1969: Cass Elliot, Bubblegum, Lemonade, and... Something for Mama

By Susannah Clark

Jimi Hendrix was in the audience. So was Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Baez, Liza Minnelli, and Mia Farrow, who sent flowers to the dressing room. Caesar’s Palace had paid Cass Elliot a record-breaking fee to re-introduce herself as a solo artist, headlining two shows a night for three weeks. The unlikely breakout of the Mamas and the Papas took the stage on her own on opening night, with a high fever and a shot voice.

 By all accounts, she crashed and burned. The 1968 concert is a legendary disappointment, with its own section on Cass’s Wikipedia page and a devoted chapter in a 2005 biography. Rolling Stone reported: “The reception was lukewarm when Cass walked onto the stage in her psychedelic muu-muu. Her hairdo was awry and she showed the effects of having just been awakened by a fifteen-hour sleep. Flatly and uncertainly, she began her set with “Dancing in the Street,’ Rubber Band,’ and ‘Walk on By,’ assisted by a girl trio. Then she forgot the name of the next song.”

 Before slurring into her finale, “Dream of Little Dream of Me,” Cass attempted to assure the dwindling crowd: “This is the first night. It will get better.”

 It did not. The next day, Cass was back in LA, hospitalized for tonsillitis, and the rest of the Vegas shows were cancelled. In a scathing pan, Newsweek compared Cass to a giant ocean liner, under the headline: “Sink Along with Cass.” She later attributed her botched performance to heroin and nerves, but the prior months of fasting four days a week couldn’t have helped.

 Months later, she released her second solo album, Bubblegum. Lemonade, and Something for Mama!, a brazen PR patch to restore the California dreams of her early days with the Mamas and the Papas. The title of her lead single? “Getting Better.”

 The chorus is not subtle: Better everyday! repeatedly maniacally, as if she’s convincing herself.

 The phrase “bubblegum pop” was only a few years old at that point. Two record execs spun out a new genre named for its targeted audience: boomer teens who spent their untaxed allowances on candy and 45s. But I think the term evokes more about the way the music is consumed than who is consuming it. Bubblegum is sweet but short lived. It’s a song you play over and over until it loses flavor; meant to be tasted but never swallowed. Too much will give you a toothache. The songs on Bubblegum. Lemonade, and Something for Mama! are sugary, effervescent, and lacking in nutrients. Her vocal artistry is exceptional, but something else sets Cass apart from the bubblegum wads of her time (and now): her body.

 Looks are a key ingredient in the bubblegum industrial complex: you’ve got to have a pretty wrapper. The defining hit of the genre, The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar,” was sung by literal cartoon characters. Michelle Phillips, the other Mama, might have been a Betty, but Cass was no Veronica. She was the Fat One, and well aware. She constantly spat one-liners about her weight in press interviews, late night guest spots, and even song lyrics. “I would say the world’s in terrible shape,” she once quipped, “But I’m afraid the world would say, ‘Look who’s talking.’”

 But despite her confident facade, the constant jabs about her body (most viciously from Papa John Phillips) stung deeply. Knowing this might eclipse some of the sunny tone of Bubblegum. Lemonade, and Something for Mama!.

To be clear: I am a card-carrying poptimist (the card in question being a physical copy of Carly Rae Jepson’s E*MO*TION). In the last decade or so, we’ve made great strides in not discounting songs on account of their catchiness. Genre labels are becoming increasingly meaningless, but the spirit of bubblegum has stuck around, (see: K-POP). Certain music is intentionally shallow, marketed toward those who will eventually grow out of it. But as hipster adults are increasingly embracing top 40 fodder, I wonder what lies beneath some of these infectious melodies. Do earworms drown out healthy skepticism? What are we not hearing when we opt to party in the U.S.A.?

***

I started reading up on Mama Cass after hearing one of her songs during a yoga class. “Make Your Own Kind of Music” is a scoop of bubblegum ice cream, dripping with sentimentality. (You might recognize it from two particularly deranged needle drops on the TV shows Lost and Dexter.) The lyrics could have been written by a middle school guidance counselor: “Make your own kind of music, even if no one else sings along.”

 But that’s exactly what I needed to hear as I held downward-facing dog, my gaze in line with my bellybutton. This is one of those poses where my thoughts start to wobble—the teacher instructs us to turn our focus inward, but I’m fixated on the rolls of fat spilling over my yoga pants, confronted with self loathing. I resist the urge to pull my shirt back down, which would reveal myself to be a bad yogi who’s lost the moment. They say yoga is a practice of mind-body connection, but why would I yoke my body to something so cruel?

 I’ve resented my stomach since my own bubblegum days. Puberty ransacked my preteen metabolism around the same time that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera flaunted ultra-low-rise jeans on TRL, their hip bones glaring at me. My gut became a lifelong problem: a muffin top, a spare tire, anything but miraculous human flesh.

 I tell my friends that I like to do yoga because it helps me focus on “what my body can do, not what it looks like.” That sounds great, and it’s also a lie. Surrounded by waifs in spandex, I think about my appearance during yoga practice a lot, and then I shame myself for doing so. Teachers often give you a choice with every pose—go deeper or stay put, or rather, push yourself physically or push yourself mentally. If I hold my planks for 10 seconds longer, my abs will get flatter. If I crawl back into child’s pose, I’m taking care of myself, doing real yoga. I understand that you can have more than one reason for doing something, but taking on an inherently spiritual practice with the intention of losing weight feels wrong, like getting drunk on communion wine. I start to get competitive about not being competitive. I perform self-acceptance while keeping my tummy sucked in. 

For a few minutes, “Make Your Own Music” interrupted this spiral; I forgot about my body entirely. But context tends to ruin things; the lyrics sound disingenuous now that I’ve read about Cass’s struggles with body image and loneliness. (Not to mention the irony of singing a song about “making your own kind of music” that someone else wrote for you.) Cass herself wasn’t wild about the bubblegum sound: “half and hour after tasting it, you’re hungry again,” she said. The album fulfilled the label’s purpose of recasting the spotlight after Vegas, but less than five years later, Cass Elliot’s legacy as a tragic figure was cemented after her sudden death (which by the way, had nothing to do with a ham sandwich.)

There’s been a wave of cultural mea culpas surrounding the pop stars of my youth that got chewed up and spit back out. An ostensibly kinder generation is reappraising Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton and the like, recognizing them as more than their pretty faces, more than their tabloid covers, more than their ditzy sound bites. Part of me wishes that I’d had a teen idol who looked like Mama Cass (or hell, anyone bigger than a size 2). Perhaps I wouldn’t still see my body as something to be fixed 20 years later. But another part of me realizes that the media of 1999 would have been relentlessly cruel to a fat pop star, and losing someone like we lost Mama Cass would have caused even more damage. I’d like to think we’ve made progress—Lizzo looked stunning on the cover of Vogue last year—but as long as skinny is the default, the conversation will continue to center on looks more than sound. Maybe there’s no way to listen to pop music without being complicit in the consumption of young women’s bodies.

***

Like much pop music, yoga has been appropriated and watered down by white people, another reality that often derails my thoughts during practice. But it’s the pranayama, or breathwork, that keeps bringing me back to the mat. Intentional breathing doesn’t clear my mind, but it does fog the window pane, making my inner criticism harder to make out. I get lost in the rhythm of inhale and exhale. Sometimes a pop song can work like a mantra—a simple affirmation, repeated into a blissful daze, a dance floor in the space between a lie and an aspiration. It will get better, you are beautiful, they do love you back. It might be artificial, fleeting hope. But in the moment, I usually can’t taste the difference.

Susannah Clark is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Her work has been published in Inside Higher Ed, PopMatters, the Brevity blog, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology and the Pushcart Prize, and has a Notable essay listed in the 2016 Best American Essays anthology.