“When it came down to it, the choice had been: live with my mom in a condo in Tarzana, do homework, heed my curfew, and follow (my stepfather’s) rules, or live with my dad in a mansion, hang out with the most famous movie stars and rock stars of the day, and have no rules whatsoever…I thought I had picked heaven over hell.”

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High on Arrival

by Mackenzie Phillips (2009)

In 2023, I bought books. Like, a lot of books. In fact, I think I bought all the books that year. My wife and I would scour the thrift store shelves and take home any and all the Hollywood bios we could find. It was ridiculous, actually and I began to feel quite intimidated as I rearranged my book shelves to accommodate all these new books. When, I would ask myself, am I going to read all these books? Or any of these books? This deluge helped prompt me to reevaluate my book-reading “rules” and the way I consumed books. It took me until late summer 2024 to really dive in and one week of holidays I found myself reading three books at one time, something I have never done in my life. One of these was an older and somewhat staid book on Jack Lemmon and the other was that book’s polar opposite, the memoir we are looking at today.

I almost didn’t buy this book by Mackenzie Phillips but I took it home from the thrift store based mostly on my love for American Graffiti, the movie that was Mackenzie’s film debut. Partly, though, I’ll admit that I knew with this book that I would also get a real salacious tale of excess, one that I assumed would be quite readable. I am seldom wrong and was right again.

“My father was different. He loved me, but under ordinary circumstances, he didn’t see himself as my protector and guide. He saw himself as a very cool person who loved to hang out with other cool people, including his own children…I was loved, but I wasn’t protected. It was a carefree and careless youth, which was fantastic and liberating but things happen. There are reasons for the standards society sets. Nobody was watching out for me…”

Phillips was born Laura Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of John Phillips, legendary leader of the Mamas and the Papas and Susan Adams, the daughter of “eastern seaboard aristocrats” who were none too pleased with the match. And this in and of itself is fascinating. The dichotomy of moneyed descendants of President John Adams and a musical genius and proto-hippie about to embark on a psychedelic musical odyssey. How did these two come together? “My father was a crazy hippie. My mother was an aristocratic eastern seaboard drunk. For all of my childhood I’d been bounced between those worlds” The early pages of the book tell of Mackenzie’s childhood, of living with her prim and proper mom and having to follow rules during the week and then being picked up by a limousine and spending the weekends in enchanted castles filled with rock royalty and every kind of hedonism. “Mack” recalls being consoled by Paul McCartney and making hash brownies with Donovan. By the time she was ten, she was smoking and became the gang’s official joint-roller, having been taught how by her dad.

For fellow fans of AmGraf, there is not much new to be revealed here except that Phillips had a brief fling with Paul Le Mat during the making of the sequel. In the passages that follow, the reader is reminded that Mackenzie Philips is not really known for her acting roles; she shares that she auditioned for Taxi Driver and The Exorcist. Of course she would later make her name on television starring in the sitcom One Day at a Time.

Mackenzie inevitably started using drugs and, later in the Seventies, she says drugs became central to her life and no longer recreational. Here’s really where the book takes off and becomes utterly riveting. There is something about soap operas that is infinitely fascinating. You may find yourself at a loss to defend yourself when trying to explain to friends and family why you watch such “trash”. Of course the answer is simple; dirt is entertaining. I mentioned at the outset the biography of Jack Lemmon. Jack is a prime example of an old school actor who lived relatively cleanly and avoided any major scandals. A book on a figure like Lemmon is going to be – not “boring” but akin to a brunch with in-laws you’ve just met. Books like that are not without their quality but… On the other hand, High on Arrival is closer to a bacchanal with page after page of sex, drugs and rock & roll. This makes for interesting and easy reading.

“Nobody grows up thinking, I want to be a junkie, but in a weird way I did. I wanted to be whatever it took to fit in with my dad, his friends and his life.”

That is not to say that there is not much depth to the tale Mackenzie tells. She relates these things matter-of-factly and does not come off like she is trying to shock or impress you. This is just her life story. These things really happened to her. One comes away feeling like Phillips does not necessarily think of these things as shocking; they just are. And they are things she has had to contend with her whole life. Heavy things.

Aside from the roller coaster drug tales, aside from the fascinating story of how someone can survive living so dangerously, the major aspect of High on Arrival is the telling of Mackenzie Phillips’ relationship with her father, Papa John; there is every indication, too, that the John Phillips story is an interesting one, as well, one worth looking into. John may not have been Brian Wilson-level genius but he is a more-than-notable figure in rock history. What he created musically and vocally with the Mamas and the Papas is truly the stuff of legend. But maybe even more than this was his unflinching devotion to debauchery. And as Mackenzie relates, as a father, he did not consider himself a protector or teacher. He wanted his kids to do what he and his friends did, to be just as cool as he was and this included teaching them – practically and by example – how to do drugs.

But probably the most notable passages of this memoir are those that deal with incest. With this book, Mackenzie Phillips chose to come clean about her incestuous relationship with her father. The first time was in a hotel room in Florida when “Dad and I got high on downs…and I eventually passed out on Dad’s bed”. Mackenzie says she only came to for the “middle” of it, felt “confusion and horror” and passed out again. Tough to read. Many years passed before it happened again and then it happened several times while Mackenzie joined her father and others to tour as the New Mamas and the Papas, a successful act on the legacy circuit that endured for many years. Of the incestuous encounters during this time, Mackenzie says “it was consensual, but not in the way one might imagine consensual sex. Sex with my father was never anything but an occasional act of drug-fueled desperation, a hopeless grasp at comfort and security in a daze of hell. I didn’t enjoy it. But at the same time – I did. I started feeling complicit”. She says she felt dirty, shameful and alone – but she finally had gained the attention of her “charismatic, magnetic sorcerer father”.

“My father abused me, but he wasn’t a monster. He was a tortured man who led a tortured existence. This is hard for me to talk about, not so much because of how personal it is to me as because of what I’m doing to his memory…the desire to preserve my father’s legacy is not reason enough for silence. I held my father responsible, but I also had my part in what went on between us, and I never believed that Dad deliberately set out to hurt me. He was in his own reality, and I was vulnerable.”

Phillips then gives the reader a break by discussing her years as a mother, years that started out under the haze of her addiction before she was able to clean up and focus on raising her son. But after ten years of sobriety, she was prescribed pain meds for medical procedures and plummeted once again. She was on her way to a One Day at a Time event on The Rachael Ray Show when she was arrested at the airport in possession of narcotics; the aluminum foil her dealer had told her to remove set off the metal detector. It was the lowest of many low points but would eventually lead to change.

Speaking of that popular sitcom of the Seventies, Phillips details her relationships with the cast including much bonding with Valerie Bertinelli and she describes enjoying working with her cast mates in a safe and comfortable family atmosphere, even when she was screwing up. She regrets all that she put them through – she was fired from the show twice – and has nothing but gratitude for their love for her.

At one point in this harrowing tale, Mackenzie Phillips caused me to reconsider my opinion that drug addiction is not a disease; or certainly not in the same way cancer is. I’m more than willing to be enlightened but I can’t help but think that a person can be responsible and look after their body and then one day get told they have cancer. Then that meticulously cared for body will erode despite all that hard work and caution. An addict? One day, they decide – they choose – to take their life in their hands and gamble with drugs. Is drunk driving a disease? That person decides to get behind the wheel and maybe kill themselves. I just feel like addiction is preventable. But Mackenzie’s tale gave me pause. Often she says she knows she had been blessed – particularly with her son – and envied those who could just live clean lives but she just could not stop using. Conversely though consider that Mackenzie herself supports my feelings somewhat with her words regarding her father’s death. Late in life John had a liver transplant but continued to drink and use drugs, which precipitated his decline. Talking about his death, Mack says “Dad was not a stupid man. He was brilliant. But he had chosen this horrible death”. Emphasis on “chosen” is mine. John maybe could have cleaned up his act and lived a lot longer life.

“I could spend time being furious and damaged, but what was the point? My father didn’t get that he was connected to others, that the harmful stuff he did to himself was harmful to other people. Harmful, in some small way, to the universe.”

Here’s another thing. The edition I have includes a new postscript and in it Phillips describes the fallout from publishing her book and revealing what amounts to a dark family secret. I got to thinking about this well before I got to the PS; why would others come out publicly to refute Mackenzie’s incest claim? Let’s start with the “claim” itself. Why on earth would someone make such a claim if it wasn’t true? Right away many of you would say I’m being naïve; well, obviously, to sell more books! But I don’t buy that. Firstly because I refuse to believe that someone would say something like that just to sell more books. Mackenzie’s drug stories and celebrity reminiscences are more than fascinating. One day she said “let’s throw in incest”? No. Secondly, you need to read the book to hear her voice and I think you’ll agree that her story, in the way she tells it, is totally believable.

Mackenzie says that she was in contact with her siblings in advance of publishing the book. They asked if she was going to tell the “whole” story and she said she was. This set off heated discussions and pleas to hold back and not reveal the dark family secret, one that Mack says the whole family had known about all along. Sad to think that many felt that the future earning potential of the John Phillips name would be greatly lessened by this admission. And I can only think that those who came out publicly to refute Phillips’ claim simply wanted the refutation on the record so that the public at large would forever have a question in their minds; well, did it really happen? After reading the book I think you’ll agree with me that there is no question that it happened. Sadly, Mackenzie ends her memoir by saying that after the book was published her siblings just stopped talking to her (Chynna Phillips said publicly she believed Mackenzie). Interesting, too, that she says her family stuck by her when she was ruining her life with drugs, when she was courting death or needing to be bailed out of jail, when she was locking her son out of the bathroom so she could shoot up, taking her across country for treatments, etc. But when she came clean about this particular part of her life, that’s when they cut her off.

Nuggets include; Mack’s mom once worked at the Pentagon as an assistant to Robert McNamara, Phillips spent part of her childhood living in Johnny Weismuller’s fascinating old house with the serpentine empty pool, she was friends with Marlon Brando’s kids, she always had an excellent relationship with Michelle Phillips, Mack dated Andy Williams’ nephew, Andy, who was too straight-laced to handle Phillips’ drug use, once when she was 18, Mackenzie went with her dad and his third wife to the apartment that Mick Jagger shared with Jerry Hall. Mack and Mick found themselves alone and Mick said as he locked the apartment door “I’ve been waiting for this since you were 10 years old” and he took her in to the bed he shared with Jerry. At 16, Mackenzie came upon her father standing naked wrapped in Saran Wrap in an attempt to kill the “coke bugs” he thought were attacking him, maybe the true love of Mackenzie Phillips’ life was Peter Asher, who’s child she aborted, at one point John Phillips was shooting coke every 20 minutes for a year, while pregnant with her son, Mackenzie was still shooting up into her 6th month, she also likely aborted a child conceived by her father, her first acting gig after getting clean the first time was a role on my beloved Beverly Hills, 90210 and Phillips remains good friends with and still spends a lot of time hanging out with Valerie Bertinelli.

This was a different book for me to read and to report on. It was a case of me knowing the subject but not really being super interested in her story. That is until I started reading it. I literally could not put this book down and finished it in mere days. So, this goes for you, too. You may not care anything for Mackenzie Phillips but her story is remarkable and it is told in a simple, believable and easy to read style. If you think you can handle the non-stop debauchery, pick up your copy today.