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

by Howard Kaylan

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  One afternoon that spring, Alex and I walked the block and a half to the post office. She clutched me tightly at the sight of a toothless, raggedy bum begging for change at the doorway. The guy actually grabbed me by the arm.

  “Howard?”

  I was scared. It was my old drummer, John Breadeau, who had played with our opening act in the early Zappa days. His sign read WILL WORK FOR FOOD. We spoke for a while as Alex huddled next to me.

  More than ever I needed to get out of there. The three of us took a vacation in Maui at the end of April while the Rodney King trial was taking place in L.A.—the whole city was scared while waiting for the verdict, and it felt good to not be there. I called my Realtor from the hotel and told her to put up a FOR SALE sign on our Studio City lawn. I had had enough. I needed fresh air. I knew where I needed to be: that wonderful stretch of Pacific Coast between L.A. and the Canadian border where the waves crashed against the rocky shoreline and honest people led simpler lives than mine. I started subscribing to Oregon Coast magazine and making mental notes.

  Pat Volman called to say that Flo was not too thrilled about my moving from L.A. to anywhere—or my escalating pot use. All of a sudden, she was Carrie Nation. Tough shit.

  Sue, Alex, and I took a trip to Oregon in the rented car and started driving. The first place we went was a tiny fishing and lumber village just north of the California border called Brookings. From there, we headed north, visiting each and every hamlet along the way. But we couldn’t get Brookings out of our heads. It was idyllic. It was perfect. We started shopping for houses. We found one that was fantastic, put in a bid, and waited.

  On April 28, the SOLD sign went up in front of our house in Studio City. We had a three-month escrow, so I wasn’t panicky. The Brookings house had a lot of restrictions and regulations, and it wasn’t the easiest home for which I’ve ever had to qualify. It was almost like this community didn’t particularly take a likin’ to us here city folk.

  Though it took forever, on June 27, we said farewell to California, packed up my little Nissan Maxima, and drove to our new lives in Oregon. The house was spectacular. It stood by itself on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. It was built like a ship to weather the storms that frequently and dramatically pummeled the coastline. There was a trail down to our own cove where otters and sea lions played. At sunset, I’d pop a Rogue Ale, roll a fatty, and stand on my deck like DiCaprio aboard the Titanic. King of the world, man.

  Traveling was impossible, however. That was the biggest drawback. The little Crescent City airport twenty-six miles south only had a few flights each day and was fogged in more often than not, so I had to drive to Eureka, California, about two and a half hours away, to board a commuter flight to San Francisco and fly from there to wherever we were booked. Lots of time to think on those drives. And lots of drives. Too many.

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  Summer was busier than anticipated, and my father passed on August 5, 1992, giving me little time to grieve. This was different than my mother’s death, of course, since we had seen it coming and his passing ended his suffering, at least. I had a show in Hartford, Connecticut, the next day. I was numb.

  In December, Mark and I went on the radio with Tony Pigg to plug the year-end Bottom Line shows and it felt strange returning to K-Rock as guests. A little bitterness on my end, but by now they had become distressingly corporate and were contemplating a format change. That’s what you get when you’re penny-wise and pound-foolish.

  Time seemed to be moving more quickly in the ’90s. On October 16, 1993, Emily got married and the three of us flew up to Seattle, where Alex was the flower girl and I saw my first wife, Melita, for the first time in twenty years. It was slightly surreal, but I knew that Emily would make this marriage work despite all of her childhood influences.

  Mark moved out of his Laurel Canyon home and filed for divorce after twenty-eight years of marriage. He moved in with a health food chick and cooked veggie burgers in her Burbank store. She didn’t last very long. He also enrolled in community college with an eye on Loyola Marymount in Westchester for his eventual degree. He met his second wife there, too. She graduated with him. She was twenty-four when they got married and, after a brief stint in a home not more than a mile from our high school, they moved to Nashville, where Mark teaches music business at Belmont University when we’re not doing shows.

  Meanwhile, the arguments with Susan were loud and frequent, and she often just passed out wherever she happened to be. I joined the Elks Club to fit in with our neighbors in the sleepy little burg we now called home. And I began writing. I did two short stories for different anthologies of horror and they were both published. One book is called Phantoms of the Night and the other is called Forbidden Acts. I had purchased on old Jeep that I traded for a new giant Lexus 450 and pretended that everything was perfect. But it wasn’t.

  Everything exploded on Thanksgiving of 1994 when Emily and her husband, Lyle Rothenberg, came to visit. I was already living downstairs in the guest room, but we were trying to act like a family until Susan’s wine kicked in. The screaming never stopped. The kids left our house to stay in some motel, any motel. And I left too. I spent the next month house-sitting at a fabulous waterfront mansion before I kissed Alex goodbye on Christmas Eve.

  Michelle Dibble met me at the airport in Medford, Oregon. I had cried during the entire drive from Brookings. We made the trip across America in the Lexus during hellacious winter storms and got to St. Louis by January 2, 1995. After living briefly in two rental places, we finally bought an amazing and gigantic home in the Clarkson Valley subdivision of Chesterfield, Missouri, just west of the city. I lived in the Midwest for almost seven years, but when Clear Channel bought Y98, the station where Michelle did her show, the entire staff was replaced by interns who didn’t demand the six figures formerly paid to air personalities. They got paid 20k a year and prayed for airtime. Time to go.

  We threw a dart at a map of the U.S. and decided to move to Seattle; close to both of my kids and somewhere I wouldn’t have to shovel snow. We found a lovely home in Bellevue that sits on a lake and backs up to a park.

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  By late 1992, Frank Zappa’s cancer was in the news. It’s not like I was the first one to know. He was losing weight and speaking hoarsely but the smile never left his face and the danger never left his eyes. Some time after that, he summoned Mark and me up to the purple house in the Canyon and greeted both of us with huge hugs. His wife, Gail, was there and she made us coffee. We talked about the Montreux fire, what it felt like to be onstage together, what he thought he was going to miss the most. It was difficult not to cry, but the man wouldn’t have stood for it.

  We watched and listened to hours of concert and road recordings that never got released, talked about that Billy the Mountain movie that never got made; tons of private jokes punctuated by Frank’s dry cough. He drank his black coffee from his thermos mug, as always, chain-smoked his Winstons, as always, and when it was time for lunch, it was his beloved anchovy pizza. Mark and I must have given each other the rolling eye, ’cause Frank caught the look and said, “What? I’m dying here! I’m certainly not going to give up the things that I love now!”

  Point well taken. It was incredibly sad when he passed away on December 4, 1993, sadder than my own father’s death had been. Frank was my father figure, and that afternoon I got the closure with Zappa that I had never gotten from my own father, and a validation that I had never received either.

  We hugged goodbye. We didn’t say it, but it was understood. We would never see each other again.

  When Bolan died, I had gone into shock. I had been ready for Frank’s death, but it left the same kind of hole in my heart.

  The following year I experienced another profound loss. About two months before his death in 1994, Harry Nilsson called me up. This on its own wasn’t unusual. We spoke often. Harry knew what his prognosis was and, much like Frank, had chosen to ignore it. He was chain
-smoking and eating greasy junk food, same as ever. He picked me up at Andy Cahan’s little studio where he was recording the last songs he had written in the hopes that his music would live on. He needn’t have worried: Harry is a legend. He wore only his famous blue bathrobe—he never got dressed anymore. Harry had given up.

  And we drove. That’s all. We drove into the valley, past the shopping centers and the record stores. He needed to stop at In-N-Out Burger and I sure didn’t challenge him. The entire time, we listened to Harry’s old music. The hits. The masterpieces.

  When “The Puppy Song” played, Nilsson’s eyes filled with tears. “Dreams are only made of wishes and a wish is just a dream you hope will come true.”

  “I was a pretty good singer once, wasn’t I?”

  “You’re the best there ever was.” I told him, meaning every word. I was tearing up too.

  “He took it from me. He stole my voice and I never got it back!”

  The “he” that Harry referred to was John Lennon, who famously produced the Pussy Cats album for Nilsson in 1974. Harry spoke of the primal screaming contests that John would coerce him into.

  “I can scream louder and longer than you!” and John could. But, sweet, gentle Harry couldn’t do it. He tried. The competition was fierce, and by the time Lennon returned to London, abandoning May Pang and the lost California years, it was too late; the damage had been done. Harry’s vocal cords were abraded beyond repair and the new stuff was scratchy and desperate. Harry cried.

  “Once I was a king, Howard. Now look at me. I’m just waiting to die.” There was nothing that I could say. He dropped me back at my car and went off into the sunset.

  Literally. When Harry ended, that’s the day that the music kind of died for me. I started looking at concerts differently. I stopped caring so much about the little things. I began to trust myself more to the flow of the universe. I stopped obsessing and spending sleepless nights on unsolvable problems. I stopped thinking, consciously, about 38 percent of the time. I lost weight and stopped eating any food that was white.

  I don’t want to die like Harry. No one was there at the end, not in his perception.

  He might have pushed them away himself, but Harry died alone.

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  As a result of my conscious decisions, my life changed in many positive ways. Sometime in the ’90s, Mark and I were working at the Miss Universe offices and had a lot of free time on our hands. And for us, free time always meant trouble. We were both still heavily into coke, and one afternoon we both found ourselves taking a well-deserved drug break in the lavatory. This drug stuff had now been going on for a great many years, and although we were still lucid and productive, the seductive drug was beginning to take its toll. Both of us were sniffling badly. Like cokeheads do in the movies. And then I started getting a nosebleed. It was funny for a minute, and then, under the sobering fluorescent overhead lights of that scuzzy bathroom, it suddenly wasn’t anymore. The smiles left our faces at the same moment.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Let’s do it!” Mark answered, and we each took the large vials out of our pockets and flushed the provocative white powder down the drain.

  “No going back!” I reiterated.

  “No going back!” came the reply.

  And neither of us ever did. Not for one second. Never again. We saved our lives that day.

  And by the way, the Abbot drug company stopped making Placidyl in 1999 and I spent a couple of really interesting weeks adjusting to the final rumblings of Dr. Lax’s Curse.

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  And I’m still busy in the twenty-first century. I made a solo album in 2003 at Billy Bob Thornton’s house in Beverly Hills. It’s called Dust Bunnies and you can get it on iTunes. I wrote a movie about the draft board and our trip to London. Rhino produced it and I went to L.A. to film My Dinner with Jimi, which played festivals and won awards. It’s on Netflix if you care to experience it. And I decided to write a book, which you, dear reader, have rewarded me for doing.

  In 2006, a New York–based company called Flower Power Concerts put on a national show called Hippiefest and we went out on the road for our first bus tour in forty years. Still hating tour buses, Mark and I followed behind in an Escalade and played shows with our friends from the ’60s all over America.

  After a couple of years of Hippiefest, the promoters decided to relaunch the Happy Together tour in 2009. That same year, “Happy Together” was predominantly featured in The Simpsons Movie and Mark and I were flown into New York to sing with our old pals U2 at Carnegie Hall. The summer tours continue and life looks sweet as the so-called golden years approach.

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  Michelle and I got married on March 24, 2005, and have been together eighteen years in all as of this writing. Alex graduated from the Evergreen State College in 2011 and moved to—where else?—Manhattan, where she has a normal boyfriend and a badass band. Emily, Lyle, and my grandson, Max, moved to Post Falls, Idaho, just across the state, where Em continues her career at Coca-Cola. Max is fourteen as of this writing. Melita made the move with her and lives six houses away. Go figure.

  And I’m in hog heaven with my kitties, Leeloo and Dubdie, and my goldendoodle, Poochifer, and seventeen miles of hiking trails behind my house. I still hang with former Mother of Invention Jeff Simmons, who still lives here. We’re actually working on an album together as I finish writing this book. I love my wife and I love being in a place where my beloved weed is legal. For medicinal purposes only, you understand. I have a pot card. I’m living the dream.

  I’m not sure how much longer I can do this entertainment shit. Everybody tells me that I’ll never quit ’cause show business is in my blood. They’re probably right, but you already know my fears about giving it up in some sleazy hotel room. When it’s all over and the piper plays “Happy Together” one last time, I want to kiss my wife, hug my dog, take a giant toke, and smile my way though the obsidian void.

  Now, that was a life!

  Photo Insert

  Brother Al, Howard as Roy Rogers, and grandfather Ike Kaplinsky on the stoop of the Kaplans’ home at the Linden Projects in Brooklyn, New York, 1953. This grainy shot is the only surviving photograph of Howard as a child.

  Mom and Dad—Sally and Sid Kaplan: first to arrive at Howard’s first wedding reception. Westchester, California, 1967.

  Promotional photo from 1964 for the release of the Crossfires’ “One Potato, Two Potato” single. Note the aprons and potato peelers. The group had to place gaffer tape over the Iron Cross on their drum kit—the label thought it sent the wrong message. Left to right: Howard, Al Nichol, Don Murray, Chuck Portz, Mark Volman, and Jim Tucker.

  The Turtles just before taping their first Shindig! appearance in 1965, backstage at ABC Studios in Hollywood. Left to right: Mark, Don, Howard, Al, Jim Tucker, and Chuck.

  The Turtles on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1967, New York City. Left to right: Mark, Johny Barbata, Howard, Al, and Jim Pons.

  Howard and his first wife Melita Kaylan at their wedding in Studio City, California, 1967.

  The lonely guy in one of his heavier Turtle incarnations, 1968.

  Alternate cover photo for the Turtle Soup album. The Turtles: Al, Mark, Jim Pons, Howard, and John Seiter in Malibu, California, 1970. (Photo by Henry Diltz, used by permission.)

  Alternate photo for the Turtles’ Battle of the Bands album interior. Left to right: Johny, Mark, Al, Howard, and Jim Pons in Laurel Canyon, California, 1969. (Photo by Henry Diltz, used by permission.)

  Meeting the Kinks’ Ray Davies at L.A. International Airport for the recording of Turtle Soup, which he produced in 1970. Left to right: Ray, John Seiter, and Howard.

  The Mothers of Invention perform the Sanzini Brothers’ world-famous Pyramid Trick, Los Angeles, 1970. Left to right: Frank Zappa, Jeff Simmons, Ian Underwood, Mark Volman, George Duke, Howard, and Aynsley Dunbar.

  The Mothers of Invention pose at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where they
thought they’d be performing. Neither the band nor the sold-out audience was in on manager Herb Cohen’s elaborate publicity stunt. Left to right: George Duke, Martin Lickert (Ringo Starr’s chauffeur, who appeared in the film 200 Motels), Howard, Frank Zappa, Mark Volman, Ian Underwood, and, far right, Howard’s cousin Cohen, in snazzy chapeau. MIA: Aynsley. 1971.

  Onstage at the Fillmore East in New York City, 1971. In the shadows, Jim Pons, Mark Volman, Don Preston, Ian Underwood, Aynsley Dunbar, and Bob Harris. Front line: Howard, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and Frank Zappa.

  On the set of 200 Motels, Pinewood Studios, England, 1971. Howard and Ringo Starr.

  Frank on the bus in Europe with unknown friend, 1970.

  Frank on the bus in Europe with yet another special mystery friend, with Ian and Mark in the background.

  Smoke on the Water. Taken from the Mothers’ hotel across Lake Geneva from the burning Montreux Casino, December 4, 1971.

  After the fire. The next day, this is what was left of the Casino. The band saved exactly one cowbell.

  Sitting in the hotel lobby, Montreux, Switzerland. Dazed and confused, with no direction home.

  Girlfriend Dianne MacKellar on one of many camping excursions she and Howard took in a VW bus, 1971. Howard calls Dianne “the one who got away.”

  Diana Kaylan, Howard’s second wife, splurging on lunch with Howard’s daughter Emily (from his first marriage), at the Kaylans’ house in Laurel Canyon, 1973.