The Tragic Fate Of The Mamas & the Papas's Members After the Band Fell Apart

The Mamas & the Papas sold the world a sunny dream of four voices blending in perfect harmony, while behind the curtain the four people attached to those voices fought each other and leaned hard on drugs until exhaustion finished the job. That dream died in the summer of 1968. The wreckage scattered in directions no fortune teller in 1968 would dare to predict. One Mama stormed out of the band in London after a cruel remark about her weight, delivered, allegedly, in front of Mick Jagger. A Papa landed in prison on an FBI drug case, then crisscrossed the country preaching against drugs with his daughter beside him, the same daughter whose memoir would tear the family apart decades later. Another Mama stayed married to Dennis Hopper for eight days. And one Papa won a late second act as the Harbourmaster on a Canadian children's series about a tugboat, a long way from the drug haze of 1968. Somewhere in there, a posthumous album appeared with a number one higher than its creator's age at death.