Doherty, who sang the lead on "California Dreamin,' " and helped drive many of the other harmonized hits from the brief, but brilliant run of the Mamas and the Papas in the 1960s, has died at his home in Canada. He was 66.
According to his Los Angeles agent's office, Doherty passed away in his sleep on Thursday night. The Associated Press, citing Doherty's sister, said the performer died Friday.
With Doherty's death, three of the pop group's four founding members have now passed. john phillips the group's main composer and author of its complex vocal sound, succumbed to heart failure in 2001 at age 65. "Mama" cass elliot, the breakout star, died of a heart attack in 1974 at age 32.
At 62, Michelle Phillips, the Golden State-praising group's lone native Californian, is the lone original link to the Mamas and the Papas' reign of the AM dial.
More often than not, the big voices coming through car speakers in those days belonged to either Doherty or Elliot. The two, an unrequited love match, at least from Elliot's end, tended to trade lead vocals on hits such as "Monday, Monday" (Doherty), "Go Where You Wanna Go" (Elliot), "I Saw Her Again" (Doherty) and "Dream a Little of Dream of Me" (Elliot).
And then there was "California Dreamin'," the first hit, the signature hit--and the quintessential hit of the Los Angeles music scene, circa 1966.
The way Doherty told the Kansas City Star in 2005, "California Dreamin' " wasn't just a turning point for the Mamas and the Papas, but for the group's fans, as well.
"They [would] go...'I was living in my father's Oldsmobile in Minnesota, and I heard that song and I just went to California,' " Doherty said in the newspaper.
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, on Nov. 29, 1940, Doherty recounted his pop life and adventures in the live show, "Dream a Little Dream: The Nearly True Story of the Mamas & the Papas," which he performed along with the so-called Dream Band from the 1990s on.
"Nearly" was the key to the show's title.
"As grace slick said, 'If you remember the '60s, you weren't there,' " Doherty would tell audiences, per his official Website. "So, some of what I'm going to tell you tonight didn't happen...The stories will be stacked up, melded and muddled together and time will be warped."
Storytelling was something of a Mamas and the Papas tradition. The group's 1967 hit "Creeque Alley" was the group's history with a catchy chorus ("And no one's getting fat except Mama Cass...") and a flute solo.
A chronological take on Doherty's Mamas and the Papas heyday would look like this: Meets Elliot in New York City, circa 1963; performs with the Phillipses—marrieds John and Michelle—in 1964; sees trio expand to a quartet thanks to the addition of Elliot; inks a record deal with the group in 1965; hits the charts with "California Dreamin' " in 1966.
For Doherty, who in his stage show described his life as an attempt to make it across a river by skipping from one stone to the other, the first blast of success was as solid footing as he'd had.
"Driving down Sunset Strip in a brand new, red Cadillac convertible with your music blaring out the radio?" one of Doherty's "Dream a Little Dream" stories went, per his site. "No denying that feels like a flat stone should."
But Doherty and band mates were too restless to stay in one place, or stone, too long. Or, with one partner too long.
Doherty once described the Mamas and the Papas' group dynamic like this to the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "The big woman was in love with me, but I was in love with the cute blonde, and she was married."
The big woman was Elliot. The cute blonde was Michelle Phillips, who'd wed John Phillips as a teen.
Their world being rock 'n' roll, sex wasn't the only the issue. Drugs were, too—Doherty drank; John Phillips drank and used, and decades later, after kicking cocaine and heroin habits, required a liver transplant.
The Mamas and the Papas flamed out in 1968, after four studio albums, and one memorable performance at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival alongside the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Who.
The group reformed in 1972 for People Like Us, an album dismissed in Matthew Greenwald's liner notes for All the Leaves Are Brown: The Golden Era Collection as a "near-disposable 'contractual obligation.' "
Elliot's early death brought an end the original Mamas and the Papas, but not to the group itself. Doherty and John Phillips hit the road in the 1980s and the 1990s, initially with Phillips' TV star daughter mackenzie phillips and Spanky & Our Gang's Spanky McFarlane.
Doherty, John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, who'd long ago left pop music for TV soaps, performed together anew as the Mamas and the Papas at the group's 1998 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Elliot's part was handled by her daughter, singer Owen Elliot.
While in life, Elliot seemed hopelessly in love with Doherty; in her death, Doherty seemed hopelessly devoted to her memory.
"If it wasn't for her, there would be no group, I'd like to get that across," Doherty said of his stage show in the Kansas City Star. "And that she didn't die from a frickin' ham sandwich."
Source:Hindustanis.org
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