Mackenzie Phillips

By Alex Teitz

Mackenzie Phillips is an actress with a music past and future. Known for her parts in American Graffiti and One Day at A Time, FEMMUSIC was surprised to see her on the Disney Channel. Phillips is now playing the part of a touring musician with family on Disney’s So Weird. The show focuses on a Annie Thelen, a 13 year old friend of the family who joins Molly Phillips, a touring musician. Annie, played by emerging artist Alexz Johnson, finds strange and unusual things. FEMMUSIC was encouraged to see a positive and realistic portrayal of a touring woman musician. For more information visit Wikipedia

At press time the tape of this interview had broken. FEMMUSIC is seeking ways to splice it and continue the second half of this interview.  

FEMMUSIC: At an early age you had a choice between acting and music. Why did you make the choice you did?

MP: Well when I was in the fifth grade I put together this band and we performed at The Troubadour on open mic night, and I was the lead singer. And you know I was enamored of my father and rock and roll and the glamour and creativity and everything and I wanted to be the girl onstage with the guitar. Then after the performance that night a casting director came up to me and asked if I would audition for this movie, American Graffiti, and I did, and I got the part. And it just sort of snowballed from there. It became…I never stopped singing, but I didn’t…for whatever reason didn’t pursue a career as a recording artist. I think because I was so young, and it was so cool to be in a movie, and be an actor. I just let it go, and just started acting.

FEMMUSIC: What attracted you to the part of Molly Phillips?

MP: M-U-S-I-C. It’s interesting, when I got the script, the audition was on a Friday or a Thursday; I’d planned a skiing trip with my son. And I was going to blow off the audition. You know you’re an actor, you audition for so many things, you get hardly any of them. The competition is huge. And then I read the script, and the name was Molly Phillips. My name is Mackenzie Phillips. It was about a mom on the road on sort of a comeback tour. There was music and I would get to sing, and I looked at Shane and said, “I’ve got to audition for this part. This could change our world.” We cut a day off the skiing trip, and I went in and I auditioned. There were too many parallels. It was just too perfect. I knew I’d get to sing, and the name was practically the same. The name already existed in the script, they didn’t write it that way for me. It was just such a perfect fit you know.

FEMMUSIC: One reason I wanted to do this interview is So Weird really does present a positive role model of the touring musician.

MP: It’s true. Back in the days when I was touring on the road with the New Mammas and the Poppas I sang with my dad in that band for ten years on the road. We were crazed. It was the Eighties, and very early Nineties. This was before I got sober too so it was partying, and trashing hotel rooms, and running around like maniacs getting drunk onstage. The thought then was “that’s how it had to be” In order to be a rock and roller you had to be crazy. Right?

While I was getting sober my husband Shane Fontaine, was playing guitar with Bruce Springstein on the Human Touch Tour, Lucky Town Tour. I went on the road with him right after I got out of rehab. Everyone traveled with their families. There was no alcohol. People weren’t crazy. It was a family oriented quiet, creative beautiful tour. I and thought , “Wow. You can still be creative without becoming an alcoholic.” It was fascinating for me to see the difference. When So Weird came along, and it portrayed a positive rock and roll family and I thought, “This is the way it’s supposed to be.” I was belaboring under a misconception.

FEMMUSIC: How has raising your own son paralleled or compared to the part of Molly?

MP: Well let’s see. Shane, my son Shane, when he was two months old, his dad was in a band called Lone Justice and they were opening for U2 on the European tour. Big Shane took little Shane on the road in a little papoose thing when he was two months old. And this was a young man with a small baby on a huge rock and roll tour. We have pictures of Shane backstage on U2/Lone Justice shows sleeping in a roadcase as a crib. So Shane has either grown up on a set, or backstage at concerts all his life. And for the majority of his life with highly committed to sobriety parents. It’s interesting to watch him grow. He’s a guitar maniac. He has perfect pitch. He can play any instrument you put in his hand just by ear. So his path is being a musician, and he’s learning what I didn’t learn that creativity and drugs and alcohol don’t go hand in hand. It doesn’t have to be that way.