John Phillips the Pervert Has Forever Ruined the Mamas and the Papas

The emerging John Phillips/Mackenzie Phillips incest story is really disturbing and it will be interesting to see what effect it has on the musical legacy of the Mamas & the Papas. For me its putting quite a damper on my enjoyment of the music. Suddenly, with the revelation that Papa was a deeply, disturbed pervert, there's a sinister subtext behind seemingly innocent songs like 'California Dreamin'.

Whatever coincidental ties they had to the fringes of the mid-'60s hippy movement (proximity to the Manson Family, for example) are much harder to ignore as aberrations in light of this story and its clear Phillips was never as naive as his music might have made him seem.