Post by the Scribe on Apr 24, 2020 9:19:31 GMT
This is an excerpt from a comprehensive blog (and growing). Check it out. It gives the feel of the time and the people that you won't find elsewhere.
www.mansonblog.com/2018_11_19_archive.html
Cass’ house was the center of LA’s young, hip, movie and music society leading up to the murders. In fact, many of those who were there claim the whole ‘party’ scene ended with the murders. Initially, the 'hippie elite' believed one of their own had committed the crime and that made everyone very paranoid. But before the crimes Cass' House was the place to be.
_____
“Graham Nash has described Cass Elliot as “the Gertrude Stein of Laurel Canyon”—that she had a “salon” similar to the one at 27 Rue de Fleurus in Paris in the 1920s. Cass brought her friends from the music and movie worlds together. She was a conversationalist and a storyteller who could hold forth on anything and everything, and according to Stephen Stills ‘you could always go over there. But call first.’”
STEPHEN STILLS: I always had a place in my heart for alley cats, and David was really funny. We would scheme about a band, and one night at the Troubadour I saw Cass, who I hadn’t seen for a while, and she said, “Would you like to have a third harmony?” I said, “I’m not sure—it depends on the guy, the voice.” So she said, “When David calls you to come over to my house with your guitar, don’t ask—just do it.” I knew that the queen bee had something up her sleeve, and, sure enough, David calls me and says, “Get your guitar and come to Cass’s house.” I can see it now—the living room, the dining room, the pool, the kitchen—and we’re in the living room and there’s Graham Nash. Then Cass goes, “So sing.” And we sang “In the morning, when you rise”.
GRAHAM NASH, singer-songwriter-guitarist, the Hollies, CSN, CSNY: Stephen’s completely out of his mind. I remember it clearly and so does David. It was not at Mama Cass’s. We did sing at Cass’s. But not the very first time.
MICHELLE PHILLIPS, singer-songwriter-actor, the Mamas and the Papas: It was very lax at Cass’s house when she moved to Woodrow Wilson. Ashtrays were overflowing. She would let people write their phone numbers and messages on her walls with felt pens. She smoked a lot of pot. I wasn’t into food at that point in my life, but there were a lot of grown men there, so there must have been food. They probably called down to Greenblatt’s Deli and had 20 different platters of sandwiches brought up.
MICHELLE PHILLIPS: Before 1969, my memories were nothing but fun and excitement and shooting to the top of the charts and loving every minute of it. The Manson murders [in the summer of 1969] ruined the L.A. music scene. That was the nail in the coffin of the freewheeling, let’s get high, everybody’s welcome, come on in, sit right down. Everyone was terrified. I carried a gun in my purse. And I never invited anybody over to my house again.
www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/02/laurel-canyon-music-scene
“Music happens in my house and that pleases me,’ Cass told Rolling Stone. ‘If you come over to my house, and you see Eric Clapton and David Crosby and Steve Stills playing guitar together and Buddy Miles walks in, it’s not because I got out my Local 47 book and called up and said let’s get a bunch of musicians together.’ (Local 47 being the LA branch of the AFM – the American equivalent of the Musicians’ Union.) ‘My house is a very free house,’ she continued, as the magazine insisted that she was the undisputed Queen of Los Angeles Pop Society. ‘It’s not a crash pad and people don’t come without calling. But on an afternoon, especially on weekends, I always get a lot of delicatessen food in, because I know David is going to come over for a swim and things are going to happen. Joni Mitchell has written many songs sitting in my living room. Christmas day when we were all having dinner, she was writing songs.”
(Fiegel, Eddi. Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot (Kindle Locations 5187-5194). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.)
_____
Henry Diltz (photographer): “That was the day (Feb. 1968) ‘Mama’ Cass had her backyard picnic for Eric Clapton because he didn’t know anybody. I met Eric that day, and Joni Mitchell that day. Mama invited David Crosby up, thinking that he and Eric were both musicians and they’d relate to one another. She was playing the earth mother again. We used to call Mama Cass the Gertrude Stein of Laurel Canyon because she would get people together – she introduced Graham Nash to David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Crosby brought this young girl he’d just discovered – Joni Mitchell. She sat on the grass playing her guitar and Clapton sat there mesmerized with her playing. Joni Mitchell played differently, she tuned her guitar to a chord, and Eric Clapton had never seen that before.”
selvedgeyard.com/2015/03/25/laurel-canyon-daze-csn-joni-mitchell-jackson-browne-mama-cass-the-eagles/
“Cass had known not only Sharon but all three of the other victims: celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Woytek Frykowski, an old schoolfriend of Polanski’s, and Frykowski’s girlfriend Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. The openness of Hollywood society at the time had led to a previously unprecedented crossover between the film and rock communities; if you were successful and hip in either one or the other or at least good friends with someone who was, you were just as likely to end up at a film star’s house for the evening as a rock star’s. Cass’s prominence in the upper echelons of the LA social scene therefore meant she was part of a community which as well as rock stars such as Crosby, Nash, Stills, Eric Clapton plus assorted Beatles and Stones also included Warren Beatty, Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, Mike Sarne, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.
(Fiegel, Eddi. Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot (Kindle Locations 5443-5446). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.)
_____
Did Charles Manson and members of ‘the Family’ ever visit Cass Elliott’s home?
“Cass and her daughter, Owen, lived in a two-story house located near the end of an unpaved private road off Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Cass bought it from Natalie Wood and turned it into a mix of conservative family home and luxurious, incense-scented hippie pad. Silken banners billowed from windows and a big leather hippopotamus guarded a reading chair in the book-lined study. The wall around the fireplace in the living room had been given over to in-house graffiti. There were scrawled messages from Eric Clapton, Ryan O’Neal, Michelle Phillips, Don Johnson, David Crosby, Keith Allison, David Pearl, Graham Nash and anyone else who wanted to leave their mark. Somebody (possibly Cass herself) had written, “The party don’t start ’til Chuck Barris gets here” as a joke. The framed gold single of Monday, Monday from The Mamas and Papas’ debut album was displayed on another, unmarked wall. Soon after we met, Cass traded it to Bruce Johnston for his gold single of Good Vibrations. Johnston, who played keyboard, had taken Brian Wilson’s place on tour and was doing studio work with The Beach Boys.” (Leon Bing, Ellen Naomi, Pasadena Weekly, December 1, 2009)
“The spacious living room was dominated by a large leather hippo, and on either side of the fireplace the bare plaster walls were covered in graffiti and autographs from Cass’s friends – famous or otherwise. Some visitors were shocked that Cass should allow people to write freely on her walls but others saw it as the showbiz tradition that it was; Cass was simply bringing a sliver of Broadway life into her home.”
Fiegel, Eddi. Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot (Kindle Locations 4191-4194). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.
Visitors to the home were encouraged to write their names, phone numbers and /or messages on the walls of the living room. From what I have been able to determine it was almost an insult to Cass if you refused or failed to do so. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. John Sebastian, Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchel, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Eric Clapton and a host of others may have once written on those walls. “Michael Caine” might have been there adding corroboration to his story. The names Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger likely would have been there, too. And it is possible the name “Charles Manson” may have been written on those walls.
I was not able to find an image of the wall. It is likely that after the murders (how long, I don’t know) the walls were painted over. If you are a conspiracy theory buff it would not be a stretch to conclude the walls may have been repainted immediately after the crime (or at least in December 1969) to literally cover something up. I could not find a ‘modern’ reference to the graffiti. Unfortunately, a piece of lost history probably lies under layers of Sherwin-Williams at 7708 Woodrow Wilson Drive.
[Aside: 7708 Woodrow Wilson Drive’s ownership records reveal that the following individuals owned the home at one time or another: Natalie Wood, Ringo Starr, Ellen Naomi Cohen (“Mama” Cass Elliot), Dan Aykroyd and most recently, Beverly D’Angelo.]
www.mansonblog.com/2018_11_19_archive.html
Cass’ house was the center of LA’s young, hip, movie and music society leading up to the murders. In fact, many of those who were there claim the whole ‘party’ scene ended with the murders. Initially, the 'hippie elite' believed one of their own had committed the crime and that made everyone very paranoid. But before the crimes Cass' House was the place to be.
_____
“Graham Nash has described Cass Elliot as “the Gertrude Stein of Laurel Canyon”—that she had a “salon” similar to the one at 27 Rue de Fleurus in Paris in the 1920s. Cass brought her friends from the music and movie worlds together. She was a conversationalist and a storyteller who could hold forth on anything and everything, and according to Stephen Stills ‘you could always go over there. But call first.’”
STEPHEN STILLS: I always had a place in my heart for alley cats, and David was really funny. We would scheme about a band, and one night at the Troubadour I saw Cass, who I hadn’t seen for a while, and she said, “Would you like to have a third harmony?” I said, “I’m not sure—it depends on the guy, the voice.” So she said, “When David calls you to come over to my house with your guitar, don’t ask—just do it.” I knew that the queen bee had something up her sleeve, and, sure enough, David calls me and says, “Get your guitar and come to Cass’s house.” I can see it now—the living room, the dining room, the pool, the kitchen—and we’re in the living room and there’s Graham Nash. Then Cass goes, “So sing.” And we sang “In the morning, when you rise”.
GRAHAM NASH, singer-songwriter-guitarist, the Hollies, CSN, CSNY: Stephen’s completely out of his mind. I remember it clearly and so does David. It was not at Mama Cass’s. We did sing at Cass’s. But not the very first time.
MICHELLE PHILLIPS, singer-songwriter-actor, the Mamas and the Papas: It was very lax at Cass’s house when she moved to Woodrow Wilson. Ashtrays were overflowing. She would let people write their phone numbers and messages on her walls with felt pens. She smoked a lot of pot. I wasn’t into food at that point in my life, but there were a lot of grown men there, so there must have been food. They probably called down to Greenblatt’s Deli and had 20 different platters of sandwiches brought up.
MICHELLE PHILLIPS: Before 1969, my memories were nothing but fun and excitement and shooting to the top of the charts and loving every minute of it. The Manson murders [in the summer of 1969] ruined the L.A. music scene. That was the nail in the coffin of the freewheeling, let’s get high, everybody’s welcome, come on in, sit right down. Everyone was terrified. I carried a gun in my purse. And I never invited anybody over to my house again.
www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/02/laurel-canyon-music-scene
“Music happens in my house and that pleases me,’ Cass told Rolling Stone. ‘If you come over to my house, and you see Eric Clapton and David Crosby and Steve Stills playing guitar together and Buddy Miles walks in, it’s not because I got out my Local 47 book and called up and said let’s get a bunch of musicians together.’ (Local 47 being the LA branch of the AFM – the American equivalent of the Musicians’ Union.) ‘My house is a very free house,’ she continued, as the magazine insisted that she was the undisputed Queen of Los Angeles Pop Society. ‘It’s not a crash pad and people don’t come without calling. But on an afternoon, especially on weekends, I always get a lot of delicatessen food in, because I know David is going to come over for a swim and things are going to happen. Joni Mitchell has written many songs sitting in my living room. Christmas day when we were all having dinner, she was writing songs.”
(Fiegel, Eddi. Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot (Kindle Locations 5187-5194). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.)
_____
Henry Diltz (photographer): “That was the day (Feb. 1968) ‘Mama’ Cass had her backyard picnic for Eric Clapton because he didn’t know anybody. I met Eric that day, and Joni Mitchell that day. Mama invited David Crosby up, thinking that he and Eric were both musicians and they’d relate to one another. She was playing the earth mother again. We used to call Mama Cass the Gertrude Stein of Laurel Canyon because she would get people together – she introduced Graham Nash to David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Crosby brought this young girl he’d just discovered – Joni Mitchell. She sat on the grass playing her guitar and Clapton sat there mesmerized with her playing. Joni Mitchell played differently, she tuned her guitar to a chord, and Eric Clapton had never seen that before.”
selvedgeyard.com/2015/03/25/laurel-canyon-daze-csn-joni-mitchell-jackson-browne-mama-cass-the-eagles/
“Cass had known not only Sharon but all three of the other victims: celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Woytek Frykowski, an old schoolfriend of Polanski’s, and Frykowski’s girlfriend Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. The openness of Hollywood society at the time had led to a previously unprecedented crossover between the film and rock communities; if you were successful and hip in either one or the other or at least good friends with someone who was, you were just as likely to end up at a film star’s house for the evening as a rock star’s. Cass’s prominence in the upper echelons of the LA social scene therefore meant she was part of a community which as well as rock stars such as Crosby, Nash, Stills, Eric Clapton plus assorted Beatles and Stones also included Warren Beatty, Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, Mike Sarne, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.
(Fiegel, Eddi. Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot (Kindle Locations 5443-5446). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.)
_____
Did Charles Manson and members of ‘the Family’ ever visit Cass Elliott’s home?
“Cass and her daughter, Owen, lived in a two-story house located near the end of an unpaved private road off Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Cass bought it from Natalie Wood and turned it into a mix of conservative family home and luxurious, incense-scented hippie pad. Silken banners billowed from windows and a big leather hippopotamus guarded a reading chair in the book-lined study. The wall around the fireplace in the living room had been given over to in-house graffiti. There were scrawled messages from Eric Clapton, Ryan O’Neal, Michelle Phillips, Don Johnson, David Crosby, Keith Allison, David Pearl, Graham Nash and anyone else who wanted to leave their mark. Somebody (possibly Cass herself) had written, “The party don’t start ’til Chuck Barris gets here” as a joke. The framed gold single of Monday, Monday from The Mamas and Papas’ debut album was displayed on another, unmarked wall. Soon after we met, Cass traded it to Bruce Johnston for his gold single of Good Vibrations. Johnston, who played keyboard, had taken Brian Wilson’s place on tour and was doing studio work with The Beach Boys.” (Leon Bing, Ellen Naomi, Pasadena Weekly, December 1, 2009)
“The spacious living room was dominated by a large leather hippo, and on either side of the fireplace the bare plaster walls were covered in graffiti and autographs from Cass’s friends – famous or otherwise. Some visitors were shocked that Cass should allow people to write freely on her walls but others saw it as the showbiz tradition that it was; Cass was simply bringing a sliver of Broadway life into her home.”
Fiegel, Eddi. Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of 'Mama' Cass Elliot (Kindle Locations 4191-4194). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.
Visitors to the home were encouraged to write their names, phone numbers and /or messages on the walls of the living room. From what I have been able to determine it was almost an insult to Cass if you refused or failed to do so. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. John Sebastian, Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchel, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Eric Clapton and a host of others may have once written on those walls. “Michael Caine” might have been there adding corroboration to his story. The names Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger likely would have been there, too. And it is possible the name “Charles Manson” may have been written on those walls.
I was not able to find an image of the wall. It is likely that after the murders (how long, I don’t know) the walls were painted over. If you are a conspiracy theory buff it would not be a stretch to conclude the walls may have been repainted immediately after the crime (or at least in December 1969) to literally cover something up. I could not find a ‘modern’ reference to the graffiti. Unfortunately, a piece of lost history probably lies under layers of Sherwin-Williams at 7708 Woodrow Wilson Drive.
[Aside: 7708 Woodrow Wilson Drive’s ownership records reveal that the following individuals owned the home at one time or another: Natalie Wood, Ringo Starr, Ellen Naomi Cohen (“Mama” Cass Elliot), Dan Aykroyd and most recently, Beverly D’Angelo.]