Incest, medication and abuse — The tangled lives of The Mamas & the Papas

On Sunday, followers of the hit Sixties folk-rock group can tune into Sky Arts to look at California Dreamin’: The Songs of The Mamas & the Papas and see each interviews and performances from their heyday.

Viewers can benefit from the story of the band behind hits equivalent to Monday Monday, Creeque Alley, and California Dreamin’.

The legendary Californian group — made up of John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty — was solely collectively for 3 years from 1965 to 1968, as their love quadrangle proved to place a pressure on working and singing collectively.

But it was an allegation of incest that emerged later which truly muddied the group’s memory.

Here, Express.co.uk brings collectively all the weather of this difficult net of affection affairs, damaged hearts, drug abuse and unspeakable allegations.

READ MORE: Cass Elliot death: How did Mama Cass die?

John and Michelle, who introduced the band collectively, married in 1962 when the previous mannequin was simply 18 years previous and he was 27. But their marriage was not monogamous — each had affairs and Michelle had a romance with Denny.

But ‘Mama Cass’ was in love with Denny, a love that was at all times unrequited. She reportedly confronted Michelle in regards to the affair, telling her bandmate that she didn’t perceive why she did it as she may have any man she wished.

John was not too joyful in regards to the affair both as Michelle, the 78-year-old sole survivor of the group, advised Rolling Stone journal final 12 months.

She recalled: “John didn’t actually find us having sex, but he did come downstairs, and I was sitting on Denny’s bed in my nightgown, feeding him candies. He said, ‘You could do a lot of things to me, Mich, but you don’t f*** my tenor.’”

Michelle was at one level booted out of the band after John found that she had had an affair with Gene Clark from the Byrds however she was shortly reinstated when the followers threatened a boycott.

John additionally had a number of affairs. When he wrote the music “Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon” Michelle would chide that he had slept “with them all”.

Eventually, the tangled relations between the group led to them disbanding in 1968 with a cocktail of booze and medicines including to the stress.

In 1969, the then 24-year-old Michelle — who went on to pursue performing — additionally determined to name it quits on her marriage and he or she walked out of their Bel Air mansion, taking the couple’s daughter along with her, including “I was so afraid of John”.

Their marriage was not easy crusing in additional methods than one as Michelle additionally alleged that her ex-husband was as soon as violent in the direction of her.

She defined: “I have never, ever mentioned this to my children or to my friends, but there was a night when John let me have it. He mentioned it in his book. I think he said there was a little slapping. It was more than that…

“There was no love lost between John and [me] towards the end. At all. I saw how he had changed from that handsome, wholesome, all-American boy into this depravity of addiction. He was not the same person I had loved.”

Papa John Phillips, as he was identified, didn’t have one of the best fame nevertheless it was really tarnished when his daughter accused him of raping her following his demise in 2001 on the age of 65.

In 2009, his daughter from his first marriage to Susan Adams, Mackenzie Phillips, claimed that she and her father had an incestuous relationship that started after he raped her whereas they had been on medication.

Writing in her 2009 memoir High on Arrival, Mackenzie mentioned the evening earlier than she was to be married in 1979 on the age of 19, her father confirmed up. She wrote: “I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually, I passed out on Dad’s bed…

“My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.”

His spouse on the time, Genevieve Waite, mentioned in an announcement given to The Oprah Winfrey Show that he was “incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child”.

California Dreamin’: The Songs of The Mamas & the Papas airs at 12pm on Sky Arts on Sunday.