Owen Elliot-Kugell

Owen Elliot-Kugell has a new book about her mother, "My Mama Cass: A Memoir."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Setts Podcast.
My guest today is Owen Elliott Kogle, who has a
new book, My Mama Cass Owen. Why the book? Why now?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well? I wanted to tell my mom's story because she
didn't live long enough to tell it herself. Why now
I finished it. I've been working on her off and
on for about fifteen years. It wasn't really intended to
come out at any special time or anything like that.
It's just happened to me when it's finished, and it

(00:45):
is coinciding with, unfortunately, the fiftieth anniversary in air quotes
of my mother's passing. So I guess in life there
aren't any accidents, right.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So you wrote the book without a publishing deal, and
when you finished it you got a deal.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
No, I actually did get a publishing deal, and I
was hooked up with it with a wonderful agent who
helped me figure out how to put it in some
kind of a proposal format. And then we then got
the deal with Hashet, And at that point I hired
a collaborative editor named Hope Edelman, who wrote a fabulous

(01:23):
book called Motherless Daughters, enjoying its thirtieth year in publication
this year, and Hope and I worked together for just
about half the book, and then I did the second
half without her, and she and I worked together in
the fashion that I would write a bunch of stuff
and it was like a live Google doc, and she
would correct it like a teacher. It was like going
back to school. It was great.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Okay. One of the points you make in the book
that the rumor that your mother died because she choked
on a ham sandwich is untrue. What is the true
story and how did you uncover the truth story?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, the truth is that she had a heart attack.
That is absolutely what the autopsy report states. I found
out the truth sort of on the by and by
because I had been friendly with and kept in touch
with a few of my mom's friends, and one of
them was a woman named Sue Cameron, who is a journalist.
And I was at lunch with Sue in like two thousand,

(02:26):
I guess, and I remember saying to her, somewhat offhandedly, Gosh,
you know, I really wish I knew who wrote that
rumor about my mom. And she stopped eating and put
her fork and knife down and looked at me and
she went, I did it? I said what? And she
told me that when my mom had passed, that she

(02:49):
had spoken with my mom's manager, who didn't really know
what to do or what to say, and whose main
concern was that people weren't going to lump her in
with so many of her contemporaries who had passed, you know,
due to drug overdoses, and we didn't know what had happened,
you know, And it really was about giving the family

(03:11):
and everybody else a little bit of a moment to
figure out exactly what had happened, which is that she
had a heart attack due to some really bad eating
habits and perhaps, you know, some damage from having a
lot of fun and partying and questionable substances. I mean,
it was the sixties and the seventies. You know, it
would be stupid to think otherwise, So okay.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Her manager was Alan Carr, who has really kind of
been forgotten in the sands of time, but was a
very flamboyant manager movie producer at the time subsequent to
your mother's death. Did you have any contact with Alan
Carr discuss any of this.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I never discussed it with him, although I did meet
him a couple of times in the mid eighties late eighties,
when I first came back out to California, I had
reached out to him and he was, you know, a
flamboyant man, and I went and hung out with him

(04:17):
at his house a little bit, and we didn't talk
about that stuff. Maybe I should have discussed it with him,
but I was just trying to find my feet and
meet as many people as I knew, knew my mom,
and I almost I didn't always have like my questions prepared,

(04:38):
you know what I mean, But I was trying.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
So in your research for the book, other than the
ham Sandwich story, what were the most surprising things you
found out?

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Well, I keep reverting back to the discovery realization that
my mom had been really fighting a weight problem most
of her life, and that it had really begun during
a period of time where she had been staying with

(05:15):
her grandparents because her new little baby sister was about
to be born, and my mom had contracted some ringworm
in some way and that's really really contagious. So she
was sent to live with her grandparents, who did the
categoric thing and just fed her all the time, and
she did what she thought, you know, made them happy,

(05:37):
and so when she returned home a couple of months later,
she was noticeably heavier, and her parents did what they
believed to be the right thing, and it took her
to the doctor, and in turn, he did what he
believed to be the right thing, which was put her
on amphetamine. That discuss was pretty shocking to me, although

(06:03):
I hesitate to do a lot of blaming, because it's
all they knew. They didn't have any way of knowing
that that was going to have a negative effect on someone,
and I think it did have a negative effect on
my mom, besides not being able to pay attention in school,
you know, being like all hyper whatever. It really planted
the seeds of some really negative stuff. You know, first

(06:27):
of all, if you're being taken to the doctor, something's
wrong with you, right, And then to be given this
message of something's wrong with you. Here, take this pill,
it's going to fix you. Those are all really super
dangerous thoughts to be giving an eight year old child.
So in a nutshell, yeah, that was some of the

(06:47):
stuff I think that that shocked me, slash surprised me.
I think the most.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Okay, I certainly knew your mother's real name was not
cast but in the book, you explain where can came from?
Can you tell my audience.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
My grandfather, Philip was the sort of guy who gave
nicknames to everybody, and he had given my mother the
nickname Cassandra, after the wild mad Greek goddess Cassandra, So
he would call her Cassandra all the time, and so
she adopted that as her stage name and then with

(07:28):
her as far as her last name was concerned, what
she told me was that she had that she'd had
a friend with the last name of Elliott who had
passed away in a car accident, and that she had
used that name in order to pay tribute to that person.
I don't know if that's true or not, but that's
what that's what she told me.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Okay, you're born and your last name is Hendrix with
an icks, not like the guitarist, and explain where that
came from.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Well, one of my mom's first groups that she was
in was a group called the Big Three. And as
the name would suggest, there were three people in the band,
two general, two men, and my mom. And uh, this
was you know, in the early sixties, around the time
of the draft of the Vietnam War, and they were
singing together and one of the members, Jim Hendrix, got

(08:21):
the draft notice and it was at a point where
single men were the number one that were being being
drafted and if you were married, you were probably going
to be okay. And my mom and James Hendrix aka
Jim Hendrix were married and a platonic It was a

(08:43):
platonic move, you know, was to keep him out of
the draft and it you know, Jim says that they
had a lot of fun with being quote unquote married,
that they would you know, go places and my mom
would buy him clothes, and you know that they had
a great friendship, you know, and remained really really good friends.

(09:05):
When my mom first came out to California, after the
moms and papa's had been in the Caribbean Islands and
really kind of begun to come together, my mom came
out to California and she stayed with Jim and his
then wife Vanessa. That's the first place she went, so
she stayed really close to him. So, yeah, Jim Hendricks,

(09:26):
I will tell you, growing up with the last name
of Hendricks, even with the icks ending, the amount of
times that people would say to me, oh, I bet
Jimmy Hendricks is your dad, I would go, yeah, see
the resemblance, right, I mean we look exactly alike. Mean,
come on, people's stupidity knows no bounds, zero bounds.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
I believe that I deal with the public all day long.
When did you decide to change your last name? And why.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
I started using the name Elliot as my middle name
when I got married, because people had a very hard
time understanding why my last name was different than my mom's.
So really, purely for ease, I just kind of, you know,

(10:22):
put it in my on my driver's license and started
using it so it's not my legal name, which, which
did you know, prove to have some challenges when I
went to go get a US passport, because I will
tell you that my passport does not say Owen Elliott
Google on it. Thank you US Government. So it was

(10:44):
for ease. I didn't want to explain every time. Oh, well,
you know, my mom she married this guy, and you
know in.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
The derivation of your middle name, Vanessa.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Jim Hendrix's wife, Vanessa, she she she named me after her.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Okay, with decades of experience, is it a plus or
a minus? Being the daughter of Cass Elliott.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Hmm. I will say that it's a double edged sword,
that's for sure. I it certainly gets you in the door.
I know that it's certainly, you know, gotten me places
that other people probably wouldn't be able to get to
as easily. But I also know that when you are

(11:38):
a well, in my case, a second generation performer singer,
if you choose to go into that same line of
work that you're that your parent went into, you feel
a little bit more judged. I think I think you
that you feel, or I would feel, that you have

(11:59):
to be as good as your predecessor or even better,
and then it's almost harder to prove yourself. I think
so in that way, it's a double ed sort. It
gets you in the door, but you have to prove
it even harder. I think.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
So you got in the door. What was your experience
in terms of proving your talent?

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Well, I didn't have too much time before the before
MCA was bought out by Panasonomy.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Not everybody knows the story. Let's roll back a lot
for it. Let's roll back to the beginning. At what
point did you realize your mother was cass Elliott and
she was famous and had fans other than yourself.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Well, certainly by the time I was four or five,
and definitely by the time that I described in the
book of going to the airport to pick her up
and seeing her coming out of the doors and just
running really fasting and and see her and she's waiting
for me, and in between us someone stepped to and

(13:06):
to ask her for her autograph, and I knew that
that was my mom's job, and I knew just to
hang back that, you know, this was part of her job,
and this was her work, and then if I was
just patient, it would be my turn. So I guess
that was one of the first moments that I can remember,
like really knowing that she had this extraordinary job, you know,

(13:29):
that required her to you know sometimes, you know, I
had that that would have to be her priority over
over us. But we'd get there.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
And of course she was a legendary connector. And you
write about your experience living in Laurel Canyon. To what
degree do you remember that experience?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Honestly, not a whole lot. I mean I remember, I mean,
if if we remember, remember that I was seven years
old when my mom passed and had had endured my
share of you know, I hate to use this work
because I feel like everybody uses it all the time.
But there had been some trauma in my early life,

(14:17):
and U when you have that, some of those levels
of trauma, your memories become. You know, you don't really
have very much of them, but the ones I have.
I remember watching The Wizard of Oz with her. I
remember watching football with her. I remember asking her why
her name why my name was different than hers, Like

(14:39):
I have sort of these, you know, little bits and pieces.
As far as being in Laurel Canyon. I remember driving
down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, you know, I remember doing that
stuff and going into Hollywood with her, and you know,
being in the back seat and hearing her sing top
of the world. You know, like those are all really
strong memories of mine. But it was it was a

(15:01):
great place to grow up, you know. And and when
my mom died, I moved in with her sister and
her sister's husband, russe In Leacunkle, and they lived just
at the top of Nichols Canyon, so they were we
were very close in terms of how where we lived.
And it was adyllic, you know, I mean, it's it's

(15:23):
like all those memes we see about, you know, kids
and Generation X. We were out until the street lights
came on. True, true, you know, riding our dirt bikes
and getting into trouble. That's what I remember about growing
up in rural Canyon is just you know, being on
my dirt bike with my friends.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Okay, you're talking about trauma at a young age. Obviously
your mother died, that's the most significant trauma. Were you
referencing trauma before that?

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah? Unfortunately I had suffered some physical abuse from from
one of the nanny's. I don't have too much of
a memory of it, but had some pretty wacky dreams
over my life, That's that's for sure. And it definitely

(16:20):
I can see now how that that trauma affected me
even as an adult. You know, she she made a
real good practice, this particular woman of telling me how
how what a bad little kid I was, and that
that stuff sticks. It just does. Unfortunately, now in.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
The book, you reference the bruises on your legs being noticed,
and that was the turning point with that nanny. Can
you amplify that story a little bit.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
You know, I don't know too much more about it.
I mean, all I know is that my aunt Liah
had been staying up in above my mom's garage. There
was an apartment up there. I wasn't totally finished, but
Leah and her new husband Russ were living in this apartment.

(17:16):
She was pregnant with her son, and she had all
the windows open because it was really warm, and she
heard this nanny bringing me home from preschool just be
rating me, you know, And this story came from Leah.
Like I said, I don't physically remember this stuff, but
when Leah told me it, it told me this story

(17:38):
it definitely and you know, rings a little thing in
the back of your brain. But this nanny was telling
me what a terrible kid I was, how bad I was,
I got my dress dirty, and she was just being
really nasty and really mean. And so Leah said, oh,
you know what, you can take an extra day off
this weekend. So she got the nanny out of there,

(17:58):
and Leah gave me a bath, and she's the one
that discovered the bruises. And then I just, you know,
did what what kids do with in a scenario like that?
You know, it's nothing I fell, Yeah, I don't think so,
you know.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
So, okay, you got that story from your aunt Leah
and you get all these stories. Did the stories tend
to line up or were their contradictions?

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Well, that particular story, I when I said I had
a couple of like pretty intense dreams, I should go
to therapy for some of the dreams, I had hit
some of the some of the things that I think
that I worked out in the in those dreams. So
so in that way, I feel like they did ring
true and a lot of times, especially with a painful memory,

(18:59):
when you hear it again, like I make this comment
about like it like the memory like ringing true in
the back of your brain. That's that's how I know
a memory is true if I like have some identification
with it, you know. And and with that particular memory
I did, unfortunately, because she also did things like I

(19:25):
used to suck my thumb a lot, and she wasn't
having it. So she was putting like tabasco sauce on
my thoe. But I'm not a dummy, I know, I
just you know, wash it off in the in the bathroom.
I remember that, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
So if that was happening, it makes sense that Stuffy
the other stuff was happening and talking to the other
members of the mamas and Papa's relatives and friends.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Was the narrative pretty consistent or do you find one
person saying one thing and another person saying another thing.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
The narrative was always consistent, always, and not one person
ever had anything negative to say. I mean, I don't
know how easy it would be to say something negative
to somebody's kid. But in spite of that, everybody's memory
of hers so Christine. And perhaps it's because she was

(20:23):
thirty two when she passed away. That's still really really young,
you know. So she kind of died in this on
this pedestal if you will, you know, it's you're frozen
in time at a certain age. You know.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
So what with all being her daughter and talking to
so many people writing the book, what do you think
your mother's magic was?

Speaker 2 (20:57):
My mother was the great connector. She was sort of
one of those people that people wanted to be around,
had a magnetism about her, and she was funny and
she was smart, and people wanted to be around her.
So I think that was part of her secret sauce,
is that, you know, people just wanted to hang out
with her, you know, and she was relatable, she was approachable,

(21:21):
you know, and she was honest. She was always honest
and down to earth and like I said, relatable and approachable.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Now, something you touched earlier on her weight and is
also in the book. Conventional wisdom is that she had
this unrequited love affair with Denny Denny Doherty, one of
the papas and the mamas and the papas. To your knowledge,
did she ever have a satisfying love relationship.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
No, no, she didn't. And that's one of the greatest
tragedies of my mother's life, is that she never got
to appreciate or be in a relation relationship with another
human being. That's that's an equal, loving relationship. I just
I do believe that most of the gentleman callers were

(22:13):
there for you know, the fame and the money and
the you know whatever. They weren't there for the for
the right reasons. And she was. She was lonely, you know,
Like I wrote in the book, she's here, she is sitting,
you know, on the on the stage apron at Carnegie Hall,
with all these people yelling her name, you know, but

(22:35):
she's checking into her hotel room by herself. Everybody else
had somebody, but she didn't, you know, And and therein
lies the reason that she decided to get pregnant and
have a kid, because I wasn't going to go anywhere,
you know, she she'd always she would always have me,
you know, or a baby, whoever that person would have been.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
But so when did you metabolize the fact that your
mother was not coming back?

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Probably like three or four years after she died. You know,
I was really really used to her traveling for her
work because that's what she did, so I kind of
would console myself, you know those when you're falling asleep
at night and you have all those thoughts that go

(23:29):
through your through your brain. One of them for me
was she'll be home. She'll be home soon, because she
always is. I guess probably a few years. It sure
wasn't right away. It's definitely a few years later.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Okay. You mentioned the fact that your mother had you
to have a companion, so there wasn't a biological father
on the scene. Jim Hendrix wasn't on the scene. Then
he dies. How much anger do you have about all that?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Then? Who dies my mom? Well?

Speaker 1 (24:08):
The fact that you know, in retrospect, yes, about your mom,
and then you were ultimately left, you know, alone, I mean,
you have your aunt and her husband, but you look
back and you say, well, this was a performer. She
had me as a companion and that was good for her,
and now she's gone.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Well, I guess I never looked at it like that particularly,
but I do remember feeling very much alone when she
died because she was my solo only parent. But I mean,
she was my friend, you know what I mean, Like

(24:52):
it was just her and I a lot, you know,
And I do remember feeling very very much like I
was going to have to just have a whole new life.
I remember there being a moment at the funeral when
we were leaving the funeral, remember, and I don't remember

(25:15):
who it was that asked me with somebody that said, well,
what car do you want to ride in? You know,
do you want to ride with your grandmother or do
you want to ride with your aunt and uncle? And
I knew that my aunt and uncle were going to
be my new family. And I remember thinking to myself,
and let's remember this seven year old kid having this thought, well,

(25:35):
this is going to be your new family, so you
better start getting used to it. I mean, what a
scary thought to realize at that age. And that's really
truly how I felt.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
You know. So you ultimately go to live with Leah
and Russ, who end up having their own child. Did
they feel like your mother and father are in the
back of them in your mind? Did you always know
they were rising to the occasion.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well, you know what, It's interesting because I had to
kind of at an early age make a distinction between
these four individuals. Okay, so stinks about it like that.
So the mother, the biological mother, and father were my
mom and the guy who fathered me. So that takes
what five, ten, fifteen minutes, that's all that takes. And

(26:29):
then I have a mom and a dad. Leah and
Russ are my mom and my dad because they did
the work, they did the job of parenting me.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
So I had to really make those those distinctions, you know, mother,
biological mother, and father and a mom and a dad,
four completely separate people in my ridiculously complicated family tree.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
But ultimately Russ and Leah get divorced.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I know, Russ and Leah then get divorced seven years later.
So I have this weird identification with the number seven.
So the first seven years I'm with my mom, and
then the second seven years I'm with Leah and Russ,
and then after that I'm shipped off to boarding school.
So you know, all that's are off. But yeah, they
Leah and Russ, we had a we had a good

(27:22):
you know, a few years. We were all. It was wonderful.
We were all it was. We were a family. Russ,
you know, I'm sure you know, is like a rock
and roll star. I just realized that, like twenty minutes ago.
He's like one of the best drummers in the world,
you know. And he was on the road all the
time in the summers. Like we would finish our our

(27:45):
you know, school year, and he's gone. He was out
with Crosby Stills and Nash, He's out with Jackson Brown,
he's out with James Dale, or he's just gone.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
You know.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
And that's when Leah had found that the farm in
the Berkshires really close to Tanglewood, So when all those
tours were coming through Tanglewood, we'd get to go see
them at Tanglewood like in the summertime. And so I
have a lot of really great memories of that. So
it was kind of neat to go from one musical
household to another, right and get to kind of have

(28:16):
this pretty rounded experience, you know, it was it was
really cool.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
So you're living in La.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, and then we go to Massachusetts.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Right, So as a young person, that's traumatic.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
What the move to Massachusetts. Yes, you know, it was
an adventure. I didn't see it as being traumatic at all.
I mean, it was really like, this is a new
adventure for us. And growing up in Los Angeles certainly
was way different than growing up in Massachusetts, and it
would give us an opportunity to sort of have a

(28:51):
semi normal, you know life as opposed to being raised
in this really you know, privilege overprivileged, you know, LA
private school scene, which is still just as bad, if
not worse. I'm grateful that we that we got out
of got out of Dodge for for four years, you know,

(29:13):
and I love I love our town in Massachusetts. It's
still it's still my home. Leah lives there, it's still
my home. I still have my bedroom there. Well, I
mean I don't have my stuff there, but you know,
it's still a big part of who I am. So
I'm super grateful that that we left. I didn't see
it as being traumatic at all. I mean, yeah, I
did leave some of my friends in a in a

(29:33):
pre internet, you know, really high long distance phone call era.
It was pretty bad, but you know, I made new friends.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
How do they end up sending you to what you
call a boarding school, but when you read the book,
it sounds more like a lot institution.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Well, it actually wasn't locked, but they did threaten you.
You know that particular school was. It turns out it
was actually in the same campus at the school that
Leah had gone to in the sixties where she'd been
friends with Arlo Guthrie and Chevy Chase had gone there
and all these It was this very progressive boarding school

(30:21):
at that point, and we drove by it and she's like, oh,
what's this? You know, And I had had a hard time,
you know, losing my mom was not an easy thing
for me, and I had a really hard time in school.
Really didn't like school, really couldn't concentrate in school. I
was floating out the window. I just wasn't I wasn't

(30:44):
able to pay attention at all. And I barely got
through school. And I really in our first year in
Northampton in Massachusetts, I didn't really attend a lot of
classes and at the end of the year. Lee was like, yeah, yes,
some got to change here, and she had been told

(31:04):
about this school. Turned out it was on the same
campus this her old school. Haha, isn't that funny? And
we went up there and she enrolled me. It was
It was like an institution in a lot of ways,
although like I said, the doors weren't locked. The consequences

(31:24):
were so severe if you if you left that they
might as well have been locked. But you get you
get into a little bit of a little bit of
what are they called not munch housing bi proxy when
you just feel like you're it was cultish. It was
cultish for sure. It was a very weird uh school.

(31:45):
And I was there for almost three years. And you
didn't get to go home. You didn't go home for Christmas,
you didn't go home for any of those things. So
you were really like locked down, like he said, in
that way. And that school stayed opened for quite quite
a long time. It would fall under the category of
the trouble teen industry. Now when that one that you know,

(32:11):
there's schools in Utah, there's schools all over the place
that are markedly worse than than than the school that
I went to. There's that there's a show on Netflix
right now, the program that's pretty close. It's pretty scary
that that series has been really bothering a lot of people.

(32:32):
I know, we're all still in touch that went to
that school, and we're all like, oh my god, that's
exactly what it was like. But it was it was
nice not being in a house where I was Leah
and I had a really hard time when I was
a teenager. I was probably not the easiest teenager to raise,
and there was a lot of yelling and a lot
of screaming and a lot of just bad stuff. And

(32:53):
I was I was actually really happy to not have
that anymore, and it and it I got to really
grow up at that point, and I never really went
I did go back and live with her for like
six months, but I mean, really, I left home when
I was fourteen, if you really want to think about it,
I was fourteen in boarding school, and when I got out,

(33:13):
I was almost eighteen.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
And you leave and then you ultimately drop out of
high school.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
I dropped out of high school, yes, because the school
that I had then attended for three years was completely unaccredited.
So every class that I had taken, even though the
grades had been bad. Every class that I had taken,
none of them transferred. So I went back to my
normal high school and they were like, yeah, you got

(33:41):
to go back to another year, another year of school
at least. And I was eighteen, and I went, I
am not doing another year of high schools. I watched
everybody that I had known getting ready to walk down
and graduate. I was like, yeah, this is this is
not happening. And so yeah I did. I went down.

(34:01):
I signed myself out of high school on my eighteenth birthday.
Leah wasn't pleased in.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
The ensuing decades not having a high school degree? Is that?
Have you gotten any penalties as a result of that?
Any roadblocks?

Speaker 2 (34:19):
No? And they actually let me write a book. I mean,
I don't know. I mean it's funny because I did
a book signing last night here in La at Diesel
Books in West LA and I had my old childhood
friend moon Zappa come in and interview me, and she

(34:41):
she had just read the book and she said to me,
she said, so, when did you know that you were
a writer? And I went today, It's like this is
so out of the you know, out of my comfort zone.
I've you know, it's it's all new to me. You know,

(35:04):
it's beautiful though, it's so fulfilling. It's just everything that
you hear people say about writing memoir that it's fulfilling,
and it's you know, cathartic, and it's all of that.
It's just it's all of the fields. It really is.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Okay, you're going to prep school in the eighties, it's
insanely expensive sixty plus thousand dollars today. It was not
that expensive back then, but it was far from cheap,
at least the cost of going to college. Where'd the
money come from?

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Well, I know my tuition was about a third of
that sixty if that gives you any indication there there
began to be smaller amounts of money that came through
the estate, and Leah was able to pay some of
it out of her out of her pocket. When this,

(36:02):
and you'll appreciate this, when the CD was invented and
labels were forced to have their artists, most of them
resign agreements because they were new there were new product,
right that, all of those new CDs that came out,

(36:24):
they saved my mom's estate because everybody rebought every bit
of anything they'd ever had because of this new sound,
everything was so great and CDs just made huge, huge
leaps and bounds. And because of all that, we were
able to finally get the estate closed in like nineteen

(36:44):
eighty seven. So, you know what, I don't know how
she got the money, but she did it, and she
made it and she I know, there was a couple
of years that I had a scholarship, you know, one
of those things.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Okay, you talk about the renegotiation. When the music comes
out on CD, most of the revenue from recording goes
to the writer, and your mother was not the writer
of those hits, right, So over these ensuing decades, have
the royalties been small significant? What are they like?

Speaker 2 (37:23):
The royalties are respectable and they and they've been they've
been even more respectable in the last couple of years.
Streaming isn't killing us yet, but it's close, you know.
It's just streaming is actually the only way that people
are listening to music nowadays. It's just kind of killer

(37:44):
streaming and licensing. Licensing is the other thing that is
our bread and butter commercials, you know, anything that we
can that we can get. I mean, it's it's kind
of a it's a bit of a dance, because back
in the old days, the whole idea that you were
going to allow your music to be used for commercial

(38:04):
usage was just like you were selling out. You never
did that. Now it is absolutely the bread and butter
of the majority of these legacy artists is you know,
oh my god, we got a we got an Adobe commercial,
We've got to you know whatever. So in that way,
it's it is, it's respectable, it's I mean definitely when

(38:24):
the CDs came in, that's what started to make everything
really happen again. And then you know, as as you know,
formats change, and now with streaming, we had to adapt
a little bit to that. But you know, they're they're
sort of paying us on streaming correctly. I get really
into it. I'm I'm really into the contracts. I'm really

(38:46):
into the business side of it. I just fight it fascinating.
It absolutely ruined my attitude about ever being an artist
because I just went, oh my god, they're doing what
did they do? Oh my god? So but yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Okay, is there enough money to take care of your bills?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yes? Yes, so that's good. I'm really lucky. I'm really lucky.
I may have suffered a lot of losses in my life.
Wish I have, but I'm not going to be ashamed
of the fact that things are okay for me and
I can live a comfortable life.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Right right, Okay, we've in the last decade a lot
of people have sold those rights. You can sell your
royalty interest. Have you been approached and would you sell?

Speaker 2 (39:47):
I was sort of approached maybe ten years ago, and
it was and it was at a point in time
when I was really, really really broke. So the way
the person that approached me, I think was sort of,
you know, knowing that, and they I think they offered
me what when they offered it by the royals, I'm

(40:08):
asking my my husband over here three times a three
time multiplier, and we didn't take it, thank God. I
don't know if I would ever take it. I don't
think I would. I don't think it would because it's
everything is so fluid that it's really really hard to

(40:31):
make it a judgment as to, you know, well, if
I sell now, is it going to be good? And
then something really amazing happens in a year and you're like,
damn it, I sold that. Now we have that lottery
commercial or whatever. It is that. You know, you go, well,
I really wish I would have had something to do
with that, because then you see this, Then you see
all these artists songs and music that are on commercials

(40:53):
that you just know that these artists would have never
agreed to. It's just a lot. There's a lot lot
of taking advantage of those of those catalogs that I
just I can't imagine that everyone feels good about. But
you lose that control when you sell it.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
So you know, your mother made solo albums, some more
successful than others. Her main success was with the Mom
is in the Papas. John Phillips wrote most of the songs,
and that's its own vertical and revenue. But there are
four people in the act and three of them have

(41:33):
passed away. So when it comes for a licensing approval,
how does that work?

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Well, that always goes through the label. That always goes
through Universal. Universal is the one that approves that stuff
as far as the songwriters are concerned. You know, for
a songwriting license, right, I think it's got to be
licensed by that. For publishing, that gets handled through their
estate and through their like for instance, John Phillips estate

(42:01):
has you know they handle things through them. They have
an attorney that handles things. It's it's a bit complicated,
but you.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Know, all these performers have children. How do you get
along with your generation?

Speaker 2 (42:14):
I all my crazy brothers and sisters, mamas and Papa's
brothers and sisters. We all get along great. It's you know,
we all have this really strange background together. You know,
I'm very close with with with most of them. You know,
China and Biju were at my book signing last night,

(42:35):
causing all kinds of trouble in the audience. But yeah,
we're all. We're all really close, you know, Mackenzie, we're all.
We're all. We're like I said, we're all part of
this weird kind of family, you know.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Okay Mackenzie certainly you know they're different mothers for John
Phillips's children, but she came out and said some pretty
horrific fixed stuff. In your research, what's your take on
Papa John?

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Well, the only research I did on Papa John is
just the stuff that I knew for myself, and my
experience with John was that he was he was a
sweet guy, you know. I you know, I think I
met John and had conversations with him. I can count
it on one hand. You know, that's it. I really

(43:26):
didn't know him very well at all. Mackenzie's assertions or
McKenzie's assertions, and it's not my business. I don't know
anything about it.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
You talk a lot about his wife, Michelle, who was
in the group and of course kicked out and then
comes back. What's your relationship with Michelle?

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Michelle? Michelle was there last night too. There was a
great moment when one of the women in the audience
asked made a comment about the mamas and Papa's not
knowing that Michelle was sitting right there, and she was
talking about how you know how great my mom's voice was,
that was better than anybody else's, and the whole mom
is in paposita. She's I'm going like this, And then

(44:12):
as I finished, I went, well, well, I don't know,
maybe you want to ask her yourself, Michelle, why don't
you answer that question right now? So she's she is totally,
she loves it. She's she's enjoying all of it. She's
kind of like the I mean, yes, she was the youngest,
so I guess it makes sense that she's the last
one alive, right, But she's she's now kind of in

(44:33):
this position where she's she's kind of looking out after
all of us, you know. I mean, China's obviously her child.
She's she keeps an eye out on all of the kids,
and I think that's kind of a neat place for
her to be at this point in her life. And

(44:55):
she'll be turning well. I don't know if I should
say it, but she has a Mileston on birthday coming
up in the next couple of weeks, and I'm sure
all of us will be there to help her celebrate it.
But she she's she's a really good person.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Michelle.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Michelle is somebody who's been very, very important to me
in my life.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
What was your relationship with Denny before he passed? Oh?

Speaker 2 (45:28):
God, I love Denny so much. I Uh, I think
I was probably the closest to him Denny. Uh. You know,
Denny had done his play in New York City and
he had been off Broadway for six months. And when
he went back to Canada and he got his requisite

(45:53):
Canadian check up, the doctor went, uh, what have you
been doing the last six months? He could believe that
that Denny's Denny. This aneurysm they had found around his
heart hadn't exploded, Like he couldn't believe the guy was
like still walking around, you know. And so he had
surgery and he was recovering, and then they had to

(46:17):
go back in and he was home recovering and he
didn't make it. And before he went in for the
second surgery, I was speaking with him on the phone.
We talked all the time. We probably talked, you know,

(46:37):
three or four times a week, anytime anything was going
on for me, if it was mamas and Papa's related.
On the phone. I had trouble in my love life.
My boyfriend broke up with me. I was calling him,
so he was he was that person in my life.
And so he was gonna have to go back in
and have the second surgery. And it was the first

(47:00):
time I'd ever heard any any bit of fear in
his voice. It's the first time I could ever identify
any like trepidation. And our relationship sort of shifted in
that moment, and I sort of realized I was going
to have to be the grown up, right And I
was like, don't worry about anything. I'm I'm a young,

(47:23):
healthy person. I'm going to beat around for a really
long time. Your kids are not going to be able
to get rid of me. I will take care of everything.
Don't worry, you know. And I think that I hope
that that helped ease his mind a little bit, you know,
because he has he still had kids that were in
their twenties. I mean they weren't you know, they weren't

(47:45):
babies or anything, but they were in their twenties, you know.
And actually I remember being in Canada and reading your
post that you wrote about him.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
He was.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
You know that that one hurt. That that one hurt.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Now musically, after the group broke up, your mother had
the most success of all four.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Mm hmm, yeah she did.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
You know, it's tough to be in the spotlight. Ultimately
Michelle had an acting career, but it's tough to be
in the spotlight and then you're not Could you feel
any of that from them.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Not necessarily, And certainly, like I said, John, I didn't.
I didn't know him, so I can't even really speak
to that at all. Denny was Denny. Denny just kind of,
you know, did his own thing. He had so many
different projects that he worked on over the years, a
lot of projects in Canada. He was he worked on

(48:50):
the show called Theodore Tugboat, the kids show for for
the Canadian Broadcasting System up there, and and he sent
me on the hat when I had my little boy,
he sent me a big box of tugboat tugboat toys.
I think he was disgrateful for everything that, you know,
he was able to do. I don't think there was
any you know, jealousy or bad you know vibes about it.

(49:15):
I mean, I guess when you're the lead singer in
a band, it kind of makes sense that you go solo, right,
isn't that kind of the story of everybody?

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Right? But that was sixty years ago, so these were progenitors,
whereas everything happens now.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Well then then then she set the pace.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
What can I say, Well, I mean, you were seven
years old. One of the things you do in the book,
which is very interesting, is you go through all the
TV appearances which not everybody saw. But your mother was
constantly in the print news. You reference when she lost
an extreme amount of weight. She would be in the
people's section of Time magazine. She was someone who continued

(49:58):
to be in the news where the other three didn't.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
On well, she wanted to continue to have a career,
you know, and she was also a single parent. She
had a reason to be out there, you know, trying
to make a living because there wasn't anybody else that
was doing it, you know. And by that time she
was I was a baby, and she knew she had
to take care of things that needed to be cared for.

(50:24):
You know. That's when she started doing a lot of
more television appearances, you know, that would kind of keep
her close to home. You know, all of the Carol Burnett,
I mean, she did so much great stick on television.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
I love all that stuff. I wish I could say
I think I've seen all of it, but I'm sure
there's a couple of things I haven't seen, which is
very weird.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
But do you listen to your mother's music.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
I do listen to my mother's music. I started to
really get into the stuff that she recorded after she
left Dunhill, mostly because this is a brand new deal.
It was just her. She was going to get to

(51:12):
pick out everything that really she was being, that really
she was she was into, and so those records I
think speak to me a little bit more. When she
was able to do some more covers, I mean, the
RCA years were some pretty pretty good, pretty good records.

(51:32):
At one point. One of the last records my mom
made for RCA was a record called The Road Is
No Place for a Lady. And that record was recorded
in England at Trident Studios, and I remember her taking
me on that trip. That's when my nanny took me
to the Buckingham Palace to watch the guards change and

(51:53):
I'm like, yeah, this is boring, We're out of here.
So she so she recorded The Road is No Place
for a Lady in at Trident and the record was
was mixed over there. And when everybody got back to
the States and and the Lou Merenstein, who was the producer,
went to go and play the record for the label.
He was horrified at at what the mixes sounded like.

(52:16):
They sounded terrible, and he said, you gotta wait. I
gotta go back to England. I gotta go remix these
these songs. The masters are over there. I'll be back
in a week. Promise me, you're not gonna You're not
gonna release the record. Okay, we promised. They were. They did.
They they released the record and it's terrible mixed, or

(52:38):
you know, terribly mixed fashion. That's what the first pressing
of that of that record sounded like. And what what
Berenstein found out when he went back to London is
that in the interim between the recording of right before
they started recording the records, that tape head were misaligned

(53:01):
and they hadn't been adjusted. So the entire record was
recorded on misaligned tape heads. So that's why it all
sounds like dog duty. So in two thousand and eight,
one of a small what's the I forget the label
that so it was a retro one of the retro stations.

(53:23):
One of the retro CD companies wanted to put out
The Road is no Place for a Lady. And I
had a friend who worked at Sony, and they went
and looked in their vault. And the Sony vault hasn't
been moved ever. It's in like some cold storage and

(53:46):
some mountain in Pennsylvania, right, so all their masters are
in the best shape they can possibly be. They went
and found the original masters and they found the finished
mix that was never put on the record, And when

(54:08):
we did the remastering for this project in two thousand
and eight, we fixed it. We took that old crappy
mix off the first single and replaced it with the
better mix. So it's almost like it came full circle.
So it's kind of some of those things that happened
I think in my life are so cool. What a

(54:30):
great experience to get to fix what was a colossal mistake.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
You go deeply into your mother's history growing up in
her family. What do you think was the background such
that she could have the drive to ultimately get success,
which was unbelievably difficult.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Depression I would call it depression, you know, I mean,
this is a post at World War two, Emily. You know,
with many many people who have have died overseas. You know,
my great grandmother's, her entire family, with exception of her

(55:11):
and one other cousin, one of one of her other sisters,
everyone died in the Holocaust. She she was, she felt
very responsible, my great grandmother. She felt as though she
should have been there. She had. She was severely, severely depressed.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
And.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
That kind of has continued, that that we have generational
depression in our family and that nothing is a better,
you know, like thing to get you out on moving
and doing is when you're depressed, you got to go
out and do it, you know. And I think that
was a big part of what caused my mom to

(56:00):
not want to give up, you know. She was. I
always liken her to the little engine that could. You know,
the children's book, I think I can, I think I can,
I think I can. You know. And the fact that
she told everyone I'm going to be the most famous
fact girl that ever lived. That's the best thing I've

(56:20):
ever heard in my life. I think that's so cool.
And she was right.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Now, when you read the book and you lay it
all out, it almost seems amazing that she made it.
There were close calls. She made a couple of records
with the Big Three. They didn't want her in the
Mamas and the Papas. It's just it's not exactly luck,
but most people would have given up much sooner.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Well. She she had this triumph over adversity thing that
she constantly exhibited. And it's almost like when someone tells
you no, you almost want to do it more her,
you know. So I think she probably was of that,
of that kind of thinking. And I think she also

(57:08):
really knew what I think she knew what she wanted,
and she was just and she just went and got it.
You know, that's that's the kind of person she was.
You know, I would love to have that kind of kutzba.
You know, she just she just didn't give up.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
So what did you get from your mother?

Speaker 2 (57:30):
What did I get from my mother? I don't know.
I'd like to believe that I have some of her
sense of humor. I know that our voices sound very similar,

(57:51):
our speaking voices and singing voices, as with a lot
of our family. So that's something I got from her.
Is I have that connection to her, And it's a
beautiful thing. I mean I I I feel very blessed
by it, for sure.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Okay, the records were produced by Lou Adler. Do you
know Lou and have you discussed this with him?

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I do know Lou. I have not discussed the book
with him. I saw Lou the last time at at
this the induction, the installation of my mom's star in
the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was one of our
guests that day, and he actually he pulled like the

(58:38):
perfect Lou Adler move without like barely even trying. We
had we had assembled like this big list of people
who had written nice things for us to say at
the at the ceremony, and we were trying to assign
and we had all these we had Graham, we had Uh,
we had Stephen Stills, we had and we had to

(59:01):
a quote from Crosby. We had quotes from just everybody
and their mother. And we were trying to figure out, okay,
well you'll give two of these quotes to Michelle, and
this person does that, and then Lou Adler goes, why
don't you just have Stephen Stills read the Crosby and
Nash and I went, oh my god, that's genius, And

(59:25):
that's what we did. So Still's got up there and
read quotes from his whole band, you know, and it
was just like this genius moment. We would have never
thought to do that take somebody like Lou Adler to go, oh, well,
that's really obvious that should go there.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Like, oh, okay, in the book you say you're very
tight with Carnie Wilson. How is it? You know, you
make it sound like it's a club and you're a
member of it. You know, all the sons and daughters
of the famous perform Was that just the nature of

(01:00:03):
growing up in La was that because you were cass
Elliott's daughter, was that your personality. How did you end
up knowing everybody?

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
I think it's growing up in LA. It's growing up
in LA the child of somebody who's well known in
the entertainment industry. It's all about where you were going
to school, you know. I mean, I was going to
school with kids whose whose parents were very well known.
And also, you know, going to school with the guy

(01:00:32):
who wrote the theme song from Law and Order, You
know what I mean. So we all just knew each
other because we were going to the same schools, same
birthday parties.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Just backing up, you talk about depression in the family.
Are you depressed? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Probably? I don't know. I think it's wearing off a
little bit generation a generation. Am I prone to it? Probably?
But I also know that if I have fits of depression,
you know what I've had. I've had some pretty shitty
things happen in my life, So I can appreciate that

(01:01:11):
and and you know, get myself out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
So you have kids. Was there any doubt about having
kids because of your upbringing? And to what degree was
your raising of your kids informs by your growing up experience.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Well, I never had any trepidations about having children. I
always knew that I that I wanted to. Uh. It's
funny because one of the conversations I was having with
moon Zappa in the last week or so, uh, and
and also with with Ahmet I did the podcast of them.

(01:01:58):
We were talking about, you know, our parents being these
sixties people, right, they they let us have so much freedom,
way too much freedom, and all we really ever wanted
was structure. And they really thought, well, they're doing us

(01:02:20):
this great favorite. Let them be free, go out do
your thing, you know. And it turns out that most
of us ended up creating completely fifties style homes and
marriages and children and lives like really super stable, you know, structured,

(01:02:41):
scheduled things because we didn't have any of that, you know,
and they really thought they were, you know, doing the
right thing. Probably not. Most of us really needed to
have a little more structure, you know. And that's that's
one thing that you know, they really, like I said,

(01:03:02):
they really thought they were doing the right thing. But
in the long run, I think it was we probably
would have done better with more structure.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
So it's kind of like family ties, But what are
your kids up to these days?

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
Well, my daughter is going to graduate from cal State
Northridge in the winter, just two classes to to take
and they wouldn't let her walk come on. So they're
going to make her take two more classes in the winter,
and she's going to have a degree in education so

(01:03:36):
that you know, she can go get a job teaching
anywhere anytime. Our son is the one kid that got
bitten by the music business bug. Did I think I
was going to escape it entirely? I don't know. He
wants to be a recording engineer. Well, he's actually is
a recording engineer, and he spends a lot of time

(01:04:00):
in his studio. And I raised a studio rat. What
can I say? One out of two ain't bad, you know,
but they're great. My son is twenty two and my
daughter is turning twenty five. I married a guy in
the music business again, big shocker. My husband is a
songwriter record producer. He's one of the founding members of SONA.

(01:04:22):
If you know who Sona are songwriters of North America.
He's you know, you marry close to what you know?
I guess you know. And we all created all of
us kids, China and Billie Carney and Wendy, we all

(01:04:44):
you know, created kind of the homes that we didn't have, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Okay, so you were in the group, which ultimately became
Wilson Phillips, and then you weren't in the group.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yes, that is a pretty accurate statement. The way it
worked was that when I first came to La we Are,
the world had just been like that huge record that
it was, and I thought, Wow, that is so cool.
You know, people coming together for a common cause. That's
really cool. And I thought, well, maybe we should, I said.

(01:05:22):
I thought to myself, I know all these kids, you know,
like we were just talking about we all went to
the same schools. We know all these kids, and maybe
we could, you know, do a charity record against drugs.
You know, all these sixties kids talking about drug abuse.
Let's do that. And I called China and she thought
it was a pretty good idea. And we called a
bunch of people and they turned us down. We called

(01:05:44):
moon Zappas she turned us down. She doesn't remember. Donovan
Leitch turned us down. IONI Sky turned us down. And
the only people that wanted to do anything were Carnie
and Wendy Wilson, who I had gone to school with
him at Oakwood when I was still living in and
so we all started singing together, and we started doing

(01:06:07):
some demos for Richard Perry back in the olden days,
and it just didn't work out. You know, I I
don't know how to blend. I really sing really loud,
and I just kind of overpower people and I don't

(01:06:27):
think that's a really good thing in a harmony group.
And so things just didn't work out, and they went
their merry little way, and of course had the success
that they had, which was huge. But it came really
a full circle when they when they made their record California,
which was oh no, dedicated, sorry, dedicated, which was all

(01:06:51):
which was a whole record dedicated to the music of
the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys. And they
asked me to come in and sing on dedicated and
saying the part that was kind of known for my mom,
and so I did, and you know what, it kind
of it really closed that circle. It really closed into
a nice full circle moment. And so we're all, it's

(01:07:16):
all good, we all, we're all really close.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
Okay, that's thirty five years thirty four. I was there
at their debut at SBK Records in the Desert. Oh yeah,
you must have. That must have been very painful to
be left out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Oh my god, I was so upset. I was so upset.
I didn't know what I was going to do. I
was so mad. I was so upset. But I just
kind of went, Okay, well, now I got to figure
out what I'm going to do. And eventually I was
able to get a demo tape together, and uh, I had.

(01:08:00):
I had been managed by a guy named Roy Silver
who had actually managed my mom back in the Big
Three Days, and he had he was sure he could
get me a deal, and he oh, he started to
be very controlling and like tell me what to where
and I that was not gonna fly with me. And

(01:08:25):
I really didn't like being told what to do very.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
Much at all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
So I ended up firing him. And then a year later,
Wilson Phillips comes out and they're a huge success, and
so he went ahead and without checking with me, sent
the tape out and got me a deal. I was like, oh, great,
And so I ended up having a deal with mc

(01:08:51):
A well with a production company that was tied to MCA,
and I made half a record for them, and then
Matt Sacheetah bought the Panasonic and just cleaned the roster,
you know, just poured some chlorox on it and cleaned
it up. And I was part of part of the
people who they let go. And then I said, you

(01:09:12):
know what fun ghoul music business. I don't need this.
And then I ended up getting married and you know,
living my life. I figured I'd go back to it
if it was meant to be right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
So how hard was it to give up the dream?

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Really hard. I think I probably still have it in
some ways. You know, I sing like a maniac in
my car, so I think I get it out that
way and getting to you know, occasionally perform with the
girls when they do shows around town. But yeah, it's
not an easy one, that's for sure. And that was

(01:09:57):
a big fear that I would really regret, you know,
not pushing myself harder. But I also really just wanted
to have a normal life, you know, and I had
just gotten married, and I just wanted to have babies
and be a mom and you know, have that be
my life for a while. And then I figured if

(01:10:19):
it was really something that I was meant to do,
then you know, there would be a way at some
point that I'd be able to to sing and love
doing it, you know, but I get older and it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Can we talk any of this up to sexism?

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
M I don't think so, because I think if I
had smelled that I would have I would have lost
my mind. I'm pretty in tune with that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
So, now that you've finished the book and your kids
are on the way, what's the plan for all your time?

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Oh my god, I have no idea. I haven't even
it's terrifying to even think of. I'm not sure yet.
We actually had we'd had to put our sixteen year
old dog down last week because you know, timing is everything,
and my husband and I realized that we have spent
the better part of the last thirty two years either

(01:11:24):
taking care of a puppy or a baby or somebody
or something, and we'd like to, you know, go travel,
we'd like to, you know, go and do some things together.
Kids are old enough we can kind of get to
have a moment. So I think that's kind of what
I'm what I'm going to do in the immediate future.
And then I don't know, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
There's another theme in the book about your biological father.
Can you tell us something about that Chuck Day.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
Well, he was certainly somebody that I felt like I
would appreciate more or after he had passed away, which
actually is the truth. Chuck Day was born in Illinois,
in Chicago, and he was a blues guy. He had
he actually had his first record put out when he

(01:12:17):
was fifteen years old on a label called Federal Records
under a name Underheath, his name Bang Day. His real
name was Chuck Day, but his stage name was Bang Day.
And he was kind of a little he was kind
of a you know, protege in in that way, and

(01:12:37):
his childhood and his upbringing had their own, you know story,
and we don't have to get into that now. But
he had a kind of a rough, a rough beginning,
and he ended up coming to LA and with I
think with Johnny Rivers because he was playing with Johnny

(01:12:58):
Rivers and he had he says that he wrote the
opening riff to Secret Agent Man and that he had
based it on the TV series Tommy, on the Tommy
gunn Uh TV series. He maintained till till he died
that he had written that that piece and he had been,

(01:13:21):
like I said, working with Johnny Rivers and Johnny Rivers
had a relationship with Lou Adler in that whole camp,
and so my biological father ended up playing on some
Moms and Papa's records, like second Guitar, And when they
were tapped to do a tour, they chose to take
him out to play guitar on their tour, and it

(01:13:46):
was a one night stand my mom and the bass player. Oh,
I guess he was playing bass at that point. My
mom and the bass player went back to her room
at the hotel and had a lot of Chinese food
and alcohol. And that was the night I was conceived.
And I did find that out after I met him finally,

(01:14:10):
in I guess it was probably eighty six or eighty seven.
I met him for the first time, and Michelle Phillips
was instrumental in me meeting him. I had had dinner
with Michelle and John and Danny right after I had
come to California in eighty six, and Michelle drove me

(01:14:31):
home that night and I said to her on the
drive home, g you know, I wish we could find
out who my real father was because I had always
wondered because my mom really didn't tell anybody. She took
that secret right to the grave, or at least I thought,
because Michelle said that when she and Danny and John
had been in the car driving to the Imperial Gardens

(01:14:53):
in LA that she had said to them, gee, you know,
we never found out who Owen Vanessa's dad was, and
that John and Denny like immediately shot each other a
look of like knowing, like, oh, you don't know, do you?
She was like, wait a minute, what do you guys know?
They knew his name? So I asked her to help

(01:15:15):
me find him, and she had her secretary put an
ad in what was Musician magazine at the time, sort
of this you know, generic ad of you know, Chuck Day,
old bass player for the Mamas and Papa's call this number.
Kind of made it seem like there was money or something,

(01:15:37):
and like within a day one of his friends was calling, oh,
is this about the kid? Well, so it turned out
that he knew about me, and he had met me once,
and that he had, you know, really adhere to what

(01:15:57):
my mother had requested, which was don't come back and
you're not her father, don't ever tell her that you are.
I did find out from him after I had met him,
spoken to him a couple of times that he had
come to the funeral and that he had stood across

(01:16:18):
the street. Oh. I got so mad, because I wondered
about him for years. He had just had the balls
to walk across the street, right And by the time
I met him, he was pretty pretty well into his alcoholism.

(01:16:44):
It wasn't pretty. And he had started talking to the
press up near where he lived. He lived in Fairfax,
Marine County, and he started telling the newspapers that he'd
had a child with Mama Cass, Like, dude, don't do that.
And it was right around the time I was pregnant

(01:17:06):
with my daughter, and I just went, I don't. I
don't really want to have anything to do with him.
So I cut off contact for a really long time,
but I did. But I did see him at the end.
Towards the end of his life, the social worker from
the hospital he was in reached out to my mom's website,
and I couldn't help myself. I had to. I had

(01:17:27):
to see him one more time, you know, and set
it straight, you know, And I showed him pictures of
art of his grandchildren that he was never ever going
to meet over my dead body, was ever going to
meet him, but I thought that he deserved at least
to see them and see pictures. So I mean it
was I definitely felt like we had, you know, sewn

(01:17:52):
it up, you know, that I had I had said
what I needed to say, and that he had said
what he needed to say. And but through him, I
did find out that I had I had more family,
you know. So I got to have a little relationship
with a woman who was my older sister, you know.
I got to know her for a few years. So

(01:18:12):
there were some there were some minor gifts, you know,
along the way.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
But yeah, what a trip, Okay, other than all the
emotional considerations. Now, when you hear stories similar to this,
people meet the biological relative and they say, oh I
look like that, or I yeah like that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Oh that happened. That happened the minute, the minute he
walked in and I looked at him, it's like you
can feel it's almost like an electrical current. It's it's
you just know that this DNA is yours. You just
know it. And I got this nose from him. This

(01:18:58):
is not a Jewish nose. This is my nose. It's
always been my nose. It's not the work of any
plastic surgeon. It's the work of having a Swedish and
Scottish birth father, you know. And he had the same nose,
only larger of course. And my son got this nose.

(01:19:21):
Why my daughter didn't get this nose, Why she got
the requisite Jewish schnas and not this. Never know why
that choice was made by whomever. But yeah, my sons
has this, and it's true. You just know. You feel it,
whether you want to or not. I wasn't really happy

(01:19:42):
about feeling like, oh yeah, that you're not the Knight
in Shining Armor. I had fantasized in my brain, you know,
a little bit of a disappointment. But like I said,
there were a little bit of you know, silver linings,
got to meet some family, got to know a little

(01:20:03):
bit of history.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Talking with you, you seem, despite all of these traumas,
as you labeled them in ups and downs, pretty well adjusted.
Would you agree with that or would you say, beneath
the surface you have no idea what's going on?

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
Well, maybe a little bit of both. I had a
lot of therapy in my life and I can attribute
a lot of my seeming mental health to that. And yeah,
I'm also not normal. You know, I can get completely

(01:20:43):
when I get mad about something. Oh it's not good,
but I'm pretty well adjusted and I'm not embarrassed to
say it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
You know, Okay, you're in Massachusetts living with your aunt
and then ultimately going to this school. Yeah, do you
feel special and you tell people your cass Elliot's daughter
or you stay silent and all of a sudden the
word spreads.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
I stay silent. I stay silent. I don't don't. I
don't usually tell people. Eventually they'll find out, but mostly
I want to find out if they want to hang
out with me for me or you know, want to
know something about my mom, because I had experienced that

(01:21:28):
a lot, so and any kid of any celebrity is
going to feel the same way. You have a almost
like a sixth sense. You have to sort of develop
it because you just never know why somebody wants to
be your friend. So keeping you know, your business to

(01:21:51):
yourself is usually the first plan of attack. And eventually
they're going to find out anyway, But by then I
might know whether or not, you know, they actually want
to hang out with me or have some kind of
you know, weird ulterior motive.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
So how important to you is your mother's legacy and
she and her music being remembered.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
Oh, it's it's hugely important to me. I think that
one of the things that most people experience, or a
lot of people experience when they listen to my mom sing,
is they they get a little sense of hope. People
people really get kind of built up, and it gives

(01:22:44):
them some kind of you know, faith in humanity because
she's she's she's she sounds happy. The songs that she
recorded were really good, positive songs, you know, and I
think she would want to be remembered like that. And
I've always felt that it would be my job to

(01:23:06):
make sure that that's what she would be remembered for
and not the sandwich thing, you know, and that she
will be remembered for, you know, her body positivity stuff,
even though she didn't all the time feel so positive

(01:23:27):
about it. You know, what she'd let other people see
was that she was totally comfortable in her skin. You know.
All of these things I think are really important part
of her legacy and things that it's important to me
that people remember about her.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
And are you passive in terms of universal does the
licenses or to what degree do you actively other than
the book, try to keep her memory and music live.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Well, we have no rights as the artist. You don't
have any rights to say yes you can license it
or no you can't. I mean, sometimes labels are nice.
If you meet the right person who's running that particular
department and they want to be nice to you, they
might tell you what's going on. But you often don't
really have a choice. You have to sort of trust

(01:24:18):
that the that the relationship between the person who's doing
the licensing and you know that that that they know
what you guys would want. So unfortunately, we don't really
get too much control over it, and you just hope
that they're going to make the right choice on what
they're gonna, you know, sell the music for I forgot

(01:24:39):
the second part of what you asked. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Well, to what degree do you actively try to keep
her memory alive? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:24:46):
God, well, this book, that's the first thing where we've
just redesigned her website. I really, you know, the book
is the is the big is the big thing right now?
Will be you know, probably doing it some form of
documentary at some point, and maybe down the line there

(01:25:09):
there would be you know, some film opportunities. I just
want to make sure that people know who she was,
you know, and why she made some of the choices
that she made. You know, I don't want people to
remember her just as you know, the fat one from
the Mamas and Papa's And honestly, I would like people

(01:25:30):
to start to remember her by name. You know, people
don't always remember her by name. It's begun, it's begun
to kind of fade, you know, into the background. You know,
if you ask somebody if they know who the mamas
and papas are, these are young kids. They don't know,
They have no idea if you ask them if they

(01:25:51):
if they know California Dreaming, they will know California Dreaming.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
My goal is that they know they know my mom
for who she was and some of the stuff she
did after you know, the mamas and papas were. As
far as the book is concerned, what were they two chapters?
They weren't they weren't they weren't the whole picture, you know,

(01:26:17):
So it's a lot more to the story.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
And you also see in the book that she wanted
to shed the Moniker Mama.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):
Yeah she did, and I do believe had she lived longer,
she would have. Absolutely, she would have, I really had.
I had a couple of really rough nights thinking about
what were we going to put on the Star and
the Walk of Fame, and I really just wanted to
put cass Elliott. But I realized that most people know

(01:26:48):
her as Mama Cass Elliott. And that's why I agreed
to do it if we put the quotes around around Mama,
because that's really what it was. It was. It was
an assumed little nickname, and I think she would have
agreed with that, you know. And like I said, had
she lived longer, we would have known her as Cass Elliott,

(01:27:10):
she would have. She would have, you know, had more
time to define herself as that. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Okay, Owen, just one more thing. Owen conventionally is a
male name. How was it growing up with the name Owen?

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
Well, I got put in all the boys camps and
all the boys cabins at camp because they just thought
they that my parents messed up and checked the wrong box.
I'm consistently, you know, on paper, mistaken for a man.
I do have a deep voice, so I guess that
kind of plays into a little bit. But I would

(01:27:52):
tell you my credit card, my American Express card. Every
time I would give a vendor my card, they would go, ma'am,
we need your card. I'd be like, this is my card, No, ma'am,
did you did? So? Finally I called American Express and
I had them put Missus on the card so people

(01:28:16):
wild leave me alone.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Wow, that's funny. In any event, Owen's book My Mama
Cass is a very easy quick read. Don't think just
because it's a book, it's too much for you. And
despite her saying there's really only two chapters on the
mamas and the papas, the story of how Mama Cass

(01:28:40):
makes it from the DC Baltimore area to LA is
very well put out and I certainly learned things. So
I want to thank you Owen for writing the book
and speaking with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):
Thank you for having me. I'm a big fan. This
was a really cool thing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
Well, it's great to finally see you face to face.
Until next time. This is Bob Left sets

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
H