Owen Elliot-Kugell, the only child of Mama Cass of the Mamas & the Papas, has for years spearheaded the campaign to get her mother a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
There’s a famous photograph by Henry Diltz of Joni Mitchell playing guitar in Mama Cass Elliot’s Laurel Canyon backyard, with David Crosby holding up a joint in back and Eric Clapton sitting cross-legged watching transfixed. There, in the foreground, is Cass’ nine-month-old daughter Owen, teething on a film canister. “I often wonder what I was thinking,” says the now-55-year-old mother of two kids in their 20s, who lives in Encino with her husband of 31 years.
“The childhood memories I have are not numerous, but they are vivid,” says Owen, who was raised by Cass’ sister Leah and her husband, noted drummer Russ Kunkel, in both Los Angeles and western Massachusetts. “I do have a treasure trove of written and video interviews, including one from ‘The Dinah Shore Show,’ when she brought me along. Getting to see our interaction was incredibly meaningful for me. I can see her caressing my head, giving me a hug because she knows I’m shy.
“Cass pretty much designed rock ‘n’ roll for me at a certain point,” says John Sebastian, who first met her in Washington, DC, when she was part of the folk trio the Big 3 with Tim Rose and Jim Hendricks. Elliot went on to introduce him to his future Lovin’ Spoonful partner Zal Yanovsky at her Gramercy Park apartment in New York on February 9, 1964, the day the Beatles performed on “The Ed Sullivan Show.
“She wanted to shed that moniker with everything she had,” says Owen, who wrestled with whether to include it on her mom’s star, and finally deciding to do so with quotes around it. “Because that’s how most people knew her. My psychic told me my mom is really exited about getting this star. If she had lived longer, I’m sure she would have reinvented herself.”
With her mother’s string of failed relationships, Owen says Cass was often lonely. Her own birth was the result of Cass’ one-night stand with a Mamas & Papas touring bassist named Chuck Day, whom she met years later after Michelle Phillips found him via an ad.