Dunhill 50006
Producer: Lou Adler
Track listing: Monday, Monday / Straight Shooter / Got a Feelin’ / I Call Your Name / Do You Wanna Dance / Go Where You Wanna Go / California Dreamin’ / Spanish Harlem / Somebody Groovy / Hey Girl / You Baby / In Crowd
May 21, 1966
1 week
The Mamas and the Papas’ road to the summit of Billboard’s album chart began in the summer of 1965. After spending much of the summer camping in the Virgin Islands, the group, which consisted of John Phillips, his wife Michelle, Dennis Doherty, and Cass Elliot, decided to flee their home base of New York for Los Angeles. John Phillips answered a newspaper ad from a man seeking someone to drive his car from New York to L.A. The car, it turned out, was a limousine. “So we all hopped in and headed for L.A.,” says John.
The group rehearsed in the car during the cross-country trek. At a stop in Las Vegas, Michelle won some money at the craps tables to help cover the group’s expenses. Once in L.A., the group crashed at a friend’s apartment near the Sunset Strip. “It was a one-bedroom with 20 people living in it,” says John. Low on cash, the group begged for money and for food and heated it on a make shift hot plate made from a converted bathroom heater. It was their friend Barry McGuire, who’d had a Number One hit in the fall of 1965 with “Eve of Destruction,” who provided the Mamas and the Papas with their big break. “We were rehearsing and he came by and said that it sounded great and we should go down and meet Lou Adler, who was producing his album,” John Phillips says.
When the group arrived at Sunset Sound Studios a few days later, McGuire wasn’t there, but Adler agreed to give the quartet a listen. “He told us to go down the hall into this room to warm up for a few minutes,” Phillips says. “We sang about 10 songs. We didn’t know that Lou was in the room.” Adler was so impressed that he signed the band the following day.
Initially, the group was enlisted as back-up singers for McGuire, who cut the John and Michelle Phillips song “California Dreamin’.” Adler loved the song, but wasn’t crazy about McGuire’s version. He suggested that the Mamas and Papas record it for their own album. “It’s the same backing track that’s on Barry’s album,” says Phillips. “We just took his voice off and Denny sang lead.”
“California Dreamin'” was the Mamas and the Papas’ first hit, but it wasn’t the group’s first single. Initially, Dunhill released “Go Where You Wanna Go” and distributed it to radio stations along the West Coast. “Then Lou had a dream one night and realized that it should be ‘California Dreamin” instead, so they recalled all of those singles,” John remembers. “I thought it was a wise choice.” The single eventually reached number four.
Aside from recording their own material, the Mamas and Papas paid tribute to some of their favorites artists by covering their songs, including the Beatles’ “I Call Your Name.” Says John Phillips, “Cass was in love with John Lennon. If you listen closely during the instrumental break, you can hear Cass whisper twice, ‘John.'”
It was the John Phillips original, “Monday, Monday,” however, that became the Mamas and the Papas’ first Number One single, on May 7, 1996. Initially, the track almost didn’t make the album. “Everyone hated it except for me,” says Phillips. “I really wanted to put it on the album, but everybody couldn’t understand what it was about. I don’t really know what it’s about, but it was cool. We did it as a test recording first, but it came out so well, we used that.”
Two weeks after “Monday, Monday” first hit the top of the Hot 100, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears reached the summit in its 11th week or the album chart.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of May 21, 1965
1. If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, The Mamas and the Papas
2. What Now My Love, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
3. Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass), The Rolling Stones
4. Going Places, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
5. Color Me Barbra, Barbra Streisand