Michelle PHILLIPS on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

she was only 21 when her group the Mamas and the Papas topped the charts with the song California dreamin in the three short years they were together they made their mark coming to represent a generation and a style of music that still resonates today hi i'm ernie manouse coming up on interviews our conversation with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer singer and actress Michelle Phillips when you hear our mama's of the Papa's song can you enjoy it as just music at this point or is it all little snapshots of your life no it's all music I don't think of when we wrote it or when we recorded it or even what it meant to us at the time I just enjoy it as music are you amazed that it still continues on yes who knew it wasn't what you'd plan to do well you can never know that your music is is going to even be played in the first place let alone have some significance to people 40 years later it's it's it's wonderful but you certainly don't know it until you can look back in retrospect and say oh they still want to hear it right what's it like being induced in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame it was very it was a big honor yeah it it took it took a while I had to do a little nudging to tell you the truth and because I when I realized that we had been eligible for six years and we hadn't been nominated I started to get uh Wow a little incensed actually and I called a couple of my friends who were on the board of trustees or whatever they're called you and I said why and they said well you know John you know made a few enemies and the business and I said Hoppa this isn't political you keep saying that so the next in the neck but the next time up we were nominated yeah I'll say the thing that surprises me the most is how short the group was really together two and a half years that is amazing to me ah it was so much work it was it was a continual a cycle of writing rehearsing recording and going on the road writing rehearsing recording going on the road and of course we only went on the road twice but we were mostly a studio group we spent a lot of time in the studio yeah old we did a lot of work in that two and a half years yeah and what amazes me is the impact it's made to a lot of groups we'll have been together a short time they'll have one or two hits not you folks you had so many hits and the songs are still played today which is what's so amazing about it because it it escapes the time in some way and it becomes just music out there yeah doing it had you any idea that that's the kind of music you were doing even well we did a lot of different kinds of music we our music is kind of like a grab bag of stuff John was trying to write commercial music and we were desperately trying to write commercial music you know we'd come out of the folk era and out of folk groups all of us had been in folk groups so we were trying to make that transition and in the meantime we did a Rodgers and Hart special for instance so we put the Rodgers and Hart stuff on our albums because we were always short of material so anything that we did got on an album we did a little jazzy stuff John was very strongly influenced by jazz and his career before even the folk stuff he was doing jazzy stuff so we did little numbers like once was a time I thought which was a cappella jazz kind of Lambert and Hendrix and Ross and we did a little of everything yeah you started off though on all of this modeling correct yes I was modeling actually in San Francisco and I met John when I was 17 doing a lot of ramp work and yeah do you ever miss that would you have liked to have gotten the modeling route as opposed to the musical rap now no um I did just just enough modeling it was fun I model in San Francisco and and then I went to New York with John and I modeled in New York I still have my modeling books which are really kind of funny cool I did a lot of teenage lingerie which was my specialty and it also I got paid double for it I thought you probably still do and so I have my lingerie book and I have my regular modeling book and they're really funny I heard at some point that someone had said to you probably John that you know sing with the group you'll make more money than you do modeling is that yes yes uh he he had been in the folk group and when the folk group broke up we were living in New York and I knew he was planning to put a group back together and I I had never had any ambition at all to saying I wasn't a singer although I I would sing parts for him if he would say hey Mitch sing this part for me and I would sing and I had sang a little bit in church when I was growing like my grandfather was a Baptist minister and I used to sing in the car with my sister but that was the extent of my singing and we were going through the Holland Tunnel one night and he said you know when I put this group back together you're going to be in it I said why why what why would you do that he said because it's the only way we can justify your expenses on the road so practical reason to had the group yeah he was very pragmatic fellow yeah and I said but you know I can't really sing well enough to do that he said you sing just fine yeah we always hear too when there are strong women in any kind of group they always tabloids love to say if there's fighting and there's battling with you and Cass Elliot did you get along was there tensions there or was it just you were friends we were mostly friends but there was tension in our group all the time that's what we wrote about right if there was no tension there was nothing to write about so you had done it long before Fleetwood Mac would uh-huh yeah but Cass and I were very very good friends yeah and she taught me a lot about singing she gave me a lot of confidence about singing she would always say hey Mitch you know just go for the note you know I'm gonna make it so you know I'll get there yeah so just just make the effort John always had his singing up in the stratosphere yeah so we were always yeah so yeah she made it easier for me yeah to you know to feel secure eventually the group breaks up do you wish it had gone on longer or at when it finally said goodbye was good for you I always thought of the group is a little bubble that a really beautiful colorful bubble that someday was had to burst yeah and it felt perfectly natural to end it when we did Cass had had her little girl I was pregnant with China and neither one of us wanted to be in the studio and we certainly didn't want to be on the road and we had all this wonderful success behind us it was the perfect time to say I do and go on to other things you were still so young to give that up at that point and say okay now that's behind me were you scared at that point was there now what do I do with my life no I I was looking forward to something new and you know the great part about it also is that we have royalties coming in was it like we were going to starve it's good to go on to a new career when you've got that kind of padding financially that you can you it takes a lot of the tension out of it right and I had always thought it would be kind of fun to act so I had friends in the acting community who said if you want to act you should join some workshops and really learn how to do it when you went into acting was there feeling she's a singer she shouldn't be in here acting or were they accepting of you no they were not accepting of me it was exactly that's that feeling in the same way that when actresses want to be singers you know the the singing community goes oh dear what are we gonna do it this one and you know you have to you have to you have to show them that you can actually get up at five o'clock in the morning when they think that that's when you generally go to bed and you have to show them that you can learn lines and that you can be good and that you can you that you couldn't be a believable actress and and also that you're not going to be a prima donna and I was starting a career from scratch yeah and I I realized that I really had to treat it like this was new that I would I didn't had it didn't have the Mamas and Papas behind me and I was coming into this you know kind of you know glorified could you do it could you get around to getting up the time how hard was that for you as a person to make that shift actually I think I'm more of a morning person really as it turned out I I loved it and I loved working I was I was just so grateful when a part started coming in and and I was being offered things I I I was so grateful that yeah I was always very prepared I was always on time I think I really made an effort a very extra extra effort to to be a good little team player now as I remember correctly to the first big thing you're out it was Dillinger yes and you got a Golden Globe nomination right off the bat yes did that surprise you were you like I knew I could do this no it did surprise me I I was very flattered and of course I already had established a pretty nice relationship with a good with the Foreign Press so yeah but it still surprised me and I was I was I was very honored tell me what about the movie Valentino well Valentino was a very uh it was one of the last big Hollywood films where they spent a lot of money you spent hours in makeup and wardrobe was very elaborate and but Rudolf Nureyev was very poorly cast as Valentino you could barely understand his English and uh and he hated acting really yes and you never knew who was going to be next to you in that makeup trailer and six o'clock in morning he could be very nice and charming or he could be just awful he was he was he was used to being the the Prince of the ballet stage and he expected everybody to treat him like that yeah and he also felt that it was perfectly all right for him to mistreat everybody else on the set because that's what he was used to doing but then he could be the most charming man in the world he he had a very much of a dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde Park sides to him it was a film that when it was released did very well in huge metropolitan cities like London New York yeah those two huge cosmopolitan cities I'm gonna move you ahead a little bit just because I need to talk about this Knots Landing oh yeah was it as much fun to do as it seems to watch back it was you you loved going to work in the morning nots was I had never seen the show before I was asked to do it and David Jacobs just asked me to lunch one day and he said you know we've got a part that we have written for you and you would be playing Nicollette Sheridan smother who I had no idea who she was but we'd like for you to do the show and I had to admit to him that I'd never seen it and he said well I'll send over the last two weeks and then tonight's Thursday so you can see in another episode of tonight you let me know tomorrow and by eleven o'clock that night I was firmly hooked what was it that drew you in just the storylines they were wonderful and the acting was great the writing was fantastic yeah it was one of the best written shows on television it survived for 14 seasons Maisie I don't think people realize how long and you'd come in then your character left then it came back again then you went for a good chunk of time at the end I did six years altogether yeah wonderful and then you went back for the reunion movie - yeah but you know the that that was kind of ill-conceived also it was too soon to do a reunion and they couldn't get everybody to come back mm-hmm nicholette didn't want to come back it took forces of you know God to get her to come to do one scene and now she's doing Desperate Housewives now if they asked you to come out and be her mother on that would you say I think that would be wonderful casting yeah kind of an but well we were a very good mother-daughter team you were and we used to sit in the trailer in the morning when we were getting on make up then uh going over our scenes and we say how can we make this even nastier how can I be even worse to you that I am and we'd sit there and you know try to make our characters even more devious and they were now one episode if I remember correctly you went back and sang a Mamas and Papas songs you went back and did one of your songs I didn't actually sing it they played it over a scene where Mack and I are talking in front of the fireplace okay and then they they were they were playing dedicated which was interesting because I'm singing the lead and then they're panning over the album covers that are on the floor and there's the Mamas and Papas album covers and then they pan up to us talking it was it was very surreal it was art imitating life imitating art you know it I thought it was a bad idea at first because they asked my permission to do it they didn't need my permission to do it but they they said do you think this is a good idea and I said no that's terrible ten minutes later I called him back I said I don't know what I was thinking that's a great idea please do it and there must've been some of the audience that didn't even know who you were from that in a sense past life here more that I have had so many people that only know me from acting and especially not slamming uh-huh they had no idea that I was in the Mamas and Papas or the men they might not even have any idea who the Mamas and the Papas were so funny yeah there were a lot of there was a very young audience also I mean it had a very large spectrum you know Knots Landing did but there were a lot of young kids that watched had kids that were in college they were Knots Landing clubs so yeah there are a lot of people who didn't have any idea who that I've had a career previous to that you talked a little bit about the reunion of Knott's landing and also at one point the Mamas and the Papas came back together and the new guys tried to come back together early 70s if I have it right well we had to come back and do an album too because we owed we owed an album they were and that album sounds exactly like what it was you know for people trying to live up to their contractual obligations so not it doesn't fun time for you people like us was not a good out no mate I opinion there are people who love it I don't know there's no accounting for taste you talk about being a mother on the show your mother in real life too is it hard to balance this career world popularity life out in the open and then have a real home life how do you balance that what have you learned from your experiences that makes that work well I it's never been a problem for me because I had China after the moms in the Papas and and I didn't really start working on a regular basis until I started doing knots I mean I didn't have a daily routine until I started Knots Landing but the studio was five minutes away from my house and we had such a large ensemble cast that I I never had to work that long I mean if you were working a lot in one week it worked two days it was the most wonderful job when China came to you and said if that's how it went I won't gonna be in a group now - oh I said that's a terrible idea I told her why do you want to be in the record business is this a terrible business so she took your advice and appleson house never happened yeah yeah they uh they all came to me and they said we're gonna form a group together I said what a bad idea and I said you know you're going to be held to an impossible standard you're going to be constantly it held up to the mamas of the Papas into the Beach Boys they said yeah okay and so they overcame that yeah and they were they're great they have they released an album last year called California and they were worried because Wendy was pregnant and they were that well we're going to have to work around Wendy's pregnancy we're you know we're going to have to stop when she is ready you know when she can't work anymore so we're going to have a lot of we're going to have some problems really promoting this album so when Wendy was about five months pregnant Chyna realized that she was pregnant and they said oh boy this is going to really be tough now how are we going to do this and china says you know I'm a trooper I can I can promote this album while I'm up to my ninth month and then a few months later Carney got pregnant pizza yeah they gave it up but ya can't beat itself a logistic so they all have now Carney's going to have her baby in May and Chyna just had her baby in December and Wendy had her baby back in October so so the next album will be lullabies I think they have to know is it yeah oh really that's what they're planning to do well it makes perfect sense when they come to you do they ask musical advice did they say to you even in the beginning how do we do this what should we do or was it pretty much let them figure out their own voice yeah they never asked me for any advice would you give him some if they had asked yeah yeah why it's their thing why would they come to me for advice I I you know I'm not their producer I'm not writing with them there were some songs I wanted them to record what were they oh dear there was when I was just desperate for them to record too now I can't remember what it was but they never did it and but they recorded Monday Monday and they recorded in my room so they took a great moments in pop a song and a fantastic Beach Boys song and it makes me cry when I hear them do you miss singing not really you did a solo album though right came out yeah seventies I did an album called victim of romance and that was fun everybody wants to do one solo album but I didn't want to go on the road and I didn't want to perform by myself yeah much to the disgruntlement of am records did you we do an album with you and you don't want to go out and promote it and I said no I don't know so um I love my album Jack Nietzsche produced it and I love the album but I'm not really a soloist I'm a very good group singer Time magazine said some very nice things about your voice I knew that's soprano and pop music something like that the purest soprano and popped up man not that she remembers the line not that I remember that obscure line from Time magazine the when you look back on all of this can you imagine that you lived at all yeah doesn't ever seem like these stories other people tell no I am NOT surprised that I've had a very interesting life because I've always been very open to new experiences and I'm very brave I I can tackle new things I was my father just kind of instilled me with a lot of gut I think when I was very young and I I could never just sit still and not have a career is there anything you've wanted to do that you didn't tackle there anything you've always thought I should have tried this or pretty much of you have you lived them all well I started painting again and that's really hard yeah painting yeah harder than the rest of us yeah because I don't have anybody to teach me how to do it yeah if I if I went to a class and maybe learn some some some structure you know and also about color and how to mix paints I might have a little more success that I've had so far but I I did an oil painting of my dog that I'm very proud of well I hope that you'll come back and join us again and next time I'll introduce you is the artist yeah you can show a painting you have you somewhere in your coming in a pleasure to talk to you thank you very much Michelle Phillips to order a transcript call eight six six six five two three three seven eight or sudden $6.95 to the address on your screen please include the name of the guests

Channel: HoustonPBS

Views: 355,077

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Keywords: michelle, phillips, on, innerviews, with, ernie, manouse, interview, calfornia, dreaming, dreamin, the, mamas, and, papas

Id: 6Q-DxMGRvNE

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2011