CHAPTER 6

Turtlemania!

The Story of America’s Beatles

Among all the artists Rhino was to reissue, none was more important than the Turtles. It wasn’t just the opportunity to mine the group’s rich but neglected catalogue, it was also that the remaining original Turtles, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, were early supporters of ours and participants in Rhino projects throughout our twenty-four years at the label. They were so culturally in synch with Richard and me, that they would have been prime candidates to join our board of directors, if we had one.

That the Turtles came from my hometown made it all the more resonant. I’d first heard about the group from a classmate at an Orville Wright Jr. High sports night (dance) who declared the Crossfires—the progenitor of the Turtles—the best band he’d ever seen. I soon found out more about them from playing Risk at Harvey Portz’s home. Harvey was the younger brother of the group’s bass player, Chuck, who was making a bass with a body in the shape of an Iron Cross in the family garage.

In its own way, the Los Angeles suburb of Westchester was close to idyllic in the mid-1960s. While the far from affluent community had to contend with the increasing roar of the newest jets taking off from the Los Angeles International Airport, it was, to use Frank Zappa’s description of the fictitious Centerville, “A real nice place to raise your kids up.” In their first year as the Turtles, the band burned up local radio with their first three singles. “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Let Me Be,” and “You Baby” all hit the top ten.

I loved the Turtles music. I knew a couple of their younger brothers and had a little more insight that made me appreciate their records all the more. I thought their records were consistently the best produced of any American rock band of the sixties. They played well as an ensemble, their harmonies were spot on, and they were blessed with an exceptional lead singer in Howard Kaylan (and later, a superb drummer in Johny Barbata). They were unique in their ability to capture the sound of their records live, and for the humor in their stage personality. Only later, when I interviewed Howard Kaylan in August 1971 for a Rolling Stone feature, did I realize that they also had great stories—from starting out as a local surf band to being the first rock group to play at the White House.

Howard (né Kaplan) distinguished himself as the best singer of Westchester High School’s award-winning A Cappella Choir. His status in choir and as a top student didn’t mean that he and his pal, Mark Volman, could repress their natural humor and behavior in choir. The director, Robert Wood, called them into his office numerous times trying to reason with them to behave, since all the other kids looked up to them. But Howard and Mark were bitten by rock ’n’ roll: they fronted the area’s best band, the Crossfires. In Howard’s first semester in high school, he described himself as “socially less than a potato.” By the next semester, after having joined the band, he felt like he had become a local teen idol.

The Crossfires’ reputation as the South Bay’s best band owed itself to some extent to winning Battle of the Bands contests. The members started as an instrumental surf band—odd, because most were in choir—initially as the Night Riders. In the early 1960s surfers adopted the German Iron Cross, which is why the group changed its name to the Crossfires. Initially surfers wore this World War II decoration, passed on by their fathers, as a group-defining, antiestablishment symbol. The image was popularized by custom car designer and artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, who sold various by-products, including medallions and decals, and by Surfer magazine artist Rick Griffin.

In 1962 the hardest dance music of the time evolved out of Dick Dale’s concept of the surfer stomp: searing guitar solos over a pounding rhythm section. The Crossfires covered records by Dale, the Surfaris, the Rhythm Rockers, and the Lively Ones. Al Nichol was the most musically gifted in the band. He had the best record collection and was the one who helped the others with the arrangements. He was one of the city’s very best surf guitarists.

Al, Howard (on tenor sax), and Chuck Portz (on bass) were all in Westchester High’s A Cappella Choir. Mark Volman was in Choir as well, but initially he was a fan of the group, who danced wildly in front of the stage when they played. He asked Howard if he could join. “I was always attracted to funny people,” said Howard, during an interview I conducted for a 1991 documentary on the Turtles, from which most of the quotations in this chapter are derived. “I thought the band could use this guy, could use a little levity, because it was not a happy band. It was a band that was concentrating on the music, on getting it right. Having Mark in the band would make it fun.”

In February 1963 Howard, Chuck, and Al took a lunchtime meeting with Mark at the school cafeteria to discuss adding Mark to the band, although no one knew what his role would be. Don Murray, the drummer, wasn’t present because he attended Morningside High in Inglewood, seven miles away. The Crossfires still largely played instrumentals because, in Howard’s assessment, “You couldn’t stomp to singing.” Mark was hired to help set up the equipment and sing a couple of songs with the group, but Al didn’t want to pay him.

Howard: “The first night he’s on the job, we’re playing a UCLA fraternity. The frat boys are preparing the evening’s drink—Hawaiian punch, any liquor they can get, dry ice—in a galvanized tub, and it’s foaming. They called it Red Death, and we had a few of them. Mark falls down these steep stairs with the drums, and he’s laughing his head off.” Because of that, and other clumsy incidents, Mark acquired the nickname “Bumbling Idiot.” When Mark’s father learned that he was only making five dollars a night while the others were getting seventeen, he bought his son an alto sax so he would be on equal footing as a contributing instrumentalist.

In most rock bands it’s assumed that the singer is the leader or the spokesman because he’s the one who’s primarily engaging the audience. “Mark and I were never the leaders of the band in name,” Howard clarified. “Our earliest business cards for the Crossfires had two phone numbers on them: Al Nichol’s and Don Murray’s. Mark and I were never considered the leaders because we really weren’t musicians. To be a musician in the band meant that you had to play an instrument and know chord changes. We were sax players, we were singers, we were comics. We didn’t have that skill. In the rest of the members’ eyes, our position was diminished. It was like, ‘Here’s the band [the other four guys], and here’s these two guys.’”

With Mark in the band, they added more vocal numbers, initially R&B songs like “Kansas City,” “Money,” and “Justine.” When the Beatles and the other groups of the British Invasion hit the charts, the Crossfires impressed their fans by being able to reproduce those records’ vocal harmonies. Rhythm guitarist Jim Tucker, from Aviation High in Redondo Beach, completed the lineup. In early 1965, the group appeared on the local TV show 9th Street West lip-synching their “One Potato, Two Potato” single. They autographed a potato to give away. When asked where they were from, Chuck thoughtlessly said, “Los Angeles 45” (the postal code) rather than the more identifiable “Westchester.”

Enthusiastic fans of the group from high school formed the Chunky Club and flocked to see the group play. A subset, calling themselves the Spoon Men, brought spoons and ladles to the dances. A male member aimed his spoon towards his partner’s vagina, motioned in a digging and scooping manner, and then brought the spoon before his face and pretended to drink the imaginary contents. This behavior caused them to get thrown out of dances. Coupled with the band’s manner of substituting their own lewd lyrics in songs like Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” the Crossfires were banned from playing in the area by the Westchester Women’s Club after they had received a copy of a police report. As a consequence the band could also no longer play the Westport Beach Club, the Masonic Lodge, and the Moose Lodge. This was a blow to them as it was money out of their pockets. As a result, in May 1965, the Crossfires found themselves at a crossroads.

In high school Howard did well enough academically to be selected class valedictorian and to be awarded a scholarship to UCLA, but he went primarily to appease his parents and squandered his freshman year. At an early age he wanted to be a recording artist. He ripped the labels off of 45s and wrote “Howard Kaylan” on them, the name he assumed at eighteen. He spent too much time with his show on the little-heard campus radio station where he regularly interviewed Mark in the guise of various English rock stars traveling through town. “Van Morrison, my cousin from Ireland,” got the most listener calls. The Crossfires were all enrolled in college, except for Mark, who was still in high school. Howard was the only one at a top university.

As winners of the Revelaire Club’s Battle of the Bands contest, the Crossfires played regularly on Friday and Saturday nights at the Redondo Beach nightclub, earning $120 a night split six ways. Usually they played their own sets, but at times they also backed up vocal groups like the Coasters, Righteous Brothers, and Sonny and Cher. Al and Don were now married. Al had a child and Don had one on the way, and they needed to make more money. With no momentum or interest—the two singles the group had recorded failed to become hits—it was agreed that the band would break up.

After a set, they were about to climb the stairs to the club’s office to submit their resignation, but the two owners got to them first. Reb Foster was a popular LA DJ who booked the acts. His cousin, Bill Utley, took care of the business. They brought the Crossfires to their office for a meeting with two men who were starting a new label. The resignation was quickly pocketed. Lee Lasseff and Ted Feigin had worked as record promotion men, for Liberty and London, respectively. They didn’t have a name for their label yet, but wanted to sign the Crossfires. They were impressed with the band’s cover of the Byrds’ (Bob Dylan-penned) “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which was then in the top ten. Al had recently purchased a twelve-string guitar so he could get the same sound as on the record. Lee and Ted thought that folk rock would be big, and they wanted the group to record another of Bob Dylan’s songs to release as their debut single.

It was nice to have the interest, but realistically, this wasn’t an offer from one of the established labels. The new label was named White Whale because Ted Feigin loved Moby Dick. He named the publishing company Ishmael after the book’s protagonist sailor, and a later publishing company, Pequod, after the whaling ship. Lee and Ted’s interest was a way for the band members to postpone giving up the rock ’n’ roll dream and assuming adult responsibilities.

In a subsequent meeting at the club, Reb and Bill offered to be the group’s managers. The bandmates were too naïve to question them. Reb thought they needed a new name, not one linked to the passé surfing craze. The band suggested the Half Dozen and the Six Pack. Reb didn’t think those would work if, say, a member left the band and wasn’t replaced. He suggested the Turtles; it was an animal name, like the Byrds. He thought the “tles”—also in the Beatles—sounded British, and that they would have more appeal if record buyers thought they were a new British band. The group went along with it, but weren’t fond of the name. They thought Reb was making fun of the way they looked, that they were slow and clunky. (It was also a name that was strongly considered for the group that became the Monkees.) The next weekend when the Crossfires announced their name change, they were booed at the club.

In keeping with Lee and Ted’s interest in “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Howard chose Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and suggested the band record it in a style similar to that of the Zombies. Los Angeles’ four major pop stations added the record to their playlists in mid-July. A few weeks later it hit the national charts. On August 7, when the record was in the top ten locally, the Turtles played their first big show as one of the opening acts for Herman’s Hermits at the Rose Bowl, which drew 35,000 kids. A few days later they played with the Hermits in San Diego. In San Francisco for their third appearance with the Hermits—at the Civic Auditorium—they were turned away from the Fairmont Hotel, where they had reservations, because of their uncommonly long hair. Utley was able to extract $200 from the hotel manager before making accommodations elsewhere.

The Turtles flew out of Los Angeles on Sunday, August 15, to join the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars. As the plane soared, they saw the smoke from the burning buildings in the Watts Riots. They would be joining Tom Jones, Peter and Gordon, the Shirelles, Brian Hyland, Ronnie Dove, Billie Jo Royal, and Mel Carter.

They checked in at the Hilton in Chicago prior to the Caravan’s arrival. Most of the hotel guests were attending the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The number of troops joining the war in Vietnam was escalating. The longhaired Turtles rankled these vets and were stared at everywhere they went in the hotel. One veteran scornfully told them, “I lost my arm defending you!”

Chuck almost got into a fight with them: “These VFW guys surrounded us and called us ‘slime’ and ‘sluts,’ and told us when they were done drinking that night they’d come back down and shoot us.” The Turtles were among the few American longhaired rock bands with a hit on the charts, and much of the country wasn’t comfortable with the new hairstyles. They were spat upon, called “girls,” and sworn at.

Al walked to the park across the street to take it all in. He wanted to take a picture of the hotel, of his hotel room, of the Chicago skyline. He got mugged. That night at McCormick Place, the Turtles played their two songs in the show. They were the only longhaired band on the tour. All of the other acts used the tour backup band, Jimmy Ford and the Executives. Three of its members later formed Chicago. The Turtles were paid $2,000 a week.

Upon boarding the Caravan bus the next day, Mark and Howard were feeling particularly appreciated, as their seating assignments were in the hip area, in the back of the bus. They sat next to the two biggest stars on the tour: Howard was next to Gordon Waller of Peter and Gordon, Mark was behind him next to Tom Jones. Jones had recently been in the top ten with “It’s Not Unusual.” British Invasion exponents Peter and Gordon had six Top 30 hits, including a number one the previous summer with “A World Without Love.” Significantly more girls had congregated outside of their windows than the others. The girls were flush with excitement. Tom was talking to the exhilarated girls outside, but they couldn’t hear him through the glass window. As Tom stroked himself, he said, “Oh, you love me darlin’. You’d love to suck on Wendell, wouldn’t you? Oh, he’s gettin’ a rise out of you, there.” It wasn’t hard for Howard to guess what Wendell was.

Brian Hyland, a clean-looking teen idol who had last been in the top ten three years prior to this with “Sealed With a Kiss,” passed on advice about the girls congregating outside of the bus. He told the newcomers to pay more attention to the straight-faced girls in the back pretending not to be fans, as they were the ones more willing to have sex than the smiling ones up front.

As the bus got rolling to the next show in Nashville, these showbiz vets gave them the lay of the land. It was a great feeling, like being at camp. To save money, the Caravan stayed in hotels every other evening, which meant that the alternating nights were spent sleeping on the bus. Howard and Mark revised their opinion of the nice-guy tour director when they learned from Gordon and Tom that, as bigger stars, they would sleep stretched out on their seats, which meant that Howard and Mark ended up sleeping on the floor below. At night, on the floor, they waved to each other.

All the Turtles were shocked at the uninhibited behavior of the people on the tour, especially the interracial coupling. Peter Asher, Gordon Waller, and Tom Jones’ manager Gordon Mills were having affairs with three of the black girls in the Shirelles. Ronnie, a large black man who was the Shirelles’ road manager, presented the Turtles with their first exposure to a homosexual. Ronnie was good at breaking the tension. He had a riding crop that he used to flick. Howard: “He’d address Mark, ‘Hey, Sophie Tucker, you there with the hair and the belly.’ Snap! ‘Sit down, Honey.’ Snap! Snap!” Sophie Tucker—who was fat—was billed as the Last of the Red-Hot Mamas and was one of the most popular singers from earlier in the century.

“He was always saying, ‘Don’t get grand on us,’” Mark said. “Meaning, don’t let it go to your head. It was a nice way of reminding us to keep our newfound success in perspective. Between leaving the theater and getting to the bus, we would have to be guarded because the girls were constantly ripping at our clothes. We were surrogates for the Beatles. He’d say, ‘They’re even chasing Sophie Tucker tonight!’”

After a show in Connecticut, Jim Tucker wasn’t so lucky. “Some girls pushed me over an embankment and I landed on a park lawn,” he recollected. “The next thing I knew I was lying on my back, my shirt was ripped, my pants were down around my knees, and a girl was running up the street with my guitar.”

The Turtles became friends with Mel Carter, a good-looking black gospel singer turned pop crooner who was high on the charts with “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.” “I went to a predominantly white restaurant with Mel Carter in Alabama,” said Chuck. “A 70-year-old man picked up his plate of beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy and threw it at us. It went down Mel’s front. We were called ‘White Niggers.’ The cops came and took us away.”

The Turtles had wanted to appear hip, so they had told Mel that they had smoked marijuana. When the Crossfires played in Hollywood, they tried to enhance their appeal by announcing from the stage, “We are hot because we smoke pot!” But they didn’t. After a show in Syracuse, New York, Howard, Mark, Don, and Al joined Mel in his hotel room. Mel filled his pipe from what must have been a pound of grass held in a large plastic bag. He passed his pipe to them, but he could see they weren’t inhaling properly. “I’m going to give you the super toke,” he said, “to make sure you get high.” He took a large hit from his pipe, exhaled into each of their mouths, and then clamped his hand over each of their faces to make sure they kept it in. After some coughing, they got the hang of it. He shared with them the tricks of the trade, like wedging a towel into the bottom of the door to the hallway and burning Aqua Velva aftershave in an ashtray to disguise the smell.

Back in their room, the Turtles shared new sensations like excited kids. They sampled different sodas and candies. They adjusted the color knobs on the TV set they were watching to distort the picture. Without the others realizing it, Al made his way outside and onto the third-story ledge where he knocked on their windows and on those of other guests. The Turtles quickly realized that they wanted to be in that state all of the time, but they had to be discreet.

While members of hit rock acts were pulling in much more than an average wage, few were making the big bucks, as Bill Utley explained: “The Turtles bridged a couple of eras. When they started only the Beatles were making big money, because prior to the Beatles, the groups weren’t paid that much. I used to put the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and groups like that on stage for $200 a night. The Righteous Brothers were an expensive act at $300 a night. The Turtles were part of the vanguard of developing the concert business. But there weren’t $40,000 dates. The goal at the time was to bring the Turtles up to $750 a night.”

On top of that, there was the belief that rock music played by musicians with Beatle-styled hair was a fad. Even the Beatles didn’t think their success would last. As early as 1965, Ringo was contemplating opening a chain of ladies hair salons after “the bubble burst.” Utley’s approach was to make hay while the sun shined, which meant that the Turtles worked. It was also good exposure for selling records. “Our lives were taken from us like we were public property,” said Chuck. “We just went and went and went, one tour after another. When we were in town, we were recording. It drained everybody.”

After another multi-act bus tour, Wrap Up ’65, the group took to the road, Utley often losing his way behind the wheel of a station wagon pulling a U-Haul trailer. They went out for six-week stints, mostly to the Midwest, playing in small bars and dilapidated dance halls that were equipped for big bands but not rock ’n’ roll groups. They shared double hotel rooms. The group made between $600 and $800 a night, and were sometimes expected to provide three hours of music. On many nights, after packing their gear, they had to drive hundreds of miles to the next gig.

“Because of our long hair we suffered a lot of indignity, especially in the South and Midwest where people were very conservative,” said Don. “They saw longhairs on TV, but it was a different matter when they came to their town where all the kids had crew cuts. We stood out real bad. We went into restaurants and the whole place would go silent, and they would stare at us.”

White Whale had an impressive launch, selling 550,000 copies of the “It Ain’t Me Babe” single. The Turtles success caused them to be lumped into the folk rock genre. Folk singers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger inspired Bob Dylan and other performers of the early 1960s folk boom. Many of their songs were concerned with political or social topics, providing a template for the folk rock, or protest rock movement in 1965/1966.

The “folk rock” label originally applied to the Byrds after they hit with “Mr. Tambourine Man.” It described a Beatles-styled rock band performing an arrangement of what was originally an acoustic folk song with electric guitars. Bob Dylan preceded the Turtles into the charts with “Like a Rolling Stone.” Sonny and Cher’s music was similarly characterized. The Turtles needed another folk rock hit and met with P. F. Sloan, a musical prodigy who had been performing on hit records and producing and writing hits while still in his teens. For a time he was labeled the “West Coast Dylan” before he flamed out in 1967.

At Hollywood’s Crescendo Tiger’s Tail where the band was rehearsing for their evening performance, Sloan presented the Turtles with a few songs. They thought the lyrics of “Eve of Destruction” were too extreme and passed. (After Barry McGuire’s version topped the charts, they recorded it for their debut album, which sold an impressive 100,000 copies.) Instead, the Turtles chose “Let Me Be,” an expression of sullen adolescent independence, which barely made it into the national Top 30. Even though the group recorded more tracks that fit comfortably in this genre—Howard rose to the occasion by penning “House of Pain”—their commitment wasn’t genuine.

The Crossfires had always been a fun band. During one of their original songs, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Mark donned a monster mask and ran through the crowd. As white, middle-class boys, they had difficulty identifying with protest songs, and guessing correctly that the genre was waning, opted for a pop rock sound similar to New York’s Lovin’ Spoonful. Sloan provided the song for their new direction as well, with “You Baby.” To complement this shift, White Whale had them jettison their grungy, Rolling Stones-look for the You Baby album cover. The Turtles wore sport jackets, ties, and turtlenecks and were each embraced by a youthful model.

One reason to go to college was to have a deferment from being drafted in the military. As full-time rock stars, the Turtles no longer had that reprieve. Around the time “You Baby” was released, Howard and Mark were ordered to report to the draft board. Before the Selective Service Administration wised up, it was easier to avoid being drafted for military service, but it still took a great deal of effort. Herb Cohen was a distant cousin of Howard’s who managed folk clubs and performers. For many years he was Frank Zappa’s manager. Howard met Herb at Frank’s house—Frank was out of town—to seek ways they could prepare themselves for their physical and mental examinations. Howard and Mark implemented many of the suggestions, which included taking a lot of drugs, not sleeping, and refraining from bathing. All of the Turtles, in their own ways, avoided serving—as did a majority of those Americans in hit rock bands.

By the time the Turtles played the Phone Booth in New York in March of 1966, “You Baby” had risen to number two on LA’s top radio stations, but hadn’t yet made the charts in New York. One night Bob Dylan was seated in the front row, wearing dark sunglasses and a polka dot shirt. The Turtles ended their set with “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Afterwards they were paraded past his table to meet him. “Bob was bent over, almost comatose,” according to Howard. “We were shocked at his condition. When it came to my turn, Bob said, ‘I really liked that last song you did. It had a nice ring to it.’” Before Howard could respond, Bob passed out into his plate of pasta.

Don was the first to exhibit the effects of the pressure they were feeling. He had an artistic nature and was more sensitive than the others. In addition, both he and Al were married with kids but unable to resist the lure of their willing female fans, which added to the tension he was experiencing. Years before Led Zeppelin and the Who set the standard for hotel room demolition, the Turtles came under scrutiny when, during a domestic argument, Don’s wife heaved a lamp through the window of the Fremont Hotel room to the street below. Coupled with Chuck’s transgression of prowling the lobby in his bare feet, the Turtles were banned from appearing in Las Vegas, and rock groups became unwelcome performers at the downtown showrooms for many years.

During this period Don described himself as going “berserk.” He became paranoid. There was an episode in the car on the way to Philadelphia. Sitting in the front seat, he accused Mark of staring at the back of his head, and then accused all the band members of looking at him, saying that they were all against him. Hours later, during a run through at Jerry Blavat’s TV show, The Discophonic Scene, he turned on Jim Tucker and both had to be restrained from fighting.

At the end of May, the Turtles were in the middle of a session at Western Recorders when Don quit the band. “There were a number of reasons why I left the band,” he said. “There were the undercurrents of all the wives and girlfriends pressuring us about whether or not we were sleeping with groupies. There was the road weariness of all the dives we were playing in. For my own self, I always felt a pressure of trying to lift anything we did on record up to a higher artistic quality.”

Don also cited the friction between Al and Howard over the songwriting. In the Crossfires, Al was the dominant writer, composing mostly surf instrumentals. In the Turtles, Lee and Ted favored Howard’s compositions. On the first two Turtles’ albums, Howard had seven songwriting credits to Al’s one. Howard was also the writer on three of the Turtles’ first four single B-sides.

I met with Don on a number of occasions and found him intelligent and friendly. Some of the things he said made me think that there was still the residue of the mental state that Howard and Mark had referred to. “When we got to the ‘You Baby’ record a lot of things happened that did a lot of damage to me personally,” Don said. “I had been working on a syncopated style of playing drums, and I wanted to use this beat on ‘You Baby.’ It did end up on the record, but I had to go through a lot of grief. The writer P. F. Sloan came to our rehearsal, listened to the way we were playing the song and told us that it was no good, that he had a track already recorded with the Mamas and Papas singing. He could merely erase their vocals and put ours on.

“I said, ‘Nobody’s playing the drums for me.’ He said, ‘Hal Blaine is on the track and he’s the greatest drummer in the world.’ He got furious and stormed out. Lee and Ted said, ‘Nice going Murray, that’s your songwriter, now what are you going to do?’ The record was a big hit on the West Coast, but only got to seventeen on the Cash Box chart because it didn’t get much airplay on the East Coast. Lee and Ted told me, ‘It’s because the kids on the East Coast don’t like the way you play drums.’ It changed everything for me. I started thinking I was a lousy drummer, that I was holding the band back. I started getting nuts about it, and it ate on me.” Interestingly enough, when I conducted the interviews for the Turtles’ documentary, both Sloan and producer Bones Howe also took credit for coming up with the drum arrangement.

The Turtles didn’t want to see Don go. He was the cutest and most English-looking of the group, and he resembled Paul McCartney. Whatever teen appeal they had diminished when he left. “Playing as the Crossfires was the best time we ever had together,” Don recalled. “We double-dated, we rehearsed once or twice a week. We couldn’t get enough of trying new things, of hoping and dreaming together. We were very close. When we started doing the road shows as the Turtles, we were together so much that when we got back to Los Angeles in between tours, we’d never even see each other.”

Don departed before it was apparent that the Turtles’ fourth single was a flop. Lee and Ted wanted the Turtles to record a group-composed song so they could reap the extra income from the publishing. It would take more than a master detective to discover why as unlikely a song as “Grim Reaper of Love” was chosen to follow the poppy “You Baby.” The droning raga would have been well suited to the soundtrack of an Indian horror movie. Chuck and Al wrote it after a gig in Oregon. Al had just acquired a Coral Electric Sitar, a guitar configured to approximate the sound of the Indian instrument. It’s an interesting record, and was selected probably because it was the band’s best composition at the time.

Gene Clark, who had been the primary vocalist and songwriter in the Byrds, told drummer Johny Barbata about the job opening. Like the Turtles, Johny had started out in a surf band, the Sentinals. Unlike Don Murray, he wasn’t much to look at. His audition for the Turtles was so impressive that they knew right away he would be an asset. In addition to being an astute technician, Barbata played with flair, twirling his drumsticks. Coupled with Mark’s tambourine acrobatics, the Turtles amped up their showmanship.

Chuck was the next to leave. His reasons echoed Don’s: “In high school with the Night Riders and the Crossfires, and even in the first year and a half with the Turtles, we were really a happy group. We did a lot of things together. But then the demand on our time caught up with us. We could never get away from each other, and we never had enough time for ourselves. I left because I no longer felt part of the group off-stage, and if I wasn’t part of them off-stage, I couldn’t be part of them on-stage. It was a result of everything we were doing. I was stressed out.”

By early October the group’s fifth single, “Outside Chance” (composed by Warren Zevon), hadn’t even made the Top 100, and Chuck threw in the towel. Mark and Howard pointed out that Chuck’s departure was amiable. He wanted to go back to college and get involved in a catering business. They also thought that Johny’s assertive drumming might have challenged Chuck’s ability. At the time most hit rock bands relied on session players to provide the instrumental backing while recording, but not the respected Turtles.

The Turtles didn’t get the recognition for their musical chops, but they were solid. “I went to one recording date, for ‘Let Me Be,’ and I was very impressed with them,” P. F. Sloan said. “The bass sound particularly was great, different from any of the groups I had heard before. Their electric guitar sounds were unique, they were really exciting, much more so than other groups of the time.”

Bill Utley was also complimentary: “Chuck Portz put down a good, heavy bass line. He used to hit those strings like he was shooting arrows. I thought Don Murray was an excellent drummer. Jim Tucker was a good-looking guy who did a good job of playing rhythm guitar. I had a lot of other groups approach me and want to know how the Turtles got their sound, but they couldn’t duplicate it, even with more musicians.”

Howard Kaylan may well have been the best singer in an American rock band of the period. His exceptional voice impressed Robert Wood, his high school choir teacher, who remembered decades later Howard’s soliloquy from the school’s presentation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. As a non-player, Mark Volman’s importance might not have been apparent. He provided a high harmony, similar to the roles that David Crosby furnished in the Byrds and Graham Nash in the Hollies. (Although Nash strummed a guitar live, mostly it was unamplified.) Mark’s humorous antics contributed substantially to the group’s unique personality.

As much as Chip Douglas—formerly with Gene Clark’s group—was an apt replacement on bass, with Don and Chuck gone, the Turtles were transitioning from the tight and familiar high school band they once were into a business enterprise, into a profession. The Turtles attempted to get back to the “You Baby” sound with “Can I Get to Know You Better,” their third single composed by P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri. Despite being a superb record, it was the group’s third flop in a row.

The Turtles pushed Lee and Ted to make a deal with Koppelman-Rubin and Associates, the production company that had been successful at sustaining a string of seven straight top ten hits for the Lovin’ Spoonful. The producers assigned the unproven Joe Wissert to oversee the recording of the group’s next single, “Happy Together.” The song was composed by Alan Gordon and Garry Bonner, who had been members of the Magicians, an unsuccessful Greenwich Village band signed to Koppelman-Rubin. “Happy Together” had been making the rounds and had been turned down by other artists, but the Turtles liked it.

“It was just a simple, scratchy demonstration record,” Howard said, “singing accompanied by a guitar and somebody keeping time by slapping his thighs. The publishing company flew the writers out to Los Angeles to play the song for us, and it sounded exactly the same as the demo, except for the scratches.” The Turtles made it a part of their live set, and as they played it they made adjustments in the arrangement. Chip had a lot to do with it, helping to arrange the vocals, brass, and woodwinds during the recording in mid-December.

Chip’s involvement was no secret, and when the Turtles performed at the Whisky A Go-Go in Hollywood later that month, Mike Nesmith approached him about being the Monkees’ next producer even though he hadn’t produced before. In the Turtles, Chip was making $150 a week. Nesmith promised him a payday of over $100,000 for their next album. Chip had already started working with the Monkees when he left the Turtles in early February 1967, shortly after appearing with the group on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV show. His place was filled by Jim Pons, the bass player in the Leaves, a group best known for their hit “Hey Joe.” The Turtles immediately liked him: he was low-key, warm, and friendly. Pons’ first recording session was in early March for “She’d Rather Be With Me.”

Jim Pons encouraged a spiritual consciousness in the band. He led discussions on the philosophy of self-discovery and leading a spiritual life, as well as on such topics as psychedelic drugs, Eastern religions, Scientology, and transcendental meditation. Pons also brought an element of diplomacy to the Turtles in dealing with White Whale. On tour, Pons whiled away the hours making collages of photos cut from pornographic magazines. “Being in the Turtles was a strange coexistence of the spiritual and the hedonistic,” he noted.

“Happy Together” knocked the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” out of the number one slot on March 25, 1967, and remained there for three weeks. It was climbing the chart in Britain when a tour was planned for early June. “Happy Together” made it to number twelve in Britain, which pleased the Turtles primarily because that meant that the Beatles had probably heard their record. They still had not met their idols, although Howard and Jim came close.

On the evening of August 28, 1966, after the Turtles performance at the Whisky, Howard drove Jim and his housemate, ex-Beach Boy David Marks, to a party for the Beatles at their rented house on Curson Terrace in the Hollywood Hills. In the traffic crawl outside the house, Marks talked back to a policeman, causing the car to be searched. The police claimed they found a marijuana roach and some seeds in the trunk of Howard’s two-day-old Pontiac GTO. In the 1960s possession of marijuana was considered a felony offense. Howard claimed the marijuana was planted, but all three were arrested, missed the party, and spent an anxious night in jail.

The Turtles arrived at Kennedy Airport late in the evening on May 30, 1967, after having played a Memorial Day weekend at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City where circus act Antalek’s Chimps opened for them. They were exhausted. Although their flight wasn’t for seven hours, Utley wouldn’t pay for hotel rooms and insisted they sleep on seats in the lounge. Howard had words with Bill, whose temper flared. He swore at Howard, called him “ungrateful,” and slammed him up against the glass window.

They flew to London on an Air India flight that Howard swears permitted live chickens as part of the carry-on baggage. They were met at the airport by Allan McDougall, their publicist. He took them to see Steve Sanders, an American photographer who had been a roadie for the Mamas and Papas and was now living in London. He served them tea. The night before, John Lennon had used a red ink pen to draw a picture of a girl on Steve’s wall. The Turtles were so excited that Lennon had just been there that they posed for pictures with the signed illustration.

They made a round of the hip clubs and ended up at the Speakeasy, arriving after midnight. The Beatles had spent the evening in De Lane Lea Recording Studios working on “It’s All Too Much,” a track that appeared on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr were ensconced in the primo booth by the time the Turtles showed up and were introduced to them. To the Turtles, the Beatles were acting strange, as though they were on LSD. Paul was crawling underneath tables taking pictures up girls’ dresses. Jim Pons was so transfixed watching John Lennon nod back and forth into the flame of a candle on the table that it took him a while to realize that he was sitting next to Paul. John Lennon was known to insult people, especially when he was drunk, and Jim Tucker took the brunt of his barbs. Brian Jones introduced Howard to Jimi Hendrix. The two drank cognac and ate spinach omelets, but the unfamiliar combination was too much for Howard, who threw up on Jimi.

It was a whirlwind: a handful of club and ballroom dates, press interviews, radio and TV appearances, and clothes shopping. Their UK label, Decca Records, hosted a press reception for them with Jeff Beck and Lulu in attendance. Allan took them to the flat he shared with Graham Nash. Allan also did publicity for Graham’s group the Hollies. Graham enthralled them by playing an advance tape of the Beatles’ new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Howard encapsulated the trip: “It was all we imagined London to be, but more so. Donovan was at Graham Nash’s house sitting on a rug with incense burning and big hookah pipes and hash all over the place. Stoned gypsy girls were twirling around in tie-died dresses and lace curtains.” Jim Pons was more succinct: “The Beatles telling me they liked my records. How much better can it get?”

A combination of jet lag, little sleep, and smoking hash lowered their resistance, and both Jim Tucker and Howard became ill, resulting in a number of commitments being cancelled. On Sunday, June 4, the Turtles played a good show at the Speakeasy. Mark remembered Jimi wearing the “eye coat” that later appeared on the cover of his debut American album. The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones, a known blues fanatic, told the Turtles how much he liked their California harmony sound. He took still photos and filmed their appearance with his movie camera. Also in attendance: Peter and Gordon, members of the Who, Moody Blues, and Procol Harum. As a result of their visibility in Britain, “She’d Rather Be With Me” rose to number four on the UK charts. Jimi Hendrix commented on the single in Melody Maker: “They don’t need all these instruments, because their voices sound very good.”

Jim Tucker: “I played my last job in England. We were always on the road, we were always recording, we didn’t have very much of our own free time. When I was on the road, all I ever thought about was coming back and being with my friends. I didn’t care for the English food. I lived on chips [French fries] and avocados. Howard and I got sick and were both flat on our backs. I woke up one morning and was feeling better, walked over to the window, and realized how tired I was, that I didn’t want to do this any longer.” When members of the Turtles arrived at the airport to return to the States, they were surprised to see Jim Tucker taking an earlier flight back to Los Angeles with Reb Foster.

Howard and Mark attributed Tucker leaving the band to his realization that the Beatles weren’t gods, that they did stupid things just like they did. They both described Tucker as having “flipped out.” Howard was more specific: “He saw his idols crumble before his eyes.” It also may have been that as music evolved, as a rhythm guitarist, he wasn’t involved creatively as much as the others. Even though the Turtles had a number one hit, much of the time they were still playing in dumpy clubs.

When the group landed in Florida to fulfill two weeks of contracted dates, they were disoriented. They hadn’t slept, and they had gone from the cold of London to humidity and temperatures in the high eighties. There was also the emotional impact of not knowing what happened to Tucker. They were told he was sick, that he needed some time off. The issue of his future with the group wasn’t discussed. The group had to perform the remaining dates as a quintet. Because Al wasn’t a flashy lead guitarist, he didn’t get recognition for his playing. He was so skilled as a rhythm player that he was aptly able to cover Jim Tucker’s parts as well as his own, and the Turtles never replaced Tucker.

With Tucker gone, not only did the group lose their second best looking member—next to Murray—but another link to the high school band that they had been. The next two singles made the top twenty. “You Know What I Mean” and “She’s My Girl” were composed by Bonner and Gordon and produced by Joe Wissert. Interestingly, the four Bonner and Gordon hits were about imagined or dreamed relationships, not ones actually experienced. “She’s My Girl,” which Don Murray considered the best record the Turtles ever made, was deemed a disappointment when it only managed to get to 14 on Billboard’s chart. The Turtles turned down Bonner and Gordon’s “Celebrity Ball,” a song that became a hit for Three Dog Night in 1970 as “Celebrate.”

Koppelman-Rubin extracted a big cut for providing their production services. The Turtles, now more popular than ever and flexing their worth, were whining about wanting to produce themselves. Lee and Ted thought it would be a good idea to unburden themselves of Koppelman-Rubin and give the Turtles a shot.

“To some extent there was an ongoing crisis of identity with the Turtles,” noted Bill Utley. “If the Turtles had been comfortable with who and what they were, I think they could have been even bigger.” There was something charming about the Turtles dedication to the Beatles. They had their own sound, they were making great records, they had a slew of hits—but they wanted to be the Beatles.

It started in the Crossfires days, when they grew their hair long. After a show they went to a coffee shop or bowling alley and affected English accents. They knew they couldn’t pass off being the Beatles, who were too well known, but they could be a less visible group like Gerry and the Pacemakers or the Dave Clark Five. They knew all their names and enjoyed the surprised reaction from waitresses who thought their customers were celebrities. People asked them for their autographs, and they got free drinks. The group knew what to order, too, confusing their server by requesting “white tea with a bickie [a biscuit, or cookie] on the side so we can dunk it.”

In August 1966, when the Turtles found themselves in Miami with a few days off, they went to the Bahamas and explored the island by motorbike looking for the locations where the Beatles filmed Help! Their mentality became, “If the Beatles can do it, so can we.” A month later when the Beatles’ Revolver was released, they purchased a portable record player in order to listen to it. To get as close into the Beatles’ mindset as possible, they took the drugs they imagined the Beatles had. They draped scarves over the hotel room lamps, lit incense, turned the TV set to a snow pattern, and congregated into a group circle.

Later, when the Beatles formed their own label, Apple, the Turtles formed Blimp. When the Beatles opened the Apple Boutique, the Turtles rented the building that formerly housed Thee Experience nightclub so their wives could open their own clothing store. The impact of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album pushed them into creating psychedelic recordings, commencing with sessions booked early in January 1968.

“We were such lovers of the Beatles,” said Howard, “and the way they were able to walk the line and have hit records and still release concept albums, that we wanted our next album to be a concept album big time.” Many of their peers were making music that got played on the more album-oriented FM radio. “Because we were having hits, our records were not considered serious music,” Howard reasoned. “They were thought of as bubble gum music, and we didn’t see any way out from being considered AM for the rest of our lives.”

As much as 1967 was a big year for the Turtles, it was also a big year for the Doors, who had opened for the Turtles the previous year. The Turtles took note that the credit for writing, arranging, and performing the songs was attributed to “The Doors.” With the Turtles lineup in place a year now, the members were feeling very democratic and adopted the Doors model. “We wanted to minimize our egos,” Howard said. “We wanted to go for a harmonious group feeling.”

In the unlikely setting of Chess Studios in Chicago, the group sat in lotus positions on Indian rugs. Incense was lit, drugs consumed, and Indian instruments appropriated: Al grasped the sitar, Howard the tamboura, and Jim the sarod. At times Jim even thought he was the Walrus, just like John Lennon in Magical Mystery Tour. By the time the Turtles added the voices from a cobbled together choir of thirty kids on one of the three songs, they actually believed they had tapped into the energy of the cosmos. Despite how they were feeling, the result, while interesting, was deemed unreleasable by White Whale.

“Sound Asleep,” the one Turtles-produced track issued as a single, included real and manufactured sound effects, like quaking ducks, an orchestra of sawing logs, and a falling tree. Hidden in the mix was a sax playing “Oh Beautiful” and the Turtles singing “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.” In mid-March 1968 it had reached its highest point on Billboard’s Hot 100, a commercial failure at 57. Oddly enough, a German language version, “Dondolo” by Rex Gildo, made the German top ten a year later.

On Thursday, April 4, the Turtles flew from Los Angeles to Chicago to start another tour, enjoying the fruits of success. The Turtles’ hits compilation, Golden Greats, had recently hit the top ten and was on the way to achieving gold record status (sales of 500,000). “We were living the fat life,” Howard recalled. “We took two floors at the Astor Tower, the same hotel where the Beatles stayed. We all had suites. The rooms were decorated in chrome, velvet and smoked glass. We had a white grand piano in the living room. We had food sent up from Maxim’s de Paris, which was in the basement. We had our own plane, a DC-3, and our two 24-hour limo drivers, Doc and George, waiting downstairs for us.” At their peak, the Turtles made between $3,500 and $5,000 a night.

That evening Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Because of the riots the following day, Friday evening’s attendance at the Cheetah Club was down. A thousand fans showed up, but three thousand had been expected. Howard and other members of the Turtles unwound by watching stag films. The next night’s show was cancelled, which was just as well since Howard was sick.

As if the social turmoil wasn’t enough, the Turtles were recoiling from the pressure of having the heads of their label clamoring for another song like “Happy Together.” On the outside the Turtles were these Happy Together guys—the purveyors of fun-spirited romantic pop songs—but inside they wanted to be artistic and creative. Feeling vulnerable on all sides, Howard retreated to his bedroom, sipped the chicken soup he had delivered from Mr. Chicken, and poured his anxiety into composing a parody of “Happy Together.” He copied the structure, inverted the melody, and exaggerated the teenage lyrics: “Gee I think you’re swell … you’re fab and gear, etcetera … I think I love you Elenore Freebish.” (Fab gear, already passé by 1968, was an expression used by the Beatles and other members of the British Invasion to refer to fabulous clothes.) He hoped Lee and Ted would find the effort so ridiculous, they would admit their folly and permit the Turtles to continue to follow in the Beatles’ psychedelic footsteps. But they didn’t get the joke, nor did record buyers.

Chip Douglas thought the melody was so strong, he convinced Howard to tone down the lyrics for the recording. Any insincerity remaining in the revised lyrics was obscured by Howard’s tender vocal and Chip’s fine production. “Elenore” is the band’s second best remembered and only self-composed hit, and was also the first hit to feature a moog synthesizer. It reached number six in the United States, and the top ten in England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where it was number one. In Britain, unlike in America, music fans preferred their own homegrown artists, which meant that American rock bands had few hits. With three big hits in Britain, the Turtles fared better than other American bands like the Byrds, Lovin’ Spoonful, Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Rascals, and Tommy James and the Shondells.

While the Turtles’ self-produced foray into psychedelia wasn’t fruitful, they were able to realize their concept album, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. They went back to their roots, and created a different act to represent each of the songs on the album. They looked upon it as their Sgt. Pepper’s. “The Beatles presented a variety show, ‘Come on in, folks, here’s the show!’ We did that,” said Mark. “It has an introduction song like theirs, ‘Tonight, the Battle of the Bands,’ and it fades into a harp which was our way of showing that this album was drug induced.” Few rock artists had followed with a Beatles-like concept album when The Battle of the Bands was released in November 1968, and none with an intended sense of humor.

Like the Beatles, the Turtles lived life on the road in a band cocoon, and concocted their own shared expressions, which resulted in the chanted “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea” (i.e. “come on, I wanna lay ya”). The songs weren’t all satirical and goofy. The album’s closer, “Earth Anthem,” was a serious song about ecology. The album contained two stellar tracks. Like “Elenore,” “You Showed Me” climbed to number six on Billboard’s chart, and benefitted from an accident. The Jim McGuinn-Gene Clark composition was recorded by the Byrds prior to their first hit, but never released. From having played in Gene Clark’s subsequent band, Chip knew the song. When he played it for the Turtles for them to consider recording, the bellows on his pump organ was broken, which meant that he could only play the up-tempo song at a slow speed. The song’s beauty and appeal was immediate to the Turtles, and they recorded it—at the lower tempo. The album only managed to get to 128 on Billboard’s album chart, adding to the Turtles’ frustration that White Whale could only effectively sell singles and not the album format that was now garnering respect among musicians and music fans.

“I’m Chief Kamanawanalea” was a showcase for their drummer, Johny Barbata. “On his best days, he was one of the greatest humans alive,” said Mark. “He would be funny and sing along to records with us. When we were at photo sessions he’d keep telling us, ‘Give ’em that knowing acid look.’ But he was also an egomaniac who was always berating the rest of the members of the band, especially Howard and me. He said we should lose weight, that we should dress better, that I should cut my hair. He felt we could be bigger if we weren’t slobs, if we cleaned up our appearance. Johny was always a good guy, but it was a side of his we didn’t like. It got so that the rest of the members wouldn’t ride with him to the gigs. He was in one car with one of our road managers, and we were in the other.”

Despite Johny’s encouragement, Mark and Howard’s collective weight grew to where it proved to be a liability in one daytime college performance. Cafeteria tables were braced together to form a makeshift stage, and Mark’s jumping caused it to implode. Johny Barbata: “It was just like in a cartoon, where the blanket goes into a hole in the floor and everything gets sucked in. The music was still playing, and Howard and Mark climbed out, still singing. Mark had a cut on his face. The crowd was laughing and applauding. It was great.”

“We started hanging out a lot with Spanky and Our Gang who lived in Chicago,” said Howard. “At that time Spanky made a devastating pot punch. Their drummer, John Seiter, became a very good friend of ours. We became so tight with him that our drummer wouldn’t even come around. Johny was very important to the Turtles, but we got tired of his goading, so we eased him out.” Johny was also looking to better himself. Returning to Los Angeles, he played the drums on albums by Dave Mason and Ry Cooder before joining Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Spanky and Our Gang’s music was similar to the Turtles, but they had fewer hits. They only had one top ten record, “Sunday Will Never Be the Same.” Because of the Gang’s clean image, when Seiter joined they nicknamed him “the Chief” to explain his very long hair—he wasn’t Indian.

The group’s producer used studio musicians on their records. “We were offering Seiter a chance to play on our records, to be one-fifth of the group, to participate in the writing and the producing and the touring,” said Howard. “It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. We looked upon the Turtles as a family, and a feeling of friendship and camaraderie was more important than the music we played. John Seiter is a wonderful human being, a real good soul singer and stuff, but he was never the drummer that Johny Barbata was. He was hired because he fit in so well that it was like he was already family.” When Seiter joined in February 1969, the Turtles were in the top ten with “You Showed Me.”

A renewed feeling of brotherhood permeated the new lineup. It was common for the band members to congregate in the middle of their tour bus and, after having smoked some grass, to collectively chant. This was not merely a ten-minute exercise, but one that often went on for hours. The various members settled into their own notes, and droning harmonies elevated the experience to an even higher plane.

No longer brash, impressionable teens, but world-wise adults in their early twenties, the search for a more valid identity compelled them to reject the former “slick Hollywood production” they were accustomed to in favor of a more artful approach. Collectively the Turtles had not heard a better rock album than The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. The album failed to chart on either side of the Atlantic when originally released in late 1968, but within a few years it was considered a classic, ranked at 252 in a 2003 poll of top albums conducted by Rolling Stone. The next best thing to being the Kinks, they reasoned, was to be produced by head-Kink Ray Davies himself—however far-fetched the fantasy was, as Ray hadn’t produced anybody but the Kinks. The Turtles were in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, to play at the Memorial University. Because they were the farthest east and closest to England that they would be, they called Ray and introduced themselves over the telephone. Much to their surprise, he agreed to produce them.

It was an odd weekend for the Turtles. The local hotels were booked, so the band was separated—for the first time. Mark and Howard shared rooms on the third floor of a frat house. Whether it was the drugs they had taken, or the strong Newfoundland Screech they had downed, they swear the place was haunted. They worked on their new concept album. “A number of the soldiers who returned home from Vietnam told us they would be alone at night in the jungle and find comfort in the ‘imagine me and you’ lyrics, and envisioned being happy together with their girlfriends back home,” Howard explained.

In thinking about the soldiers in Vietnam, they came up with a work about a returning quadriplegic who learns that it’s not what he has, but what’s in his heart that’s important. The concept was titled “Stump Boy”: “Stump Boy dun-dun-dun-dunt, he has no arms, he has no legs, he has nowhere to go now.” Only one track was completed, the potent “We Ain’t Gonna Party No More,” which graced the B-side of a later Turtles single. “Youth in Asia,” another song, was recorded by Flo & Eddie in 1975.

The Turtles considered Ray Davies to be one of the reigning geniuses of pop music, and there was so much idol worship on their part, they even wrote songs in the Kinks style. Ray had other reasons for coming to Los Angeles: he wanted to check up on why Warner Brothers Records was neglecting the Kinks, and he looked forward to the respite from his shaky marriage. He arrived in mid-April 1969 for a week of recording.

The Turtles were already wrestling with their unhip image when their management office received a hand-engraved invitation for the group to perform at the White House at Tricia Nixon’s Masked Ball on May 10. They were aware that the president’s youngest daughter had cited the group as her favorite in a magazine interview. The band wasn’t aligned with the politics of President Nixon’s administration and was inclined to reject the offer. Their managers presented a more reasonable context: they explained that it wasn’t political, it was comparable to performing before the Queen of England, and they should do it because they were Americans.

Like so many of the Turtles’ episodes, it gravitated toward the surreal. Tour manager Carlos Bernal: “We arrived the night before with the equipment. The Secret Service guys were not familiar with instrument cases, so during the inspection when they came to the trap case—the one that contained the snare drum and assorted smaller items like drum sticks and pedals—they turned it upside down, which set off the combination metronome/tuner. When they heard the rapid ticking, they thought it was a bomb and they all jumped back. They put us up against a wall. As they opened the trap case, the high pitch of the tuner went off and everybody hit the dirt. They took the device inside the White House. Ten minutes later they came back with it. It was soaking wet and the front plate had been peeled off. The next day we received a White House check for the cost.”

The Turtles were met at the airport, and each member was sequestered in his own chauffeured car with an American flag flying on the front. When they arrived at the White House, each Turtle was escorted to a holding lounge and given his own dossier to hold for security clearance. Afterward, they had the freedom to wander throughout the White House, as long as they didn’t go upstairs to the living quarters. They were given the Lincoln Library for a dressing room, and they prepared for the evening like they would any other, by snorting cocaine. According to Mark, “It was a fun party, they treated us nice, and the food was good. There were about 450 young adults, lots of Congressmen’s and Ambassadors’ kids, and boy were they wrecked.” Mark was, too: he fell off the small stage five times and almost got into a fight with Pat Nugent when he hit on his wife, President Lyndon Johnson’s youngest daughter Luci.

Tricia glowed with the genuine charm of a Cinderella. Her handheld mask sparkled with crystals. She was dating the recently elected Congressman from northern Los Angeles County, Barry Goldwater, Jr. Mark told him that he voted for him, but he hadn’t. The men were in tuxedos, the women in gowns. In order to make their (small) statement, the Turtles wore non-matching coats, and scarves instead of bow ties.

Inside the ballroom kids distributed SDS literature, which was a surprise as the Students for a Democratic Society was the most prominent and progressive left-wing activist organization, one at odds with the Nixon administration. The Temptations were also on the bill. That the Turtles were the first rock band to perform at the White House was overlooked at the time. Tricia sent each member of the Turtles a hand written thank-you note and a photo of the event. The Turtles’ co-manager, Jeff Wald, positioned his wife, singer Helen Reddy, in the center of the photo. She was two years away from her first hit record.

The Turtles were enough of a hit that one of the guests, the daughter from one of the heads of US Steel, asked them to play at a society party in Burlingame, California. It was there that Howard went “mental.” The Turtles played through five of the group’s biggest hits to almost no response. The guests were so caught up in socializing they gave scant attention to the music. Problems the Turtles were experiencing had been festering for a long time. Boom! Howard broke loose and heaved chairs, lounges, and umbrellas into the pool. Mark made an effort to cover for him, explaining it as part of the act. It was obvious that Howard’s actions had spoken for the whole band, but the others contained themselves. The set was cut short so that Howard could recompose. He quit the group then. He stayed home and took a lot of drugs.

“I never looked at myself as head of the band,” said Howard. “I always gave way to Al’s superior musical knowledge, or to a group vote of any kind. In the early days Chuck Portz used to call me the King Penguin because I strutted around the stage and the rehearsal halls like I knew what was happening, and everybody else better keep it down. But it was strictly a façade. In the Turtle years I felt quite helpless and alone. I was singing and fronting the band, but that was the band. I think probably deep down, psychologically, I knew that physically I had no business being there because I wasn’t good looking enough to be on the cover of a teen magazine like Peter Noone [Herman’s Hermits] or Mark Lindsay [Paul Revere & the Raiders]. I tried to make up for it in other ways, like singing my ass off.”

The “democracy” in the Turtles reached its peak with their new album. This was due to the collective response to business pressures and the fact that Howard had recently rejoined the band after having quit in an uncharacteristic squabble. With Howard gone, the rest of the members opted to continue sharing lead vocals, an opportunity they were not ready to give up when Howard returned. This diffused one of the strengths of the group—Howard’s voice—and that in the instance where they exist, the Howard-sung demos are more effective. Recording with Davies resumed on June 24. While the Turtle Soup title was inevitable, on the LP it turned out to be appropriate as the vocal diversity represented a true bouillabaisse.

The members were overly sensitive about the orchestral backing of their hits overshadowing their contribution as musicians. They were looking for more of an ensemble sound, similar to the Village Green Kinks. Without having conveyed this to Davies, Ray had prepared for an orchestra accompaniment similar to their 1967 hits. Consequently, they had Ray re-mix the album to the point where arranger Ray Pohlman’s orchestrations were in the background. That not only served to dilute their effectiveness, but to defeat the purpose of involving Davies in the first place. Despite some fine recordings, it was their worst selling album since 1966’s You Baby.

Though the Turtles’ albums usually didn’t get recognized for their artistic merit, British writer Tom Hibbert’s definitive reference book, The Perfect Collection, referred to Turtle Soup as “one of the five very best albums of the Sixties.” While this stance is certainly a subjective one, it was indeed a very special album for the Turtles, and it also ended up being the last album the group ever completed.

The Turtles still used Chicago as a Midwest hub, but with the hits having dried up they could no longer afford the Astor Tower. They now shared double rooms at the Lake Shore Drive Holiday Inn. Gone was their private plane. They now traveled in two Ford station wagons. Had there been a hit single when the album was released in late October 1969, there probably would have been more fortitude to survive the various problems that were confronting the group.

As a consequence of the influence of marijuana on the members’ judgment, these otherwise smart individuals weren’t as sharp as they should have been when it came to taking care of business. They were very trusting of those in their inner circle, and were not too scrutinizing when they were presented with documents to sign. A case in point was their trusted road manager Dave Krambeck. Looking for a way to improve his position, towards the end of 1967 Krambeck schemed to take over the management of the Turtles, a move that resulted in the group having eight managers in a little over two years, and a slow unraveling of their career.

Originally Bill Utley (1) traveled with the Turtles. He then hired Krambeck to be the group’s road manager. Krambeck told the Turtles that Utley was screwing them over. By this time they were tired of Utley’s paternalism and his demanding tour schedule, and were inclined to believe Krambeck. Krambeck told Utley that the group didn’t like him and didn’t want him to be their manager any longer. He colluded with White Whale, who were more than willing to get rid of the shrewd Utley in favor of someone—Krambeck—they could manipulate. Krambeck (2) worked out an agreement to buy the Turtles out of their current management contract for $250,000. He then got the Turtles to sign off on getting an advance from White Whale to make the initial $50,000 installment to Reb Foster Associates. Krambeck was in way over his head. Unbeknownst to the band, he sold half of his management of the Turtles to a New York firm, Martin Philips Management (3), for $13,000. Krambeck told them the contract was with a new talent agency. He soon missed the second installment payment to Reb Foster, and disappeared to Mexico with $27,000 of the Turtles road earnings and, temporarily, with Jim Pons’ wife. What followed was a succession of road managers who became the group’s manager: Rick Soderlind (4) and Charlie Galvin (5), who had married Spanky.

Because of the missed payment, Reb Foster Associates initiated a lawsuit against the Turtles for $2,500,000. Michael Philips Management also initiated a lawsuit for commissions of $85,000. Soderlind recommended attorney Rosalie Morton to sort things out. The Turtles thought they needed clearer heads to make sense of what was going on, so they cut out peyote (mescaline), magic mushrooms (psilocybin), and THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) from their regular drug regimen.

Initially the Turtles thought Morton was great. She was very protective of them and became their de facto manager. She arranged for them to hire a business management company that collected a fee of 5 percent of their earnings. She suggested that they stop hiring their friends to manage them and get a “class organization.” She recommended Campbell-Silver-Cosby (6).

Roy Silver managed TV star Bill Cosby, then in production on The Bill Cosby Show for NBC. At the time, Bruce Post Campbell was producing a movie. The company also had a record label, Tetragrammaton, for which Deep Purple recorded their first three albums. The Turtles met with Roy Silver and liked him a lot, so they signed. It soon became apparent that Roy didn’t have the time to manage the Turtles, so he assigned them to others at the firm. Within months Bill Cosby left, and the Turtles did shortly thereafter, preferring to go with two of the managers they had worked with, Jeff Wald and Ron DeBlasio (7), who broke away and started their own company.

Rosalie Morton revealed herself to be a loose cannon. She launched a costly and aggressive legal strategy that Mark and Howard said “ruined our career.” Carlos Bernal estimated that they were on the road 80 percent of the time: “We’d be out on the road for three or four weeks, and come home for a week or less. Sometimes we only had enough time to change our clothes, turn in the money, and get new contracts before we had to leave again.” But while they were home, their time was compromised further when members of the Turtles had to sit in depositions. Morton handled one of the cases and handed off the other to a novice attorney. Then she gave her case to an associate when she ran for Los Angeles County prosecutor. In this position she had a long career, but it was not without controversy. She was accused of misconduct numerous times and had been suspended. In one case, California Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote: “Morton’s actions, at times childish and unprofessional, and at other times outrageous and unethical, betrayed her trust as a public prosecutor. Her methods were deceptive and reprehensible.”

The pressures mounted: the two lawsuits, a demanding touring schedule, Lee and Ted pushing the Turtles to record a more radio-friendly record that could be a hit, and there was strong evidence that White Whale hadn’t paid the group all that it should have. During one six-month period, an audit revealed that the Turtles had been shorted by $160,000. They were bleeding money.

When the Turtles got to know Jeff Wald better, they realized they didn’t like his personality. In January 1970, they set up a meeting with Bill Utley, the best manager they ever had. Reb Foster Associates was now big, representing Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night, the latter of whom benefitted from the initial Turtles’ payment which was used to buy their equipment. Utley agreed to manage them again, and threw out the lawsuit. The Turtles then settled with Michael Philips Management by paying them $25,000. Without hits, their status declined to where they were opening up on bills headlined by Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf. Utley wanted to clean the Turtles up, told them to cut their hair and dress better. They bristled at his comments even though it was good advice.

Jerry Yester, who had worked with the Lovin’ Spoonful, was slated to produce the Turtles’ sixth album. The collective, we-are-all-brothers feeling had faded. The only songs submitted by the group that Lee and Ted liked were the ones written by Howard and Mark. There was tension as Al, Jim, and John attempted to infuse their concepts on Howard’s and Mark’s songs in order to qualify for shared songwriting credits—rather than to consider whether their ideas were what was best for the Turtles’ music. Howard and Mark, with Yester’s support, asserted their proprietary. Howard: “A lot of our energies were stifled during that time because you’d start to write a song, you’d bring it to the rest of the guys, and they would throw in their two-cents, and it would come out being written by the Turtles, but it wasn’t anything close to the way you envisioned it. It’s sort of a testimony to Mark and me that we were able to get ourselves even heard above all that democratic junk, because it really had a debilitating effect on most of the material.” The in-studio resentment and outside pressures built to such a point that, in early May, the group called it quits.

“It wasn’t just the pressure we were experiencing from the record label, now it was the band,” Howard said. “We were growing apart. Al and Jim were trying to take the group in a country direction, which I wasn’t in favor of. Because we had set ourselves up as a democracy, we were hearing, ‘How come Howard’s and Mark’s songs are being selected by White Whale and ours aren’t? That’s not right.’ You’re right it’s not right. We should be writing the songs and you guys should be history. So we broke up the band.”

With most creative artists, their first, or first and second albums tend to be their best because they have had years to write their material before recording. Atypically, as the Turtles matured, their albums kept getting better. It seems likely that had the album tentatively titled Shell Shock been finished, it would have been the group’s best.

Howard: “When we told our attorney, he said, ‘Boy, are you guys stupid.’ He explained that we were signed to White Whale not only as the band the Turtles, but as individuals, so we couldn’t use our own names.” At the time the Turtles broke up, fourteen people were on the payroll (down from twenty-two). They owed $45,000. The Turtles’ suit against White Whale for unpaid royalties wasn’t settled until 1974, at which time Howard and Mark, the only remaining members, were awarded a small amount of money and ownership of the Turtles’ masters.

Within weeks following the dissolution of the band, Mark and Howard found themselves in Frank Zappa’s new lineup of the Mothers of Invention. In the “Relevant Quotes” section of the liner notes to the Mothers of Invention’s first album, 1966’s Freak Out!, “A noted L.A. Disc Jockey” (actually Reb Foster) is quoted as saying, “I’d like to clean you boys up a bit and mold you. I believe I could make you as big as the Turtles.” When Jim Pons joined eight months later, three-fifths of the Turtles were now in the Mothers. In a not totally satisfying way, the Turtles of AM radio were now accepted by FM radio, except it was Frank’s band and they received no royalties from sales of the records.

During a concert in London, Frank was seriously injured when a fan pulled him off the stage into the orchestra pit. Needing to work, most of the band members continued with Howard and Mark. As they were prevented from calling themselves the Turtles, they used The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie for their debut album on Reprise Records. It was a nickname for the Turtles’ roadies, Carlos Bernal and Dennis Jones. Howard: “Carlos always asked for things: ‘Can I have a cigarette; can I borrow five bucks; hey, give me the keys to your car.’ He dressed flamboyantly, with an Afghan coat and scarf, and he had bushy hair. We named him the Phlorescent Leech.”

Mark: “Dennis Jones was the president of his frat house at Cal State Northridge. He had short hair and wore a letterman’s jacket. He looked like an Eddie, so we called him ‘Eddie.’ They both played guitar, and when we were thinking of producing other acts for Blimp, we were going to make an album called ‘The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie’ starring Carlos Bernal and Dennis Jones.”

For subsequent albums—one more for Reprise, two for Columbia—they shortened their name to Flo & Eddie (Mark is Flo and Howard is Eddie). The albums were good, but none sold well enough to have made Billboard’s Top 200 LP chart. The Rolling Stone Record Guide even gave Illegal, Immoral, and Fattening four stars. Subsequently, Mark and Howard complained of a sinus problem: “Nobody wants to sign us.” Over the next ten years they were involved with numerous projects, and then revived the Turtles (they were the only original members) for a consistent slate of dates on a yearly basis.

As Mark matured, he took more of an interest in the Turtles’ business affairs. In 1992 the one-time high school class clown enrolled in college at the age of forty-five. He became the class valedictorian, graduating magna cum laude in Communications at Loyola Marymount University, and was accepted into the honor society. Two years later, in 1999, he achieved his master’s degree in Film Studies and Screenwriting. An inspiration to us all, Professor Flo, as he is now sometimes called, teaches classes on screenwriting and the music business at Belmont University in Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor.

It was the Turtles that set it all in motion: “I was not pegged to be a success in adult life,” Mark reflected. “Being in the band taught me about commitment and responsibility. It taught me about getting up off the ground at the lowest points, and trying to get back to the top. It taught me about humility, and how to deal with people in our most successful times so I wouldn’t be thought of as somebody who relied on their success for friendship, and for anything other than it being work. I learned the ethics of work.”

I saw Flo & Eddie play more than any other act, first on August 7, 1971, with the Mothers of Invention at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. I loved their songs and the creative way they integrated humor into their set. On occasion I wrote an article on them, and a friendship developed. When I told them about the record label Richard and I were forming in the back room of our record store, they were supportive, and licensed us a handful of unreleased tracks from the psychedelic sessions to issue a Turtles picture disc. I paid them an advance of $1,100. It was a thrill for me to have the Turtles on a Rhino release, as unconventional as it was. I hoped that we could build our label to the point where we could do justice releasing the entire Turtles oeuvre.

In working on subsequent projects with them, I got to know them better, and got more of an understanding of how creative and funny they were offstage. I had many enjoyable times hanging out with Howard and Mark, hearing their marvelous stories told with insight and humor, and creating projects together. Visiting with them was like being a guest on “Anything Can Happen Day” on The Mickey Mouse Club. They were in a reggae phase where they played reggae cassettes, smoked ganja, and sprinkled the conversation with “Ya, mon!” (They even recorded an album in Jamaica, at Tuff Gong Studios in 1981.) Then it was electronic music, nodding along to Kraftwerk. Sometimes it was work related: composing and recording soundtracks in the studio for kids’ TV specials with The Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake, or writing a TV pilot while working out of their office at Miss Universe. It’s hard to imagine, but Howard and Mark escorted the Miss Teen and Miss USA contestants during the taping of the shows.

I overhauled the Turtles catalogue: improved the song selection on their original albums, added liner notes, created the two albums that should have been released but weren’t, and reimagined the Battle of the Bands package. Howard and I re-mixed the multitrack tapes to restore the presence of Ray Davies’ orchestration for Rhino’s 1986 rerelease of Turtle Soup. I also improved the sequencing. Did we believe it would sell? No, and it only sold three thousand. We did it in service to the art.

The first extensive interviews I did with Mark and Howard were for the booklet that accompanied the three-record set, The History of Flo & Eddie and the Turtles. The album included the Westchester High A Capella Choir (with four members of the band) singing the school alma mater, the better Turtles’ records that weren’t on their Greatest Hits, Flo & Eddie tracks, rarities, and a recreation of their imaginative radio show. It was a fun and informative package.

On record the Turtles were pristine, polished, and accomplished. Back in their hotel rooms when they needed to let off steam and relax, they became the Rhythm Butchers. They took drugs, rotated whatever instruments were handy, and butchered pop classics of the day, all recorded on a cassette machine. Knowing that sales would be modest, we pressed up seven-inch EPs in a limited-edition series. We thought we’d keep it to a thousand, but the last few only sold in the low hundreds. Mark and Howard signed the first volume, and Jim Pons, the second. From 1980 to 1986 we released seven volumes. Howard and Mark were so into the project, they made up satin Rhythm Butchers jackets with our names on the front. More EPs were planned, but the weak sales made us less interested and we weren’t motivated to complete the last five volumes. The point was made. As our Greatest Hits album(s) sold over 300,000 copies, there was more than enough profit to absorb whatever we lost on some of the projects, like the Rhythm Butchers.

During the Turtles days, Howard and Mark wished the group had an outstanding lead guitarist like Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. When the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, drummer Jim McCarty and vocalist Keith Relf formed a group, Together, because they wanted to go in a musical direction like the Turtles. I thought of realizing their one-time desires by combining the relevant elements of each group. As the Yardbirds (except for Relf, who died in 1976) played well when they reunited to record as the Box of Frogs in 1984 (with Beck on three songs), I thought of flying Howard and Mark over to London to record an album with the remaining members: Beck, McCarty, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, and rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja. It took some persuasion to convince Samwell-Smith, who preferred producing to playing bass. (He had produced the two Box of Frogs LPs, as well as successful albums by Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull.) During my phone conversation with him, when I was in London in September 1987, he expressed his frustration regarding Jeff Beck: “Sometimes he showed up for a session; other times he wouldn’t.” Because this would have been an expensive endeavor for us, I didn’t want to risk our finances if Beck was unreliable, and didn’t proceed further.

From having produced a few feature films, in 2000 I wanted to make a Turtles movie based on the dinner Howard had with Jimi Hendrix when the Turtles visited London in 1967. I thought it would be a much more manageable period in which to set a movie than one that spanned their career. I had Howard write the screenplay because of his gift for humor and dialogue, and so that it would be faithful to the events he experienced. Bill Fishman, who had directed a number of Monkees videos for us, was the director. For a low budget feature it turned out well, but no company wanted to distribute such a period piece without any stars. Billy Bob Thornton loved it and recommended it to Bob Weinstein at Dimension/Miramax, but we never heard from him. Noted music producer Brooks Arthur felt similarly, and arranged a screening for Adam Sandler, who told me it was “excellent … but not comedic enough” to put through his deal at Sony. So, My Dinner With Jimi (inspired by the 1981 feature My Dinner With Andre) came out on DVD and didn’t come close to recouping the money Richard and I had invested. It was gratifying to have heard from a number of people, like the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, about how well we recreated the era.

The professional relationship I had with Howard and Mark spanned the full twenty-four years I was at the label. As enjoyable and creatively stimulating working with them was, seeing how well they worked together provided a role model for me in my partnership with Richard. As friends since high school, their business relationship has lasted over fifty years.