Phillips was born in 1935 of a full-blooded Cherokee mother and a career officer in the Marines, and had an unexceptional if mostly unhappy childhood. In his teens he learned to play the guitar, exhibited musical talent and began the drift into a music career. By 1965 he had formed the folk-rock group The Mamas and the Papas. Although married, he actively pursued women and also took much pleasure in a variety of pharmaceuticals, and found, with the success of the group, unlimited access to both and the financial ability to gratify those and other desires. Phillips s penchant for drugs led him into increasingly deeper waters, culminating in an arrest in 1980 and a long drying-out period. This is a compulsively readable, juicy autobiography of an egocentric, unrestrained, creative, good-hearted man. It is a revealing look at life at the top in the turbulent 60s that will have the reader alternating between envy, disgust, fascination and nostalgia. Photos not seen by PW. First serial to Rolling Stone and US; Literary Guild selection.