Laurie Beebe Lewis
A Search for Love and
Harmony
Perfect Pitch and
Discordance
There’s
a hunger that stirs Laurie Lewis creative juices. She loves to be close yet
chooses be free. She can harness logic for behavior that may seem irrational on
the surface but contains a perfect understanding of paradox. What seems to be
the problem could actually be the solution like an addiction that soothes an
earlier wound. Laurie can talk about why it’s so hard to talk about it. She is
clearly aware of herself and has a deep abiding interest in moral choices. She
has a heart that reaches out to love and beauty. She can love many different
people in many different ways. As a
singer for a great local band Pitche Blende Laurie achieved almost instant
notoriety. She was a heartthrob to many of the boys that gaped slack-jawed at
her sensual energy and natural beauty. She had an untrained yet powerful voice
that could reach the stratosphere. As a young adult she moved to Chicago,
joined the Buckinghams and never looked back. She achieved massive success as a
full member of the Mamas & Papas and toured with them for several years. Through
her experiences in show-biz she gained an understanding of complex
relationships within a wider social framework. She’s on a first name basis with
several famous icons from the era and has been able to maintain these
relationships to the present day. Laurie is able to see the divine in art,
poetry, music…and love. This is her spiritual longing. She is a true original
Laurie, when did you first join Pitche Blende?
Oh,
wow. I’m going to say 1969. Before that I had been in other bands (Laughter) Oh
boy. We had a little all-girl band called the Lemon Kind. Later on I think
another band came around and called themselves the Loving Kind or something
like that. It was some funny name. It was an all-girl group. It was pretty
lame. It was actually really lame. We were just kids and just playing with it. We
were like not even musicians, just kind of wanna-bees. We tried to write own
songs and play. I think my sister Jinny was playing with us also. It really
didn’t last too long. Jinny went on to join a group called the Purple Gang and
they were rather successful. In the meantime I joined different bands around town,
garage bands. Tom Morris was our lead singer. We were called Ugly Pudding. We
did Traffic and Bob Dylan’s music, and I’d sing and all that kind of stuff. So,
yeah, we had a band. It was kind of a drug-based band because we were always
smoking pot and drinking cough syrup and alcohol. You know, we were just kids,
and I was like 13 or 14 years old.
Who recruited you for Pitche Blende?
My
mother recruited me... and Tom but we really got into a lot of drugs. Drinking
cough syrup, popping LSD, smoking, you know, a lot of pot. Something happened
where I like drank way too much alcohol and my parents said I could not see Tom
any more. In the meantime, we were madly in love, you know, (Laughter) at that
age. We snuck out to see each other anyway, but my mom kind of knew. At that
time Jinny had already played with the Purple Gang. Things were happening and people
were going their different ways. It was one of those things. Their band was
kind of on their way out anyway. In the meantime my mom saw an opportunity, she
heard me and Tom singing together, and she realized that there was some real
talent there. If you were to talk my sister, she would tell you that mom would
say, “Look, your sister’s got some problems and if we don’t get her in this
band and keep her busy doing something, then they’re both just going to be in a
bad place.” My mom got me and Tom Morris in the band so she could keep a closer
eye on us. She was trying to keep me my energies running into a more positive
place. She was our manager, bus driver, you name it.
You became an almost instant celebrity. I
think you took over the limelight once you got in there. What do you think?
Well,
you know my sister was the quiet bass player. She didn’t really like a lot of
attention. One of the things that really bothered her was the fact that I was
so outgoing and at times did very outrageous things in front of people,
sometimes almost inappropriate. We played at some concert one day and it was
raining, and me in my little mini-skirt, I ran out in the middle of the pouring
rain and started doing a rain dance all by myself in front of about 20 bands
that were all sitting underneath the eaves trying to stay dry, and I’m doing
this rain dance. Okay… maybe I was high. I might have been acting high. A lot
of times I really wasn’t high. I just pretended to be high because I felt like
it was peer group pressure.
Where did you get those incredible chops,
that great voice?
I never
took a vocal lesson, never in my life until I was in my 20s.
It was
just a natural thing for me. Trevor Davis, who was just recently one of the
contestants on The Voice, is a guy that’s coaching me right now and we were
talking about this. You know, people that have this natural talent and we never
had a singing lesson and then when we finally get singing lessons, we go, “Oh wow.
Okay, this is getting even better.” It was about taking chances. I imitated
what I heard and people who are usually very good vocalists imitate what they
hear. So I imitated some of the biggest around. Grace Slick was one I aspired
to. One of the people I really imitated more than anybody believe it or not was
Dick Wagner. Dick had such a pure voice, and the guys in the Frost, you know
they all sang great. Donny Hartman had no clue of what an influence vocally he
had in my life. I saw him sing and doing the blues, and I said, “I want to sing
the way Donny Hartman sings, and I want to bring the house down the way Donny
Hartman brings the house down. We were inspired by Dick Wager and the Frost.
They did a lot of their own music. That was what we aspired to do. We learned
to have our own music, get out there and play.
Where did you record you 45 My World Has
Stopped and Stop?
We
recorded it in a studio in Detroit, Michigan, and I couldn’t tell you the name
of it, but I remember going down there. Everybody from Pitche Blende was on the
record Dennis, Jinny on the bass, Dan Quinnan on guitar and background vocals.
Tom Morris sang the lead. If you notice the way the song was set up on both “My
World Has Stopped” and “Stop,” I’m not really singing background. It’s like
we’re doing a duet song. Typically there would be the male lead singer and the
female back-up singers but we were
very different because we had a guy and a girl singer. I ran harmonies with him
and he ran harmonies with me. We were definitely a vocal duo, both of us were
powerful singers, and so when you listen to the song, you notice that both of
us are featured as vocalists.
Why did the band break up?
Things were really kind of rough for
everybody. I got to a place where I really didn’t want to be dating Tom any
more. I was getting kind of sick of the whole scene and my sister was dating
Dan Quinnan - dating someone in the band is kind of like a kiss of death
(Laughter). So if you ask my personal opinion, I would say that the break-up of
Tom and Laurie and Jinny and Dan all happened around the same time, and the
band just started to fall apart. At the same time Dennis and Mike, they had started
going to a Bible study and they had found a spiritual path.
And so there
was that going on. If you want to hear the break-up story, just say, “Yoko Ono
broke us up.” Yeah. (Laughter) Whenever a band breaks up, we always blame it on
Yoko. (Laughter).That was 1970.
Was music was an outlet for you?
By the time I reached high school, I learned how
to control myself a little more and of course drugs helped. Taking drugs was sort
of my way of self-medicating. I just popped the pills and… mellow. I had joined several bands, but it always
seemed like there would come a time where there would be a personality clash.
It was always me, and it was really hard. I always thought something was wrong
with me. By the
time I turned 18 I was already playing with older musicians, lounge music where
I was making $50 a week singing downtown at the Fordney Hotel. I played with
this guy, R.G. Frederick, who was an ex-con. He was a piano player and he
wanted a girl to come and sing so that’s where I learned the ropes of singing
outside of the box, a lot of rock and doing more things like “Call Me,” “Misty”
and other standards. I discovered that there was real money in it. So when I
finally hooked up with R. G. Frederick we were doing paying gigs. I didn’t have
to do much more than show up and sing and of course he was always keeping me in
line, telling me, “You need to settle down, girl.” He was actually a mentor.
When did you leave Saginaw?
Well,
first I met up with Pastor Gary Miller the youth pastor at the First
Congregational Church. He had a Dixieland Band Celebration Roadshow with Nick
Opperman, Jim Beebe and Uncle Lesley. I don’t know what his real name was. I
was offered a job to play piano, which I hadn’t really played too much. I had some
piano lessons as a kid and I knew all the chords. So I kind of whipped into
that, and when I was told that I was going to get paid $300 a week (that was a
lot of money back then) so I took that job and found that we were playing in
Churches, in schools, in nightclubs, and it was really, really quite a
different kind of music. I was going from rock and roll and singing “White
Rabbit” to singing “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey.” I was with them for five
years. In 1974 the band decided to move to Chicago. Gary moved to Chicago first
so we all shifted there. It was more centrally located. I got involved with Jim
Beebe who was 25 years my senior. I married him for a short period of time and
he became my best friend later. I
stayed in Chicago after the Celebration Roadshow broke up - after 500,000 miles
of traveling. Gary was tired of the road… everybody was getting tired of the
road. We were touring constantly 48 states and Canada. We’d play a nightclub
and then have to drive 300 miles to play at some Church in Iowa the next
morning. It was really grueling for the guys. It wasn’t so much for me because
I was young, you know, I was in my 20s and they were all older.
That must have been a great experience.
It was
an amazing experience. I was in Chicago and then I got hooked up with Barb, my
friend, Barb Unger, and she and I had a duo for seven years called Les Amies
(friends). We played the clubs. She’d play the piano and I’d sing. In the
meantime I sang also with Jim Beebe with his jazz group at times. She
eventually married Paul Wertico, the drummer for the Pat Metheny group. He’s
really a well-known drummer.Barb
and I remained friends, that’s when the Buckinghams took note of Barb and I as
a duo and hired both of us for the band
She was
with the Buckinghams for a short period of time because they decided they
didn’t want two girls but they wanted more vocal power so that was when I had
to make a decision about staying with them and leaving my partnership with Barb.
It was one of the most difficult decisions but I knew it was probably best if I
went with the Buckinghams. I was with them from 1982 to the end of 1985 into
1986. We did a couple of gigs into early 1986. I ended up moving to San Diego
in January 1986.
You recorded with them too. What’s your
memory of the sessions?
I really loved it. We already had these songs
written and we were in the process of getting them really tight. I think the
fun part of recording was it was in a really nice studio in the Chicago area
and it was a privately owned studio by someone who had a lot of money. I’m
trying to remember - Red Label Records or something like that. He had a beautiful
studio in this giant mansion. Nick, Bill, Carl and I wrote a lot of the songs but
each one of us as musicians contributed our gifts to the songs. So it really
made it special. I think it’s a great album and I wish more would have happened
with it. I think it would have if we’d
have had better marketing. I think if the album cover should have been better -
it was cheesy. I loved “Made to Love You” which was something that Tom and I
did as a duet. Then of course “Veronica” was our hit song. It would’ve been a
great come-back song. We did it in our show on the Happy Together tour. Our
album came out the same time we were on the tour.
What was the “Happy Together” tour was like
for you?
I had a
good experience on the “Happy Together” tour in most situations except for the
tour manager, Larry Soty. For some reason he didn’t like me, and he made it
pretty clear. When we’d get on the tour bus, he always made it very clear that
he did not like me. He called me a putz. At one point Jim Dobson, the manager
for the whole tour rode with us. When we finished the ride Dobson went up to
our band and said, “I am absolutely astounded that you would allow Larry Soty
to treat that sweet girl, Laurie, so horribly.” I think at that point they did
say something to Larry about it and Larry lightened up a little bit, but I
finally just said, “You know what? I really just don’t want to deal with this
anymore. It’s really not fun.” That’s when Gary Lewis said, “You know what,
Laurie? Why don’t you come and ride with me in my van? You’ll have more fun.”
It was meant to be because Chuck Lewis was riding with Gary. Chuck wasn’t my
boyfriend then, he was just a friend but we got to be close, and we got
married, so it all worked out great.
How did
you become a member of the Mamas and the Papas?
Well,
we did 265 dates during the 1985 Happy Together Tour. The lineup included the
Buckinghams, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Turtles and the Grass Roots.
Sometimes we would go to a venue and Tommy James and the Shondells or Herman’s
Hermits would be on the bill. There’d be a guest group that would join us, so instead
of four bands, there’d be six or whatever. On a couple of particular dates we
had the Mamas & the Papas with us and it was neat because Chuck had already
known Spanky McFarlane on the 1984 Happy Together Tour. So Chuck was like, “Oh,
you’re going to meet Spanky, and I said, “Oh, I’d like to meet Spanky.” I knew
about Mackenzie Phillips and I knew her as an actress so I was quite taken with
the fact that I was going to meet these people.
So backstage they just seemed to have a whole different vibe about them
than any of the other bands on the tour. They didn’t have that “I’m trying to
make a come-back” vibe. They definitely had a presence about them, very
friendly and nice.
That
was when Chuck asked me to marry him and we’re living in San Diego and summer
comes and we all got together to watch the 1986 Happy Together Tour. This time
it’s the Turtles, Gary Puckett and the Monkees. So we went to see the show in San Diego and went
“Oh, this is fine, this is great.” Afterwards we all met at this hotel lounge and
there was Spanky. She remembered me from the Buckinghams and we sat in the
corner and just talked, and me being me I said, “When are you going to get rid
of Mackenzie and get a real singer?” (Laughter) - just being funny. Spanky
looked at me, and said, “Sooner than you think.” Later on Chuck called Spanky
and said, “Did you really mean that because my wife really needs to be doing
something and if there really is a sooner than you think, then let me know
because my wife is your girl.” I had no idea Chuck had made that phone call.
Then what happened
It
wasn’t much after that that I got this phone call from Spanky. She said, “I
just wanted to call you and tell you that John Phillips was going to call you,
and he’s going to ask you to be in the Mamas & the Papas, and I want you to
say yes.” I said, “Okay,” and I was
thinking, “Who’s John Phillips?” (Laughter)… it just wasn’t registering in my
mind. It wasn’t five minutes later that my phone rang, and “Hi, this is John
Phillips.” Right away as soon as he said
“John Phillips,” I knew who it was. He was so kind and gentle.
We rehearsed for three
weeks and then after that we left on a tour of England for a month. I remember
it was November 6th because that’s my birthday. John told me to just learn all
the parts.” (Laughter). So I went out and
bought all the Mamas and Papas albums (Laughter). So, I’m
like, “Okay.” Being ADHD actually is a gift because I love pressure. I love
stimulation. I love the challenge. So I listened to all the parts and learned
all the parts. I wrote all the words down manually by hand.
I was
told the first week it was going to be two or three shows a night. The first
show would be Mackenzie and Spanky, and the second show would bring me up.
There would actually be three Mommas then for the late-night show it would be
me without Mackenzie. So the first night I just sat and observed and was
brought out for the third set, the late-night show, which I guess usually isn’t
so busy. I think they were really astounded that I had this learned so quickly.
By the end of the first week, I was pretty much doing the show on my own. So
that went on for three weeks. Mackenzie left and I went on the European tour.
It was pretty amazing. I just remember we got off the plane and we got into
some hotel near Piccadilly Circus. I’d never been to Europe and I’m riding in
business class with the Mamas & the Papas.
We got off the plane and John said, “You’ve
got half an hour to get dressed and be down in the lobby. There’s going to be a
press conference.” At this point I’m realizing that we’ve got Lou Christie, Martha
Reeves and the Vandellas and Scott McKenzie. This is a month long tour. I get
down to the lobby and there’s probably a good hundred or more photographers in
this press room. There were interviews going on over in this corner and there are
TV cameras going on in that corner and people being interviewed. I’m standing
in the midst of all of this going, “Oh, what do I do?” (Laughter). Spanky’s being interviewed over here and
John’s over there getting interviewed and I walk in and suddenly millions of
cameras just start popping off at me and they’re going, “Ms. Beebe, this way
please… Ms. Beebe, Ms. Beebe, over here.” It was just like, crazy. Am I
supposed to act like a model? I started like, you know, fixing my hair.
(Laughter) I had no idea what to expect. The next thing I know there are microphones
being put in front of me and questions are asked. I’ve done plenty of
interviews but suddenly I’m blown into this situation where it’s very different
because as the Buckinghams we were a band. As the Mamas & the Papas, it’s
more legendary, you know?
So
after that whole affair, I went upstairs exhausted and laid down. At 9 o’clock
the phone rang and it was John Phillips, and he said, “You were really good
today, kid.” I said, “Thank you.” “By the way, happy birthday.” I thought,
“Wow.” I had forgotten it was my birthday. So I really felt a little bit out of
my element, and I really didn’t know how to claim my Mama.
How did you come to terms with your new
status?
As it went on people would come to me with
Mamas and Papas albums with Michelle Phillips, Mama Cass and ask for
autographs. In Europe people really don’t know the names of all the Mamas &
the Papas and they don’t care. Just sign the album. That’s fine...okay, so I
did. So afterward we got on the bus and I found myself a little corner. Denny
walked up to me and said, “Laurie, what are you doing back here…you sit up here
with us.”I get up, and he’s like, “You need to claim your position in this
band. If you don’t, you are going to get stomped on. You are one of the
principal members of this band. You’re not a band member.” So he made it very
clear to me what my position was, and he made sure that I was included on
everything that happened with the band. I was therefore inducted into the Mamas
& the Papas.
I saw the Mamas & the Papas after their
initial fame. John did some songs he recorded with some of the Rolling Stones.
He also did Mississippi a cool Cajun song. Did you do some of those songs?
We did
Mississippi. We did Sugar and we even did a couple of the African songs. All of
a sudden John just called out a song but I never heard it. It was in the middle
of concert. There were 10,000 people and all of a sudden John calls Zulu
Warrior. I’m like, “What the heck?” Spanky said, “Just get over here and follow
me. It’s easy. Do Little Warrior.” (Laughter) I’m like, “Okay.” I caught on right
away. I just danced when I felt like I didn’t know what to do. I put the mike
up close to my mouth and suddenly I was singing, and I didn’t know what I was
doing but I made myself look like I was part of the show and that was all that
mattered. After that, I said, “Okay, give me the songs. I need to learn them.”
I got them all down and learned them, and that was it. Next time I wasn’t going to get caught with my
pants down on stage again.
I have read Mackenzie Phillips’ book High on
Arrival and it revealed the incest between Mackenzie and her father.
You knew them and you really liked them. What
did the discovery about John Phillips’ behavior do to your relationship with
him and with Mackenzie?
Wow,
that’s really a question.
I
really do want to answer this because it’s a really good question. Let’s just
back up. Let me finish up my first tour with the Mamas & the Papas that
started in October of 1986.It ended in April of 1987, actually early May. I was
playing my last gig with them, knowing that Mackenzie was coming back, and I
knew they had some shows coming up, and I was feeling very despondent about
leaving because it was solid ground, and it was really great. I was really
hoping Mackenzie would stay away longer but obviously she’s coming back. I got
a phone call from John Phillips’ girlfriend at the time, Marcie, and she said,
“John wants to have a talk with you downstairs, blah, blah, blah.” I thought,
“Well, this is kind of weird. Finally I found his room and the door was jarred
open. It looked not so much like a room as it did a conference room or
something. I walked in, and there was everybody and they had a cake and they
had a party for me, thanking me and saying good-bye to me. It was just the
sweetest thing.
I went back to my life in San Diego wondering
where do you go when you’ve done this, after you’ve played for the multitudes
and the masses and being treated like this and come back San Diego to play in a
bar. So I did go back to some music things with some friends. Suddenly not much
more than just a couple of hours later I was called to go back out on a tour
with them for two weeks. “What’s going on?” “Oh, Mackenzie, her back is hurting.”
So okay I did that then two months later they’re going to Germany and “Oh,
Mackenzie can’t go – it’s her back.” I still didn’t realize that Mackenzie
could not leave the country because her history of drug use would set off this
big red flag, it was just impossible for
her to get through the border. I think at one point she wasn’t welcome in a
couple of countries. I was filling in for her. I was the stand-in, and so
between 1986, ’87, ’88, ’89, for those next four years, I stepped in quite a
bit with the band.
So I called Mackenzie and I said, “Your friend is telling me some weird stuff.” I didn’t even tell her what it was. She started revealing what was going on in a very matter-of-fact way. She just shared this whole thing with me. This was in 1990 before I became a full-fledged member of the band. I was like, “Wow, that’s really intense.” She pretty much laid it all out for me. I believed every word of it. I don’t think that she would mince words and I don’t think she would lie about it. There would be no reason to lie about it. I never told a living soul except for my husband Chuck and a pastor friend of mine. In the 1990s, I was called again to go on the road with the Mamas & the Papas. At this point I had knowledge of what’s going on. I was still just recently clean and sober myself. January 24, 1990 is my sobriety date.
When John left for good, did it make a big
difference in the band, or did the band get better then?
Well,
you know, without John there it was different. It was just different. We only
had one original member left in the band and Denny was definitely more stable.
Denny was truly the strong lead singer of the Mamas & the Papas. At this
point I know what’s going on and I’m wondering what they know. I kept that in
my heart for all of those years until 20 years later Mackenzie came out with
her book. She’s getting slammed by all these people who are saying it didn’t
happen so I came forward in San Diego and I supported her and I still support
her.
You dated Andy Kaufman at one time in
Chicago.
Once he
came to me and said, “I’m living alone. Do you want to come and see my room?” I
said, “Well, um, you know I’ve kind of got stuff going on and I don’t really
have time to come out tonight. I don’t know Andy, what is it you’re actually
asking me?” He said, “Well, don’t get all upset or anything about it. I’ve got
a girlfriend. I’m not asking you to be my girlfriend. I’ve got somebody I love
very much. I was just asking you to come out and see my room but that’s okay,
you don’t have to. He got really defensive. I said, “Oh, no, no, don’t take it
that way. I was just asking. I do have a girl and you’ve got your stuff to do.
I’ll talk to you soon.” Well, that was the end of that conversation. I saw Andy
about a month or so afterward. I said, “You know I read this article in the
Enquirer. It says that you have lung cancer and that you’re dying. Is any of
that true? I just want to check and make sure you’re okay.” He said, “Don’t
worry. All that stuff is just bullshit. Don’t believe any of it.”
Laurie Beebe Lewis is making a rare Saginaw
appearance on Saturday August 31st @ White’s Bar. Ryan Fitzgerald is
bringing in the Barbarossa Brothers to back-up Laurie as she presents a career
retrospective through songs, music and stories. Doors open @ 7pm. $5 admission
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