Papa John
by John Phillips
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Book Summary Information
Author: John PhillipsCollaborator: Jim Jerome
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1986-01-01
ISBN: 0385231202
Number of pages: 444
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Book Reviews of Papa John
Book Review: A perfect how-not-to book
Summary: 4 Stars
JP might have called this, "My Life and The Kitchen Sink", because there is no end to the extraneous details. For those looking for stories of the Mamas and Papas, they're here, with plenty of good tales of their early days. But then the real theme of the book takes hold: drugs, drugs, and then some more drugs to go with those other drugs. What, we're out of drugs?! Let's buy more with our next $100,000 royalty cheque!
After a while it just gets depressing. No matter how many names and whacked-out chemical adventures he drops, Phillips comes off as a man who has no idea how to live an intelligent life. What to say about a guy who shoots up his teenage daughter with cocaine? (And what to say about her, One Day At A Time's Laura Mackenzie Phillips, who complains that he missed her vein?) After a while you just stop feeling sorry for the guy and start hating him, especially when he kidnaps his kid with his pathetic loser of a wife Gen and they drive cross-country, fleeing the law while they shoot heroin in front of their ten year-old son as they are driving.
I don't care how many great tunes he wrote, that's despicable stuff. He should have known better from his own f'ed up childhood, but apparently not. At what point do you stop blaming drugs and start taking some responsibility for your actions? When you get busted and not a minute sooner; that's the lesson this book teaches.
The only truly useful thing about this tome is that it's a great reason to never do hard drugs. I remember that when this book came out in '86 and Rolling Stone had an excerpt, the quote I could never forget was from JP's junkie buddy, Keef the Moron Richards: "Street heroin is for losers." (Dilaudid is for "winners" like him and Phillips.) That line stayed with me for years, and along with watching some of my friends and bandmates fall apart and occasionally die from drugs, it has kept me from trying heroin or coke even once. I played music for a living for many years and saw tons of it (the music, tv and film industries are still awash in blow to this day, as well as the business world), and not once did I see that hard drugs do anything but kill those who do them, and those all around them.
This book only confirms that thought. Dumbass John (a better title) shot whatever he could get into his veins for nearly two decades, and at one point was shooting coke every 15 minutes for two years! What a waste of a body. That he sucked so many other people into his hell only makes him more culpable.
Books like this may seem honest, but who knows what the real truths really were? The only thing I can say for sure about these stories are that if ever you need a reason to never do hard drugs, there are a million in here. All the success, money, women, travel and family love in the world wasn't enough for John Phillips, once the drugs took hold.
On the other hand, this book makes my low-key, healthy life full of music and drug-free friends seem even better than I might realize. Apparently it's not about making it to The Top: it's about living simply and well and giving thanks for all the little blessings that come our way every day. You don't need to be famous for that...in fact, fame might be the worst drug of all.
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