So let me address the elephant in the room. In today’s social climate, is there a place for a discussion or an appreciation of the musical legacy left by John Phillips? This is a problem I’ve faced for a while as a writer and a music fan which began when I made an attempt to write about his brilliant 1970 solo release “The Wolf King of LA” a number of years ago. Despite the fact that the album once was a favorite of music critics and vinyl hipsters alike, research on the album proved difficult as the people who once loved the album were now fleeing from having any association with it. In the end I decided to abandon the story and have been very cautious about writing about John Phillips ever since.
John Phillips sits amongst a perplexing group of rock n’ roll innovators, including Phil Spector and Ike Turner, who once were considered giants in their industry, but are now being slowly written out of music history due to the atrocities and crimes they committed during their lifetime. Even before the unforgivable explosive details that further soiled his already divisive reputation in the years since his death in 2001, John Phillips was a really terrible man. A drug trafficker, abuser, hedonist, and narcissist, John Phillips wreaked havoc in the lives of the people who surrounded him, including his bandmates in The Mamas and the Papas, and never fully took responsibility for his crimes during his lifetime. As much as I love the music of The Mamas and the Papas, their story is one I have always shied away from in order to not retell the toxic narrative that runs through their story. But, despite his personal brand of evil, John Phillips was a brilliant songwriter, arranger and producer, and he helped create one of the defining sounds of the 1960’s by merging folk music with modern pop, and wrote, arranged and produced songs that continues to keep the world singing to this day. In our time of cancel culture, to ignore the legacy of John Phillips is fair, but to forget his music is nearly impossible. His songs are iconic and are musical touchstones of an entire era, and no matter what evil he did in his lifetime, the quality of his work is undeniable. Perhaps, in time, the beauty of his songs will outlive the memory of the man. I do believe that a man’s crimes can’t erase the art that he creates, and if we erased every song from existence based on the bad behaviors of musicians there would be very few songs left to listen to. So let me make it clear than that writing about John Phillips is not me celebrating the man as much as celebrating the music that he brought into the world. I hope that my intent can be felt and understood.
Which brings me to The Journeymen. Early on in my relocation to Ottawa I came across a store that was selling all three of The Journeymen’s releases from the early 1960’s. Now I’ll admit that I’m not much of a folk connoisseur, but knowing who The Journeymen were, the albums peaked my interest although I’d never heard their music before. The albums were a bit pricey, so I purchased their third album, “New Directions in Folk Music,”, and left the others behind. Bringing it home I found myself fascinated to the rich melodies which had that distinct John Phillips stamp on them, and the next week I went back to buy the other two. But, as has happened many times before, the other albums were long gone by the time I returned to the store again. When in question, always buy all the albums.
Established in Greenwich Village in 1961, The Journeymen failed to make it commercially, but featured a pair of performers who would become two of the most celebrated artists of the 1960’s – John Phillips and Scott McKenzie. But, what stands out with The Journeymen was that the still unknown John Phillips was creating some truly interesting melodies and arrangements, giving the listener an early taste of the innovative sound soon to dominate the pop world.
John Phillips and Scott McKenzie met each other while still teenagers when their families were living in Alexandra, Virginia. Their mothers had been friends and sharing that their individual sons were interested in music, they brought the two boys together. Listening to the early rock n’ roll that was starting to dominate youth culture at the time, the two young men were drawn to doo-wop music and formed their first group, The Abstracts. Consisting of friends Mike Born and Bill Cleary, The Abstracts became a popular group locally, and Phillips began to hone his skills at creating complex vocal arrangements, which would become his hallmark in years to come.
Around 1960 The Abstracts changed their name to The Smoothies and decided to try their fortune in New York City. This led to a shot at Decca Records where they released two singles, “Ride, Ride Ride” and “Softly Joanie.” However, once in New York Phillips and McKenzie’s musical interests took a different turn when they became seduced by the blustering folk movement that was happening in Greenwich Village. Failing to have a hit with Decca, The Smoothies broke up by the end of the year and Phillips and McKenzie entered the folk industry.
By 1961 Phillips and McKenzie had met banjo player Dick Weissman and the trio took the name The Journeymen. Although they adopted the same style of traditional folk music played by a plethora of artists in the industry, The Journeymen stood out by mixing additional elements from other musical genres into their music. While much of their material was covers of popular traditional songs, Phillips was still heavily influenced by the vocal groups of the late 50’s, primarily Indianapolis quartet The Four Freshmen, and he sought to bring the intricate vocal arrangements into the Journeymen’s folk music. With Scott McKenzie as the lead vocalist, Phillips and McKenzie added the harmonies, although each member would get their individual chances to take the spotlight in various numbers.
While playing throughout Greenwich Village, The Journeymen gained the attention of Frank Werber, who managed The Kingston Trio, who began representing them and helped get them a five month residency at the New York folk hot spot Gerdes Folk City where they shared the stage with future music icons such as Ian and Sylvia, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Bob Dylan. By adopting a playful on stage presence which was peppered with current day political discourse, The Journeymen brought a touch of modernism to their act while many groups still sought to embrace a more traditional American roots sound.
Frank Werber got The Journeymen a contract with Capital Records and in 1961 they released their first self-titled album. Comprised of primarily traditional tracks, the album contained the earliest of John Phillip’s recorded originals – “Soft Blows the Summer Wind” and “Run Maggie Run.” Molded in the same style as The Kingston Trio, Capitol took a strong liking to the group and put out a handful of singles, but the success of The Journeymen was mediocre. There was no denying they were a solid group, but none of the singles hit the mainstream Billboard market. The album did, however, get the group on “Hootenanny,” which exposed them to a wider audience than just the New York folkies.
But behind the scenes, things were starting to get tense for The Journeymen. Scott McKenzie was beginning to experience a number of mental health issues, which was causing havoc within the group, as well as with his friendship with John Phillips. Suffering from anxiety and an increasing paranoia, McKenzie would have bouts of stage freight which would prevent him from going on stage some nights and having him often disappear for days. With McKenzie becoming increasingly erratic and unreliable, the future of The Journeymen was becoming questioned. When singer Dave Guard left The Kingston Trio, Frank Weber offered the opening to Phillips, but he decided to put faith in McKenzie and stick it out with the Journeymen. This period saw the release of a live album, “Coming Attractions – Live” in 1962 and, their second studio album, “New Directions in Folk Music” in 1963.
In some ways “New Directions in Folk Music” sounded like more of the same which the folkies had heard before, but there was an obvious progression to their sound, and the group was taking things up just a notch. Phillips composed another pair of originals, “Ben and Me” and “One Last Martini” which were starting to fall out of the folk tradition. “Ben and Me,” particularly, sounds closer to the music he’d created in the 1970’s after the Mamas and the Papas dissolved and could be an early entry into the southern rock genre. Meanwhile, Scott McKenzie provided a sensitive vocal track for “One Last Martini” which sounds like a sort of folky torch song.
Dick Weissman also provided two original songs to the album – a blues inspired number called “Two Hobos” and possibly of the strongest songs on the disk, “Someone to Tell My Troubles Too.”
But the highlight of the album, again, is the intricate harmonies and arrangements put together by John Phillips. The vocal arrangements had grown far more complex, and the group recorded excellent versions of traditional folk and blues favorites such as “Stakolee,” “All the Pretty Little Horses” and “Down in Mexico.”
Although “New Directions In Folk Music” was a strong release, it would also be the group’s final project together. In 1963 Capitol Records signed a new band who they saw as being the future of popular music – The Beatles. With a rebirth of rock n’ roll happening in England, Capitol became disenchanted with the folk scene and dropped all of their non charting folk acts, which included The Journeymen. The internal struggles and being dropped by the label essentially broke the group up.
Yet despite Scott McKenzie’s fragile mental state, Capitol decided that he was the marketable member of the group as the lead vocalist and offered him a solo contract. McKenzie signed, but despite releasing a number of solo singles, he was eventually dropped by the label as well.
In 1964 John Phillips attempted to reform The Journeymen. Now married to a young groupie who he had left his wife for named Michelle, he reached out to Scott McKenzie to form what he would call “The New Journeymen” but McKenzie turned down the offer. Instead he brought in Denny Doherty, who had been performing in a group called The Mugwumps which had also recently dissolved. The trio headed on to the Virgin Islands to put together their new sound and was eventually joined by Doherty’s Mugwumps bandmate Cass Elliott. Now a foursome, the group changed their name from The New Journeymen to The Mamas and the Papas and would become one of the leading bands of the era via Phillips’ brand of complex arrangements and memorable sunshine pop numbers.
John Phillips and Scott McKenzie would work together again in 1967, creating one of the biggest anthems of the flower power generation, but that’s another vinyl story. But how about Dick Weissman? What did he do after The Journeymen?
Despite initially being dropped by Capitol along with John Phillips in 1963, Weisman went back to work for the company as a studio musician, performing banjo and guitar on many folk, blues and country albums. This led him to releasing his own solo album, “The Things That Trouble My Mind” in 1964 which gained little attention. Weisman eventually moved his way into production but left Capitol in the early 1970’s for a new career teaching music at the University of Colorado in Denver. Weisman has written fifteen instructional books for guitar and banjo, as well as a memoir titled “The Music Never Stops: A Journey into the Music of the Unknown, The Forgotten, The Rich and the Famous.” Called “The Professor” by his musical colleagues, Weisman has also released an additional thirteen solo albums. At this writing Weisman is 89 and the last surviving member of The Journeymen.
Although The Journeymen never had any notable hits, the group was part of the foundations of a musical movement that would inspire multiple generations to write, play and sing. It may sound different from what was to come, but that early John Phillips sound is undeniable in their music.
