In the meantime, I had no intention of remaining a true-blue husband out on the road—I’d seen how it was done—so home was a place I went to between shows and affairs for two weeks at a time while, just like the rest of the band and every other band out there, I was cultivating relationships, or at least one-nighters, with any cute girl who would give the old boy a tumble. I could look ahead at my itinerary and see where I was going to be on any given day before picking up the phone and scheduling my nighttimes around the shows. The shows became secondary, in fact. A good night wasn’t judged by the quality of our onstage performance, but by the performances of our nighttime girls. And on a lot of nights, particularly after the success of “Happy Together,” I had to schedule my lady visitors so as not to conflict with one another. In retrospect, I wonder when I ever slept. My, what amazing things the young male body is capable of, especially when there are female bodies around that are far more capable.
So, not to brag or compare myself to an NBA player, but it was astounding to me, as a not-so-attractive teenager, how many women I was able to “be with”—and this continued into the ’80s: lined up in the hallways, crossing paths in the lobby preceding the shift change … Of course, with each lady came baggage. I heard more stories about parents and brothers and unfaithful boyfriends and school than I care to recall. In fact, fortunately, I recall none of them. A switch in my brain could accept a certain amount of palaver without even taking it in. Click. Ah! That’s better. Now I don’t hear a word you’re saying. Oh, is that your bra?
Got pretty damned good at it. I know, a horrible, chauvinistic way to act. If it helps at all, I’ve learned my lessons, albeit late in life and following at least three decades of Caligula-like decadence. I’m older and wiser now, and besides, I don’t have the energy anymore these days, or the inclination. And I don’t give a flaming shit about anybody’s brother or their schoolwork. I’d kill myself if I had to listen to that crap again. But at the time, it got me into many, many pairs of panties, and that was the game.
♦ ♦ ♦
Man, did we have fun when we got back to touring America during the Summer of Love in 1967. There were chicks in Seattle, Columbus, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, and everywhere in between. I was the lead singer, so I got noticed and usually laid. But Barbata was amazing. With his Italian suits, perfect coif, and Playboy Club maneuvers, he was a pleasure to witness on a nightly basis. The rest of us were all rank amateurs compared to Johny. He had the girls in and out in like twenty minutes. Next! And these were generally the cream of the crop, so to speak. It’s true, some of the ladies complained about Johny’s brusque treatment, but remember, they had to complain to someone! And that was usually one of us. So—and please don’t be offended—some lucky bandmate would usually wind up with the legendary “sloppy seconds.” I apologize, ladies, but I’m here to educate as well as entertain.
The theaters were bigger now and the crowds were a lot more animated, though every once in a while we’d find ourselves doing things like opening up for the jumping horse on the pier at Atlantic City. True, not a lot of prestige there, but that damned horse was amazing. He’d hurl himself and his rider off of the boardwalk and into the Atlantic Ocean. For a lousy carrot, for God’s sake. And ten times a day. Like us, he had showbiz in his blood. Or, to paraphrase Woody Allen, he just needed the carrots. We all did.
Melita and I installed a pricey black-bottomed pool in our tiny hillside yard. I still have no idea why. But I had actual tour money for the first time in my short career, and it felt great.
And, because the Turtles had been deemed family-friendly following our first Sullivan show, we were the new “go to” band for the myriad television shows being produced for syndication. Everybody had a show, and we did them all. Let’s see: Della Reese had a show, as did Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Diahann Carroll, even Woody Woodbury. Then there was Shebang, Upbeat, The Hollywood Palace, Hollywood A Go-Go, 9th Street West. It wasn’t uncommon for us to do two or three big-time TV shows in any given week. We were getting cockier with each performance, and the wackiness sometimes translated to a lack of caring on our part, but hey, that’s what the Beatles did. We did care; we just thought it was cooler and more English to act that way, especially for the lip-synced broadcasts.
By the time we did our second Ed Sullivan Show, my nerves had left me: I got high instead of uptight, and I really had a good time. “She’d Rather Be with Me,” for all our trepidation, zoomed up to either number two or three, depending on which trade paper you believed. Not bad for a follow-up, especially one that was supposedly lacking that magic.
We were part of the Koppelman-Rubin hit machine now, exactly what we wished for. But as we all know, you gotta be careful about those wishes. The records we released weren’t our choice anymore. I guess the Lovin’ Spoonful went through the same thing, but they had John Sebastian and we had Bonner and Gordon. And, as brilliant as they were as a songwriting team, when we listened to our next proposed single, it was tantamount to beholding the emperor’s new clothes. We just didn’t get it.
“You Know What I Mean” was basically a tone poem. There was no disputing that it was beautiful and that Joe Wissert’s production was flawless, but there was no verse, to speak of, and no sing-along chorus at all. I sang the lead vocal in a single take and there were to be no overdubs—just me, out there in a blue spotlight in front of an amazing full orchestra and, of course, the band playing everything else. It was different. It was, I suppose, a change of pace for us, but as Stan Freberg once famously spoofed, “If they can’t bop to it, bombsville!”
You surely couldn’t dance to this. But we said nothing. We were scared and we had begged for this. We didn’t even think to talk back to either our production company or our label. Management didn’t care; they were too busy counting their cash and putting together many more road months for their golden boys. As a band, we feared the worst: There goes our winning streak and soon it’ll be back to Dairy Queen, metaphorically speaking. But here’s the weird part: The record was a hit, climbing to number twelve in the all-important Billboard singles chart. Radio played the hell out of it. We were and continue to be grateful, but we never performed “You Know What I Mean” onstage live. Ever. Not even when it was a hit. I still turn it up when it comes on oldies radio, but I doubt that I could remember the words. That record’s success was a miracle as far as I’m concerned.
♦ ♦ ♦
And I needed all the miracles I could get, because in 1968, when I was the ripe old age of twenty-one, Melita informed me that we were preggers. All of the wives were. In 1968, if you were a Turtle, your wife was with child. That’s cool. It was the thing to do.
It was our turn to live large. We saw all the other hit bands enjoy their success, and we were bound and determined to do the same. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the benefit of wisdom or direction to guide us. No one helped us set up retirement accounts or invest our earnings in growth accounts. Hell, no. We received our checks and didn’t see “management” until they needed something from us. So when we got money, we spent it. We were really stupid, but we were young and no one our age was thinking about their financial future at that time.
Even though we all lived in Los Angeles, most of our concerts were in Middle America, so we all agreed that somehow it made perfect sense to rent out an entire floor of the exclusive Astor Tower Hotel in downtown Chicago—we drew straws or something to see who would get the bedroom closest to the white grand piano in the living room. Very Beatles.
Speaking of whom, we all had seen the Fabs waving to their fans from the BEA plane that they cleverly turned into the BEATLES with a can of paint. It was our turn now. Hell, we had earned this. We had paid our dues. We were twenty-one. So we leased our own airplane. True, it wasn’t as snazzy as the Beatles’—it was a wartime DC-3—but it flew. It came with a crew of two, who were now on salary. One was a Nazi. Really. And man, did he hate our guts. Every flight, we held our breaths waiting for our Germanic copilot to grab
the wheel, yell “Heil Hitler,” and fly us into a mountain. Here’s the best part: On one side of the plane we had painted THE TURTLES. But on the other, we had it say EHT SELTRUT. We thought that was hilarious. I don’t think anyone else got it.
We weren’t done throwing our money away yet. Waiting downstairs from our high-rise Windy City digs were Doc and George, our twenty-four-hour limo drivers. They just sat there, in case Al wanted to go to the nearby Playboy Club or Jim needed toothpaste. And, tick-tick-tick, these guys were on the clock. Could we really justify this excess considering our paychecks for these state fairs and even arena shows? No, we couldn’t. But we also couldn’t be bothered with those details. It was our turn. Besides, touring kept us away from home for literally months at a time. And this was in a primitive epoch before FaceTime or Skype.
Still, it was amazingly cool. We would wake up late on any given morning—and we needed to, trust me—and roll downstairs into one of the two waiting stretch Cadillacs for the short ride to Midway Airport, where Captain America and Heinrich Himmler would have the engines revving up for the very quick flight to, let’s say, Appleton, Wisconsin, or Minot, North Dakota.
Generally, the local radio stations were involved in that evening’s show, so they would announce our impending arrival on the air, resulting in a few dozen teenage female fans, at least. Easy pickins. And we hadn’t even gotten to the hotel yet. A few hours there, with or without company, was a smokeathon followed by what Al called the Shower, Shit, and Shave, and then we’d get picked up or escorted to the venue.
The shows were great and the crowds were consistently enthusiastic, though once we found ourselves playing an afternoon show on a community college’s stage, hastily constructed from a dozen or so cafeteria tables. Picture it: The drums behind me, all of the amps in a tight little line, the mic stands in place, and the kids grooving. Volman’s tambourine flies up and, in slow-mo, he jumps to grab it in midair. A split-second shared look of dread and anticipation. Then Mark hits the “stage” and it all collapses around us. It was like a whirlpool, or maybe a vortex. Whichever, Volman was the center of the black hole, and we all caved in around him, with the drums and amps and hardware raining down on our heads. Good thing we were toasted. I remember just hearing laughter among the rubble and it was contagious. We laughed all the way back to our dressing room. I’m not sure what the audience thought, but I seem to remember that the students set the makeshift stage back up again, rescued the equipment with the help of our roadie guy, and that we finished the set, received our cash and accolades, in that order, and flew back to Chicago. It wasn’t all glamorous.
Then there was Arnolds Park, Iowa.
There was an amusement park there and our accommodations were little trailers, the sort that carny folks would inhabit. Insert cliché here: The park owner had this daughter, see? I can hear the groans. And you’d be right. So it was a one-night stand with the promoter’s daughter in a carny dressing room, within earshot of the calliope and the crowds. I loved the surreal parts, don’t get me wrong. And what did I care anyway? I’d be out of there in the morning, and this one would get the same space in my new daily diary as everyone else did.
Cut to Arnolds Park, Iowa again, one year later. I’m in the same trailer, just unpacking my suitcase, when I hear a squealing commotion outside of my door, followed by the dreaded knocking. It was good ol’ What’s Her Name, as expected, but with a three-month-old—I’m just guessing—infant of some kind or other. What the hell? “And I’ve named him little Howie ’cause he looks just like you!” Oh, hell no! Bye-bye, baby. It’s been real! You’ve gotta go now. Honest. Down the three creaky steps and back to your own trailer somewhere on the midway.
“But my dad!…And you loved me!, … And you won’t get paid! … And…”
Blah blah blah. I had already flicked the mute switch.
I soon learned from her father that I had nothing to worry about. He told me about his idiot daughter’s lunatic boyfriend and their love child and how she had tried the same crap on Mark Lindsay and Davy Jones and how they hadn’t bought her story either and he was so sorry and really liked our band. Just another town. Blah blah blah.
♦ ♦ ♦
We had the best times on our little plane. I mean, it was a DC-3: the workhorse of World War II, with rows and rows of upholstered seats. There was a galley we never used and a bathroom that we certainly did, although, much like on a tour bus, the man or woman who dookied would be chastised for the remainder of the flight.
The main advantage of having our own airplane, besides the obvious ease of travel, was that we could get as high as we liked whenever and wherever. Of course, Hermann Goering was not amused and eventually fled for less green pastures, but we didn’t care. He was simply replaced.
Our airplane was officially christened when Stephen Stills, even higher than usual, hitched a ride to a mutual show and spray-painted some unintelligible hieroglyphs across the bulkhead.
Class, Stephen. Real class.
Eht Seltrut would land in Des Moines and the girls who greeted us would, in turn, be greeted by a cloud of smoke as we descended from the two-engine prop behemoth with pretty big smiles for that hour of the day. The hotel, the show, the girls, the flight back to the Astor Tower, Doc and George, room service food from Maxim’s de Paris or fantastic pizza and barbecue from Mister Chicken. Then, there was the obligatory call home followed by hours of smoking and singing around the piano. It was here that most of our creative juices were allowed to flow crazily. There were never any groupies allowed at these intimate sessions that, I have to say, were some of the happiest times in my life. The dumb song covers that we invented, just to occupy our off-hours, we’d record onto a cassette and pretend that we were our alter egos, the Rhythm Butchers, performing at some empty roadhouse cafe. Stupid fun times. Many years later, Rhino Records released seven Rhythm Butchers extended-play records, so our childlike exuberance lives on for future generations to ignore.
It was all pretty psychedelic. Finally, our music and our real lives were intersecting. The fourth release from the new Koppelman-Rubin-ized Turtles was a beautiful example of a two-and-a-half-minute acid trip. With its gorgeous melody, “Lucy in the Sky” words, and a lush orchestral arrangement to boot, “She’s My Girl” became one of my favorite Turtles singles. And White Whale must have agreed, because they ponied up the dough for an incredible music video shot by Rod Dyer. We had done a rather famous film for “Happy Together” that the BBC had commissioned a full fourteen years before MTV existed, but it wasn’t widely seen in America. Now we had a short film that we could send to the smaller cities that weren’t on our tour schedule in an effort to saturate America. One small problem:
The opening line of “She’s My Girl” is: “Morning, morning glory / If you’d like to know where was I last night…”
Sorry. This was still the ’60s and morning glories were known to have hallucinogenic properties. It was said that if you chewed on enough morning glory seeds, you’d go on a mind trip you’d not soon forget. And it was true. Unlike the “Mellow Yellow” craze that triggered a nation of banana-peel smokers who dried and scraped and puffed to no avail a few years before, morning glories worked. Evidently, our glorious opening line about this beautiful flower was a threat to America and thus a great many radio stations across the country refused to play our record. Luckily, a great many more did. And the Turtles had scored yet another Top 20 hit despite the controversy.
Which, to White Whale, meant just one thing: It was time to release a greatest hits album!
We were really afraid that these guys were going to drop the ball here. After all, we were a band that sold singles, not albums. No one had cared about the LPs, not really. We were just another one of those groups that racked up a ton of hit 45-rpm singles but was perceived as padding out our 331/3-rpm albums with fillers and B-sides. An assumption that was largely true.
But now we had something to actually sell to an album-buying audience. Including the fol
k-rock stuff and the newer NYC productions, we had a solid commercial product at last.
As a band, we still didn’t want this record to look typical: the band guys all wearing bad suits and standing in half-profile with shit-eating grins on their faces. So we went over to the house of our pal and fellow L.A. road dog, Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean fame, who was just beginning to segue from rock into graphics. He designed a surreal cover with our heads floating in space and surrounded by the headless bodies of stylized naked women. What’s not to like about that idea? Packed with monster singles as it was, The Turtles! Golden Hits, released in the fall of ’67, went gold instantly, hit the Top Ten, and became our biggest-selling album.
Bill Utley wasn’t traveling with the band anymore. There were a few interim tour managers hired, including Bill’s brother Bob, but either we hated them or Bill did. Ah, but then came a guy I’ll just call Dave K. A tall, blond, Midwestern drink of water, Dave was a smooth-talking son of a gun who had just the correct amount of gravitas to collect the money for each show with heavy-handed authority, while hanging out with the band like a sixth member. Everybody loved Dave. Hell, we trusted him with our lives, not to mention our money. We laughed together; we loved together. He was one of us: a chosen traveler who we happily invited inside of our exclusive little circle.
In fact, Dave became such a comrade-in-arms that we all decided that the band would be a lot better off if he were our manager instead of cranky old Bill, who didn’t seem to really have time for us anymore. At least, that’s what Dave told us. It didn’t take long and, as I mentioned, Dave was charming. By the end of our fourth tour together, he had us thoroughly believing that Utley was an ogre and up to no good.
Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. Page 10