Mamas & Papas Star Got Invited to Sharon Tate's Home That Fateful Night. He Almost Went. Hallucinogens & Bioluminescent Plankton Saved Him

On a Friday night in early August 1969, John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas got an invitation from Sharon Tate to come to her home at 10050 Cielo Drive. He was tempted. He left the decision to his friend, Marshall Brickman. Brickman suggested they go to the Pacific instead to look at bioluminescent plankton. They went to the beach. The next morning Phillips got a call that changed everything. The murders committed by followers of Charles Manson at Sharon Tate’s home in the early hours of August 9 killed five people: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent, a young man who happened to be visiting the property’s caretaker. Sharon Tate was eight and a half months pregnant. Phillips had almost been there. So had his bandmate Denny Doherty, who’d also received an invitation that night and also declined.

Brickman hadn’t been joking. He genuinely wanted to see the phosphorescent plankton glowing in the Pacific. Phillips thought the idea was amusing enough, especially given the mescaline. They drove to the beach with director Michael Sarne, watched the water glow, and went home separately. The next morning, columnist Joyce Haber called. “Thank God you’re alive,” she said. “What the hell are you talking about?” Phillips asked her.

Nobody knew yet who had done it. But five people were dead inside Sharon Tate’s home on Cielo Drive.

Phillips panicked for a specific reason. When investigators arrived at the scene, they found the sheet music to his song “Straight Shooter” resting on the music stand of the grand piano. A grand piano mere feet from where Sharon Tate’s body lay. He’d been in that house. His music was there when the bodies were found.

The connections ran deeper. Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys had invited Phillips to come and spend time with a group of followers led by a man named Charles Manson. Terry Melcher had wanted Phillips to hear Manson’s music. Phillips declined both. “It sounded a little too crazy and cosmic,” he wrote. He knew all four of the murdered guests: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger.

Related: 1970 Summertime Anthem Everybody Knows, Written in 10 Minutes by a Timex Lab Technician on His Day Off, Almost Nobody Remembers His Name

Phillips wasn’t the only one who almost went that night. Steve McQueen had also received an invitation and would’ve been there had he not, as his widow later explained, “ran off with a chickie” he’d met earlier that evening.

Phillips bought a gun. He hired extra security. He brought ex-wife Michelle and their daughter Chynna back to live with him. He and his circle hired psychics and numerologists to investigate. Then he found out that Roman Polanski, away in Europe when the murders happened, had briefly suspected him. Polanski had been having an affair with Michelle Phillips and thought John might have killed Sharon as revenge. The paranoia of that summer in Hollywood ran in every direction.

Charles Manson was arrested on October 12 1969. Phillips believed Manson hadn’t been targeting Sharon Tate at all. His theory, shared by others close to the case, was that Manson was sending a message to Terry Melcher, who’d lived in the house the previous year and had decided not to produce Manson’s record. The wrong people were home that night.

During the trial, Manson listed both Phillips and Mama Cass Elliott as potential defense witnesses. He apparently believed the band was close enough to him to testify on his behalf.

The Band That Almost Didn’t Survive the Summer of 1969

Two years before that August night, Phillips had co-organized the Monterey Pop Festival alongside Lou Adler, the event that launched Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding to mass American audiences. That same summer, The Mamas & the Papas had headlined the Hollywood Bowl with the Jimi Hendrix Experience as their opening act. For one night they were arguably the biggest band in America. Within months it was gone.

The Mamas & the Papas were already dissolving before that August night. The murders didn’t cause the end. They accelerated it. Phillips watched the Woodstock Festival on television from a locked-down Hollywood while the rest of the music world celebrated in a field in New York. “I knew that we had helped pave the way for Woodstock,” he wrote, “but it seemed to be a long way off now.”

The 1971 reunion album People Like Us was recorded with the four members rarely in the same room. It failed commercially and critically. Michelle Phillips is now the last surviving original member. Mama Cass Elliott died in London on July 29, 1974, aged 32. John Phillips died on March 18, 2001, aged 65. Denny Doherty died on January 19, 2007, aged 66. The band that almost lost Phillips to the Manson murders eventually lost all its members to time.

“California Dreamin’” is still playing.

Marshall Brickman wanted to see the plankton. John Phillips left the choice to him. They went to the beach. The next morning Joyce Haber called. “Thank God you’re alive.” His sheet music was on the music stand of the grand piano at the crime scene. He’d been in that house. He just wasn’t there that night.

The reason was bioluminescent plankton.

Some decisions are made for you.

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