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

by Howard Kaylan

  If our first Fillmore show that evening was wonderful, our second was transcendent. When the concert ended and the audience stood, waiting for their encore, it felt as though a herd of elephants had entered the auditorium as the world’s most famous couple walked onstage. The resulting jam was recorded by both Frank and the Fillmore and was released on two different albums. John released it as the fourth LP in his Some Time in New York City compilation on Apple, although he took writing credit on every song, including Frank’s iconic “King Kong,” which he renamed and tried to publish. Frank’s lawyers had to sue John’s lawyers to straighten the entire thing out, and it really wasn’t all that great anyway, but at least I can say that I am among a handful of people, right alongside Paul McCartney, to ever share writing credits with the immortal John Lennon. So there.

  NINETEEN

  A Closely Guarded Secret

  I smoked pot with Frank Zappa. Not once, not twice, but at least three times. It was a closely guarded secret, and no one in the Zappa family nor any of the chronicles of Frank’s life have copped to it. Frank was famously anti-drugs and anti-liquor too. But when he was feeling particularly low or even fabulously good, the man would sometimes follow his famous nose to where the smell of Mary Jane took him. And that was generally my room or Mark’s. I gotta admit, the first time it happened, I didn’t know how to react.

  Frank would often nurse a syrupy green concoction when the band went out on the town. It was crème de menthe or a grasshopper or something abysmally sweet. Generally, Frank would imbibe only when he was with a lady, which was pretty often. But later on, when the band actually started feeling like a band, it wasn’t uncommon for Zappa to be one of the boys.

  My first recollection of him smoking was when we were all in the same room, and we were all happy. It was me and Mark and Jim. We always checked with Frank before we did any substances in his presence, but after the John Lennon episode, our habits weren’t as taboo as they once had been.

  We were smoking a single joint between the three of us when Frank came over and asked if he could have a hit. We were in shock.

  “Are you sure, Frank?”

  “Why not?” was his reply, and he took the joint from me and inhaled deeply. Just the one toke. He exhaled a huge cloud of smoke.

  “Tastes good.” he said.

  “More?” we asked.

  “No, thanks,” came the reply. “This shit gives me headaches. But don’t let me stop you.” And we didn’t.

  There were one or two group orgies where the green booze flowed and Zappa sought out a little combustible solace. He was often just trying to impress a young lady, which he certainly didn’t have to do—he was fuckin’ Frank Zappa, for Christ’s sake! But in this new and more democratic Mothers of Invention, which Frank had shortened to the Mothers, all the old bets were off. We were a close-knit bunch of musicians on a common mission, and camaraderie was a huge part of our band dynamic.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  June 14, according to the good old daily entries, was the day that we signed the settlement with Martin-Phillips. It was ordered by the courts of the great state of California, that we—meaning the Turtles—owed this New York company the sum of $65,000. It was a good deal, our attorney Paul Almond assured us, and under the bizarre circumstances of the management confusion of the ’60s, he was probably right. Of course, we didn’t have $65,000 or even two sticks to rub together, but the Fillmore album was coming out and someone at Warner’s must have heard some street buzz, because on that same afternoon, we picked up checks for $10,000 each from Herb’s office. Even better, Herb told both of us not to worry about the money that we owed or anything else. Enjoy, he advised.

  So I celebrated. The now elusive marriage bed was visited and I schlepped down the hill to Chalet Gourmet, the amazing upscale grocers, for champagne, caviar, and lobster to go with the extra hits of blow we’d consume that night. Even in the dark times, we lived large, but it sure felt better when you knew that you could actually pay for it. Four days later, we finally got an offer on our Woodland Hills house. Things, it seemed, were rapidly turning around.

  Frank had hired a language instructor for Mark and me. Her name was Lu, and we had met her in Germany. Now she was currently living in Frank’s basement or guesthouse; I really don’t know which. He had an idea for our next, post-“Billy” opus and it all seemed to depend on our progress in the Germanic language arts. Frank was thinking, at least, three steps ahead. We weren’t singing in German yet.

  On June 29, we left for the summer tour and Frank felt, I think, that we were truly a band for the very first time. In Quebec City, after a boys’ night out, I hung with him and Aynsley until dawn, and the next night the two of us went to a rancid discotheque and spoke philosophy until the wee hours. We were almost like buddies. I kept my distance; I think I knew my place, but I was being myself. It wasn’t like I felt like I was on my best behavior around my boss. There wasn’t anything about me that Frank didn’t know. I believe that part of the man’s genius was to get inside his players’ heads and bring out the best or the weirdest or the most perverted part of them to amplify and turn into a piece of theater. I was certainly ripe fodder in 1971.

  On July 5, in Frank’s hotel room in Montreal, Zappa played a happy new guitar lick while the band jammed along and, unbeknownst to all, I hastily scribbled out the absolutely obscene lyrics to “Magdalena.” They grossed out even me! But in the spirit of the Mothers and madness of that band and that city, they seemed perfectly and disgustingly appropriate. Even more than that, they made Frank laugh. Really laugh. Like, sit down on the bed and wipe his eyes laugh. I have never felt so good. It was parental approval for this kid.

  I felt like telling the world, but it was 3:30 in the morning, and the only person I felt like talking to was Lin in Seattle. I was very confused. Confused enough to actually pass up a now-famous Zappa-era orgy in Winnipeg. I don’t feel bad about missing it now, but at the time, especially knowing all of the girls as I did, it was sort of like not being the guy who walked on the moon to earn his ranger’s badge. In fact, Mark, Jim, and Frank developed an actual salute that I also adopted, although never earned: full, military right hand on the heart, then lifted skyward to the chant of “Rangers, ho!” I never got to be an actual Winnipeg ranger, but I still think of one of those girls, Enid Finnbogason, every once in a while. I think I saw her in a soft-core porno thing a few years ago and she was looking good. Hi, Enid. Rangers, ho!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I don’t remember what story I made up to tell Melita, but I didn’t come home when the rest of the band did. I went, instead, to Seattle, took the ferry to Vashon Island, rented a bicycle, and pedaled to Lin’s house for an amazing week, off the books. I needed every minute of it. It was amazingly romantic in that nonpermanent and safe way: the misty island, the beautiful girl with the long brown hair. We went to a beach party together at her mother’s house, also on Vashon, and woke up together spooning beneath her always open bedroom window with the gauze curtains brushing against my newly grown Zappa-era beard. She smelled of vanilla. It was wonderful. For the first time, I knew clearly what I had to do.

  It wasn’t Lin or the thought of Lin. Actually, it had been Dianne and the thought of Dianne. It was personal and very selfish, but as I returned to my home in Woodland Hills with our marriage’s inevitable collapse ahead and my young daughter literally in her mother’s arms, I drunkenly walked through my front door, suitcase in hand, and announced my departure. There was an ocean of wonderful and new women out there for the taking, and none of them nagged me or told me that I was lazy or held their hands out for a check at the end of the month. Of course, that was a little something called responsibility and I certainly hadn’t learned anything about that. Fuck, man, I was a rock star.

  So I helped Melita and her mom move out of our classy McMansion and into much more modest digs and I found a little non-family-friendly place on Treasure Trail to begin the first of a great many crises, midlife and otherwise
. I felt nothing—no remorse—and shed not one single tear. This would only affect my daughter for the best. She certainly didn’t need to be around two parents constantly screaming, I justified.

  We were still learning German and rehearsing in the evenings, and Frank was supervising the animated section of 200 Motels at the offices of Murakami-Wolf, the production company that had coproduced the movie with Zappa and Herb. It was there that Jerry Good handed Mark and me the script for a new animated feature that one of his animators had written especially for us. It was something about a weaselly little insurance salesman and his foulmouthed friend, a six-foot duck. You bet, pal. Anything if the check clears.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Two houses now, one for each of us. And I’ve got to talk to somebody. I hate to be truly alone. So I spent hours on the phone—only landlines in those days—to Lin and to Dianne, and when I finally really needed a shoulder to cry on, I found it in a very unlikely place. After rehearsals, it fell to me as a Canyon dweller to transport Frank home after rehearsals. Frank and Gail had two children at the time, Moon Unit and Dweezil, and had hired a most nontraditional nanny, the lovely Pamela Miller, she of 200 Motels and GTOs fame. I would drop Frank at his front door and then circle around with my headlights off to park behind his guesthouse, wherein dwelt the lovely Miss Pamela. I was pushing the envelope now and certainly should have known better, but look at whom we’re talking about here. Excess R us.

  On August 7, the Mothers sold out the very same Pauley Pavilion at UCLA, the old alma mater, where I had gone to congratulate the old Mothers less than a year before. Frank recorded the entire concert on his portable Uher reel-to-reel machine and it would soon be released as an album, without a single overdub or studio sweetening, as Just Another Band from L.A., but that was a long way off in Zappa time.

  Pamela and I partied, hung with Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night, saw our buddies Cheech and Chong at the Troubadour, and went to Disneyland. I was talking to Dianne for hours in the daytime and then doing my wash with Pamela at the Zappas’ and running around naked in the middle of the night, as the entire household did. Except I wasn’t part of the Zappa household. I was a naked employee who was drinking milk out of the carton while being framed in the nude by the refrigerator light. Not cool.

  Dweezil was still in diapers. It sounds weird to say after all these years have passed—I recently worked with Dweezil’s band—but life is full of surprises.

  My relationship with Miss Pamela wasn’t exactly normal either. There were no secrets here. Not really. Pamela sort of knew about Dianne, although not the total picture, and I was obviously aware of Pamela’s famously promiscuous past and, indeed, present. One evening, while we were relaxing in the guesthouse, a long black stretch limousine pulled up in front of the little house, the back door opened, and Pamela rushed by me dressed in diaphanous scarves and made up for an evening of play. She said that she was sorry but she had forgotten to mention that Led Zeppelin were in town and she had this standing arrangement with Jimmy Page—she knew I would understand, which I did. I was just as guilty, or innocent, as she was. It was a time to be free.

  But hey, was it phenomenal!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  On Monday, August 21, the Mothers’ white-covered Fillmore East—June 1971 album entered the Billboard charts. Four days later, we played a long show as a favor for our good friend Bill Graham at the Berkeley Community Theatre. We met a lady friend of Jim’s whom he had flown in from the Midwest and ate a lovely dinner. After an uneventful concert, I was in my room when a call came in: orgy in Frank’s room!

  There were these Eastern Airlines stewardesses there that we had encountered earlier in the day, and by the time I arrived they were both naked, each on one of the two double beds in this particular chamber. A living room separated this room from Frank’s king-size master.

  And they weren’t alone. The entire band was there, as were the crew and a now-infamous groupie named Nigey Lennon (no relation to you-know-who). This girl actually spent several years in Frank’s company and proudly wrote a book about this night and her ongoing affair with the maestro. But on this particular evening, she focused her attention on one of Frank’s shoes. That’s right, a large, well-worn purple saddle shoe. She wanted to put on a show for us all, this considerate lady. And the only condition was that we all get naked. Well, hell, no problem.

  So we disrobed, and Nigey began to put on her show. All of us—except for Frank, that is—wore bemused smiles as he watched her writhing on the double bed. He puffed his cigarette and drank his disgustingly foul green drink as her captive audience watched and she reached her climax. It was intense. Masturbation, insertion, groaning, and coming. When she finished, she wiped the sweat from her brow, tossed aside the object of her desire, and asked, “Who’s first?” She was obliged by one of Graham’s roadies, but that’s all it took to begin the free-for-all.

  Bodies were everywhere. The stewardesses were more than courteous and accommodated three or four guys at a time. No coffee or tea was served. There was something sad about seeing Jim’s little Midwest friend, Miss Prim and Proper, get hauled into the fracas, only to be happily ravaged by Aynsley and everybody else for hours. It was great fun, and although after a while even orgies get old, it felt like we were a club now. We had, for better or worse, a shared secret, and nothing brings a band closer than a shared secret. Ask Fleetwood Mac. I had shot my wad, so to speak, and was happy to return to my room. There, I called Lin and made plans for one last trip to Vashon Island.

  We took psilocybin cuddling in a blanket, watching the sun come up over Seattle and talking of the pompatus of love. We were terrific together. It was great fun, but it was just one of those things, as the song says. Three days later, I flew to San Francisco, where Dianne met me at the airport in her VW bus with her dog, Trucker, and all of her belongings. We drove to Los Angeles to begin our new lives together.

  TWENTY

  A Pony Harness Dipped in Enchilada Sauce

  On August 14, I did a brief interview in the old Woodland Hills house. That wasn’t unusual. Reporters and music writers would frequently get their best stories going to the interviewees’ domiciles. Comfort meant letting your guard down. The surprise was that the article came out in Rolling Stone. Six years of supposed show-business success and now, at last, I was deemed hip enough to be interviewed by the only validating newsprint vehicle of my generation. It wasn’t a huge article, but it allowed me to breathe a massive sigh of life relief. And by the way, it was written by a young freelance writer from L.A. named Harold Bronson. Some of you more astute record collector types will recognize Harold as one of the future owners of Rhino Records, which would reissue all of the Turtles’ albums and release a lot of other stuff Mark and I did.

  Harold started his article by putting my life at the time into proper perspective. He wrote, “Working in the Turtles, working in the Mothers, it’s all the same, Howard Kaylan says. But he has undergone a transition nevertheless. Gone is the superstar showbiz Woodland Hills suburban dwelling complete with wife and pool in favor of a small, unimpressive wooden house north of the Hollywood Bowl. ‘I went from a Mercedes to a Volkswagen,’ he puts it, ‘but I didn’t understand why until now.’”

  Dianne and I were living in the new little house on Treasure Trail, struggling to keep cool during one of the hottest, un-air-conditioned summers in memory. On Labor Day, Bolan called from the Chateau Marmont, and Dianne and I picked him up in her camper van. We got plowed and listened to his new album, particularly the amazing background vocals, and the two of us made love with Marc passed out in a cognac stupor. It was perverse and very cool. I think he was passed out. If not, what the hell? We were brothers.

  It was a busy week. Mark, Jim, Frank, and I went into the studio on Tuesday to record the voices for the trailer and movie commercial. June Bolan phoned the following morning, way too early. Marc was already in the studio and she was bored, dahling. We walked the expensive boutiques on Sunset Plaza, dined and cha
mpagned at the Old World restaurant, and wound up back at their suite. Then both Dianne and June decided that it was time for me to be officially welcomed into the world of hip. With enough room service champagne and the assistance of June’s little stash bottle, I was deemed sufficiently numb enough to have my left ear pierced by these two well-meaning alcoholics.

  June didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Dianne didn’t either. I was wasted and they wouldn’t let me see. I only heard, “Oops!” and that was enough to make me blanch a bit.

  “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. It’s okay. We can fix it.” Not what you want to hear. “Sit still, my angel,” says June. Only by now the damage had been done. I had an earring in my left ear all right—at the bottom of a very long and bloody gash. Rock ’n’ roll! What are you going to do? I didn’t go nuts about it then, and I don’t regret it even now. An earring still dangles from the bottom of that scar. Call it a souvenir of the best era in my life. Of course, this is a judgment made more than forty years after the fact.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  That night, the Mothers had a photo shoot with Henry Diltz for the press kit that would accompany the movie premiere, but the next evening I had set time aside to have a very important dinner. I picked up Pamela at her mother’s house and we went out to dinner at the Chart House in Marina del Rey, one of my favorite haunts. It was a serious and unhappy meal. I told Pamela about Dianne. She had known her name, but had no idea that I had intended to fly her in from Detroit to live with me. I had only just separated from my wife and child—how did this happen so quickly? I didn’t have an answer that made any sense to her except that I had fallen in love. But didn’t we also have love? It wasn’t the same, I told her. The lady cried. Even though what we had was far from exclusive. Even though she has admitted, even in her own best-seller, I’m with the Band, that I was never really her type, we had something.