Sounds Like The Turtles

In the world of Sixties pop music there have been a small handful of bands that have stood the test of time and trends, endearing themselves to people of all musical tastes, and one of those bands is undoubtedly The Turtles.

Originally a surf band called The Crossfires, they got smitten by The Byrds protest folk-rock bug and inadvertently created a bizarre hybrid of surf-folk. The band played protest songs like Let Me Be and It Ain't Me Babe with a surf-rock style that made the band stand out in a big way. It also didn't hurt that cheery Mark Volman always played a whimsical foil to Howard Kaylan's dramatic vocals. The band was a lot of fun no matter what the message was.

During their four-plus years in the Top 40 The Turtles had a long streak of hits which lasted longer then many of their contemporaries like The Monkees or Paul Revere & The Raiders. Why? Maybe it's because they didn't have a gimmick, just a very straightforward approach to producing sunny yet provocative pop records.

By 1970, The Turtles called it quits in spite of their unbroken string of hits because of signing with too many managers and getting wrangled up in an endless stream of binding contracts. There were also complaints of royalties not reaching the right people.

Three members of The Turtles – Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan and Jim Pons joined Frank Zappa & The Mothers and recorded five great albums together, some of Zappa’s best work: Chunga’s Revenge, Fillmore East June 1971, Just Another Band From LA (I attended that show!), the motion picture soundtrack to 200 Motels, and the released-much-later Playground Psychotics.

Although the music produced was terrific it was probably the worst season in The Mothers’ careers, as it was fraught with horrific episodes like a hotel fire in Montreaux, Switzerland (immortalized in Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water) and an attempted assassination of Zappa on stage at The Rainbow Theater in London, England, relegating Zappa to a wheelchair for the next 12 months.

During their tenure in The Mothers Mark and Howard recorded under the names The Phluorescent Leech and Eddie, which they used to call their new band, including Pons (drummer Johnny Barbata joined Jefferson Starship). They recorded about four albums, two for Warner Bros. and two for Columbia. The Turtles sound lives on in occasional reunion tours and the band has never lost their sense of humor in spite of a career loaded with speed bumps and brick walls.

If you're a success in music you're going to inspire a spate of imitators who are either influenced by your sound or simply want to cash in on your magic. Whatever their motives may be, this blog tracks down three records heavily influenced by The Turtles sound, largely written by the team of Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon:

Life Is Short - Billy Nicholls

Billy Nicholls was a friend of The Small Faces, and that was connection was put to good use with Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott playing and producing his album, Would You Believe? Would You Believe is an interesting album in that it's more Sunshine Pop than Freakbeat. Sunshine Pop didn't really hit England as much as Freakbeat did, so Nicholls' album is very different than the usual album coming out of the UK. Several of the tracks have a strong Turtles influence in them, especially Daytime Girl and this one, Life Is Short.

Reason To Believe - Skip Bifferty

Nobody sang a more heartfelt ballad than Howard Kaylan and you can definitely hear echoes of that in Skip Biffferty's great moody, romantic sing, Reason To Believe. Brief but touching!

You're Gonna Hurt Yourself - The Bystanders

You're Gonna Hurt Yourself was originally recorded by The Four Seasons but this version has more bounce. The harmonies recall classic Mark and Howard, too. Again, a good English tribute to the boys from Westchester, who obviously made a strong impact on the UK, especially with Marc Bolan, who used Volman and Kaylan as his backup singers on countless classic T. Rex hit singles, as well as on the Electric Warrior and Slider albums. Perhaps they were good luck charms for him, bringing him luck at every turn.

Bubblegum And Garbage

1980: The Laufer Company was an entertainment publishing empire that put out a slew of showbiz rags on a monthly basis: Rona Barrett’s Hollywood, Tiger Beat, Flip, Rona Barrett’s TV and Movie World, etc. They had offices on Hollywood Blvd. across the street from the Chinese Theatre and it was walking distance from my courtyard apartment built by Charlie Chaplin’s studio. It was a temp job that paid poorly, but when you’re living the punk rock lifestyle everything is either free or cheap, anyway.

My first assignment was working in the mail room. We had to open up mailed requests for 8 x10” glossies of TV and movie stars.
“This one’s for Dirk Benedict. Who’s that?” I asked.
“Who’s that? You don’t know who Dirk Benedict is?”
“Where have you been?”
I wanted to say guzzling beer at the Hong Kong Café watching The Weirdos play “We Got The Neutron Bomb”, but I was hung over and they would have asked, “Who’s The Weirdos?”
“I’ve got a request for Scott Bayou. Where’s the Bayou pics?” I mumbled.
“THAT”S SCOTT BAIO!!!” some gay ranger yelled. “Don’t you know? It’s Chaaaahhhhchee”.
“Yeah, Chachi from Happy Days”, some girl chirped. “He goes ‘wow, wow, wow’”.
Everyone laughed but me. Are these people crazy?
“Who am I?” some Chinese kid quizzed. “Eeeey!”
“A used car dealer?” I asked.
“It’s the Fonz!” the girl chirped once more. “Chang, you are so funny!”
“Fonzie, Fonzie, Fonzie!” the homo fan wailed. “I have one for Henry Winkler!”
Henry Winkler, sounds like a Rabbi from Baltimore, I thought.

*****

My boss Phyllis was a tired, dog faced blonde in her seventies that liked to flash cleavage, which always made me feel uncomfortable.
“Andrew, do you prefer Andrew or Andy?” Phyllis nervously asked.
“Andy’s just fine”.
“Andrew, go down to Basement Room B-50. I want you to clean out the room. The Andy Gibb contest is over and we have to clear out the room to make space for the Charlene Tilton giveaway”.
“Will I need a broom and a dustpan?” I asked.
“Oh, Andrew”, she spurted. “You’re always joking”.

How do you clean out a room without cleaning materials? I took the creaky elevator down to the Basement and opened the door to a tiny storeroom, just a little bit bigger than a closet. A pile of postcards tumbled out the door at my feet.
I switched on the light to see: The room was piled with postcards three feet deep from one end of the room to the other. I walked on postcards, I kicked them out the door, I jumped out of the room and grabbed a trash can in the hall and started grabbing handfuls of postcards and throwing them in the bin. As I threw them out I noticed one postcard had a photo of Bettie Page with a crocodile.
“Hey, wait a minute”, I said and tossed it to the side for a pile I was going to take home. The next postcard was a vintage Fifties postcard of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.
“Sweeet”, I gushed at the cool postcard. Five minutes later I sat down on the pile examining every postcard. Some were lame but a few were awesome.
I began reading the postcards and started chuckling. This is what they said:

Tiger Beat’s Andy Gibb Contest
WHY I LOVE ANDY
A is cause he’s Adorable
N is new pictures of cute andy make me swoon
D is for his dreamy eyes
Y is for his yummy lips yummy yummy andy

I giggled like an embarrassed schoolgirl. The big cock block of course was the signature:

MICHELLE JONES, 11
Topeka, Kansas

Eleven? That’s not jailbait, that’s embryo bait. Oh well, at least I scored a cool postcard of a jackalope. I was such a vain bastard I blew 2 hours reading the Andy glory parade and finally tossed out the rest of the junk. It wasn’t very hard work.

*****

Robert was a huge, Tone Loc-looking black guy in his thirties. He kept calling me “Young Blood” because I was just barely in my twenties.
Phyllis raced over to us. She never walked, she raced. She was very intense.
“Robert, Andrew”, she commanded nervously, “I want you both to load the truck up with all the Expired Issues boxes. Take them to the landfill in Sylmar, and remember, BE CAREFUL”.
After loading the pickup with endless boxes we tore down the 101 to Sylmar, and there it was: The Sunshine Canyon Landfill Station.
Passing the gate we entered a hellish scene: miles and miles of sprawling, flat land with large ditches scattered here and there, tractors shoving enormous piles of trash into even more enormous gaping holes. There were broken television sets, chairs, dressers, exercise bikes, etc. There were scattered bonfires of burning garbage. It was like the Mojave Desert of junk!
“Damn, Young Blood”, Robert exclaimed, “there’s some halfways good shit lyin’ around here”.
A map was handed to us showing where we were allowed to dump our boxes, so we turned to a tiny plot of dirt after almost getting run over by a rogue tractor.
I jumped up to the truck bed and handed boxes to Robert.
“Okay, these babies are pretty damn heavy so watch out”, I told him.
“Cool, youngblood, use yo’ bionics, that’s the way”, he grunted.
“Incoming!”
“I love it, love it, love it! Say, youngblood, where you from?”
“New England”, I panted heavily, “You know, Kennedy Country”.
“President Kennedy, man it’s a shame the way they shot him down like a low-down dog. Me, I’m from South Cackalacky. I got me some fambly in North Cackalacky”.
Robert called the Carolinas “Cackylacky”; he was clearly insane, but who better to hang out with in a garbage dump than a lunatic?

I handed Robert another box and he dropped it. The box burst open and out tumbled magazines with the cover blurb, “TV’s Bathing Beauties Pictorial”. The cover showed Heather Thomas, Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs in bikinis.
“Well, alright! Check it out!” I jumped down and leered at a copy. “Robert, dude, check out Linda Carter in a string bikini”. I picked up the magazine and jammed the pin-up in his face.
“Awyeeeeah”, he picked up his own copy. “Jack-well-leeen Smith. I love it, love it, love it”.
“This one’s going home with me”, I smacked my lips.
“Sheeeet, youngblood, ah heards that. SNORT!” he snorted.

Two hours later we were done and took off in the pickup. The radio was cranking “Da Doo Da Da” by the Police. When Sting got to the moronic chorus, “da doo dah dah”, Robert started bouncing up and down like a madman and singing along at the top of his lungs.
“Come on, youngblood”, Robert roared. “Sing along! Use yo’ bionics! Da doo dah dah!”
He was out of tune and out of rhythm with the record, but who cares? I just spent a small fraction of my life in a garbage dump and this song was our National Anthem.