But, not to worry—Dave had a plan. He would buy our management contract from Bill in installment payments and we would soon be free to become the supergroup he knew we could be.
In reality, here’s how the shit went down: Dave needed cash, so he went to White Whale and convinced them that Utley had been the only thing standing between the label and the complete control they wanted to have. Now, however, with him as manager, the label got to do whatever they so desired, release whatever they felt like, and even have a financial stake in our touring. All he needed from them was cash—cash that Lee and Ted refused to part with. However, the Turtles had money in their account and they really wanted this deal to happen, so…
We borrowed $50,000 from White Whale as an advance against future royalties, and paid it to Bill Utley as the first installment of a $200,000 buyout.
We bought ourselves, and gave ourselves to Dave K., who still owed Utley a stately hundred and fifty large.
So, imagine our surprise when, upon returning from a particularly grueling month of schlepping on the road, we found out that Dave had absconded to Mexico with all of the tour money. Neither Dave nor the money was ever seen again.
Still, we were living the good life, so we sucked it up and attempted to move on. One afternoon, in the midst of a routine landing in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the front wheel of the airplane locked up and we found ourselves hurtling wildly across the runway and off the tarmac onto the grass. Still spinning out of control, we all had the most amazing reaction—we laughed. All of us. Nearing death, it was all we could do. My life didn’t flash before my eyes or anything. I could only laugh at how stupid it was to wind up checking out like this. What a way to go!
Needless to say, we dumped Eht Seltrut right then and there and went back to rented station wagons and U-Haul trucks. I figure what we lost in glamour, we made up in years of life.
There was a new road manager now, and a new attitude in the group. We were big-time successful. The new guy was named Rick Soderlind and, while we were all looking to calm ourselves in the wake of Dave K., Rick was getting ready to bring another storm of his own.
TEN
Punks Leaving a Trail of Destruction
We turned down the next few Bonner and Gordon songs that were sent to us. One of them, “Cat in the Window,” proved us correct. We recorded it, just to make sure it wasn’t right for us, but we didn’t release it (we later stuck it on our second greatest-hits collection, even though it wasn’t a hit). Petula Clark did cut it as a single, and it tanked, so we were feeling all cocky regarding our ability to detect a loser.
But the next one proved us to be not only wrong but world-class morons. It was originally called “Celebrity Ball” and the only cool thing about it, as far as we were concerned, was the fade-out at the end of the song. That song is now referred to as “Celebrate” and it became a Top 20 single for Three Dog Night. You win some, you lose some. We sucked it up, again.
We begged the songwriting duo to come up with something else, anything else. But for some reason, the well had run dry. Bonner and Gordon had a falling-out, broke up as partners, and never wrote another song together. There were a few more submissions, but we were getting Spoonful castoffs now, so again we felt abandoned. Even with our album on the charts and our pictures in the trade publications, the face of music was shifting and we weren’t really a part of that change, no matter how cool we represented ourselves to be.
One or two hit records may not take a band very far, but when you string together a collection of seven or more, as we did, you’ve got something you can actually take to the bank. Or sell as an album. But we were a singles outfit, and we weren’t getting airplay at all on the newfangled FM radio the kids were all listening to. During the previous year or so, there had been a marked sea change in music. Bands like the Grass Roots and Herman’s Hermits were being eclipsed by newer-style, heavier bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hit records weren’t important to a new culture that didn’t value success. These kids just wanted to groove, man. And if you could play the same chord for twenty minutes and do it loudly enough, you were the flavor of the month and would probably soon grace the cover of that new, hip rock mag called Rolling Stone.
So the Turtles were a bit of an anomaly. Hip, just because we were, and square because of the way we were perceived in some places. In New York, we headlined the Fillmore East in October 1968 with Creedence Clearwater Revival opening for us. It was a different experience than in ’66 when we played the original Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. There Bill Graham, who booked us into both venues, shook our hands and congratulated us, but it had been intimidating—we felt like we were out of our element in that nascent jam-band culture. Funny thing, though: You play your songs, talk to the audience like real people and maybe drop the tambourine a few times and the next thing you know, the kids genuinely like you, and you realize that music is music, good is good and, at least back in the ’60s, we were all in this together.
But it was totally frustrating not to be getting the all-important FM airplay where the new “underground” stations were springing up. So, of course, we all started looking around for someone to blame. We decided, as a band like we had always done, to replace Koppelman and Rubin, even though they had given us nothing but hits. We were going to produce ourselves. Heck, yes, that’s the ticket!
Only, it wasn’t that easy to say goodbye. It seems that White Whale had signed some sort of long-term production deal with Koppelman-Rubin in New York and, regardless of our feelings, we weren’t at liberty to decide anything. Which, of course, pissed us off. Results didn’t matter—only decisions mattered. And we had made up our collective mind. I don’t know what machinations Lee and Ted went through to dissolve their agreement, but I know it cost them, big-time. We were punks leaving a trail of destruction in our path. And it’s not like we had an alternative plan. We had bupkes, but we wanted our freedom more than we wanted success.
The label fought us as they never had before, and they were right. We were a band of brats running amok with power. We had never produced anything in our lives and now we were about to take a chart career and throw it away, without a producer or even a song—just because we could. What a bunch of jerks. But we were all they had and, horrified at the prospect of stirring up trouble now, they played the acquiesce card.
Jim had been working on this little ditty called “Sound Asleep,” and with a bit of communal assistance—I added this and Al added that, etc.—we came up with a cute little concept piece that featured a bit of everything but, in reality, contained not enough of anything. So to polish this turd we added a handsaw and a falling tree, sitars, a horn section, a marching army, and a chorus of quacking ducks. “Sound Asleep” was a mess, but it’s still fun to listen to and it still made the charts, sort of, in early ’68. No career damage sustained—yet.
Cut back to the Astor Tower in Chicago. Trying to find that next record. We kinda got psychedelicized by some pot punch brewed up by Elaine McFarlane (of Spanky and Our Gang fame) and wound up writing a group of spaced-out songs that we were convinced would put us into Revolver territory. Still trying to be the Beatles. We penned this opus called “The Owl,” about a wise old bird who sees all (Jesus, really?), and, together with two other spacey gems, notably “The Last Thing I Remember” and “To See the Sun,” were ready to go into any studio with a tape machine and change the world, as long as White Whale was picking up the tab.
Of course, we went big. We booked the famous Chess Studios for a run of days so that we’d have sufficient time for the sitar and tamboura overdubs. (I was the tamboura player—never mind, you don’t need to know.) We also managed to book about a dozen local kids from the Head Start program to portray the plaintive children of the world. “To See the Sun” was an opera. They all were amazing little ecology plays in their own way and we happily sent off both the recordings and the invoice to the label, awaiting their response to the next big thing. Which was, “What are you, h
igh or something?” We could see their point.
Meanwhile, the Turtles had decided that we, as a band, were fully capable not only of producing and writing but also of managing ourselves. All we needed was a spokesman to voice our thoughts and keep us at arm’s length from the record company, and that might as well be Rick Soderlind, who was road managing us anyway. He seemed to be a nice guy. So as we struggled in the Chicago studio, where he wasn’t needed, Rick was back in Los Angeles, where he had found an attorney by the name of Rosalie Morton. Outraged by our financial state despite our career success, the two of them hatched a plan to secretly shop around and find out what the Turtles “might” be worth to a major label. Well, that’s just plain illegal. When you’re under contract, shopping around, even casually, is considered an enormous breach of contract. Any lawyer knows that, especially one who was soon to be named a prosecutor. But RCA said we were worth something to them and we found ourselves on the horns of a dilemma.
♦ ♦ ♦
Emily Anne Kaylan was born on May 7, 1969, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A., and Melita instantly realized that our Laurel Canyon home would be far too small. Besides, what the hell, we could afford it. We found a classic red-barn charmer, as the realtor said, in nearby Woodland Hills. There was an Olympic-size pool (why?), a hayloft, and a frickin’ corral. I thought it was a bit much, but Melita and her mother, Helen, both agreed that a child needed room to grow, so we moved to the Valley. Now, every day was spent with Melita and Helen out by the pool with little Emily in the water and Daddy locked in the den, trying to be creative.
There were a bunch of meetings at Rosalie’s office and actual signed RCA contracts were dangled in front of our faces. We were so close to actually being on a major label. Not that it would have mattered one little bit at that point in our careers, but we didn’t grok that. It was a strange period that felt a lot like limbo, even though we were still out there touring and the bread continued to roll in from our past recordings.
I was a landlord now. We had rented out our Hollywood Hills digs to a couple of starving actresses and on one occasion—and I know this sounds like a scene from an old Jack Lemmon movie—I was given the task of driving to the house, in person, to collect the delinquent rent. It was raining when I arrived at the all-too-familiar edifice. Up the stairs, ding-dong, and here comes little What’s-Her-Name, wrapped only in a towel. “Sorry, but I don’t have the money yet. Would you like some wine?” Boy, am I a sucker for that obvious shit. Of course I would! And the little pipe. Even the baggage: the boyfriend in a band and his photo on the bedside table, the sputtering candles dripping wax on the carpet I’d just had cleaned, the Stones playing in the living room where Emily had taken her first steps. Fuck it—I wanted this chick! The whole bedroom thing was a bit surreal, but the sex was actually pretty good and, sorry, Melita, I think the rent’s gonna be a bit late this month. I wrote a song called “Lady Blue.” I put it on The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, the album Mark and I released in 1972 that launched the Flo and Eddie phase of my career. Inspiration has to come from somewhere.
Our track record at White Whale was still pretty good, yet no matter what we released or how successful it became, these clowns who now had a financial interest in us weren’t happy. Realizing that we weren’t any good at producing ourselves in the studio and wishing to appease the label a little, just to get some breathing room, we placed a call to our former bassist and now Monkees producer Chip Douglas, who was all too pleased to rejoin our happy throng in a new and improved capacity. Chip called his pal, the genius Harry Nilsson, to join us for a session at the fabled Gold Star recording studio in Hollywood.
Nilsson played us a song called “The Story of Rock and Roll” and we were floored. Harry played piano and Chip produced. Mark and I recorded ourselves on track after track, combining our falsettos into a divine gospel glory that Chip named the Incredivoices. The record was really great, got released as a single, and should have worked. Yet, it stalled midway up the Billboard Hot 100 chart, thereby fueling the label’s anxiety even further. Now they weren’t sure that Chip had been the correct choice either.
But we loved working with Chip—he got us, and singing with Harry was like working with Gershwin. It was time to hit the Astor Tower and do some writing.
♦ ♦ ♦
Our idea was to portray twelve completely different groups on a single album. We’d be the heavy metal band, the folkies, the surf band, the mods; we’d write songs in all of these divergent styles and let Henry Diltz, our trusted photographer and good friend, take pictures of us dressed appropriately in rented costumes and makeup. It would be like a variety show where, unlike the Beatles on Sergeant Pepper, we could be all the bands on the compilation. All we needed was an opener, something to welcome the audience to the show. Let’s call Harry.
Harry wrote the title track for The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands. It was all razzamatazz and step-right-up: exactly what we were looking for. There, in Chicago, everyone was working on what would become their contribution to the project. Jim had a tasty country number called “Too Much Heartsick Feeling,” Al had this fuzzy instrumental called “Buzzsaw” that sounded like velour wallpaper; even Johny had a drum solo spoof called “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea” that was going to be awesome. Chip contributed the amazing ecology mantra “Earth Anthem,” written by his pal Bill Martin, and I had a funny song or two in the mix, but nothing jumped out. And the label, like the hungry, slobbering beast that it was, called out for more, more, more.
“Give us another ‘Happy Together,’” the assholes intoned. A litany of garbage chanted by drooling idiots. Give us another “Happy Together”! I couldn’t stand it anymore. I bolted to my room, locked the door and, thirty minutes later, emerged with “Elenore.”
I had gotten so pissed off that I had decided to show White Whale, once and for all, what dicks they were. So I took the song “Happy Together” and mutated it, just for Lee and Ted. Every time the “Happy” chords went up, mine went down. Every time the melody took a cheesy turn, mine took a cheesier one. Then, to sweeten the deal, I threw in handfuls of pimply teenage hyperboles: “pride and joy, etcetera” was originally “fab and gear, etcetera.” “Your folks hate me” and “I really think you’re groovy” were meant to inflame the wrath of these L.A. lames and I couldn’t wait to sing this new ditty for the band, hear their cynical laughter, and forward it on to our slave-driving masters in the West. But instead, something else happened.
Everybody liked it. Humor? What humor? This is just what we’ve been looking for! Chip was nearly orgasmic. We worked out the harmonies right then and there. Chip called the label to tell them that we had the hit they had been looking for. We came back to L.A., cut “Elenore” at Gold Star and it was a monster hit, not only in America but in Canada, the UK, even Australia and New Zealand. Couldn’t have come at a better time. We had a minute now to finish the album, we had a Top Ten record three years after “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and back we were on the Hollywood soundstages, doing network TV and still performing, long after the Fab Four had hung up their touring shoes. Yeah, man.
Although “Elenore” was all my doing, we had agreed before this project to write everything as a group, just like the Doors did. True democracy in action. Which is why I only receive one-fifth writers’ royalty for “Elenore,” the same as Mark, Jim, Al, and Johny. Unfair? Yes. Democratic? Most certainly. Regrettable? Shit, yes. Would I do it again? Not bloody likely.
There was still one slot to fill on The Battle of the Bands and Chip was convinced that he had just the tune for the job. The song he had in mind was a Beatles-style Merseybeat tune written by Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds (who was still Jim at the time), way back before they had gotten a record deal or recorded “Mr. Tambourine Man.” It was a lot like “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Chip was excited about playing the song for our approval, so Mark and I drove up to his house at the top of Kirkwood to hear him perform it. There was no piano at Chip’s and he
couldn’t play it on guitar. So we wound up listening to the performance as Chip sang accompanied by an old pump organ with only one of its two bellows working—it was broken and playing things only half as fast as they should have been. Remember, Chip kept reminding us, this song is fast: I just can’t play it that way. But what we heard was a beautiful ballad with a soaring melody and plaintive lyrics. And that beautiful, broken pump organ. “No, Chip. You’re wrong. This is a slow song. This is the ballad that we’ve waited for. This is a giant hit record.”
We included “You Showed Me” on The Battle of the Bands and released it as a follow-up to “Elenore.” It was, indeed, a gigantic hit record, our final Top Ten single. The album itself sold respectably, but we were still a singles band. Rolling Stone reviewed it twice. The writer of the first article absolutely loved it and hailed us as a musical force to be reckoned with. The second called us a schlock Mothers of Invention pretend band, inferring that only Mister Zappa could fuse comedy and music. I’ve never forgotten that review. Sometimes it only takes one little thing, one negative critic, to color your entire world black. If I ever meet that guy…
ELEVEN
Lucifer Laughs
Rick Soderlind was a friend of ours first, unlike Dave K., who had been thrust upon us and ripped us open from the inside. Johny had really been hurt. He had given Dave a shitload of money to open up an exclusive Italian auto dealership in the Bay Area. Johny was going to be the exclusive West Coast distributor of the Italian Marcos automobile, a really fast, fiberglass racing machine. Johny bought one and fell in love with it. He’d rocket through the Canyon at ridiculous speeds, tempting the inevitable daily. Dave also set Johny up with a magnificent geodesic dome house in Marin County. With the down payment supposedly in escrow, Johny drove up there one afternoon to check out his new digs, and was shocked and angry to find it happily occupied by an owner who didn’t know what Johny was talking about. Dave was a lovable dude.
Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. Page 11