Music Monday ~ Double Quadruple Gemini: Michelle Phillips, Colm Wilkinson

Two singers today, appropriate enough during the time the Sun is passing through zodiac sign Gemini (the twins). Featuring: one female, one male, one born in Ireland, now lives in Canada; the other, a California gal. They were born a day apart, on June 4 and 5 1944:


Michelle Phillips, originally one of the iconic 1970s group The Mamas & the Papas, of which she's now the only living member. She later became an actress in TV and film.
And Colm Wilkinson Irish tenor who created the role of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables in the London production in 1985. He went on to star in several other stage musicals, and is set, all these years later, to play Bishop of Digne in an upcoming movie of Les Miz, which I'm impatiently waiting to see, never having had an opportunity to see Les Miserables on stage.

Michelle Phillips - one of those music stars who lived and loved through the wild and woolly 1960s and has lived to tell the tale- or more accurately for others to tell the tale.








There's a long article about Ms Phillips' life, a good read: California Dreamgirl by Sheila Weller from a 2007 online issue of Vanity Fair. Her success as vocalist and actress provide the backdrop for her multiple love affairs involving fellow group members of The Mamas & Papas, John Phillips and Denny Doherty, movie stars Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and others. She has married five times.

From the above article:

The Mamas and the Papas were the first rich hippies, stripping folk rock of its last vestiges of Pete Seeger earnestness and making it ironic and sensual. They made the rock elite part and parcel of Hollywood. (Michelle’s eventual serial conquest of its three top young lions—Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, and Warren Beatty—nailed for her its femme fatale sweepstakes.) And then, just as fast as they’d streaked across the psychedelic sky, they burned out in some unseen solar system.

After break up of the Mamas & the Papas Phillips began acting during the 1970s. She has appeared in several television series: Knott's Landing, Desperate Housewives, Star Trek: the Next Generation, among others, and in a number of movies.



Data from Astrodatabank. Hmmmm - a quadruple Gemini with Gemini rising too! Very Mercurial! Her many love associations reflect the mutable (changeable) quality of Gemini, and her Scorpio Moon is a reflection of the emotional magnetism she must have exuded in her young days - maybe even now. Three planets in Leo represent her draw to the spotlight and the stage.

With The Mamas & the Papas and Monday, Monday








Colm Wilkinson's career has followed a rather more sedate path. An archived piece from People magazine of March 1987 outlines his trajectory to Les Miz fame.

From that article:

One morning two years ago, as the mist rose over Killiney Bay outside Dublin, a barrel-chested Irishman pushed open his garden gate. As wife Deirdre waved, Colm Wilkinson was off to yet another audition. "This is the one," she called out as he headed for London to try out for the lead in a musical version of Victor Hugo's classic tome, Les Misérables.

Wilkinson, now (then) 42, wasn't so sure. Until he was approached about playing Hugo's fugitive hero, Jean Valjean, he had never heard of the author, let alone read the book. Moreover, Wilkinson had spent most of his show business years crooning Irish folk songs and performing with pop bands. His clear-honey voice, a perfect high tenor, was even heard singing jingles for sausages, Toyotas and other consumer goods far removed from Hugo's 19th-century world of good and evil. None of this, however, deterred the Royal Shakespeare Company's director Trevor Nunn and associate director John Caird, who had rejected every singer known to them in their search for the perfect Valjean.

After listening to Wilkinson, they knew they had their lead. "He has this uncanny ability to communicate dramatic events through his voice," says Caird. "Also, Colm's a man with a simple human faith, and that's what Valjean's got. It's a match made in heaven."

He sang the part of Che in the original concept recording of Evita (which I believe has never been bettered), played The Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, began a solo career as a singer-songwriter, In 2007 he undertook a cross-Canada concert tour, Broadway and Beyond, with Susan Gilmour and Gretha Boston.

With his wife and family he now live in Toronto, Canada.



In 2009 Wilkinson played the part of Lord Thomas Darcy in the third & fourth season of Showtime’s miniseries The Tudors. He also, in 2009, participated in U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy's birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and was also asked to perform at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at the Memorial Service for Senator Kennedy on the evening before the Senator's funeral.



I could find no birth time for Mr Wilkinson, so the chart above is set for 12 noon.

Another quadruple Gemini! The main differences between the charts of Wilkinson and Phillips would stem from the rising sign, (which in Wilkinson's case can't be calculated without a time of birth); and exact Moon position, which for Wilkinson could be either Scorpio or, if born around or after 4:00 PM, Sagittarius.

I suspect Wilkinson's rising sign to be one of the Fixed signs, possibly Taurus or Leo - or maybe Aquarius. His long-lasting marriage, in contrast to Michelle Phillips' list of five is testament to a much steadier, if still versatile nature.

A Sagittarius Moon (another mutable sign and it represents travel) along with his quadruple flexible Gemini could reflect his globe-trotting. He and his family have, at various points in his career, lived in Dublin, London, the USA and now have settled in Canada.

Singing the gut-wrenching "Bring Him Home" from Les Miz