Mark Volman Put the Turtles Right Up There With the Beach Boys
If the 1960s were a golden age of weird rock artist names, let’s not overlook the quiet weirdness of calling your band the Turtles.
Happily, this six-man ensemble that grew out of an instrumental surf band, dabbled in folk-rock and originally spelled its name “Tyrtles,” is better remembered for its music, because co-anchors Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan learned how to make records that sounded really good on the radio. Their brand signature song turned out to be “Happy Together,” but for sheer exuberance, few records anywhere top “She’d Rather Be With Me.” John Philip Sousa didn’t march with more jubilation than this 45.
Mark Volman, however, who died Friday at the age of 78 after a battle with Lewys Body Dementia, always felt the Turtles were more than just a band that turned out memorable top-40 hits. In his view, they deserved to be placed on the top level of American rock ’n’ roll bands.
Like, say, the Beach Boys.
“I’m frustrated to see America see the Beach Boys as the only American band,” Volman said in a 1984 interview. “Every Fourth of July, the Beach Boys seem to be all that American music is. But they’re only out there because Mike Love has to support five ex-wives and they can’t do anything else.
“They give me no energy. Their groove is negative. All we read about is their problems. Brian Wilson hasn’t done anything ‘genius’ in 17 years. In a battle of the bands, the Turtles could compete with them.”
When Volman was saying this, he and Kaylan had just reassembled the Turtles, after a 14-year hiatus, for the multi-act “Happy Together” tour that would evolve into a long-running staple on the summer tent show circuit. Just like, say, the Beach Boys.
The reunion of the Turtles did not, in any case, mark a reunion for Volman and Kaylan, who had regularly worked together all those intervening years. Since they didn’t own the Turtles name, they became Flo and Eddie, whose stage act combined music and comedy.
“We satirize acts like Duran Duran,” said Volman, adding that he actually liked Duran Duran, on whose records he and Kaylan had at times sung backup. “It’s all for fun. It’s like how the Turtles can do 90 minutes of hits and then Flo and Eddie break it up with some light comedy.”
Six years later, in 1990, Flo and Eddie would get a day job as the afternoon drive hosts on New York radio station WXRK (K-Rock), one of many attempts by the station to parlay Howard Stern’s massive morning audience into a decent listenership the rest of the day.
“When it comes to radio, we’re definitely the new kids on the block,” Volman said in 1990. “Fortunately, at K-Rock we’re surrounded by some of the best DJs in the country, people like Pete Fornatale, who brought us to the station, or Meg Griffin.”
He liked K-Rock’s “attitude” toward its music format, which was classic rock at the time and included artists like the Turtles. Because of that link, he said, he and Kaylan could bring something unique to the microphone.
“Most DJs get music history out of a book,” he said. “We were out there on the road with Ian Whitcomb, with the Shirelles, with Herman’s Hermits. We slept on the floor of the tour bus.”
Volman often made a point of noting that his resume didn’t just read “1960s pop star.” Back in his 1984 interview he said several times that besides forming a band he felt was the equal of the Beach Boys in the contemporary American music world, he and Kaylan had also achieved something relatively rare for top-40 hitmakers: lifelong music-based careers.
That resulted, he said, from a deliberate and ultimately smart decision not to throw all their eggs into the pop-star basket, which too often is simply discarded by the music biz when it passes its sell-by date.
“We were seen as outlaws because we didn’t fall into the teen magazine trap,” he said in 1984. Instead, he said, he and Kaylan looked for wherever music work could be found.
While they were were performing as Flo and Eddie, Volman also became a featured player in Frank Zappa’s bands, including the Mothers of Invention and others whose music often confounded critics and audiences. (“If you ever want to see bad reviews,” Volman mused, “look up Zappa.”)
Before they turned the Happy Together tour into a ’60s nostalgia fest that would run for decades — it ran this summer, with a new bale of Turtles — they worked regularly as studio singers, backing the likes of U2 and Bruce Springsteen. Then when they weren’t singing “Everybody’s got a hungry heart,” they were crooning somewhat less fraught tunes for Easter Seals or for Strawberry Shortcake and the Care Bears, whose repertoire would never be confused with Zappa’s.
Volman himself returned to college at 45, eventually earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees and teaching music and entertainment courses at Loyola Marymount and Belmont.
His philosophy through all the years, he said, remained consistent: You should enjoy your work and music should be uplifting. While the Turtles’s breakout hit was a version of Bob Dylan’s ominous “It Ain’t Me Babe” and they wrapped up their top-40 career by remaking Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” Volman stressed that their core songs — “Happy Together,” “She’d Rather Be With Me,” “Elenore,” “You Showed Me,” “She’s My Girl” — were all pretty upbeat stuff.
“People are tired of negativism and sexism,” he said in 1984. “They want love songs with a good pop beat.”
Mark Volman and the Turtles, odd name and all, gave us that. They were a shelluva band.
