While everyone is reeling from the Oprah exclusive! Mackenzie Phillips incest bombshell, the aftershock of denial and support from her family and friends, the incendiary Oprah exclusive! revelation that was sure to follow – an aborted love baby!? – and the follow up interview, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the John Phillips song She’s Just 14. There are some who are starting to trip on this song, in part because it seems to verify so much of what Mackenzie has described of her childhood, and also because it actually dares to hint at the nature of her relationship with her father.
Songwriting is a grand release and a great escape, and nowadays it’s become a really great way to say whatever I want about whatever is on my mind. But something or someone has to be on my mind to come up with the inspiration that tweaks me to reach beyond the ordinary, the mundane. Otherwise, it’s all technique. And there are songwriters like that, people who sit down at a piano everyday like they’re going to work in a factory and they say, gimmie a c, a bouncy c! and write stuff in a committee, with a bunch of other people over coffee and pastries. but I’m not one of them. Songwriting for me is really solitary and intimate and strange. I wish I could throw a tea party and write a hit song. Or even get with one person and come up with some cool stuff. Oh, maybe later. For now, I'm happy all alone.
Fortunately, I fall in love every day. It just so happens that pert near everything pisses me off. And as bad luck and God Almighty would have it, I have a very, very long memory. There’s always something on my mind. So there’s plenty that’s marinating in me to inspire another song that rips somebody a new one. Or loves someone from afar.
John Phillips was a wonderfully gifted songwriter, when he wasn't high or drunk or having sex with everybody or otherwise tripping his balls off. Here's my two favorite quotes about his songwriting:
"John was such a great story teller," says Harvey Goldberg, who worked with Phillips on several recording projects from the early 70s onwards. "I would say 50% of what he would say would be truth and 50% would be fabrication. But you'd never know which was which. And, without fail, the stuff that you were convinced was fabrication always turned out to be the truth."
"John was, in a lot of ways, very soulful," says Dick Weissman. "He hated to admit it, and he didn't like to express emotion publically but it came out in the music."
That kind of sums up songwriting for me, in so many ways.
All of that rock and roll behavior is fine and well and good but after a certain point you have to get clean and sober enough to do what you do, or fade into obscurity, you and the body that's caved in on you because of the decades long abuse it tolerated - which is basically what happened to him. He died in a hospital bed, waiting on a new liver that never really showed up. I mean, seriously - The Mamas and the Papas were only around for three years. Three years! That's it. One wonders what they would have accomplished -- what John Phillips would have accomplished, actually, because he was the creative force behind the songs -- if they'd stayed together longer, or if he'd cleaned up enough after their demise to create more and debauch less, and have a viable solo career. The only reason why he gave up hard drugs was because he was facing hard time in prison if he refused to do so. So he took up alcohol instead - and the rest is history.
It is with all of this in mind that I considered that John Phillips song about Mackenzie. When he recorded this, Mackenzie was something like 16 and a big tv star and she was way more famous than he was, pop tv stardom-wise. I mean, come on. She did American Graffitti at 12 -- so she probably wasn't too far off from what's in those lyrics. Her book reinforces all this. Pretty lurid stuff. This song from the album Pay Pack & Follow, produced by Mick and Keith. Yeah, he did something when the band broke up, and yeah, he was working on something when he died - but this effort is essentially John Phillips' only full length independent solo work. The album was recorded in 1979 but didn't see the light of day until 2001 when it was released on a label called Phoenix, for a myriad of reasons. From all accounts, it's nothing short of a miracle that the album was ever recorded in the first place because he and Keith were so fracking high the whole time -- and shooting up in the bathroom and whatever when they bothered to show up, anyway. When he died, lots of people in the business who knew him said that they would miss the music -- but when he traipsed through most of his professional life single-handedly sabotaging himself with such free-wheeling elan at almost every turn, weren't they missing it, anyway?
Wow. And to think that I thought David Crosby in his heroin/freebase "I'm a pistolero" years was so bad. I mean, yeah, he was. But John Phillips could give that freak a run for his money. Hard time in prison stopped "The Cros" in his tracks, too - although to his credit, David actually ended up going for several years. In the Texas penal system, no less. But I digress.
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the only song that John Phillips ever wrote about Mackenzie. I don’t know what’s more disturbing – what he says in the lyrics or that the song is actually quite good. Both he and Mick sound high as all get out on vox. Click here if you want to hear it. Click here if you want to read a blow by blow description of how it all came together, what happened in the studio and the demise of the album. Basically, the album is The Rolling Stones doing John Phillips songs, and him singing with Mick backing him up here and there, as far as I can tell. This would have worked if they'd landed long enough to pull it off and if the Stones had held it together long enough to get along with Mick Taylor, probably because it sounds like such a good idea on paper. Oh, well.
Did Mick sleep with Mackenzie -- in the bed he shared with Jerry Hall, after some drug-fueled party on the upper west side in New York City -- because he was feeling vengeful towards John Phillips for sleeping with Bianca? Had Mick really been jonesing for her ever since she was 10 years old? Did John Phillips sleep with his daughter for 10 years running? The world may never know. When the smoke clears and time marches on, all we really have left is the lyrics that live inside of the music.
With no further ado, here they are:
She’s just 14, little movie star queen
There isn’t much she hasn’t seen
She “did it” in a limousine car
She dated pop stars
Hey Rainbow Hair, say that’s no where
But she always says
I’m just a sexy trash can
But she’s just a little girl who thinks like a man
And sometimes her Daddy’s spoiled her
Sometimes he treated her rough
Sometimes she’s gentle
Sometimes she’s tough
But she is always too nice to the driver
She says, “James, have you had your supper”
And she’s always too high on arrival
And she runs on her high platform heels
And she falls flat on her face and she knows how life feels
She got the moves, yeah she got the looks
She got the style, she’s read all the books
And nobody got her on their hooks
She’s on a real smooth, yeah a real smooth trip
She’s always too nice to the driver
She says, “James, have you had your supper”
And she’s always too high on arrival
And she runs on her high platform heels
And she falls flat on her face and she knows how life feels
I see her sipping her Thunderbird wine
Wonderin’ if she’s the last word in space and time
And she knows she is, she’s so pleased to discover
She’s so hip. She’s on a smooth trip.
Well she’s always too nice to the driver
She says, “James, have you had your supper”
And she’s always too high on arrival
And she runs on her high platform heels
And she falls flat on her face and she knows how life feels
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thankful
sick
contemplative