Jill Gibson

Jill Gibson (born June 18 1942, Los Angeles, California) is an American singer, songwriter and artist. She is mostly known for having once briefly been a member of the famous 1960s rock group The Mamas & the Papas.

Jan & Dean with Jill

Jill Gibson was studying at University High School in Los Angeles, California when she met Jan Berry of Jan & Dean fame in 1959. The two became an item for the next seven years. Together, Gibson and Berry wrote over a dozen songs and through Berry, Gibson began to get more involved with the music scene. Eventually she began composing songs with other known songwriters such as Don Altfeld, George Tipton and Roger Christian, a Los Angeles based radio disc jockey who also wrote with Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

In 1962 Jan Berry decided to create a female answer to Jan & Dean called Judy & Jill, featuring Jill Gibson with Dean Torrence's girlfriend Judy Lovejoy. Demo recordings such as "Come On Baby" (written by Gibson & Lovejoy), "Eleventh Minute" (written by Gibson & Altfeld), "Just For Tonight", and "Baby What's It Gonna Be" were cut and produced by Berry for Liberty Records. Gibson performed most of the leads on these unreleased demos. However, nothing really happened with the Judy & Jill recordings, and Gibson soon was providing background vocals on several Jan & Dean album cuts. During this same time Gibson was studying visual arts at the University of California at Los Angeles.

In 1963, Gibson appeared on the Jan & Dean track "Surf Route 101", and a year later she performed backing harmony on a song she wrote with Don and Horace Altfeld called "When It's Over" for a Jan & Dean album. She then recorded two vocal duets with Berry that she had written with Don Altfeld that year, "It's As Easy As 1,2,3" and "A Surfer's Dream". Both of these tracks appeared as album cuts on two different Jan & Dean albums, released in 1964.

Jill Gibson released her first solo recording in 1964, a single of a cover version of her own song "It's As Easy As 1,2,3" which was backed with "Jilly's Flip Side", written by P.F. Sloan and issued on Imperial Records. Both tracks were produced and arranged by Jan Berry. Gibson also sang backup on the Jan & Dean hit,"Ride The Wild Surf".

In July 1965, a hit song Jill had co-written with Berry and Roger Christian called, "You Really Know How To Hurt A Guy", peaked at #27 for Jan & Dean on the "Billboard" singles chart.

By the time Jill sang vocals on the last studio album recording of Jan & Dean's, recorded in early 1966 called"Jan & Dean Meet Batman", Gibson and Berry's personal relationship was coming to an end. When the album was released in March 1966, the pair had already gone their separate ways but still remained friends. Shortly after the break up, Jan Berry was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident on April 12 1966, which he survived. During Berry's long difficult road toward recovery, he was often visited by Jill Gibson while he was in the hospital. Afterwards Jill began dating Lou Adler, whom she had known since 1959 when he was the executive producer and manager of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence. Adler had recently separated from his wife actress and singer Shelley Fabares.

"Eleventh Minute" was briefly released in 1997 as the B-side of a 45rpm record on the Maltshop Records label. The licensed recording was soon withdrawn from sale (300 of the 500 red vinyl copies subsequently destroyed) due to questionable ownership of copyright and mechanical rights, as well as numerous label innacuracies - most notably the performing artists are identified on the label of Maltshop 2 as "Jody & Jill". To make matters even more confusing, the A-side recording "Come On Baby" is not the ballad demo offered to Liberty Records but an up-tempo surf rocker by an unknown male singer and band.

The Mamas & the Papas

It was through Adler that Gibson met the rock group The Mamas & the Papas, a highly successful band Adler produced in the late 1960s. Occasionally, Jill would visit Lou in the studio while he was producing his 'magic' with the band, who had just begun work on a new album. Gibson found herself in the right place at the right time when the leader of the group, John Phillips, fired his wife, Michelle Gilliam, from the band on Saturday, June 4 1966, for having had an affair with Gene Clark of The Byrds. Within days, Jill had been asked to join The Mamas & the Papas as their newest member "Mama Jill".Shortly after joining the band, The Mamas & the Papas, along with Lou Adler, left for Europe for several weeks to begin working together.

Arriving in London, England, Jill, Cass, John, Denny, and Lou rented the top half of a large house in Berkeley Square to work in (the downstairs part was rented to Mick Jagger and model Chrissie Shrimpton). Over the next three weeks, Gibson rehearsed non stop with the group in London for the recording of the band's upcoming second album and for a few live shows. While in England, the band had a series of business meetings, but still made time to party with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, and Mick Jagger at Dolly's (the private London rock club that catered to the stars). Upon returning to the United States, the group, their manager Bobby Roberts, their attorney Abe Somer, and their label Dunhill Records officially fired Mama Michelle on Tuesday, June 28 1966, and hired Mama Jill two weeks earlier.

Beginning in late June and continuing through July and part of August 1966, Jill, Cass Elliot, Denny Doherty, John Phillips and Lou Adler recorded the band's second LP at Western Studios in Los Angeles, California with Bones Howe as the engineer. Ten tracks were recorded for the second album including "I Saw Her Again", which was quickly released as the first single in early July and would peak at #5 on the "Billboard" singles chart on July 30 1966, while Jill was a member of the band. Four of the ten tracks were re-recorded (they had been previously recorded with Michelle before she was fired) to include Jill's vocals. It was decided the album would be called "Crashon Screamon All Fall Down" and was scheduled for an August release. The American record buying public had already ordered more than half a million advance copies of this album before it came out, and it was said to have been the most eagerly awaited record of that year.

Prior to Michelle's firing, the band had been photographed for the cover of their second LP inside the window frame of an abandoned house in the desert. This was soon rectified by their label Dunhill Records who asked the original photographer Guy Webster, to photograph Jill alone in the exact same pose as Michelle had been in, and then to superimpose Jill's image over Michelle's. The record label was not satisfied with the finished product and therefore ordered an entire new album cover to be shot by Webster. Guy then shot a splendid new cover with Jill, John, Denny, and Cass outside in a field of grass against a white picket fence. (This image can be seen on the official website of Cass Elliot). The label was pleased with this new album cover and it was used as promotion for the upcoming new LP inside of the music trade papers, as well as on large billboards across the country.

A promotional campaign to introduce Jill Gibson as the newest Mama soon followed with articles in such publications as "Newsweek" magazine who did an article on the group called "Under the Lemon Trees", where they referred to Jill as "skeletal, modish, blonde and beautiful". Another article called "New Mama is definitely Jill" was published in "Melody Maker" followed by a cover story on Jill that was featured in "KYA BEAT" with the headline reading "Brand New Mama". The article inside of this San Francisco publication screamed, "Michelle's Out!". The new Mamas & Papas then quickly did several television show appearances with Gibson to promote their new single "I Saw Her Again".

The Mamas & the Papas hit the road for a five-city concert tour in July beginning in Dallas, Texas (the Dallas show was supposed to be on June 18 but was postponed until July 1) and ending in San Francisco, California. Other dates included Forest Hills, New York, Denver, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona. Simon & Garfunkel opened for the band on some of these dates. Things according to Jill had gone smoothly as if the fans had accepted her. She was comfortable performing on stage with the group and enjoyed singing all of the songs in the band's forty-minute set. But according to John, the chemistry within the group was not there with Jill. He decided in late August 1966, it would be best that Jill be let go and that Michelle be reinstated, even though Phillips would admit that Gibson had sung well and had done a very good job.

Mama Jill exits

Contrary to popular belief, fans did not scream out for Mama Michelle during every live concert with Jill; it occurred only once, according to Gibson, at a show in Forest Hills, New York, when a male fan shouted out, "Where's Michelle?". This one-time incident has since been greatly exaggerated over the decades and has today taken on a myth-like existence of its own.

Jill Gibson later would say she felt both betrayed by John Phillips and relieved to be free of all the chaos that seemed to follow this supergroup. The band and their label Dunhill Records gave Jill an undisclosed lump sum for her two and a half month stint as Mama Jill. The album the group had recorded with Gibson was then pulled by the label to accommodate Michelle's return. No copies of the album featuring Jill were ever released to the public. Only the promotional copies that were sent to national radio stations across the United States were released with Jill as a member. These promo copies are the "Crashon Screamon All Fall Down" cover with the white picket fence picture of the band, and are valuable collectibles today.

With Mama Michelle back in the mix, two extra tracks were cut for the second album. The LP was soon re-named simply as "The Mamas & the Papas" and it hit the stores in September 1966, with Michelle's image on the cover. Jill Gibson would later claim that her vocals are featured on the entire album except for two tracks that feature Michelle's voice. Nevertheless, the LP would go gold and would peak at No. 4 on the "Billboard" album charts without Jill receiving a gold copy herself. A second single called "Words of Love", was released from the LP, and it too hit the "Billboard" top five chart in late 1966 pushing the album into platinum status. However, things would still remain quite intense for the four original members until the band finally parted ways in the summer of 1968.

After having been ejected from The Mamas & the Papas, Jill continued to write songs on her acoustic guitar inside her small Westwood Village apartment in Los Angeles, which was above a garage. She wrote the songs "I've Got A Feeling For Love" and "How Can I Be Down" with record producer Gary Zekley for the psychedelic band The Yellow Balloon, a band that featured actor Don Grady of the hit television show "My Three Sons" and later included a young Daryl Dragon. Gibson did background vocals for the band's debut album "The Yellow Balloon", which was produced by Zekley for Canterbury Records.

She also co-produced with Don Altfeld a cover version of the Bo Diddley song, "Who Do You Love" for the blues-rock group, The Woolies. Around this same time Gibson returned to photography which she had begun to take seriously back in 1965 when she met photojournalist Ralph Gibson (no relation, and a now renowned photographer living in New York City). During this same period, Gibson studied with Edmund Teske, a photographer working with the technique of solarization, and whose work was recently shown at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Photography continues to remain an interest of hers.

In June 1967 Gibson attended the first ever Monterey International Pop Festival with Lou Adler, where she was an invited member of the press. Over this three-day period in sunny Monterey, California, which later became historical, she photographed nearly every act on the bill. Her photographs of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas & Papas, and Brian Jones as well as many others, have been published around the world. Photography was one of Jill's many passions. Gibson can be seen in the film version of this festival, "Monterey Pop", filmed beautifully by D.A. Pennebaker.

In early October 1967 Jill and Lou offered their support during Cass Elliot's court hearing in London, England, where Cass was being charged with stealing two hotel blankets, two keys, and an unpaid hotel bill. The charges against Elliot were later dropped to the relief of many and soon after this Gibson and Adler took a vacation together to Belgium with singer Scott McKenzie and his girlfriend at the time, Ann Marshall.

The artist

Gibson and Adler would break up as a couple in late 1967. After briefly dating Elmer Valentine, owner of the famous rock club the Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles, Jill left for Florence, Italy in 1968. For the next five and a half years Gibson painted and studied sculpture at The Simi Studio before returning to California in 1973. In December 1973 Jill made her American debut as a painter where her art was showcased for the first time at the DeVorzon Gallery in Hollywood for a week. Such guests as Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, former love Lou Adler and Michelle Phillips were in attendance. Phillips purchased an original Gibson painting for $450 at the time while Nicholson also purchased two originals.

In 1975 Jill gave birth to a son, Mattia Borrani. Borrani has followed into his mother's musical footsteps and is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the indie rock group trio, Oslo.

In 1992 Gibson attended the 25th Anniversary tribute for the Monterey International Pop Festival along with Lou Adler, Michelle Phillips, Booker T., and John Phillips.

Jill Gibson's developing style as an artist is influenced by her interest in Renaissance art, Asian Indian sculpture and pre-Indo European imagery. Many of her original art works are in the private collections of Max Factor, Guy Webster, Michael Savage, The Seattle Museum, Jack Nicholson, and a fifteen foot photo montage in The Los Angeles Free Clinic.

In 2002 Gibson's past as a singing former Mama came briefly full circle when she recorded a cover version of "California Dreamin'" with San Francisco singer-guitarist Ace Andres for his "Cowboy Hat Blues" album. On this version of her former band's pop hit anthem, the song was turned into a hard rock classic.

In March 2004 Jill Gibson attended a memorial service for her ex-boyfriend the legendary Jan Berry and on April 18 she was one of 400 invited guests who gathered at The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood, California, to celebrate his life and music at a tribute called "Jan Berry: A Celebration of Life". For the first time in decades, Jill mingled with old music friends like Judy Lovejoy (her former singing partner), Dean Torrence, Don Altfeld (her former songwriting partner), Ann Marshall, Ryan O'Neal, Nancy Sinatra, Lou Adler, Lloyd Thaxton, Diane Rovell and Ginger Blake of The Honeys. The night was filled with rare live performances of Jan & Dean songs by artists who had once worked with Berry in the 1960s. The successful event had been planned by Berry's widow, Gertie, and Al Nassar.

Today, Jill Gibson is a full time artist with her own studio, Gibson Artworks, located in Oakland, California. Over the last twenty-five years her art work has been displayed in galleries in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and in the USA.

Her paintings, sculptures, photography, planters, plaques, fountains, and bowls can be viewed on her official website ( [http://www.gibsonarts.com] ) which was designed by Mark A. Moore, and at [http://www.mesart.com/] . She divides her time between her homes in Oakland, Los Angeles and Mesa, Arizona.

External links

* [http://www.gibsonarts.com/ The Official Website of Jill Gibson]
* [http://www.rockandrollgallery.com/jill_gibson.html Jill Gibson Bio]
* [http://www.michaelochs.com/artistPages/mamas_papas/mamas_papas_17.html Nice rare photos of Jill Gibson in The Mamas & the Papas-page appears to have been removed (6/2007)]
* [http://www.jananddean-janberry.com/gallery/gallery.html Rare photographs of Jill Gibson with Jan Berry]
* [http://aceandres.com/RobnJill.jpgPhoto of Jill and singer Rob Liszt in the studio with Ace Andres on the set of Cowboy Hat Blues 2002]