Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc.

by Howard Kaylan

  Our first real concert as the Turtles was opening up for Herman’s Hermits at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Sonny and Cher were there too. Nearly half a century later, we still frequently open shows for Peter Noone of the Hermits. Some things never change.

  And now, with a single entering the Top Ten in America and our first album in the can, we flew off to Chicago for our first tour, Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. It ran from August 1 through September 6, 1965, and was our first experience away from Los Angeles. Hell, we had never even stayed in a hotel before as a band. We were meeting the entire entourage, in progress, as the cross-country bus tour hit the Windy City at the Hilton, a snazzy place. The lineup included Tom Jones, fresh off “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat?”; Peter and Gordon, also from the UK with a slew of Beatles-related hits; the immortal Shirelles; singers Brian Hyland, Ronnie Dove, and Billy Joe Royal; and crooner Mel Carter, who did “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.” When Dick Clark wasn’t on board to intro the show, there was an MC named George McCannon III to vamp.

  The tour was doing great business and we were giddy to be a part of it. In a happy trance and thrilled to be on the road at last, Al Nichol went across the street to an inviting park bench to take pictures of the hotel after check-in and was promptly mugged. Wallet gone, cash gone, camera gone. He returned to the hotel to report the incident, only to be met by hundreds of conventioneers from the Shriners, who had the rest of us intimidated in the restaurants, lobby, stairwells, and elevators, shouting obscenities and calling us long-haired fairy boys and worse. There was much shoving and a few very tense moments as we got our first taste of life outside Hollywood as a rock group. Still, the following day, we were welcomed onto the tour bus for the short drive to the Convention Center and went on, as scheduled, before the first-half closers, Peter and Gordon, to perform our big hit and our new follow-up. And they sounded exactly the same.

  The following day, we were all assigned our permanent bus seats and couldn’t believe our incredible good luck. I was actually sharing a bench seat with the great Gordon Waller in the back of the bus, and even I knew that was the place to be! And Mark had done even better, getting to sit next to Tom Jones for the next several weeks. We were happy, but we were ignorant. As night fell, and we left Chicago heading for the great unknown, Gordon looked at me and announced, “Right then, here we go!” I stared at him blankly, not knowing what was expected of me. Tom Jones stared at Volman and nodded toward the floor.

  Ah, I see. Now we understood. When it got dark outside, the “stars” got to spread out on the seats to nap the traveling hours away in relative comfort, while the lackeys were forced to sleep at their feet in the tiny spaces between the seats. From my position on the bumpy floor, I could see Mark looking back at me in the darkness. We shared a “What the fuck?” moment and tried to get some sleep.

  The concerts were great and our first taste of actual stardom, although it was baby stardom in our case. However, the perks were undeniable. Namely, girls. That’s right, I said girls. Did I mention girls? Hey, I’ll admit, sometimes it felt like I was merely inheriting Tom Jones’s rejects, but this whole groupie thing was totally new to me, and that actually wasn’t such a bad thing at all. I found that even a potato of a guy such as I could do pretty well with the ladies as long as he had a hit record. This knowledge would serve me well over the next few decades.

  By the time I got to Columbus, Ohio, the following week, I had learned how to shuffle my schedule around to accommodate multiple liaisons on a daily basis. Hey, it wasn’t like I was cheating on Nita—we never had exclusivity that I was aware of. I was emerging from the hive I was never allowed into, not even in high school. I was spreading my wings at last. I was a newborn baby bee, ready to pollinate any flower that landed on my radar. Regrets? Not a one.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  As life-changing as the random ladies were, it was a guy who actually had a more profound effect on my future. And no, not in that way! I guess that the Turtles had been rather obvious about our innocence aboard the bus, but we couldn’t understand what a lot of the onboard giggling had been about. Still, we were pretty sure that it had been directed at us. Paranoid? Not yet.

  One night in Memphis, Mel Carter called my room and invited all of the Turtles up. This was unprecedented, to say the least. The tour had experienced an inordinate amount of resistance from hotel managers and restaurant owners as we worked our way across America’s heartland, all due to the integrated nature of rock ’n’ roll. We were thrilled to be on the same bill as the Shirelles and Mr. Carter, but this was still 1965 and the country was not yet ready for the races mingling so happily. Often, the entire busload was turned away at diners and motels that wouldn’t accept black entertainers. These were usually the same assholes that made fun of our long hair. We hated them all, but there was nothing we could do about it. Small people with small minds have always run this country. Still, everyone on the tour was united, and we were pissed off. So maybe this meeting in Mel’s room had something to do with that.

  When we got there, we could hear voices inside and smelled the subtle aroma of incense that signaled a party. We knocked and Mel opened. Things got quiet. There were two very large black men in dark suits and sunglasses sitting on Mel’s sofa. And between them, on the floor, was an ominous brown paper bag. No one made a move to camouflage the obvious, and we could see the long, green buds protruding from the container.

  Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so it took us a while to figure out how to inhale this stuff correctly. All of us were coughing and spewing and trying not to embarrass ourselves as the large, scary guys fought to contain their laughter.

  “Naw, that ain’t it!” Mel was trying his best to be patient with us as the precious smoke was lost in the ozone. Finally, in desperation, Mel motioned to me to come nearer. He took a mind-blowing hit of the weed, grabbed me by the shoulders, and breathed the entire hit into my mouth, which he covered with his own. In this uncomfortable and nonerotic frightening moment, thoughts were leapfrogging through my brain. Am I high? Am I gay? Am I going to be sick? The noise had been sucked out of the room; I was, literally, in a breathless vacuum of weirdness, not knowing what was going to happen next.

  And then I felt it. With the cleansing exhale that followed, the world came back into view with a new and better focus. Mel pulled back to see the expression on my face and his smile made me feel even better. Whatever this was, sign me up! It wasn’t only me, either. We were like kids in a candy store: “Me next! Me! Me!” The band lined up like we were receiving the blessed sacrament. Which we were.

  We hung out with Mel for an hour or so until he announced that he had some business to take care of with his “associates,” and we somehow found the way back to our rooms to talk about our newly awakened perceptions. The next day, we each purchased small amounts of weed from Mel, who seemed more than ready to accommodate us. Needless to say, the rest of the tour was significantly more fun. There were no more giggles. I guess we had been accepted into adulthood in bus terms and were allowed to join everybody’s hipper-than-hip little club.

  The Caravan of Stars was a learning experience. Tom Jones was an education all by himself. Every day, when the tour bus arrived at our venue, there were hundreds of waiting, screaming teenage girls, and Tom taunted them mercilessly from behind the safety of his window. He actually pulled out his legendary-for-good-reason schlong, which he had nicknamed Wendell, and waved it at the befuddled girls, who hooted, hollered, and pushed their friends aside to get a look at the one-eyed monster.

  “Ooh, you’d like to meet Wendell, wouldn’t you, ladies? Arrrgh, here he comes, girls.” Tom was very advanced.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It’s hard to calculate exactly how much we learned on that first six-week outing, but we could now play to any crowd in America with confidence. And we knew how to amuse ourselves between shows, too, a talent we’d soon need, as yet another bus tour was about to loom large.

  And kee
p in mind, we’re not talking about your contemporary, upscale rock ’n’ roll tour bus here. Picture my nose mere inches from Gordon Waller’s postconcert stocking feet. And Mark had Tom Jones to contend with. Tom, you snore! These were your Greyhounds, your Trailways: bench seats and a stinky pisser two rows behind me.

  While we were still out on the road with the Caravan of Stars, our next booking came in, a little three-weeker called Wrap-Up ’65. This one was a doozy. And already the six of us were beginning to appreciate how fortunate we had been mere weeks before.

  The lineup was Jewel Akens, who had a monster hit called “The Birds and the Bees”; the Larks, a vocal quintet with a dance record called “The Jerk”; and Shirley Ellis, who famously had the world playing “The Name Game.” Now, add to that urban mix Bobby Goldsboro, who’d had a hit with “See the Funny Little Clown,” and then insert us. Not making much sense, is it? Audiences and promoters had the same reaction: confusion.

  It was as weird on the bus as it was off. Shirley had her arranger and accompanist, Lincoln Chase, with her, day and night. And it was plain to us, now seasoned druggies, that these guys were bombed 24/7 and, whatever they were on, it sure wasn’t weed. Coincidentally, the Larks also seemed afflicted by this glassy-eyed medication. Those guys stayed pretty much to themselves, leaving us and Mr. Goldsboro to amuse ourselves—he just played country acoustic and made cricket noises. The pot waited until we got to our shared motel rooms.

  After that one, we made a group decision not to do any more bus tours if we could help it. And we pretty much stuck to our guns. Once in a while, we’d wind up joining an existing tour in progress, replacing another act for a week or two if there were prior commitments involved.

  We jumped on one Dick Clark Caravan to fill in for the Standells. But, jolly sorts that these gentlemen were, the lads had gone on their way letting the entire tour believe that the Turtles were infamous junkies and to keep their eyes open for suspicious behavior. Well, we didn’t know that. And on one auspicious evening, as the rain pelted our Holiday Inn balcony, Al and I found ourselves pinned to the floor of our shared room by some wicked weed that had come from a local fan. We couldn’t move. Which at first was hilarious. And then it wasn’t. And then the tour manager started pounding on our door and yelling something about being late and leaving without us. Hell, the shower was still running in the bathroom and neither of us had unpacked yet, let alone dressed for the concert.

  So we didn’t. We just crawled to the door and somehow made it onto the bus, where the brilliant Ian Whitcomb (“You Turn Me On”) was playing his ukulele and regaling the tour with bawdy English drinking songs. I lost it. Al lost it. We all lost it. Uncontrollable laughter, convulsing tears, gasps for air. Later, at the show, my senses went into overdrive. Somehow, I had convinced myself, in the middle of “Let Me Be,” that I hadn’t been singing at all; I had merely been lip-syncing, miming to the record, just as we had done on countless television shows. And then I forgot the words. So, naturally, I waited to hear what the singer was going to do before I could pretend to sing along. Only the singer was me. It was bad. I don’t think anyone noticed, and that was even more disheartening. But I somehow caught up and the rest of the set was, evidently, fine. We stuck to a rented station wagon and pulling a U-Haul trailer after that.

  And we were, for the most part, on our own. Traveling for the first time ever with Bill Utley behind the wheel was at once both totally freeing and really frightening. He was an awful driver with a horrible temper, which would manifest itself more violently to us later. Bill tried to be our buddy for his percentage’s sake, but he really had little patience for our juvenile behavior and eschewed our pot-smoking ways. He didn’t last very long as a touring manager and quickly foisted us off on his brother-in-law, who would act on his behalf, if not ours. We played ballrooms in the Midwest, school dances, mall openings. Sometimes we had dressing rooms. Sometimes, we’d change in the car.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Our show was pretty silly. We did our folk-rock album stuff plus some Crossfires dance standards, when called for, and always remained self-deprecating and accessible. They loved us in the heartland. And we loved them back. Lots of them. Some nights, two at a time.

  We would do a tour, come back to L.A. just long enough to do our laundry and record for the second album, and take off again. Now, when we played at the Whisky a Go Go, we were the obvious headliners and house band. We would do a couple of weeks at a time. Crazy Vito Paulekas and even crazier Carl Franzoni, Sunset Strip fixtures with white beards and gypsy clothing, would bring their commune down to our show to dance and play tambourines and frighten off the general population. Among their tribe was one very young and hot little blonde, always in a see-through top. This was a fifteen-year-old Pamela Miller, soon to be Miss Pamela of the GTOs. Our opening act was an upstart band of miscreants who called themselves the Doors. The L.A. Times hated them, but they sure loved us. And we sure loved the Doors.

  But we were starting to doubt ourselves a little bit. We had a Top Ten record our first time out of the box, but “Let Me Be,” while respectably making it into the Top 30, was a follow-up: no less and no more. It did nothing to solidify our career. And now, with yet another folk-rock album in the works, we began to question, yet again, what the hell we were protesting.

  Barry McGuire’s recording of “Eve of Destruction” had become an international number one record—we all knew that it would—but, as predicted, there would be no follow-up to that one.

  Folk rock was already showing signs of either wearing thin or becoming fodder for parody and we were clueless about our next move. You had to have a next move if you really wanted to be America’s Beatles and that we certainly did.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We pulled into New York City, my ancestral homeland, for the first time to play at Steve Paul’s Scene, the biggest happening club in the city. It was star-studded and we killed. Almost immediately, we were asked to fill in for a week of shows at the Phone Booth, just as the Young Rascals were about to embark on their first trip to L.A. to play the Whisky.

  On our nights off, or even after our shows, the whole group would head off to Greenwich Village to hang with the hippies and smoke pot in Washington Square. Our pals from L.A., the Mothers of Invention, were playing ridiculous shows at the Garrick Theatre, and we’d hang there night after night. One lucky evening we happened into a dark, smoky nightclub called the Night Owl Cafe and got our first glimpse of the Lovin’ Spoonful. They were amazing. And more than that, they were really having fun. Onstage! They were actually smiling at each other and at the adoring audience. And they weren’t protesting anything—they were singing happy songs: “Good Time Music,” they called it. Shit, that’s what we wanted to do too! Spoiled little bastards that we were: We want that now.

  So we returned to L.A. and, right then and there, told Lee, Ted, and Bones that we were finished with folk rock and were now the West Coast Ambassadors of Good-Time Music.

  They could have panicked. They should have panicked. But instead, Bones in particular nodded knowingly and plucked a 7-inch demo record from his briefcase.

  “This is the new one from P. F. Sloan,” he announced.

  Oh, no. Another protest song?

  But then the drum pattern started and Don Murray smiled for the first time in three years.

  The song was “You Baby.” It became a Top 20 hit, broke the sophomore curse, and changed us, literally overnight, into the West Coast Ambassadors of Good-Time Music, just like we wanted. That song marked another sea change in the band’s destiny as we suddenly became more adult-friendly and television-accessible. Now Merv Griffin’s office was on the phone and Mike Douglas came out to talk to us between songs. The bigger television shows were lining up to air bands with a little longevity and here we were. There were a ton of teen dance shows on the air in the mid-’60s, and the Turtles were regulars on all of them.

  I can’t tell you offhand how many episodes of Where the Action Is we did fo
r Dick Clark, but we did a lot. And American Bandstand too, the very show that I had rushed home from school to see all those years ago. Man, what a feeling that was! Local KHJ DJ Sam Riddle had three shows; Lloyd Thaxton over at channel 13 became a close friend; Clay Cole in the East and Jerry Blavat—“the Geator with the Heater”—in Philly. There was Upbeat in Cleveland, and on Saturday night Dick Clark had a prime-time rock show back in Hollywood as well. The biggest of the L.A. shows by far was Shindig! and it was a great and prestigious national network mainstay. After that one, we almost felt big-time.

  If you did Shindig! on the West Coast, then it was a given that you’d do Hullaballoo in New York. That was NBC’s national prime-time equivalent. They set up the cameras to shoot our segment through a fully stocked aquarium, and posed between us were the famous Hullaballoo models standing mannequin-still in full scuba attire. They were magnificent. One in particular caught my eye, a stunning pixie-haired blonde, and with my new self-confidence and a sense of nothing to lose, I approached.

  Her name was Heidi and I somehow scored her number. In fact, she invited me on a tour of the city and I took a taxi to her apartment the following day. The bad news—Heidi had a boyfriend. The good news—Heidi also had a roommate. And this was a statuesque honey-haired ballerina with the unlikely moniker of Melita Pepper. She was aloof and artsy and couldn’t have cared less about rock ’n’ roll, so of course I was immediately attracted to her. She was everything that Nita was not.

  Nita had been a petite little porcelain girlfriend with an amazing body and aspirations of stardom. Melita drank Lancers wine from a ceramic bottle, planted country daisies in her Upper East Side flower box, and spent hours listening to the rain on the roof while Tim Hardin played on the stereo. It was so damned New York. And it was spring: cherry blossoms in Central Park, the hansom cabs and the omnipresence of the Spoonful at the Night Owl.