Page 24 - The NOISE November 2015

thE tURtlES
The Turtles are a band from Hawthorne, a Los Angeles neighborhood also home to The Beach Boys. Founding members Mark Volman and Howard Kaplan met during their
freshman year at Hawthorne High (youngest Wilson brother Carl was in their class). The two misfits bonded over their shared love of music and bizarre sense of humor.
They formed a band called The Crossfires that managed to release a record in 1963, at the height of the surf craze, when Mark and Howard were only 16 years old. Their parents and friends bought copies, but that was about it. After another single tanked the following year, The Crossfires decided to overhaul their sound. Surf music was on its way out. The British Invasion was absorbed by American musicians and out came folk rock, kicked off when The Byrds’ electrified version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” shot to #1 in April 1965.
The Crossfires signed a contract with White Whale, a tiny independent L.A. label, which set about re-grooming the band. They grew out their teenage buzz cuts and traded in the matching stage outfits for vests and Cuban-heeled boots. Howard and Mark put away their saxophones and practiced their singing. Howard (now calling himself Howard Kaylan) was a natural lead vocalist; his clear tenor could be tender and sweet one moment, forceful and gritty the next. Mark’s high squeaky voice meshed with Howard’s effortlessly.
White Whale came up with a swell new name for them: The Tyrtles. The group rejected the misspelling as a too-obvious Byrds lift, but The Turtles appealed to their nutty sense of humor as the uncoolest band name possible. Beatles crawled around in the dirt while Byrds soared in the sky, but Turtles ... well, they didn’t do much of anything, really.
With folk rock just taking off, The Turtles recorded an electric arrangement of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe,” which their label released in July 1965. It climbed to #8 and The Turtles had scored their first top ten single mere months after graduating high school. Two more hits followed: “Let Me Be,” (#29) in October, and “You Baby,” (#20) in January 1966.
In many ways, The Turtles were the anti-Byrds. On the West Coast scene, The Byrds were the hippest of the hip. They took their art very seriously. They never smiled onstage or on their albums or publicity photos. They were cute, but not too cute. They cultivated an air of aloofness and mystery. Their covers of Dylan and Pete Seeger were performed with the proper respect due to the masters.
The members of The Turtles had never been in the same room as hip. They resembled the wall of dorks at the sock hop no girls wanted to dance with, or the last few losers chosen for dodge ball. Howard Kaylan had a vague rugged handsomeness with his expressive eyes and Fred Flintstone jaw, but second banana Mark Volman was six foot something
24 • november 2015 • NOISE arts & news• thenoise.us 32 • SEPTEMBER 2015 • NOISE • thenoise.us
and rotund, with unkempt frizzy hair (which would grow to an absurd and impressive length in the 1970s) and thick Coke-bottle glasses, a wide idiot’s grin plastered on his cherubic face as he banged a tambourine. The rest of the band didn’t fare much better.
The Turtles accepted their roles as the court jesters, the revenge of the geeks, the bratty little brothers of the L.A. scene with relish. They performed comedy sketches between songs, wore silly clothes, messed with the audience, mocked their peers, and generally made fools of themselves onstage. They provided a healthy shot in the arm of reality to offset the Byrds’ solemnity. Their solid playing and tight harmony vocals slowly won them respect among fellow musicians. They were allowed entrance to the palace of hip, where their agreeably goony personalities made them the life of any party.
In early 1966, White Whale hired a staff songwriter named Warren Zevon. Zevon was born in Chicago, raised in Fresno and Los Angeles. He dropped out of school at 16 and left for Greenwich Village to make it as a folk singer. When that failed, he moved back to L.A. to peddle songs. He wrangled the job at White Whale and met The Turtles.
Warren was 18, the same age as Mark and Howard, but was somewhat naive as to the workings of the music industry. The Turtles, riding high off three consecutive hits, took the new kid under their collective wing. Zevon proved to be a lovable weirdo and became close friends with the group. For a time, Howard and Warren fell into a routine: Kaylan would cruise out to Zevon’s pad in East Hollywood, where they would each ingest a handful of acid. Then they would walk (drive? catch a ride? fly?) the 4 1/2 miles to Pioneer Chicken on Sunset and Laurel Canyon Drive, eat roast beef sandwiches and giggle at the parade of hookers and junkies and lowlifes. They both loved the seedy underbelly of the California dream, especially Zevon, who would work stories and characters from this scene into many of his songs. Eventually they would head back to Warren’s, once they figured out which direction was east.
As a staff songwriter, Zevon was not required to make his own records, just demos to shop around. One of the first he completed was “Follow Me,” a mysterious folk rock nugget sung as a boy/girl duet. Zevon had brought in high school friend Violet Santangelo as co-performer and co-writer, and White Whale was impressed with the results. The label offered to release it as a single if Warren and Violet would rerecord it and think up a band name. They christened themselves lyme & cybelle (in arty lower-case letters).
Violet and Warren entered the studio with ace producer Bones Howe and came out with something special, an
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