Folkobit: Denny Doherty

The death has been announced of Denny Doherty, Mamas and the Papas songwriter. He was 66.

Doherty was born in Nova Scotia in 1940, and started singing on the Canadian folk scene in his teens. His first serious band, The Halifax Three, managed a deal with Colombia and a minor hit The Man Who Wouldn't Sing Along With Mitch before falling apart. The band's demise left Doherty and Zal Yanovsky broke in New York, from which they were rescued by "Mama" Cass Elliot. Hearing of their plight, she persuaded her management to augment her band, The Big Three by taking on the pair. Further band augmentation led to a name change to Mugwumps, and an untenable financial position. The band fell apart, and Doherty was once more without a visible means of support.

Doherty was thus luckily able to take advantage of the departure of Marhsall Brickman from The New Journeyman, filling the man's shoes for a set of prebooked tour dates. The Journey ended in 1965, but the band reformulated - with Cass Elliot on board - as The Magic Circle. Shortly after signing their first deal, a run of bands with terrible names was topped when they elected to change their name to The Mamas and The Papas, a title so terrible it's still being used for a pram and nappy shop today.

Their debut album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, was something of a triumph, although not uncontroversial - complaints about the sleeve weren't focused on the band, sharing a bath (fully clothed). No, it was the presence of a toilet in the picture that led to charges of indecency. Later versions would cover or crop the offending John.

Behind the can was, in effect, everything the band is known for - vocal harmonies, California Dreamin, The In Crowd, Monday, Monday. If it had the sound of someone choking on a ham sandwich, it would have the lot. Rolling Stone still reckons it to be the 127th best album ever made - doesn't sound much, but there's been a lot of albums released over the years - and its modest sales of half a million disguises quite how central to pop culture the record would become. BBC Four, for example, is calling its season on California the California Dreaming season - it's quite an accolade for your creation to become something of a dead cliche that people can't quite shake off.

Doherty wrecked the band by that old stand-by, having an intra-band affair. His was with Michelle Phillips, with the added complication that her husband, John, was also a Mama and Papa; she ended up kicked out the band and Doherty on the juice. The atmosphere wasn't exactly perfect for making blissed out tunes, and the decision to draft in Jill Gibson (the producer's girlfriend) didn't exactly work out, either. The substitute was paid off, Michelle was brought back, and things got even harder for Doherty to cope with.

A lacklustre performance at the Monterrey Pop Festival and an incident where John slagged Cass off in front of Mick Jagger added to a terrible working relationship; Cass stayed for just as long as the contract forced her to. July 1968, as it turned out.

Elliot and Doherty remained friends, as she enjoyed some solo success and he continued to drink; an offer of marriage from her was turned down. In 1974, Cass died. Her funeral was the first time the band were in the same place without bickering for years.

Doherty had a solo career which was well-reviewed if not especially lucrative. He took the lead in a 1975 Warhol Broadway play, Man On The Moon, and a return to Canada in 1978 saw him presenting Denny's Sho, thirteen half hours of "musical entertainment."

There was a sort-of revival of the band - John Phillips firmly in charge - which featured Doherty in the 80s, although it was more the Daughters and the Papas, featuring Mackenzie, John's offspring. Doherty also produced Dream a Little Dream, a stage show telling the Mamas and Papas story from his perspective.

More recently, he provided the voices for Thomas The Tank Engine wannabe Theodore Tugboat.

Doherty died on January 19th at his home in Ontario. Cause of death was an abdominal aneurysm.

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Parlophone buy into Babyshambles

Normally, when bands sign long-rumoured deals, the size of the signing is measured in quids. It's usually a totally made-up figure, and never less than several millions, but it's standard.

Not so Parlophone's decision to take their one ep with Babyshambles to the next level: a full, long-term, public commitment; and one unsullied by talk of money and cash and so on. It's all about the art:

"We're extremely pleased to be welcoming such a vibrant and talented band into the Parlophone label," said managing director Miles Leonard.

Parlophone has cultivated some of the UK's most successful rock acts, including Coldplay and Radiohead.

"We see Babyshambles very much as continuing this tradition," said Leonard.

"They have a great reputation for crafting some of the most exciting music around today, and in Peter Doherty they have one of the best songwriters of his generation."

So, Babyshambles have hooked up with EMI, on the same imprint as Bernard Cribbins used to record for. We're expecting a Best Of (with two new tracks, specially recorded) sometime in late 2009, then. If Pete makes it.

music pete doherty babyshambles parlophone

Music is my hot, hot fest

CSS are being added to the already overflowing bucket of delights (Foals, Orange Lights, Nouvelle Vague, Help She Can't Swim, Kubichek, Mumm-Ra, Mr Hudson & The Library, and Ripchord) for this year's Great Escape festival in Brighton.

Meanwhile, the Glastonbury spin-off effect is continuing to spawn new stand-alone microfests from the people who organise various tents and fields in the Mendips: Croissant Neuf Summer Party will take place at a "secret" location in the Welsh borders on August 19th.

music css great escape croissant neuf

A working defintion of turgid: Coldplay bring back Travis

Chris Martin playing a track by Travis. It's only lacking "to an audience with Snow Patrol in it, as a request for James Blunt, and we would be able to use it to put brain surgery patients to sleep.

Even Chris Martin sounded like he was slipping under as he put the track on, during a guest slot on Zane Lowe's show:

"We're gonna finish with an incredible exclusive, we're very privileged to play it, it's a new song by the band Travis, the band that invented my band and lots of others, along with Radiohead... um, as in those two bands invented bands like mine... get to the point... Travis here we go."

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The bath leaked quickly... the story took longer

There is, perhaps, little sadder than people who still wreck hotel rooms, seemingly unaware that they're simultaneously enacting a tired old cliche and making life even more miserable for the poor sods who have to clean up after them on the barely-minimum wage.

What's more, if you're a band, and you're staying at the Travelodge, you really don't want to draw attention to that. It's effectively shouting "our record label don't really want to invest very much in us."

So, big applause all round to The View who behaved like oiks at the Liverpool Travelodge. Apparently, drunk and incapable, they put a duvet in a bath and turned the taps on.

It's not just the seven grands worth of damage, as the other guests trying their darnedest to get some sort of rest in the Travelodge who also had their stays disrupted - lets hope there was nobody staying there while they were visiting a dying relative, or before an important job interview, say.

That this happened in November, but hits the papers in the week their album is released, makes it seem almost as if they're proud of themselves and trying to use their tiresome behaviour to flog some records.

And their punishment? Banned from every Travelodge in the land. Which is hardly a punishment at all.

music travelodge the view

Noel Gallagher likes furry creatures

Who knew that Noel Gallagher would be a big fan of Meerkat Manor?:

“Mostly I sit at home with my daughter Anais watching Meerkat Manor.”

Mind you, a bunch of small, furry creatures which stare into the distance looking for trouble - he probably thinks it's an Oasis docusoap.

[Plug: Buy Meerkat Manor]

music noel gallagher oasis

EMI announces new team

Having had a terrible Christmas, and indeed, a fairly rotten 2006, EMI axed its top management a couple of weeks ago. It's needed; after all, a record label which really built its hopes for the year on the back of Robbie Williams, Janet Jackson and Keith Urban clearly needs to take a new direction.

Instead, of course, EMI has chosen to promote from within the same team as has been running the ship into the ground.

Thus, Eric Nicoli moves to expand his role. He's been executive chairman of EMI for years; now, he's become CEO. Before he joined EMI, he wasn't entirely without links to the music industry - United Biscuits had owned the Linda McCartney brand name while he was in charge there.

JF Cellion has been promoted from being in charge of Europe to chairman & CEO, EMI Music International. Before Cellion joined EMI, he was with Sega, overseeing the launch of the Dreamcast and pumping twelve million quid into sponsoring Arsenal to promote it. Money, we're sure, well spent.

It's certainly a powerful sounding team.

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Celebrity Big Brother: Let's not forget the real victim here

Since we last mentioned Celebrity Big Brother, the story has grown and grown - there was a strange moment last night when you could flick between E4 and BBC One, and Russell Brand and David Dimbleby were both inviting an audience to ask famous faces about the goings on in the house.

David Cameron has pretty much defined his leadership by suggesting that the answer to the complex questions raised by the programme is to "not watch it" - the Tories, of course, have long responded to racism by looking the other way and pretending it isn't happening, so we shouldn't be surprised.

And Gordon Brown, trying to hide his glee that it's helped raise the profile of his visit to India to the front end of the new bulletins, snorts that he prefers the X-Factor.

Gordon likes a programme where the talented usually lose the big prize to someone a bit vapid but who looks good on TV? What can he find to enjoy there?

Very little of the coverage and debate seems able to define itself clearly: are people objecting to the programme, or are they objecting to the behaviour of Goody, that woman out of Zoo and Jo O'Meara? Isn't this the first time that Big Brother has actually done what it told us it wanted to, and really shown us what British society is really like? Channel 4 could argue, should they wish, that the programme isn't endorsing the behaviour and that there is a public interest in showing the way some people might behave when they're not appearing in anti-bullying campaigns. Of course, to do that, the network would have to admit that there's something nasty at the base of the bullying - but then it would have to explain why it hadn't followed the rules of the programme and put a stop to it.

As their careers tank, friends of the three women are popping up all over the media to insist how they haven't got a racist bone in their bodies, and how some of the people they have sometimes seen in the street might be a bit German or something.

A petition on PetitionOnline calls for us to care for the real victim here: Jo O'Meara, apparently:

We have witnessed Jo stand up for Shilpa, but also be dragged into Jade and Danielles bitching conversations, in which she doesnt seem to say anything (to avoid conflict with them) except look as though she is agreeing. She is now being seen as part of this gang by the outside world and this is just not her! The two things in life Jo is most against is racism and bullying. She has suffered herself in her younger years from bullying and would never dream of doing it to another. As for racist, this she is definatly not as some of her own family are of the Indian origin.

We think that the "of the Indian origin" probably says it all, really. We did wonder, though, if the echoes of "how can I hate women? My mother was one" meant this was just some post-modern prank, but the confusion the petition then sinks into suggests it's all done quite seriously:

If BB were fair on their editing of Jo and showed her positive comments, laughter, and entertainment and got rid of Jade Goody and Danielle -to avoid Jo being dragged in to any of their petty little sessions again- we guarantee you WILL see the real genuine Jo.

So... it's not actually that Jo's bullying Shilpa, it's just that she's joining in the bullying sessions because Jade and Danielle are there - only obeying orders, if you like? But then why was she sitting, cackling like one of the Hyenas in the Buffy 'Pack' episode? If she hates bullying so much, why didn't she step in? Why didn't she stop it? Why did she not walk out? Why did she sit there cackling?

The petition also has to try and work out how, if Jo is so at home with "people of the Indian origin", she made the ignorant comment about people in India being thin "because they don't cook their food properly." It tries to explain this:

Lastly, we do not condone the recent comment said by Jo at all, as it was extremely OUT of ch