainey mentored Smith more in stagecraft and the ways of the road than in singing, and neither woman was only a blues singer, though both had huge success with their blues records.  Indeed, since Rainey was already in the show, Smith was initially hired as a dancer rather than a singer, and she also worked as a male impersonator. But Smith soon branched out on her own -- from the beginning she was obviously a star. The great jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet later said of her "She had this trouble in her, this thing that would not let her rest sometimes, a meanness that came and took her over. But what she had was alive … Bessie, she just wouldn't let herself be; it seemed she couldn't let herself be." Bessie Smith was signed by Columbia Records in 1923, as part of the rush to find and record as many Black women blues singers as possible. Her first recording session produced "Downhearted Blues", which became, depending on which sources you read, either the biggest-selling blues record since "Crazy Blues" or the biggest-selling blues record ever, full stop, selling three quarters of a million copies in the six months after its release: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues"] Smith didn't make royalties off record sales, only making a flat fee, but she became the most popular Black performer of the 1920s. Columbia signed her to an exclusive contract, and she became so rich that she would literally travel between gigs on her own private train. She lived an extravagant life in every way, giving lavishly to her friends and family, but also drinking extraordinary amounts of liquor, having regular affairs, and also often physically or verbally attacking those around her. By all accounts she was not a comfortable person to be around, and she seemed to be trying to fit an entire lifetime into every moment. From 1923 through 1929 she had a string of massive hits. She recorded material in a variety of styles, including the dirty blues: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Empty Bed Blues] And with accompanists like Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, "Cold in Hand Blues"] But the music for which she became best known, and which sold the best, was when she sang about being mistreated by men, as on one of her biggest hits, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" -- and a warning here, I'm going to play a clip of the song, which treats domestic violence in a way that may be upsetting: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do"] That kind of material can often seem horrifying to today's listeners -- and quite correctly so, as domestic violence is a horrifying thing -- and it sounds entirely too excusing of the man beating her up for anyone to find it comfortable listening. But the Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has made a convincing case that while these records, and others by Smith's contemporaries, can't reasonably be considered to be feminist, they *are* at the very least more progressive than they now seem, in that they were, even if excusing it, pointing to a real problem which was otherwise left unspoken. And that kind of domestic violence and abuse *was* a real problem, including in Smith's own life. By all accounts she was terrified of her husband, Jack Gee, who would frequently attack her because of her affairs with other people, mostly women. But she was still devastated when he left her for a younger woman, not only because he had left her, but also because he kidnapped their adopted son and had him put into a care home, falsely claiming she had abused him. Not only that, but before Jack left her closest friend had been Jack's niece Ruby and after the split she never saw Ruby again -- though after her death Ruby tried to have a blues career as "Ruby Smith", taking her aunt's surname and recording a few tracks with Sammy Price, the piano player who worked with Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Ruby Smith with Sammy Price, "Make Me Love You"] The same month, May 1929, that Gee left her, Smith recorded what was to become her last big hit, and most well-known song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] And that could have been the theme for the rest of her life. A few months after that record came out, the Depression hit, pretty much killing the market for blues records. She carried on recording until 1931, but the records weren't selling any more. And at the same time, the talkies came in in the film industry, which along with the Depression ended up devastating the vaudeville audience. Her earnings were still higher than most, but only a quarter of what they had been a year or two earlier. She had one last recording session in 1933, produced by John Hammond for OKeh Records, where she showed that her style had developed over the years -- it was now incorporating the newer swing style, and featured future swing stars Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden in the backing band: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Gimme a Pigfoot"] Hammond was not hugely impressed with the recordings, preferring her earlier records, and they would be the last she would ever make. She continued as a successful, though no longer record-breaking, live act until 1937, when she and her common-law husband, Lionel Hampton's uncle Richard Morgan, were in a car crash. Morgan escaped, but Smith died of her injuries and was buried on October the fourth 1937. Ten thousand people came to her funeral, but she was buried in an unmarked grave -- she was still legally married to Gee, even though they'd been separated for eight years, and while he supposedly later became rich from songwriting royalties from some of her songs (most of her songs were written by other people, but she wrote a few herself) he refused to pay for a headstone for her. Indeed on more than one occasion he embezzled money that had been raised by other people to provide a headstone. Bessie Smith soon became Joplin's favourite singer of all time, and she started trying to copy her vocals. But other than discovering Smith's music, Joplin seems to have had as terrible a time at university as at school, and soon dropped out and moved back in with her parents. She went to business school for a short while, where she learned some secretarial skills, and then she moved west, going to LA where two of her aunts lived, to see if she could thrive better in a big West Coast city than she did in small-town Texas. Soon she moved from LA to Venice Beach, and from there had a brief sojourn in San Francisco, where she tried to live out her beatnik fantasies at a time when the beatnik culture was starting to fall apart. She did, while she was there, start smoking cannabis, though she never got a taste for that drug, and took Benzedrine and started drinking much more heavily than she had before. She soon lost her job, moved back to Texas, and re-enrolled at the same college she'd been at before. But now she'd had a taste of real Bohemian life -- she'd been singing at coffee houses, and having affairs with both men and women -- and soon she decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin. At this point, Austin was very far from the cultural centre it has become in recent decades, and it was still a straitlaced Texan town, but it was far less so than Port Arthur, and she soon found herself in a folk group, the Waller Creek Boys. Janis would play autoharp and sing, sometimes Bessie Smith covers, but also the more commercial country and folk music that was popular at the time, like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", a song that had originally been recorded by Wanda Jackson but at that time was a big hit for Dusty Springfield's group The Springfields: [Excerpt: The Waller Creek Boys, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"] But even there, Joplin didn't fit in comfortably. The venue where the folk jams were taking place was a segregated venue, as everywhere around Austin was. And she was enough of a misfit that the campus newspaper did an article on her headlined "She Dares to Be Different!", which read in part "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break out into song it will be handy." There was a small group of wannabe-Beatniks, including Chet Helms, who we've mentioned previously in the Grateful Dead episode, Gilbert Shelton, who went on to be a pioneer of alternative comics and create the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Shelton's partner in Rip-Off Press, Dave Moriarty, but for the most part the atmosphere in Austin was only slightly better for Janis than it had been in Port Arthur. The final straw for her came when in an annual charity fundraiser joke competition to find the ugliest man on campus, someone nominated her for the "award". She'd had enough of Texas. She wanted to go back to California. She and Chet Helms, who had dropped out of the university earlier and who, like her, had already spent some time on the West Coast, decided to hitch-hike together to San Francisco. Before leaving, she made a recording for her ex-girlfriend Julie Paul, a country and western musician, of a song she'd written herself. It's recorded in what many say was Janis' natural voice -- a voice she deliberately altered in performance in later years because, she would tell people, she didn't think there was room for her singing like that in an industry that already had Joan Baez and Judy Collins. In her early years she would alternate between singing like this and doing her imitations of Black women, but the character of Janis Joplin who would become famous never sang like this. It may well be the most honest thing that she ever recorded, and the most revealing of who she really was: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, "So Sad to Be Alone"] Joplin and Helms made it to San Francisco, and she started performing at open-mic nights and folk clubs around the Bay Area, singing in her Bessie Smith and Odetta imitation voice, and sometimes making a great deal of money by sounding different from the wispier-voiced women who were the norm at those venues. The two friends parted ways, and she started performing with two other folk musicians, Larry Hanks and Roger Perkins, and she insisted that they would play at least one Bessie Smith song at every performance: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, Larry Hanks, and Roger Perkins, "Black Mountain Blues (live in San Francisco)"] Often the trio would be joined by Billy Roberts, who at that time had just started performing the song that would make his name, "Hey Joe", and Joplin was soon part of the folk scene in the Bay Area, and admired by Dino Valenti, David Crosby, and Jerry Garcia among others. She also sang a lot with Jorma Kaukonnen, and recordings of the two of them together have circulated for years: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonnen, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] Through 1963, 1964, and early 1965 Joplin ping-ponged from coast to coast, spending time in the Bay Area, then Greenwich Village, dropping in on her parents then back to the Bay Area, and she started taking vast quantities of methamphetamine. Even before moving to San Francisco she had been an occasional user of amphetamines – at the time they were regularly prescribed to students as study aids during exam periods, and she had also been taking them to try to lose some of the weight she always hated. But while she was living in San Francisco she became dependent on the drug. At one point her father was worried enough about her health to visit her in San Francisco, where she managed to fool him that she was more or less OK. But she looked to him for reassurance that things would get better for her, and he couldn't give it to her. He told her about a concept that he called the "Saturday night swindle", the idea that you work all week so you can go out and have fun on Saturday in the hope that that will make up for everything else, but that it never does. She had occasional misses with what would have been lucky breaks -- at one point she was in a motorcycle accident just as record labels were interested in signing her, and by the time she got out of the hospital the chance had gone. She became engaged to another speed freak, one who claimed to be an engineer and from a well-off background, but she was becoming severely ill from what was by now a dangerous amphetamine habit, and in May 1965 she decided to move back in with her parents, get clean, and have a normal life. Her new fiance was going to do the same, and they were going to have the conformist life her parents had always wanted, and which she had always wanted to want. Surely with a husband who loved her she could find a way to fit in and just be normal. She kicked the addiction, and wrote her fiance long letters describing everything about her family and the new normal life they were going to have together, and they show her painfully trying to be optimistic about the future, like one where she described her family to him: "My mother—Dorothy—worries so and loves her children dearly. Republican and Methodist, very sincere, speaks in clichés which she really means and is very good to people. (She thinks you have a lovely voice and is terribly prepared to like you.) My father—richer than when I knew him and kind of embarrassed about it—very well read—history his passion—quiet and very excited to have me home because I'm bright and we can talk (about antimatter yet—that impressed him)! I keep telling him how smart you are and how proud I am of you.…" She went back to Lamar, her mother started sewing her a wedding dress, and for much of the year she believed her fiance was going to be her knight in shining armour. But as it happened, the fiance in question was described by everyone else who knew him as a compulsive liar and con man, who persuaded her father to give him money for supposed medical tests before the wedding, but in reality was apparently married to someone else and having a baby with a third woman. After the engagement was broken off, she started performing again around the coffeehouses in Austin and Houston, and she started to realise the possibilities of rock music for her kind of performance. The missing clue came from a group from Austin who she became very friendly with, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and the way their lead singer Roky Erickson would wail and yell: [Excerpt: The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me (live)"] If, as now seemed inevitable, Janis was going to make a living as a performer, maybe she should start singing rock music, because it seemed like there was money in it. There was even some talk of her singing with the Elevators. But then an old friend came to Austin from San Francisco with word from Chet Helms. A blues band had formed, and were looking for a singer, and they remembered her from the coffee houses. Would she like to go back to San Francisco and sing with them? In the time she'd been away, Helms had become hugely prominent in the San Francisco music scene, which had changed radically. A band from the area called the Charlatans had been playing a fake-Victorian saloon called the Red Dog in nearby Nevada, and had become massive with the people who a few years earlier had been beatniks: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "32-20"] When their residency at the Red Dog had finished, several of the crowd who had been regulars there had become a collective of sorts called the Family Dog, and Helms had become their unofficial leader. And there's actually a lot packed into that choice of name. As we'll see in a few future episodes, a lot of West Coast hippies eventually started calling their collectives and communes families. This started as a way to get round bureaucracy -- if a helpful welfare officer put down that the unrelated people living in a house together were a family, suddenly they could get food stamps. As with many things, of course, the label then affected how people thought about themselves, and one thing that's very notable about the San Francisco scene hippies in particular is that they are some of the first people to make a big deal about what we now  call "found family" or "family of choice". But it's also notable how often the hippie found families took their model from the only families these largely middle-class dropouts had ever known, and structured themselves around men going out and doing the work -- selling dope or panhandling or being rock musicians or shoplifting -- with the women staying at home doing the housework. The Family Dog started promoting shows, with the intention of turning San Francisco into "the American Liverpool", and soon Helms was rivalled only by Bill Graham as the major promoter of rock shows in the Bay Area. And now he wanted Janis to come back and join this new band. But Janis was worried. She was clean now. She drank far too much, but she wasn't doing any other drugs. She couldn't go back to San Francisco and risk getting back on methamphetamine. She needn't worry about that, she was told, nobody in San Francisco did speed any more, they were all on LSD -- a drug she hated and so wasn't in any danger from. Reassured, she made the trip back to San Francisco, to join Big Brother and the Holding Company. Big Brother and the Holding Company were the epitome of San Francisco acid rock at the time. They were the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, which Helms ran, and their first ever gig had been at the Trips Festival, which we talked about briefly in the Grateful Dead episode. They were known for being more imaginative than competent -- lead guitarist James Gurley was often described as playing parts that were influenced by John Cage, but was equally often, and equally accurately, described as not actually being able to keep his guitar in tune because he was too stoned. But they were drawing massive crowds with their instrumental freak-out rock music. Helms thought they needed a singer, and he had remembered Joplin, who a few of the group had seen playing the coffee houses. He decided she would be perfect for them, though Joplin wasn't so sure. She thought it was worth a shot, but as she wrote to her parents before meeting the group "Supposed to rehearse w/ the band this afternoon, after that I guess I'll know whether I want to stay & do that for awhile. Right now my position is ambivalent—I'm glad I came, nice to see the city, a few friends, but I'm not at all sold on the idea of becoming the poor man's Cher.” In that letter she also wrote "I'm awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you. I understand your fears at my coming here & must admit I share them, but I really do think there's an awfully good chance I won't blow it this time." The band she met up with consisted of lead guitarist James Gurley, bass player Peter Albin, rhythm player Sam Andrew, and drummer David Getz.  To start with, Peter Albin sang lead on most songs, with Joplin adding yelps and screams modelled on those of Roky Erickson, but in her first gig with the band she bowled everyone over with her lead vocal on the traditional spiritual "Down on Me", which would remain a staple of their live act, as in this live recording from 1968: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me (Live 1968)"] After that first gig in June 1966, it was obvious that Joplin was going to be a star, and was going to be the group's main lead vocalist. She had developed a whole new stage persona a million miles away from her folk performances. As Chet Helms said “Suddenly this person who would stand upright with her fists clenched was all over the stage. Roky Erickson had modeled himself after the screaming style of Little Richard, and Janis's initial stage presence came from Roky, and ultimately Little Richard. It was a very different Janis.” Joplin would always claim to journalists that her stage persona was just her being herself and natural, but she worked hard on every aspect of her performance, and far from the untrained emotional outpouring she always suggested, her vocal performances were carefully calculated pastiches of her influences -- mostly Bessie Smith, but also Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, Etta James, Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. That's not to say that those performances weren't an authentic expression of part of herself -- they absolutely were. But the ethos that dominated San Francisco in the mid-sixties prized self-expression over technical craft, and so Joplin had to portray herself as a freak of nature who just had to let all her emotions out, a wild woman, rather than someone who carefully worked out every nuance of her performances. Joplin actually got the chance to meet one of her idols when she discovered that Willie Mae Thornton was now living and regularly performing in the Bay Area. She and some of her bandmates saw Big Mama play a small jazz club, where she performed a song she wouldn't release on a record for another two years: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Ball 'n' Chain"] Janis loved the song and scribbled down the lyrics, then went backstage to ask Big Mama if Big Brother could cover the song. She gave them her blessing, but told them "don't" -- and here she used a word I can't use with a clean rating -- "it up". The group all moved in together, communally, with their partners -- those who had them. Janis was currently single, having dumped her most recent boyfriend after discovering him shooting speed, as she was still determined to stay clean. But she was rapidly discovering that the claim that San Franciscans no longer used much speed had perhaps not been entirely true, as for example Sam Andrew's girlfriend went by the nickname Speedfreak Rita. For now, Janis was still largely clean, but she did start drinking more. Partly this was because of a brief fling with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, who lived nearby. Janis liked Pigpen as someone else on the scene who didn't much like psychedelics or cannabis -- she didn't like drugs that made her think more, but only drugs that made her able to *stop* thinking (her love of amphetamines doesn't seem to fit this pattern, but a small percentage of people have a different reaction to amphetamine-type stimulants, perhaps she was one of those). Pigpen was a big drinker of Southern Comfort -- so much so that it would kill him within a few years -- and Janis started joining him. Her relationship with Pigpen didn't last long, but the two would remain close, and she would often join the Grateful Dead on stage over the years to duet with him on "Turn On Your Lovelight": [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, "Turn on Your Lovelight"] But within two months of joining the band, Janis nearly left. Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records came to see the group live, and was impressed by their singer, but not by the rest of the band. This was something that would happen again and again over the group's career. The group were all imaginative and creative -- they worked together on their arrangements and their long instrumental jams and often brought in very good ideas -- but they were not the most disciplined or technically skilled of musicians, even when you factored in their heavy drug use, and often lacked the skill to pull off their better ideas. They were hugely popular among the crowds at the Avalon Ballroom, who were on the group's chemical wavelength, but Rothchild was not impressed -- as he was, in general, unimpressed with psychedelic freakouts. He was already of the belief in summer 1966 that the fashion for extended experimental freak-outs would soon come to an end and that there would be a pendulum swing back towards more structured and melodic music. As we saw in the episode on The Band, he would be proved right in a little over a year, but being ahead of the curve he wanted to put together a supergroup that would be able to ride that coming wave, a group that would play old-fashioned blues. He'd got together Stefan Grossman, Steve Mann, and Taj Mahal, and he wanted Joplin to be the female vocalist for the group, dueting with Mahal. She attended one rehearsal, and the new group sounded great. Elektra Records offered to sign them, pay their rent while they rehearsed, and have a major promotional campaign for their first release. Joplin was very, very, tempted, and brought the subject up to her bandmates in Big Brother. They were devastated. They were a family! You don't leave your family! She was meant to be with them forever! They eventually got her to agree to put off the decision at least until after a residency they'd been booked for in Chicago, and she decided to give them the chance, writing to her parents "I decided to stay w/the group but still like to think about the other thing. Trying to figure out which is musically more marketable because my being good isn't enough, I've got to be in a good vehicle.” The trip to Chicago was a disaster. They found that the people of Chicago weren't hugely interested in seeing a bunch of white Californians play the blues, and that the Midwest didn't have the same Bohemian crowds that the coastal cities they were used to had, and so their freak-outs didn't go down well either. After two weeks of their four-week residency, the club owner stopped paying them because they were so unpopular, and they had no money to get home. And then they were approached by Bob Shad. (For those who know the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the Bob Shad in that film is named after this one -- Judd Apatow, the film's director, is Shad's grandson) This Shad was a record producer, who had worked with people like Big Bill Broonzy, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Billy Eckstine over an eighteen-year career, and had recently set up a new label, Mainstream Records. He wanted to sign Big Brother and the Holding Company. They needed money and... well, it was a record contract! It was a contract that took half their publishing, paid them a five percent royalty on sales, and gave them no advance, but it was still a contract, and they'd get union scale for the first session. In that first session in Chicago, they recorded four songs, and strangely only one, "Down on Me", had a solo Janis vocal. Of the other three songs, Sam Andrew and Janis dueted on Sam's song "Call on Me", Albin sang lead on the group composition "Blindman", and Gurley and Janis sang a cover of "All Is Loneliness", a song originally by the avant-garde street musician Moondog: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "All is Loneliness"] The group weren't happy with the four songs they recorded -- they had to keep the songs to the length of a single, and the engineers made sure that the needles never went into the red, so their guitars sounded far more polite and less distorted than they were used to. Janis was fascinated by the overdubbing process, though, especially double-tracking, which she'd never tried before but which she turned out to be remarkably good at. And they were now signed to a contract, which meant that Janis wouldn't be leaving the group to go solo any time soon. The family were going to stay together. But on the group's return to San Francisco, Janis started doing speed again, encouraged by the people around the group, particularly Gurley's wife. By the time the group's first single, "Blindman" backed with "All is Loneliness", came out, she was an addict again. That initial single did nothing, but the group were fast becoming one of the most popular in the Bay Area, and almost entirely down to Janis' vocals and on-stage persona. Bob Shad had already decided in the initial session that while various band members had taken lead, Janis was the one who should be focused on as the star, and when they drove to LA for their second recording session it was songs with Janis leads that they focused on. At that second session, in which they recorded ten tracks in two days, the group recorded a mix of material including one of Janis' own songs, the blues track "Women is Losers", and a version of the old folk song "the Cuckoo Bird" rearranged by Albin. Again they had to keep the arrangements to two and a half minutes a track, with no extended soloing and a pop arrangement style, and the results sound a lot more like the other San Francisco bands, notably Jefferson Airplane, than like the version of the band that shows itself in their live performances: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Coo Coo"] After returning to San Francisco after the sessions, Janis went to see Otis Redding at the Fillmore, turning up several hours before the show started on all three nights to make sure she could be right at the front. One of the other audience members later recalled “It was more fascinating for me, almost, to watch Janis watching Otis, because you could tell that she wasn't just listening to him, she was studying something. There was some kind of educational thing going on there. I was jumping around like the little hippie girl I was, thinking This is so great! and it just stopped me in my tracks—because all of a sudden Janis drew you very deeply into what the performance was all about. Watching her watch Otis Redding was an education in itself.” Joplin would, for the rest of her life, always say that Otis Redding was her all-time favourite singer, and would say “I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I Can't Turn You Loose (live)"] At the start of 1967, the group moved out of the rural house they'd been sharing and into separate apartments around Haight-Ashbury, and they brought the new year in by playing a free show organised by the Hell's Angels, the violent motorcycle gang who at the time were very close with the proto-hippies in the Bay Area. Janis in particular always got on well with the Angels, whose drugs of choice, like hers, were speed and alcohol more than cannabis and psychedelics. Janis also started what would be the longest on-again off-again relationship she would ever have, with a woman named Peggy Caserta. Caserta had a primary partner, but that if anything added to her appeal for Joplin -- Caserta's partner Kimmie had previously been in a relationship with Joan Baez, and Joplin, who had an intense insecurity that made her jealous of any other female singer who had any success, saw this as in some way a validation both of her sexuality and, transitively, of her talent. If she was dating Baez's ex's lover, that in some way put her on a par with Baez, and when she told friends about Peggy, Janis would always slip that fact in. Joplin and Caserta would see each other off and on for the rest of Joplin's life, but they were never in a monogamous relationship, and Joplin had many other lovers over the years. The next of these was Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, who were just in the process of recording their first album Electric Music for the Mind and Body, when McDonald and Joplin first got together: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Grace"] McDonald would later reminisce about lying with Joplin, listening to one of the first underground FM radio stations, KMPX, and them playing a Fish track and a Big Brother track back to back. Big Brother's second single, the other two songs recorded in the Chicago session, had been released in early 1967, and the B-side, "Down on Me", was getting a bit of airplay in San Francisco and made the local charts, though it did nothing outside the Bay Area: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me"] Janis was unhappy with the record, though, writing to her parents and saying, “Our new record is out. We seem to be pretty dissatisfied w/it. I think we're going to try & get out of the record contract if we can. We don't feel that they know how to promote or engineer a record & every time we recorded for them, they get all our songs, which means we can't do them for another record company. But then if our new record does something, we'd change our mind. But somehow, I don't think it's going to." The band apparently saw a lawyer to see if they could get out of the contract with Mainstream, but they were told it was airtight. They were tied to Bob Shad no matter what for the next five years. Janis and McDonald didn't stay together for long -- they clashed about his politics and her greater fame -- but after they split, she asked him to write a song for her before they became too distant, and he obliged and recorded it on the Fish's next album: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Janis"] The group were becoming so popular by late spring 1967 that when Richard Lester, the director of the Beatles' films among many other classics, came to San Francisco to film Petulia, his follow-up to How I Won The War, he chose them, along with the Grateful Dead, to appear in performance segments in the film. But it would be another filmmaker that would change the course of the group's career irrevocably: [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"] When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival, nobody had any great expectations. They were second on the bill on the Saturday, the day that had been put aside for the San Francisco acts, and they were playing in the early afternoon, after a largely unimpressive night before. They had a reputation among the San Francisco crowd, of course, but they weren't even as big as the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape or Country Joe and the Fish, let alone Jefferson Airplane. Monterey launched four careers to new heights, but three of the superstars it made -- Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who -- already had successful careers. Hendrix and the Who had had hits in the UK but not yet broken the US market, while Redding was massively popular with Black people but hadn't yet crossed over to a white audience. Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the other hand, were so unimportant that D.A. Pennebaker didn't even film their set -- their manager at the time had not wanted to sign over the rights to film their performance, something that several of the other acts had also refused -- and nobody had been bothered enough to make an issue of it. Pennebaker just took some crowd shots and didn't bother filming the band. The main thing he caught was Cass Elliot's open-mouthed astonishment at Big Brother's performance -- or rather at Janis Joplin's performance. The members of the group would later complain, not entirely inaccurately, that in the reviews of their performance at Monterey, Joplin's left nipple (the outline of which was apparently visible through her shirt, at least to the male reviewers who took an inordinate interest in such things) got more attention than her four bandmates combined. As Pennebaker later said “She came out and sang, and my hair stood on end. We were told we weren't allowed to shoot it, but I knew if we didn't have Janis in the film, the film would be a wash. Afterward, I said to Albert Grossman, ‘Talk to her manager or break his leg or whatever you have to do, because we've got to have her in this film. I can't imagine this film without this woman who I just saw perform.” Grossman had a talk with the organisers of the festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips, and they offered Big Brother a second spot, the next day, if they would allow their performance to be used in the film. The group agreed, after much discussion between Janis and Grossman, and against the wishes of their manager: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Ball and Chain (live at Monterey)"] They were now on Albert Grossman's radar. Or at least, Janis Joplin was. Joplin had always been more of a careerist than the other members of the group. They were in music to have a good time and to avoid working a straight job, and while some of them were more accomplished musicians than their later reputations would suggest -- Sam Andrew, in particular, was a skilled player and serious student of music -- they were fundamentally content with playing the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and making five hundred dollars or so a week between them. Very good money for 1967, but nothing else. Joplin, on the other hand, was someone who absolutely craved success. She wanted to prove to her family that she wasn't a failure and that her eccentricity shouldn't stop them being proud of her; she was always, even at the depths of her addictions, fiscally prudent and concerned about her finances; and she had a deep craving for love. Everyone who talks about her talks about how she had an aching need at all times for approval, connection, and validation, which she got on stage more than she got anywhere else. The bigger the audience, the more they must love her. She'd made all her decisions thus far based on how to balance making music that she loved with commercial success, and this would continue to be the pattern for her in future. And so when journalists started to want to talk to her, even though up to that point Albin, who did most of the on-stage announcements, and Gurley, the lead guitarist, had considered themselves joint leaders of the band, she was eager. And she was also eager to get rid of their manager, who continued the awkward streak that had prevented their first performance at the Monterey Pop Festival from being filmed. The group had the chance to play the Hollywood Bowl -- Bill Graham was putting on a "San Francisco Sound" showcase there, featuring Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and got their verbal agreement to play, but after Graham had the posters printed up, their manager refused to sign the contracts unless they were given more time on stage. The next day after that, they played Monterey again -- this time the Monterey Jazz Festival. A very different crowd to the Pop Festival still fell for Janis' performance -- and once again, the film being made of the event didn't include Big Brother's set because of their manager. While all this was going on, the group's recordings from the previous year were rushed out by Mainstream Records as an album, to poor reviews which complained it was nothing like the group's set at Monterey: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] They were going to need to get out of that contract and sign with somewhere better -- Clive Davis at Columbia Records was already encouraging them to sign with him -- but to do that, they needed a better manager. They needed Albert Grossman. Grossman was one of the best negotiators in the business at that point, but he was also someone who had a genuine love for the music his clients made.  And he had good taste -- he managed Odetta, who Janis idolised as a singer, and Bob Dylan, who she'd been a fan of since his first album came out. He was going to be the perfect manager for the group. But he had one condition though. His first wife had been a heroin addict, and he'd just been dealing with Mike Bloomfield's heroin habit. He had one absolutely ironclad rule, a dealbreaker that would stop him signing them -- they didn't use heroin, did they? Both Gurley and Joplin had used heroin on occasion -- Joplin had only just started, introduced to the drug by Gurley -- but they were only dabblers. They could give it up any time they wanted, right? Of course they could. They told him, in perfect sincerity, that the band didn't use heroin and it wouldn't be a problem. But other than that, Grossman was extremely flexible. He explained to the group at their first meeting that he took a higher percentage than other managers, but that he would also make them more money than other managers -- if money was what they wanted. He told them that they needed to figure out where they wanted their career to be, and what they were willing to do to get there -- would they be happy just playing the same kind of venues they were now, maybe for a little more money, or did they want to be as big as Dylan or Peter, Paul, and Mary? He could get them to whatever level they wanted, and he was happy with working with clients at every level, what did they actually want? The group were agreed -- they wanted to be rich. They decided to test him. They were making twenty-five thousand dollars a year between them at that time, so they got ridiculously ambitious. They told him they wanted to make a *lot* of money. Indeed, they wanted a clause in their contract saying the contract would be void if in the first year they didn't make... thinking of a ridiculous amount, they came up with seventy-five thousand dollars. Grossman's response was to shrug and say "Make it a hundred thousand." The group were now famous and mixing with superstars -- Peter Tork of the Monkees had become a close friend of Janis', and when they played a residency in LA they were invited to John and Michelle Phillips' house to see a rough cut of Monterey Pop. But the group, other than Janis, were horrified -- the film barely showed the other band members at all, just Janis. Dave Getz said later "We assumed we'd appear in the movie as a band, but seeing it was a shock. It was all Janis. They saw her as a superstar in the making. I realized that though we were finally going to be making money and go to another level, it also meant our little family was being separated—there was Janis, and there was the band.” [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] If the group were going to make that hundred thousand dollars a year, they couldn't remain on Mainstream Records, but Bob Shad was not about to give up his rights to what could potentially be the biggest group in America without a fight. But luckily for the group, Clive Davis at Columbia had seen their Monterey performance, and he was also trying to pivot the label towards the new rock music. He was basically willing to do anything to get them. Eventually Columbia agreed to pay Shad two hundred thousand dollars for the group's contract -- Davis and Grossman negotiated so half that was an advance on the group's future earnings, but the other half was just an expense for the label. On top of that the group got an advance payment of fifty thousand dollars for their first album for Columbia, making a total investment by Columbia of a quarter of a million dollars -- in return for which they got to sign the band, and got the rights to the material they'd recorded for Mainstream, though Shad would get a two percent royalty on their first two albums for Columbia. Janis was intimidated by signing for Columbia, because that had been Aretha Franklin's label before she signed to Atlantic, and she regarded Franklin as the greatest performer in music at that time.  Which may have had something to do with the choice of a new song the group added to their setlist in early 1968 -- one which was a current hit for Aretha's sister Erma: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] We talked a little in the last episode about the song "Piece of My Heart" itself, though mostly from the perspective of its performer, Erma Franklin. But the song was, as we mentioned, co-written by Bert Berns. He's someone we've talked about a little bit in previous episodes, notably the ones on "Here Comes the Night" and "Twist and Shout", but those were a couple of years ago, and he's about to become a major figure in the next episode, so we might as well take a moment here to remind listeners (or tell those who haven't heard those episodes) of the basics and explain where "Piece of My Heart" comes in Berns' work as a whole. Bert Berns was a latecomer to the music industry, not getting properly started until he was thirty-one, after trying a variety of other occupations. But when he did get started, he wasted no time making his mark -- he knew he had no time to waste. He had a weak heart and knew the likelihood was he was going to die young. He started an association with Wand records as a songwriter and performer, writing songs for some of Phil Spector's pre-fame recordings, and he also started producing records for Atlantic, where for a long while he was almost the equal of Jerry Wexler or Leiber and Stoller in terms of number of massive hits created. His records with Solomon Burke were the records that first got the R&B genre renamed soul (previously the word "soul" mostly referred to a kind of R&Bish jazz, rather than a kind of gospel-ish R&B). He'd also been one of the few American music industry professionals to work with British bands before the Beatles made it big in the USA, after he became alerted to the Beatles' success with his song "Twist and Shout", which he'd co-written with Phil Medley, and which had been a hit in a version Berns produced for the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] That song shows the two elements that existed in nearly every single Bert Berns song or production. The first is the Afro-Caribbean rhythm, a feel he picked up during a stint in Cuba in his twenties. Other people in the Atlantic records team were also partial to those rhythms -- Leiber and Stoller loved what they called the baion rhythm -- but Berns more than anyone else made it his signature. He also very specifically loved the song "La Bamba", especially Ritchie Valens' version of it: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, "La Bamba"] He basically seemed to think that was the greatest record ever made, and he certainly loved that three-chord trick I-IV-V-IV chord sequence -- almost but not quite the same as the "Louie Louie" one.  He used it in nearly every song he wrote from that point on -- usually using a bassline that went something like this: [plays I-IV-V-IV bassline] He used it in "Twist and Shout" of course: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] He used it in "Hang on Sloopy": [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] He *could* get more harmonically sophisticated on occasion, but the vast majority of Berns' songs show the power of simplicity. They're usually based around three chords, and often they're actually only two chords, like "I Want Candy": [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Or the chorus to "Here Comes the Night" by Them, which is two chords for most of it and only introduces a third right at the end: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And even in that song you can hear the "Twist and Shout"/"La Bamba" feel, even if it's not exactly the same chords. Berns' whole career was essentially a way of wringing *every last possible drop* out of all the implications of Ritchie Valens' record. And so even when he did a more harmonically complex song, like "Piece of My Heart", which actually has some minor chords in the bridge, the "La Bamba" chord sequence is used in both the verse: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] And the chorus: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] Berns co-wrote “Piece of My Heart” with Jerry Ragavoy. Berns and Ragavoy had also written "Cry Baby" for Garnet Mimms, which was another Joplin favourite: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And Ragavoy, with other collaborators

California Preachin' captures her daily honest Walk of Faith. During the pandemic, the channel started to grow more and more in subscribers. Her videos often feature her husband of 25 years, actor Billy Baldwin, in a segment, they refer to as “Chilly: Chynna & Billy.”    In 2019, Chynna fulfilled her dream of starting her own Christian YouTube channel, entitled “California Preachin'”    In 2022 Chynna began California Healin', a weekly live meeting that offers a support system for women on their faith journey and includes ongoing group chats, and reading The Word together. California Healin' continues to grow, as more and more women are finding healing and community.    Singer/songwriter, and actress, Chynna Phillips-Baldwin was born to musicians John and Michelle Phillips of famed 60's group The Mamas and The Papas. She is one part of the iconic pop trio Wilson Phillips with number-one hits in the 90's such as “Hold On” and “Release Me”.  . #wilsonphillips #holdon #releaseme #music #californiapreachin #califormiahealin #ministry #womensministry #singersongwriter #faith #inspiration #motivation #encouragement #billybaldwin

California Preachin' captures her daily honest Walk of Faith. During the pandemic, the channel started to grow more and more in subscribers. Her videos often feature her husband of 25 years, actor Billy Baldwin, in a segment, they refer to as “Chilly: Chynna & Billy.”    In 2019, Chynna fulfilled her dream of starting her own Christian YouTube channel, entitled “California Preachin'”    In 2022 Chynna began California Healin', a weekly live meeting that offers a support system for women on their faith journey and includes ongoing group chats, and reading The Word together. California Healin' continues to grow, as more and more women are finding healing and community.    Singer/songwriter, and actress, Chynna Phillips-Baldwin was born to musicians John and Michelle Phillips of famed 60's group The Mamas and The Papas. She is one part of the iconic pop trio Wilson Phillips with number-one hits in the 90's such as “Hold On” and “Release Me”.  . #wilsonphillips #holdon #releaseme #music #californiapreachin #califormiahealin #ministry #womensministry #singersongwriter #faith #inspiration #motivation #encouragement #billybaldwin

This episode features a conversation with Michelle Phillips, Principal at the White Plains, NY, office of Jackson Lewis P.C., as Michelle discusses major legal developments that impact DEI efforts in the workplace. Discover how the Supreme Court's recent ruling limiting affirmative action in college admissions is also causing companies to pull back on their DEI programs. Michelle provides insight into how employers can navigate this complex legal landscape while expanding diversity pipelines and addressing unconscious bias. 

PLAY IT AGAIN? Captain Picard comes to the rescue of a woman he ghosted! Will it be awkward? Chill? A chance to do it all over again? Bryan and Kristen relive some of the worst that eighties TV had to offer as Patrick Stewart and Michelle Phillips act out trite melodrama in a story that deals with some cultural detritus that has been (seemingly) left behind in the 20th century -- you don't see too many naked ripoffs of Casablanca these days! There's also some stuff about a time fart in here that fails to inspire when it's not a little confusing; but, does Michelle Phillips' experience with people tripping on acid help her performance in this one and does the science fiction B-plot entertain just enough?If you've been enjoying the show, consider rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, in the Spotify app, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Keep track of our standings at trekmarrykillpod.com and if you have any ideas or questions for the show, you can at us on Twitter or Instagram @trekmarrykpod.

Book a reading at: www.jilljardineastrology.comIn this episode, follow the celestial journey that opens the doorways to heaven with guest, Michelle Phillips, a revered intuitive healer known around the globe, . Be captivated as Michelle recounts her spiritual awakening, sparked by the miraculous healing of her son's severe kidney condition. This led her to embody the pure energy of Christ consciousness, bringing about meaningful transformations in people's lives. You'll get to hear about Michelle's innovative approach to healing, integrating divine energies and releasing deep-seated, unconscious memories and epigenetic patterns through our DNA.  Michelle can be reached at: http://soulsawakening.comMichelle takes us on a meditative voyage for pineal gland activation, a portal to higher consciousness. Feel the powerful vibrations of intention setting, protection from Archangel Michael, and the divine reprogramming of your subconscious. Michelle offers a sneak peek into her spiritual connection with her late son, Frank, who continues to guide her and others in spirit form. Discover how Frank, along with Jesus, led Michelle on an extraordinary exploration of the afterlife, and how he assists her in her spiritual work. An exceptional episode awaits you, filled with divine wisdom, spiritual guidance, and healing energies. Tune in for an enlightening experience.Michelle Phillips is an internationally renowned intuitive, healer, speaker, teacher, author and workshop facilitator. She has appeared on various radio and TV shows worldwide. For over 5 years she was the host of the very popular live call-in spiritual television show, “Soul's Awakening”. She was the co-host of the radio show “Soul's Purpose Salon” and while living in Northern California, she started the monthly “ Spiritual Connection breakfast".Michelle  is known as the Healer's Healer. She has been referred to as an Inter-Galactic Shaman because of her knowledge and ability to travel through many dimensions – Light/Dark, Shadow, Above and Below. Many people come to Michelle as a last resort, when everything else has failed, and from her work they experience life-changing transformationsMichelle was born conscious of her gifts and always had a direct connection to the Source. She began her conscious spiritual work after healing her son from a severe kidney ailment. Since that Spiritual Awakening, she has dedicated her life to her spiritual purpose and mission, assisting others in their Soul's Awakening, self love and purpose; co creating Heaven on Earth in all life forms. All of Michelle's work is the embodiment of the “Christ Creator (God) source energies (male/female) integration as one consciousness.Michelle's various modalities were given to her from Christ and downloaded through her own healing process. Her techniques are constantly evolving and expanding as human consciousness opens more to releasing epigenetic patterns and unconscious memories carried through the DNA. One of her most common requests is to shift patterns around relationships to others and to prosperity.Michelle is the Author of 5 books “The Creator Speaks” ,”The Creator Teaches”, “The Creator Heals” , “The Creator Archangels & Masters Speak on the Cosmic Ascension & “The Light at the End of the Tunnel.” The Cosmic Ascension gives us hope by explaining the larger picture of what is happening on our planet now; that we are in a “collective dark night of the soul” and that there absolutely is a “light at the end of the tunnel.” We are shifting dimensions and coming home, full circle into the ONENESS from which we were first created.  Her most recent book “Surfing through Heavens Doorways” was written with her son Frank after he left this world into the higher heavenly spiritual realms.Support the show

 Joe Lindsey eBikes Better Than Cars? The Not Old Better Show, Author Interview Series Welcome to The Not Old Better Show, Art of Living Interview Series on radio and podcast.  I'm Paul Vogelzang, and today's show is brought to you by StartMail.com.  Private email you can trust.   We have a fantastic interview and subject today with our guest, freelance writer, from Bicycling Magazine, Joe LIndsey whom I'll introduce in just a moment. But quickly, if you missed any episodes, last week was our 725th episode when we spoke with Smithsonian Associate Craig Nelson reading from his new book, ‘V Is For Victory.' Craig Nelson shares with us how FDR's skillful leadership turned a nation wary of war into an arsenal of democracy ready to take on the dangers of another world war. Craig Nelson will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up. Two weeks ago I spoke with author Scott Shea about John Phillips, Denny Doherty, Michelle Phillips, and “Mama Cass” Elliot,or as they were collectively known, The Mamas and The Papas, who became standard-bearers for California counterculture after their amazing song, ‘California Dreamin.' Scott Shea has written the new book All the Leaves Are Brown. Excellent subjects for our Not Old Better Show audience. If you missed those shows, along with any others, you can go back and check them out with my entire back catalog of shows, all free for you, there on our website, NotOld-Better.com. You can Google Not Old Better and get everything you need about us! Writer, author, storyteller,  Joe Lindsey is our guest today on  The Not Old Better Show, Art of Living Interview Series on radio and podcast. From Joe Lindsey's website, Joe loves research and reporting. Joe Lindsey loves talking with people and learning about their lives and work, and most of all, Joe LIndsey loves telling stories for an audience on NPR, ESPN, and Bicycling Magazine, which is where I first became acquainted with Joe Lindsey.  Joe Lindsey has written his latest piece, entitled UGH. I'M IN THE CAR AGAIN.  The Best Bike Is One That Gets You Out of Your Car As you all know, I've been a long time bike rider, and recently switched to an eBike from Lectric eBikes.  I love my eBike, and I've done a couple other editorial shows, like this one about the virtues of eBike riding.  When I first read Joe's article, I found Joe to say what I've been tyrying to say about eBikes much better than I ever could. Joe and I will talk about how eBikes promise of better ecology, better economy, and better all-around fun, and you'll hear Joe explain the role e-bikes play in improving public health and well-being and how this aspect can be emphasized to promote cycling over car usage.  Joe writes about this subject in a very balanced manner…no fluff, just facts, and I appreciated our time together.  I'm far from alone on this subject. Please join me in welcoming to The Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast, writer, author, storyteller,  Joe Lindsey. My thanks to Writer, author, storyteller,  Joe Lindsey.  My thanks to StartMail.com.  Private email you can trust. for sponsoring today's show.  My thanks to the wonderful Smithsonian team for all they do to support the show.  My thanks to you, my wonderful Not Old Better Show audience here on radio and podcast.  Please be well, be safe, and let's talk about better.  The Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast.  Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next week.

How FDR Challenged the Nation: From Isolation to Ally - Craig Nelson The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series Welcome to The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Art of Living Interview Series on radio and podcast.  I'm Paul Vogelzang, and we have a fantastic interview and subject today with our guest, author and Smithsonian Associate Craig Nelson, whom I'll introduce in just a moment. But quickly, if you missed any episodes, last week was our 724tth episode when we spoke with author Scott Shea about John Phillips, Denny Doherty, Michelle Phillips, and “Mama Cass” Elliot,or as they were collectively known, The Mamas and The Papas, who became standard-bearers for California counterculture after their amazing song, ‘California Dreamin.' Scott Shea has written the new book All the Leaves Are Brown.  Two weeks ago, I spoke with psychologist Dr. Jennifer Guttman about her new book, Beyond Happiness: The 6 Secrets of Lifetime Satisfaction. Excellent subjects for our Not Old Better Show audience. If you missed those shows, along with any others, you can go back and check them out with my entire back catalog of shows, all free for you, there on our website, NotOld-Better.com. You can Google Not Old Better and get everything you need about us! In 1938, when Nazi Germany seized land from Czechoslovakia, the military force of an isolationist United States was smaller than Portugal's. But that same year, President Franklin Roosevelt's order to dramatically expand domestic U.S. airplane production was the first step in the monumental transformation of American enterprise that brought victory in World War II, as well as ended the great Depression, gave rise to middle-class affluence and a consumer society, and triggered an economic, military, and scientific boom that turned America into the undisputed leader of world affairs, and about both American Revolutions. That, of course, is our guest today, author, historian, Smithsonian Associate Craig Nelson reading from his new book, ‘V Is For Victory.' Craig Nelson shares with us how FDR's skillful leadership turned a nation wary of war into an arsenal of democracy ready to take on the dangers of another world war. Craig Nelson will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up.  The title of Craig Nelson's presentation at Smithsonian Associates is How FDR Challenged the Nation: From Isolation to AllyPlease check our website or Smithsonian Associates website for more details, but we have Craig Nelson today. Please join me in welcoming to The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Art of Living Interview Series on radio and podcast, author, historian, Smithsonian Associate Craig Nelson. My thanks to author, historian, Smithsonian Associate Craig Nelson, who'll be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up.  The title of Craig Nelson's presentation at Smithsonian Associates is How FDR Challenged the Nation: From Isolation to Ally. Please check our website or Smithsonian Associates website.  My thanks to the wonderful Smithsonian team for all they do to support the show.  My thanks to you, my wonderful Not Old Better Show audience here on radio and podcast.  Please be well, be safe, and let's talk about better.  The Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast.  Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next week.  For more details, please click here on the Smithsonian Associates link:   https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/fdr-challenged-nation