RIP Denny Doherty

My most favorite member of one of my most favorite groups from the 60’s died. Everything about the Mamas and the Papas was beautiful and tortured – the love triangles, the drugs, the music and those stirring yet soul-crushing harmonies – and Denny was the cutest, quietest and most tortured of them all.. If I were a teenager in the 60’s, he’d be plastered on my bedroom wall (as it happens, Paul Stanley was plastered all over my bedroom wall, in all his hairy chested glory).

I started really getting into that mid-to-late 60’s psychedelic and folk rock back in high school (circa ’86). That’s when I fell in love with harmony – that era had some of the best – the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, CSN&Y, and on and on – that I savored like a fine wine.

And even back in ’86, that music was called the “oldies,” and they only played that stuff on the “oldies” radio stations, even though it was only two decades (sometimes less) old.

Now the music that came out when I was my kids’ age isn’t called “oldies”. They don’t even call it “classic rock” (a term owned entirely by early ‘70’s hard rock bands, since…well, disco). I don’t think it’s called anything – the radio stations in my area lump all pop music into the “music from the 80’s, 90’s and more” category.

And incredibly, my kids listen to some of that stuff that came out when I was their age as if it just came out yesterday; although, I am reminded by my youngest daughter that “She Blinded Me with Science” is a “totally stupid song” and usually adding “Duuuuuuhhhh. What does that song even mean? C’mon mom, it’s totally retarded.” even though back in the day, I thought that song was the s**t.

So upon hearing of Denny’s passing, I do what I usually do…throw some tracks on the iPod, most notably, “Twelve Thirty,” “I Saw Her Again,” “Safe In My Garden” “Look Through My Window” and my personal-fave sing-a-long, the autobiographical “Creeque Alley,” and lament about the passing of time and of getting (and feeling) older.

Thanks for the harmonies, Denny.