The Turtles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1965 and best known for their 1967 hit song "Happy Together". They charted several other top 40 hits, including "It Ain't Me Babe" (1965), "You Baby" (1966), "She'd Rather Be With Me" (1967), "Elenore" (1968) and "You Showed Me" (1969).
As the Turtles' commercial success waned by the end of the 1960s, they became plagued with management issues, lawsuits and conflicts with their label, White Whale Records, leading the group to break up in 1970. Founding members Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman later achieved long-lasting success as session musicians and reunited under the name Flo & Eddie, a comedy rock act. Since 1983, the Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie, a reconstituted version of the band, are currently touring.
albums by The Turtles
Songs by The Turtles
Been a minute since I've even seen a payphone.
Yes, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan did backing vocals with Zappa, Stephen Stills, Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen, and quite a few others.
Volman and Kaylan were also in Zappa's movie "200 Motels." My brother rented it and I walked away from the TV about halfway through. I don't remember much about it, only that it got amateurish and tiresome.
According to the Wikipedia article about the film, Volman and Kaylan got their nicknames "Flo and Eddie" from their work with Zappa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_Motels
In 1970, Frank Zappa formed a new version of The Mothers of Invention which included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".
It is a time of innocence, of utter amazement, and your head is like, floating in the breeze, man, and your mom takes hold of your arm and you go inside the Baskin Robbins store down on the swanky Country Club Plaza and there is that sweet cream-smelling chill and all those flavors are lying there in buckets behind the glass and you drag over the little foot-stool to get high enough to get a good look at them and you stop fighting with your bonehead brother for a second and choose a two-scoop combo of Rocky Road and JaMocha Almond Fudge and THIS SONG is on the radio, and even your mom, your mom, can you believe it?, is singing along, "imagine me and you...I do..." and the world seems like a pretty nice place, at least for a moment, now forever frozen in time...and music connects it all.
John-
Country Club Plaza....Kansas City?
Howard Kaylan of The Turtles explained: "Elenore was a parody of 'Happy Together.' It was never intended to be a straight-forward song. It was meant as an anti-love letter to White Whale (their record company), who were constantly on our backs to bring them another 'Happy Together.' So I gave them a very skewed version. Not only with the chords changed, but with all these bizarre words. It was my feeling that they would listen to how strange and stupid the song was and leave us alone. But they didn't get the joke. They thought it sounded good. Truthfully, though, the production on 'Elenore' WAS so damn good. Lyrically or not, the sound of the thing was so positive that it worked. It certainly surprised me."
Beats the alternative!!
INDEED, BEEN THERE.....
Weren't they also in Zappa's band for a time?
Yes, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan did backing vocals with Zappa, Stephen Stills, Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen, and quite a few others.
dippy goofball tune during complicated social times
Check out a Kiss concert video, on You Tube, from 1976 where Flo and Eddie are dressed in Kiss costumes introducing the band. Pretty funny.
Weren't they also in Zappa's band for a time?
Happiness is a fragile thing.
Take care with it.