“So I hear the Turtles broke up. What are you boys going to do now?”
We confessed that we didn’t have a clue, but I did like being referred to as a “boy.” It felt paternal somehow.
“Listen,” he continued, “I’m putting together a new Mothers of Invention—none of the original guys. We’re going to go to Europe, play some festivals, maybe some TV…. What do ya think?”
We thought yes.
“I’m having a family barbecue this Sunday. Why don’t you guys come on over. Bring your wives. Oh, yeah, and your saxophones. You do still play saxophone, don’t you?”
Saxophone? What the hell did Frank want us to bring our saxes for? He had the incredible Ian Underwood in his band and my old Selmer hadn’t seen a new reed in five years. Mark and I traded a look not unlike the one that passed between us at the draft board. Still, maybe Frank just wanted us to honk along with an old-school tune—that we could do.
Comes Sunday and the big pool party at Frank and his wife, Gail’s, purple house on Woodrow Wilson Drive, not far from my Laurel Canyon home. Wives in bathing suits, getting the third degree, screaming naked children running around the chlorined lagoon, the all-American smell of burgers and hot dogs: suburbia at its least corrupted. We ate, we drank, we schmoozed. Then Zappa motioned the two of us downstairs to his legendary studio to hear what we could do. I had my old tenor. Mark had his old alto.
He placed sheet music before us on stands and counted us off. We did what we could. Then he put on a tape of a classic MOI song for us to blorp along with. We did what we could. And then he turned off the machine and told us to put our instruments away. My heart sank. I guess, deep down, I had somehow counted on this all-new life.
“Yeah, you guys won’t be needing those. We’ve got two weeks of rehearsal before we leave for England. Got passports?”
Oh, hell, yes. Frank wanted singers. The Turtles had been broken up for all of two weeks and we had a great new gig.
♦ ♦ ♦
Rehearsals were held in the big, private studio behind the offices on Sunset Boulevard that Frank owned with my cousin Herb Cohen. We had no idea what to expect, musically. No one knew exactly what direction Zappa would be headed in; that was one of the most alluring parts about being asked to join this newly invented Mothers. Brimming with anticipation, Mark and I arrived super early. The studio doors were open and band equipment had already been set up. The standby lights were glowing. There wasn’t a soul around except for this guy Mike, a hirsute hippie who lived on a mattress in the back of the room. He was otherwise occupied, I guess, so Mark and I reverted to our usual pre-anything ritual and lit up a fatty or three. We were in fine shape, indeed, when Mr. Zappa walked in with a briefcase and a thermos. He sniffed the air and instantly registered his disapproval.
“I don’t know what you guys are used to, but around here we have rules.”
Oh, shit!
“And one of our rules is, there is to be no marijuana smoking in this studio. If the police are lured here by the decibel level of the music going on inside these walls, for instance, who do you suppose is responsible once they get a whiff of your shit? Me, that’s who. And I sure ain’t going downtown for your ridiculous vices. Do I make myself clear?”
He had every right to be pissed off. It was his room. We were jerks.
The second day, Gail dropped Frank off at the rear parking lot as always, and there were Mark and I, hanging near Mark’s blue and white VW bus and sending up aromatic smoke signals that no one could possibly ignore. Zappa was livid.
“I thought I told you guys that there was to be no smoking of that shit!”
“But you said, no smoking inside the studio, Frank. We’re outside, see?”
Frank was not laughing.
“You’re not in the Turtles anymore, wise guys. My music is serious. This tour is serious. We spent twelve hours here yesterday working our asses off and our first show is less than two weeks away. I can’t afford to keep going over this intricate shit just because you guys got stoned and forgot it.”
And we said, “Test us, Frank. Anything we learned yesterday. Go ahead. Test us anytime you want to. And if we fail the test, we’ll stop the smoking—we promise.”
It was not unlike my leaving-college ultimatum.
So Frank did test us. We went over the bizarre and difficult music that we had been taught the previous day, note for note, phrase by phrase. And, not to brag, but it was perfect. Thank you, Mister Wood. See, kids? The sight-reading really paid off here. And Zappa was a little flummoxed, I think. He hesitated to find the right words to say in front of his entire new band.
“Yeah, well, if I catch you guys smoking dope, I’ll test you right then and there. And I’ll never bail you out. You get caught at some border crossing, you’re on your own; I don’t know you. Get it?”
We got it.
The guys in the band were amazing players. And they all hated us. Before we even walked through the door, they hated everything about us. We were the Turtles and they were serious musicians. More than one of them was afraid that Frank had lost his mind, not to mention his credibility, by selecting these fat, AM radio pop singers to join what was to be, ostensibly, a heavy FM blues/jazz fusion group.
Aynsley Dunbar certainly didn’t understand. Jeff Simmons laughed, but not in a good way. George Duke had never heard of us and didn’t care, Don Preston was against vocals, period, and Ian Underwood was happy just to be getting paid.
Man, if our own band didn’t get it, how the hell would Zappa’s ultra-hard-core fans react?
But we dutifully learned the Zappa classics and a bunch of new stuff while Frank drank coffee, chain-smoked cigarettes, and tried to figure out what to do with me and Mark.
FIFTEEN
A Hint of Possible Ascension on the Hipness Scale
The legal crap was still going on every day. Fortunately, the worst of the lawsuits had taken an interesting and semi-calculated turn. During the Turtles’ final days, we had had the legal advice of not only the questionable Rosalie Morton, but our own, more personal attorney, a young partner named Paul Almond. It had been Paul who had told us how stupid the two of us had been to break up the band without calling him first. That Martin-Phillips lawsuit was still in daily depositions, and now, with the rest of the Turtles literally out of the music business and Mark and I about to become more visible, the evil opposing lawyers threatened to keep Mark and me from going to Europe at all by scheduling court appearances to coincide with the five days ahead that we were to be spending in Amsterdam.
Oh no! Don’t you bastards dare take Amsterdam away from me!
Interestingly enough, through all of the legal horrors that we were facing and would continue to encounter, even years later, it was cousin Herbie Cohen who got on the phone with these white-collar types, cut through the bullshit, and was the voice of reason. We never considered Herb to be our manager, ever, and neither did he. But he was certainly a strange and dark angel who looked over both Mark and me like family (which I guess I was), only better.
In those rehearsal days, Carlos Bernal, one of our roadies, would still come over to my Woodland Hills house, just to hang out. So would Dean Torrence. So would Danny Hutton. As would the Volmans—Mark’s daughter Sarina was a well-behaved addition to the mix. We were doing a lot of tie-dyeing. Just weeks before, in our downtime, we had spent a few days with Rainbow Annie, the lady who sort of started the whole fashion movement, at John Sebastian’s camp (yes, he actually lived in a tent on the property of Cyrus Farrar from the Modern Folk Quartet, a few prime acres in the hills just above the Warner Bros. studios).
In May, Emily turned one year old. White Whale released our 1965 recording of “Eve of Destruction” as a single. Seiter came over with copies and we laughed. Then, of course, the stupid thing actually charted, though barely cracking the Hot 100. It was a weird way to go out.
Rehearsals were difficult, but it was really fun and stimulating to hear the jaw-dropping soloing of Mr. Zapp
a, a longtime hero, inches away from my head. Just picture yourself in a similar situation: One day, you’re a drooling Led Zeppelin fan and the next, you’re the new Robert Plant and when Jimmy winds down his amazing solo on “Black Dog,” he points to you. Yeah, it felt exactly like that.
The guys in the Mothers were beginning to come around. It helped that I had a car and was willing to take Jeff Simmons home after rehearsals. We learned the greatest hits: Some we learned right off of the record, and others we would mutate, such as “Who Are the Brain Police,” or use in medleys, linking “Mom and Dad” up to “Concentration Moon,” for example. Frank had new instrumentals for the group to tackle too, so it wasn’t just about them sitting around and watching the newbies play catch-up. We learned some of Frank’s soon-to-be-recorded pieces. Our first encounter as a band had been on June 1, and on the morning of June 11, I flew to San Antonio, where Frank and I did some FM radio interviews and hung out at a bar that was actually called Bwana Dik, a name that soon would go down in Zappa history and be the site of many folklore-inspired incidents that would be turned into songs by Frank for fun and—for him, at least—profit.
I was nervous as hell before the next night’s auditorium concert, but the audience seemed to either know who we were, or only came to see Mr. Zappa and whomever he brought with him. Which, luckily, was the case nine out of ten times. At any rate, to much applause and with the support of our new onstage best friends, night one went off without a hitch. It was a little loose, but that was to have been expected. Afterward, Mark, our new smoking buddy, Jeff, and I stayed up to party and evaluate our night, ’cause the stakes were going up with every concert. Our next warm-up show was a giant rock festival the following night at Braves Stadium in Atlanta.
I only remember the size of the audience and the feeling of validation, at last, as I actually glimpsed a hint of possible ascension on the hipness scale. The following day, I flew to New York to hang out with my songwriting buddy Steve Duboff, and to get high with my old pal Soupy Sales. There was a carnival in the East Village and it was raining, of course. The city felt different somehow. It was still romantic to me, but not in a lovelorn way. I was the lone traveler now, collar to the wind, and about to embark on a Herculean journey.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sadly, that journey, as had the one three years earlier, began with a transoceanic flight on the dreaded Air India—a not-so-instant replay—followed by a switch to KLM at Heathrow and a speedy flight to Amsterdam. I was to share a room with George Duke, but after I returned from the Paradiso with a pocketful of hash, George decided that I deserved a single. Smart man. Beethovenstraat shopping and beautiful pubs with pigtailed blond waitresses, those fantastic canals and the allure of the smoky coffee bars where tourists could sit for hours ordering marijuana and hashish off the menu while Hendrix music blared into the narrow cobbled streets … It was fantastic.
I was totally wasted for the recording of the following afternoon’s Dutch television special for the VPRO network. It was precisely the correct frame of mind for that appearance and it’s still around to haunt me, constantly, on YouTube. Sometimes, you have to trust the drugs. Now there’s advice your mom’s not going to give you.
And already, there were girls. Maybe being around Aynsley helped. Of course it helped. Still, I remember going to the airport the next morning with Marilyn and Barb. And those are the memories that just won’t go away. The girls dropped us at the airport and we flew back to London, this time to stay at the tony Kensington Palace. I knew exactly where I wanted to go for dinner that night. I took a taxi to the Speakeasy. I did not, however, have the spinach omelet.
The next afternoon, June 20, fell on a Saturday. Mark and I met after breakfast and decided to take a stroll down the famous Portobello Road, where the lane had been designated as a weekend walking street for the trendiest of Londoners. It was really hot outside. We took our time, browsing the colorful booths and storefronts with vendors hawking sweet rock fashions and handmade head shop items and jewelry. This was the coolest place to be in all of London, and we remembered what our coolest of London friends had told us just months before: “If you guys are ever in London, give us a shout-out on the Portobello Road….”
That’s what Bolan had said. And here we were. The chances were pretty damned slim, but what the hell? So we started yelling his name.
Two blocks down and two floors up on the left, the window opened and out poked the curly, elfin head of our new best friend, Marc.
“What the hell are you guys doing here?”
“We came to party!”
And party we did. We listened to music—mostly California surf stuff. Marc had a lot of our albums too. We smoked and had tea. June was a lovely hostess and I fell in love with her immediately. And with Marc, too. No secret there.
We exchanged information. We would see them both soon, but had a 10:30 P.M. interview back at the hotel before a midnight show, guess where?
Did you guess the Speakeasy? If yes, move your marker forward two squares and take a guzzle of your favorite beverage.
Frank booked a session the following night at Trident, one of the best rooms in town, and I recall Alice Cooper being there as well as our buddy Harry Nilsson. I think Jeff Beck was there too. On my birthday, Frank and Jeff Simmons had one helluva fight about musical direction, but I didn’t think much about it at the time. Hmmm. A foreshadowing, perhaps?
We took a bus the next morning to a castle, a real fucking castle in Littlehampton to do a press conference for the upcoming Bath Music Festival with Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Canned Heat, Dr. John and many others. There were many things to ingest and imbibe there, and Volman wound up spending the night while I took the bus back to London alone to dine on Wimpy burgers and watch TV. Then, at 11 P.M. the phone rang. It was Bolan. Are you guys around and available? I’d sure like you to sing on this track. I hopped a taxi to Trident, where native New Yorker Tony Visconti was producing Tyrannosaurus Rex and I tripled my background vocals on a song called “Seagull Woman.” It wasn’t exactly rock ’n’ roll—not yet. But I got to sing on my buddy’s very English new record. And I felt pretty damned good.
♦ ♦ ♦
We played at the Bath Festival on Sunday, June 28. I hit the stage before 250,000 Brits with the added help of all I could smoke from Donovan and Jefferson Airplane. It was terrific. The Mothers of Invention sounded great.
The very next day, the entourage left London on yet another Air India flying tandoori oven and wound up in Chicago to play the first of a few domestic dates that would get us back to Los Angeles for a bit or normality before beginning the first rehearsals for 200 Motels, whatever that was: Lots of acid, W. C. Fields, Mexican food and, of course, the ever-present Dr. Lax, the infamous Beverly Hills physician who refilled Placidyl prescriptions with no questions asked. There was still a FOR SALE sign on our Woodland Hills house, although the foot traffic had dwindled down to a few new agents but no clients. Didn’t anyone want a house with a corral anymore?
Meanwhile, Mark and I began production meetings with, of all people, Freddy Cannon, he of “Palisades Park” fame. We had found some great songs for Freddy and we were all ready to go into the studio to mount his comeback. I know, right?
I guess we figured that if you spin enough plates…
Toward the end of the summer, the Mothers of Invention played a concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, home to some of our earliest successes as the Crossfires. It was really close to my parents’ house in Westchester, close enough that they came to the show.
I’ve got to mention here that, back when I was eighteen or so and visiting the folks over a long holiday weekend, I brought home the Freak Out! album and blasted it as loud as their G.E. console stereo would go. When my father pounded on the door, demanding to know what the hell I was listening to, I showed him the album cover and he almost exploded. With laughter. He couldn’t believe it. He had the proverbial cow. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Really. So much so that the mere
mention of the name Frank Zappa would send him into sidesplitting convulsions. And then there was Frank’s picture. And the one with the pigtails.
Now, four years later, this clown was my boss.
We hung out near the apron of the stage after the concert ended. Mark’s parents, Bea and Joe, were there as well; we had eaten dinner at their house before the show. Sid and Sally approached the raised platform as they had done hundreds of times before, rooting on the Belvederes, the Nightriders, the Crossfires, and certainly the Turtles. My mother kept scrapbooks of everything I had done since kindergarten and I knew when I saw the tears in her eyes that she was proud of her little boy and what he had accomplished in his short life.
She looked up at me as only a mother could and said, “What the hell was that? You go from singing like an angel on Ed Sullivan to making this Zappa garbage? I can’t tell my friends about this crap. I can’t write about this in the local paper. What are you doing with your life?”
So that went well.
Into the studio when we weren’t rehearsing. This would be Chunga’s Revenge. The tracks were cut at Whitney Studios in Glendale during the day and the vocals were done by night at the Record Plant. A week later, the album was done and mixed and Cal Schenkel had already designed the album cover. Mark and I weren’t allowed to use our names on the record at all because of the White Whale litigation, so Frank had pressured us to come up with noms de plume, aliases we could use to disguise our true identities.
We racked our brains to come up with something clever before we remembered that we had nicknamed Carlos “the Phlorescent Leech” because of his mooching ways and his colorful garb. Our other roadie, Dennis Jones, looked more like an “Eddie” to us than he did a Dennis, so we called him that. They were the original Phlorescent Leech and Eddie. When he heard that, Frank laughed hard enough to shoot warm coffee like a spit take and we knew that, at least for a little while, I would be the Phlorescent Leech and Mark would be Eddie. And a little bit of history was made.
Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. Page 14