Gary James' Interview With Former Mamas And Papas Vocalist
Jill Gibson



Jill Gibson was once a member of The Mamas And The Papas. That's right, for a brief time she replaced Michelle Phillips. And before that, she sang background vocals on Jan And Dean records. In 1967 she photographed the Rock performers at the Monterey Pop Festival, and we're talking "A" list performers. These days she's a painter, a sculptor and a jewelry maker. We spoke with Jill Gibson, or Mama Jill as she was known in her Mamas And Papas days, about her life now and then.

Q - How long did you spend in The Mamas And The Papas? Was it just seven weeks?

A - It keeps getting smaller and smaller. (laughs) My contract says six months. I went in, in June and my ending contract says December. But everybody says something different. I can't remember exactly. I know at least three months, but then after that I don't know how long it was. It seems to me if I signed a contract that ended my participation with December on it, that would make it six months, but I don't remember. I wasn't keeping track. I don't really remember. Not long after that I left and went to New York to school, went to Europe and lived for six years. All this disappeared. It's not like I sat around talking about old times. It all went away. It was a fun time, but it also had its problems.

Q - Jill, it would seem to me after being part of a big act like The Mamas And The Papas you would miss performing in front of an audience. Do you in fact miss performing?

A - No. I never wanted to perform. It was never my intention to perform.

Q - Did you ever want to be a part of a successful recording, touring act?

A - Well, I wouldn't call myself as having been a singer. I never thought of myself as a singer. I simply played music. I played music from the time I was, I don't know, seven years old or something. I was in the grammar school orchestra. I played the violin. The piano was my first instrument at home, but in school it was the violin and then at a certain point, I think junior high, I moved on to guitar. I simply entertained myself. I didn't have any ambitions. I didn't want to be a songwriter. I just wrote music.

Q - Was it just by chance that you met Jan Berry (one half of Jan And Dean)? Was he in one of your high school classes?

A - My sister was in the same grade with him. I'm not sure how I became aware of him. I knew of Jan. I was at parties with Jan at school, but I was two grades younger than him, but there was no participation or shared classrooms or anything like that. But I very well knew who he was.

Q - You did go on to write songs with Jan, didn't you?

A - Yeah. Well, I used to write with Tracey Newman. She was in school with me. She went on to become a big writer for television. Then I started dating Jan, but I was always interested in playing music and writing music, but just for myself. I wasn't really ambitious. I was a model. That was the way I made my money. So, Jan decided to use; I was never much of a word writer, I just wrote music and played the guitar. Made up tunes. Jan used those for his surfing lyrics. That's how it worked out.

Q - You also sang background on Jan And Dean's records. How did you like the studio?

A - I liked the studio. The studio was necessary. It was very professional. It was very interesting and we had great engineers. I worked with Bones Howe and Henry Lewy. Mostly them really. I worked with a couple of other people, but those names I don't quite remember right now. I found that the most interesting part of all was the arrangements you could do. I think Henry Lewy passed away. It's been awhile. He went on to become Joni Mitchell's manager I believe, but also her production engineer, although I don't know that for sure. But he was very influential in my life, just as a person.

Q - You were on a TV show called Celebrity Party, hosted by Dick Clark. What was that like, to be alongside performers like The Beach Boys and Connie Francis?

A - You know, I don't really remember that one. I know there are photographs of me with Dick Clark and Jan, but for some reason I don't remember that very well, but I never was very impressed by celebrity. I was just there. I grew up with people that I guess you'd call 'em celebrities, and they weren't celebrities then maybe, You know, I grew up with a lot of people in high school who went on to become famous, but they were always just the people from high school to me. You know, Jan and Dean also was in the same high school. James Brolin. He married Barbra Streiand. These people were in my school and they were always just like my school mates. I even dated a couple of them, but they always remained simple people to me. They never appeared to be separate and famous. I never looked at it that way. It just seemed natural to me. I was a friend.

Q - While you were in Europe with The Mamas And The Paps you got to meet people like John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Brian Jones at this club called Dolly's. I've never heard of Dolly's before. What kind of place was that?

A - It was a nightclub. I don't remember a lot about it and I can't say I know a lot about it. It's just that it was a nightclub. Very, very crowded. Very, very noisy like any nightclub, but I suppose it was like one of those exclusive nightclubs that you can only get in if your a V.I.P. or something. But I was just going along. I didn't make the arrangements. I was just simply going along. We were invited. I went. I don't actually remember who I met there really. I just have fleeting memories from that. One was when we were leaving the club. I remember that there was a limo, it looked like a limo. I think it was John Lennon's car. I'm not really sure whose car it was, but it had these speakers that were blasting music out from the back of it, going down the street. I never will forget that. I was impressed by that because I'd never seen anything like that before, or heard anything like that before. The club itself, I just remember it being packed. You know how clubs are. They're noisy. You can't hear anybody say anything. Everybody's drinking. It's just a zoo. That's what it felt like. It didn't really mean a lot to me.

Q - Any top Rock star of the day could have been there then?

A - Yeah, at any time or another. Sure.

Q - It doesn't sound like seeing John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Brian Jones impressed you.

A - Well, I think my memories of Brian Jones weren't from then and also of John Lennon that weren't from then. And Paul McCartney, I guess it might have been the same evening, but not from Dolly's. He came over to the apartment I was staying at which was a several floor apartment. It was a floor up and then there was a floor above that, that was part of our apartment. There was an amazing event that happened that was very memorable and I was very impressed by in the sense that it stuck with me my whole life because it was so amazing. He sat down, the whole apartment was kind of dark. I was by myself, looking out the window at the park across the street and Paul started playing a harpsichord that was in the same room as me. In fact, it was quite an empty room, but there was a harpsichord and it was slightly out of tune, at least parts of it. Not the whole thing. He started playing this very atonal improvisation because it was a song I'd never heard. It was no song. It was an improvisation. While he was playing that I was looking out the window at this cat that was walking across the street, very slowly, meandering. He played for maybe five minutes and this cat ended up right below me because I was looking out a window that was right above a doorway that had a door mat on it. Just as the cat coiled up on the door mat, Paul finished the song. It was like the whole thing had been choreographed. It was completely magical. That's the memory I have of Paul McCartney. You meet somebody in a club, it's fleeting. "Hi. How are you?" You can hardly hear them and there's other people trying to talk. It's like something never really happened. Nothing really registers when it's noisy and crowded. Brian Jones stayed with us at the house Lou (Adler) and I rented. He was with Nico. That's my memory of Brian Jones. He was really, completely drugged out at all times. I shouldn't say at all times, at all times in the house that I was aware of. When he was walking around the Festival (Monterey Pop Festival) he seemed like he was able to walk around. I don't know what drugs he was on. When he was at our house he was quite drugged out.

Q - I hate to hear that, Jill. To me, Brian Jones was and will always be The Rolling Stones.

A - I don't know their history that well. I never spent much time following all that stuff. I'm an artist of my own, in my own right in another medium, so it's not like I sit around looking at histories. But I would imagine that at that time, I can't remember how long after that he died. I think I was living in Europe then.

Q - The Monterey Pop Festival took place in June, 1967. Brian Jones died on July 3rd, 1969.

A - I would suspect that there were a lot of problems in the group. When people are doing so many drugs, problems are bound to be there. Maybe that's why he was so drugged out when he was staying with us. I never could have a conversation with him. He was literally foaming at the mouth. I mean literally foaming at the mouth.

Q - I wonder what his drug of choice was.

A - I have no idea. I wasn't into drugs. He and Nico kept to themselves in the house. I would pretty much pass them in the hallway kind of situation. I think I saw them more at the Fairgrounds and I took many photographs of him and her together. They kind of were always together.

Q - Wasn't Nico a girlfriend of Jim Morrison?

A - Yeah. She was a girlfriend of a lot of people.

Q - Simon and Garfunkel opened for The Mamas And The Papas when you were in the group. Do you remember how popular they were at the time?

A - I do, but I was never a fan of theirs so I never really paid too much attention to them. I do remember they were huge. Paul Simon participated in the Monterey Pop Festival meetings, at least initially. I don't know if he ended up staying involved. I think there were some problems there, but I don't remember too well. Yes, I know they were very big and he was very influential. I think he was really the main leader of the group, but I don't actually remember them opening for me anywhere, probably because I was backstage or something, preparing for our entrance, our show. So yeah, I just don't remember that. I don't even remember a couple of the places. I don't remember all of them. I just remember some that stuck out in my mind.

Q - You photographed Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival.

A - Yeah.

Q - Did you get a chance to engage them in conversation at all?

A - No. I simply was in the audience, actually I wasn't in the audience per se. I was in the aisles with other photographer friends and we were shooting from a distance. I never did go backstage to do any backstage photography, which was unfortunate. I guess I never thought about doing that. I was very busy shooting out. I wanted the performers.

Q - These days you're involved in painting, creating sculptures. Are you doing this on assignment or just what you want to do?

A - I have always done artwork. I was painting when I was fifteen, sixteen. I did the music. I was painting until I got to high school. I was painting and doing music. Then I went to art school in New York. I went to Europe, painted for many years. I always played music, but I wasn't being entertaining at all. At a certain point I started doing sculpture. Then I did that for twenty years. I'm not making sculptures anymore, but I still have the business. I still have the business of selling the sculptures I did make. I make copies of them. It's a production. They got really heavy for me 'cause they're made of concrete. Then I started making jewelry which I'd also done in high school and then after high school. So, I made jewelry for four years and then when I lived in Europe I knew some jewelers and I worked in a jewelry factory for awhile in Italy. So, on and off I've always done jewelry, but mostly not. And then after the sculpture it got heavy for me. It was only about five years ago I picked up jewelry again. And so that's what I'm doing now. I don't play music anymore. I create because I have to. It's just the way I am. I'm built that way. I seem to need to create, but I always have hard times marketing, but I do have several websites and I'm on Instagram with the jewelry.

Q - With the sculptures, who were you selling to? Individuals or maybe museums?

A - Stores, well individuals, but mostly stores. I would do trade shows. High-end gift shops. Galleries. Nurseries. Mostly high-end places. I never saw any sculpture like mine when I was first trying to sell it. Sculptures with images, like putting with images on it was not there. I was really the first person doing that. Then I went from pottery because I knew I could market them at nurseries by myself. Then I started doing plaques that you could hang up on the wall. Three dimensional plaques so you could hang them on your garden wall. Then I moved on to table top sculpture. But I was selling at trade shows and gathering outlets that were galleries, museum stores I should say. Nurseries. High-end shops. That sort of thing.

Official Websites: JillGibsonJewelry.com
www.GibsonArts.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.