The sad story of Mamas and Papas songwriter/creator John Phillips never ends.
Phillips died a broken man, completely crippled by drugs. His eldest daugher, MacKenzie, also a drug addict, accused him last year of molesting her.
Both Phillips and his ex wife, Michelle, wrote books about their brief time together in the mid to late 1960s as pop’s golden couple.
Now Keith Richards explains in his memoir how Phillips got hooked on drugs. It was Richards’ fault, and he takes responsibility for it.
The year was 1976. Phillips, his wife Genevieve Waite, and their son Tamerlane were living in London. Rolling Stones Records had already been enlisted for Phillips’ comeback record. (It was released in 2001, after Phillips died, and it was atrocious.)
“Phillips was amazing,” Keith writes. “I’ve never known anybody to be so hooked on dope so quick, and I had something to do with it. The night Ronnie [Wood] was leaving the Wick, John had called me up and said, “I’ve got a bottle of this stuff called Merck. And he said, Does anybody have some use for it? I don’t do that stuff.” I said I would drop by on my way out of Ronnie’s…[at Phillips’] I went into the john and shot up…When I came out, John said, What were you doing? I said, John, it’s called smack….So I shot him up, in the muscle.
“I always felt responsible for John because I turned him on to smack. Within a week, he’s got a pharmacy under control, and he’s become a dealer. I’ve never seen a guy become a junkie that quick.”
