Six years before Alejandro Jodorowsky’s extraordinary but ill-fated 1975 attempt to film Frank Herbert’s Dune—the story of which was compellingly told in the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune—there was another similarly ambitious and ground-breaking film project that, until recently, was largely unknown: Saturation 70, a science fiction movie starring Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and Julian Jones, the five-year-old son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones and Linda Lawrence (later Linda Leitch, Donovan’s wife, of “Legend of a Girl Child Linda” fame.)

Unlike Dune, Saturation 70 did actually make it into production and was shot, but never completed, then was forgotten and undocumented for over forty years. Dangerous Minds pal Chris Campion reveals the story of the film’s production in an article for The Guardian:

The film was the brainchild of an American writer-director named Tony Foutz, the son of a Walt Disney company executive and a friend to both Parsons and the Rolling Stones. The film was shot (but never completed) at a 1969 UFO convention at Giant Rock, near Joshua Tree in the Mojave desert, and in Los Angeles. It tapped into the spectrum of esoteric interests and outlandish ideas — aliens, psychedelics, time travel— of the late 60s counterculture. “The whole experience of making the film was like a technological tribal throw-down, with an energy buzz off the Richter scale,” Foutz says now. “It took on a life of its own.”

 

The Kosmic Kiddies, from R to L: Tony Foutz, Michelle Phillips, Gram Parsons, Phil Kaufman and Andee Cohen. Photo: Tom Wilkes

Also appearing in Saturation 70 were Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola (aka Rolling Stones confidant, ‘Prince Stash’, the son of painter Balthus) and Nudie Cohn, creator of the Nudie suit. The shoot took place from late 1969 to early 1970.

Filming guerrilla-style, without permits, they managed to realise several ambitious set-pieces, including a surreal shootout between a Vietcong soldier and an American GI in the aisles of Gelson’s supermarket in Century City (Phil Spector, a noted gun fan, visited the set to watch from the sidelines) and a parade of Ford Edsel cars roaring through the City of Industry in a flying-V formation.

 

Skid Row Los Angeles, 1970. Not much has changed. Look closely at the signs.

Director Tony Foutz was also behind another, even wilder film project, a vehicle for the Rolling Stones to star in and write an original soundtrack for, entitled “Maxagasm,” which was co-written with Sam Shepard in 1968.

Closer to Mad Max than the Beatles’ Help!, the film was to feature the group as a band of unemployed mercenaries wandering through Moroccan desert, in a plot that involved UFOs and Mayan-style human ritual sacrifice.

For years, Saturation 70 was little more than a rumour among Gram Parsons fans—a strange anomalous event in his short gloried career—but now all the existing footage and production photos have been dusted off for an exhibition in London that recreates the film shoot, and the story of Saturation 70 can finally be told.

Saturation 70: the Gram Parsons UFO film that never flew (The Guardian)

Saturation 70, the exhibition, runs at the Horse Hospital in London from September 6th to 27th. More information here.
 

Julian Jones and his fairy godmother

 
After making one remarkable self-titled psych-pop album in the ‘60s that’s been a collector’s staple for years, Jamme are one of those bands that somehow slipped through the net. Their debut has just been reissued for the first time, 40 years later (via Now Sounds), and has a fantastic story attached to it.

In 1968, Jamme—a four-piece made up of two Brits and two Americans—were just another young group of musicians trying to make it on the Sunset Strip when they were handed the opportunity of a lifetime after John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas offered to produce an album for them, thinking he had found the new Beatles.

So far, so good. However, not everything went quite to plan. The band came into Phillips’ life in the summer of 1968, just as the Mamas and the Papas were breaking up, his marriage to Michelle Phillips was on the rocks and he was having an affair with Mia Farrow (right under the nose of Frank Sinatra!).

All of that contributed to a rather bizarre recording experience, all of which took place in the studio Phillips had installed in the roof of his Bel Air mansion—the same studio Sly Stone later used to make “There’s A Riot Goin’ On”—the entrance to which, incidentally, was hidden (James Bond-style) behind a secret panel on the first floor of the house.

The whole amazing story of the Jamme is detailed in the pretty lengthy liner notes that come with the reissue. For now, listen to their groovy signature tune, “Strawberry Jam Man”, which sounds it like it should be the theme to some whacked-out Saturday morning kids TV show, and enjoy this little nugget from the notes:
———-
One night, Michelle Phillips, Mia Farrow and Jamme drummer Terry Rae all dropped acid together in the lounge below the studio, while John was upstairs leading a session with the band. When the panel that lead out to the main house was closed, the room was cast into pitch blackness. They all laid underneath a table with their heads pressed together, legs sticking out like the spokes of a wheel, all giggly and loose.

“Wouldn’t it be great to go to France,” squealed Mia. “Just jump on a plane right now and go.”

“Let’s go to France, then,” added Michelle. “Let’s just go!”

Rae’s 18-year old acid-fried mind was having trouble taking all this in. He was sitting under a table in the dark with Michelle Phillips and Mia Farrow as they were discussing taking him with them halfway across the world on a Lear jet. When the talk turned to more intimate matters, Rae began to get feel uncomfortable.

“What would the sleeping arrangements be,” Mia asked out loud.

“What if John was here? You wouldn’t be talking like this,” Rae stammered.

But no sooner had he said it then the panel opened up, the room was flooded with bright white light and John Phillips’ voice boomed out: “I am here.”

He had been there all along, standing silently at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the studio, listening to every word. Rae was mortified. “Being on acid, it blew the whole thing up in my mind. I was just totally blown away that he might have thought I was doing anything. But he took the opinion that I was a threat and had all the intentions of going to France with them to get laid. It was just a crazy fantasy. A joke, basically. We were having fun. But it turned out to be my demise.”

Shortly afterwards, John pushed the other members of the Jamme into firing Rae. As he was not only acting as their producer but also bankrolling the sessions, they had little choice but to comply.

“Funny enough,” Rae reflects, “both Mia and Michelle were in love with John. There were obviously problems with Michelle, but I don’t think she would have ever frivolously just gone off with some guy to get laid.”

A month after he was fired from the band, Rae was bemused to get a call from Mia Farrow. She invited him to the house on Copa De Oro Road that afternoon on the pretext of showing him some candid photographs of her with the Beatles in India.

“Nobody had photos, you know, actual 4x4 photos of the Beatles. You never saw stuff like that,” he says, even while acknowledging that he again found the situation alone with Mia Farrow in Frank Sinatra’s house“really weird”.

After a fashion, Mia sighed. “I have a problem,” she said, gingerly. “My best friend is Michelle, but I’m in love with John. What should I do?”

“Stick with Michelle and don’t mess with John,” Rae offered, his advice colored by his own recent experience at the hands of John Phillips.
 

 
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