Back when pop music had real prestige, The Turtles were one of its finest practitioners. Their success was due in no small part to a DIY approach to music and their collective ear for a great song. The band first hit the charts with a version of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” in 1965. From there, they covered songs from bands like The Byrds and recorded tunes from songwriters like Warren Zevon and the mostly forgotten—yet incredibly prolific—Alan Gordon, who co-wrote their signature song, “Happy Together.”
Despite numerous personnel changes, Mark Volman never fully abandoned the idea of The Turtles. He and Turtles bandmate Howard Kaylan departed from the band for a time and joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, calling themselves Flo (Mark) & Eddie (Howard). They continued to tour and record as Flo & Eddie (separate from Zappa) through the ’80s until they regained control of The Turtles’ name. Today, Volman and Kaylan bill themselves “The Turtles Featuring Flo & Eddie” and gig around the world with fellow ’60s and ’70s pop acts on their popular Happy Together Tour.
Volman has thrived in the music industry for the better part of fifty years. His incredibly varied career has included work as a backup singer, record producer, screenwriter, and college professor. When he’s not touring with The Turtles, Volman chairs the Entertainment Industry Studies Department at Belmont University in Nashville.
Volman most recently oversaw the creation of a Turtles box set containing newly remastered 45RPM vinyl singles (out now), a perfect tribute for one of the most beloved pop bands of the ’60s. Our conversation with him last week makes it clear why his students have voted him “Outstanding Professor” and why The Turtles’ music endures in 2014.
I remember really liking “Happy Together” as a kid because it was this upbeat song in a minor key, and so it kind of stuck in my mind…
[Laughs] Well, I think that the effervescent minor key to major key was a big part of The Turtles. Ultimately, it shaped the sound of our songs. I think that “Happy Together” certainly is a good demonstration of that; “Elenore” was probably the one that was more famous by kind of the fact that we were lampooning ourselves. Again, I think in the beginning, we had no idea that it was going to end up doing what it did!
Your big hits came in such a brief period of time, and they’re so well-crafted—almost like Rodgers and Hammerstein type story-songs. Is that what you set out to do when you got into music?
Well, we were experimenting with a lot of different [things], and we were fortunate. We came along when songwriting was still thought of as the most important thing. From our standpoint, we never really worried about what material we were doing, whether we were writing it or not; the most important thing was that we had a piece of music we felt we could stand behind. Because our live show played such an integral part of our survival in that era, we wanted to make sure that the music we were performing on record was something we could do on stage. I think sometimes you take for granted the fact that so much of the music that came out of Southern California—The Mamas & The Papas, The Beach Boys…there was a whole slew of artists who were making records, but not playing on their records.
In 1965, when The Turtles set the foundation of the band, we played on all of the records that we made. We didn’t have the benefit that a lot of groups had, which was the money to afford to bring the fantastic musicians who ended up becoming so famous—Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, and Tommy Tedesco—we were not afforded that luxury. Our record company was a very small, independent record company that wouldn’t let us spend the money to record using other musicians.
So, we were sort of forced to perform our records on stage as an act of survival, so I think we’re probably one of the few bands that never were given that luxury. The Byrds made their whole Mr. Tambourine Man album on Columbia with studio musicians; Paul Revere and the Raiders used the same studio musicians that The Beach Boys used; The Beach Boys used the same musicians that The Mamas & The Papas were using. We had to find a way to play everything, so it had to be a more condensed, simplistic concept to it. Listening to a song like “Happy Together” up against a record like “Good Vibrations,” where you had all these absolutely fantastic musicians performing…we couldn’t count on that.
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about the fact that so many Southern California bands of that era almost exclusively used session musicians for their songs. You guys were outliers in that sense.
Well, I think we had to be a lot more conscientious about the organization of the material. We didn’t have the musicianship to be able to perform; probably our best musician was ultimately our drummer, who joined the band in ’66 when we did the song “Outside Chance.” All in all, Johnny [Barbata] was probably the strongest player in the group. We had some great musicians with Jim Pons and Al Nichol, but there was no real leader. I mean, we didn’t have an Eric Clapton or a guitar player like Jim McGuinn that could step out and kind of lead the group. Everything we did was done by the group and performed in that manner.
What is intriguing to me about you, in particular, is that you’ve kind of been a chameleon in the music industry—so much so that you wrote a what is basically a textbook about it (Off the Record: Your Ultimate Resource for Success in the Music Business). You’ve done so many things and found your way into so many areas of the industry, do you feel like you know what the key to success is for artists today?
Well, everything comes and goes really fast. I think success for anybody in today’s market, a year of success and building your fan base in smaller numbers is really necessary. I live in a city [Nashville] where there are a lot of concert businesses going on, whether it’s at the Ryman or it’s at the Schermerhorn with the symphony…touring is still a major part of building your fan base. Success for an artist today…it passes through at incredible speed.
When you’re putting a box set together and looking at the sixteen songs in the box set, it’s amazing to me that a group like ours that had [so many hit songs] from that era…it’s mind-blowing to me that you could have eight records that people really know…even with the lesser-known songs, there was room for us to have ten or twelve songs played on the radio. It’s different today. An artist really builds his foundation, in most cases, around one record. Maybe one record! You take an act like Tegan and Sara, they don’t even need a hit song! They can build a fan base with just who they are and whether they will have the longevity that we have had…we’ve been very fortunate.
We had an idea five, six years ago…we wanted to really brand ourselves. We sat down and the way we did it was with the Happy Together Tours. Now those tours have become so successful that we just go to a business meeting with a lot of agents and say, “We’re going to take out the Happy Together Tour,” and we can pretty much count on [booking] thirty to forty cities—before we even know who’s going to do the tour! They just know that we have cultivated a niche in an area that needed to be cultivated. The ‘60s and ‘70s acts needed a platform, and the Happy Together Tours have become that for a lot of artists who can go out, play fifty or sixty cities and remind people of the great songs they were part of during their halcyon days.
You’re in Nashville, which is in the thick of things as far as the music industry goes, and you’re able to see trends as they happen. Do you feel continuing to tour with other ’60s acts is a necessity?
It’s been really exciting the last few years in terms of that. Putting that together and the kind of reconfiguration of vinyl…I think there’s such a big audience for music that there are many people today who are excited about the possibility of owning original vinyl records or even make people go out and look for the original records.
There are a lot of young bands, a lot of young artists—probably most notably a guy like Jack White, who’s been very instrumental with Third Man [Records]… he did a lot of straightforward pop-type-rock. Now we’re seeing a resurgence in young bands who are doing this [same] straightforward pop music [like ours].
Of course, sometimes you forget that touring is maintenance. We’re seeing a lot of people from the Baby Boomer era who are coming out to shows. I think this past year, artists like Paul McCartney and The Eagles and Ringo Starr and the Happy Together Tour are all bringing that continuation of the success of those songs and the maintenance of taking them out on tour.
And that must have informed your decision to do the box set as well. Did you put The Turtles’ singles out on 45s because it’s something that your audiences are demanding? As you said, vinyl is something that people are seeking out more and more.
[Laughs] It’s kind of two-fold. I mean, Howard [Kaylan] and I have been collecting vinyl… we’re probably those two guys that you smirk at—those geeks who are always collecting vinyl—that’s me and Howard. [Laughs] For us it’s really fun!
I go about once every month with a really good friend here in Nashville…we get together and we play vinyl. Everybody’s allowed to bring some stuff and we kind of go in a row. Guys like Gary Tallent of the E Street Band and Bill Lloyd from Foster & Lloyd—[it’s]a bunch of people who have always loved the sound of vinyl.
So, when we started thinking about doing a “greatest hits,” it was exciting to get in to the studio, remaster those records to take them to vinyl, and then we sort of spun that out with not just the “greatest hits,” but also the Happy Together album and the It Ain’t Me Babe album, which were not a big sellers—even in the ‘60s. The Turtles were really a 45s act. That’s sort of what’s the exciting thing about putting a box set together of 45s, because we really were a 45 act. We were one of those acts where people spent ninety cents or a dollar and bought a vinyl record, so we wanted to do a really quality version of that. The version that we’ve done is just fantastically put together; the little covers, the FloEdCo Records, the little Turtles design is kind of making fun of the old White Whale [Records] design. We used the same color that White Whale used back in the ‘60s—it’s almost an exact replica of the records that we put out fifty years ago! [Laughs]
For us, it was really fun—just to see it take place and having the necessary people to do it. We were really fortunate to have Manifesto Records be so supportive to help us pull this together. We knew, with the release of the “greatest hits” as an album, there was a fan base. Overseas, we had to reproduce the greatest hits album three times because it has done so well!
When we did the box set, we really did it for us—for fun. Two years ago, we actually were selling it at our live shows as a limited edition, signed by Howard and I. Last year, we tightened it up and did about two thousand copies. Now, the one that you have…that’s been a work in progress for the last three years, so it’s really exciting to see it. The things that we’ve been able to pull together—the albums on vinyl—[now] we’re talking about doing some of the Flo & Eddie stuff on vinyl. I think the marketplace…it’s going to keep growing.
I don’t think [vinyl] will ever replace downloads and CDs, but it’s fun to have these things that you can actually hold in your hands. It’s such a tangible [thing]. That was the great thing about music in the ‘60s: the album! The designs, the covers were BIG, and it was a platform where you could look at a cover and really, like, go into it and have fun with it. I think that’s the thing that we’re enjoying about putting this out on vinyl. It was NEVER something we felt would make money, but we know it wouldn’t lose money. We knew that if we did it, and did it with care, that there was enough of an audience out there that it would at least pay for us to do something really fun for the fans.
That’s really cool. It sounds like you and your neighbor Jack White should get together and put out some records!
[Laughs] You know what’s funny, he surrounds himself with some really sharp people. A lot of them come to the vinyl parties [I go to]…you know, one of the things I do know is his love of the history of popular music. I think that’s an exciting thing. It doesn’t matter how old you are or whatever era you’re in, we all love the fact that we’re doing these kind of quirky things for people who appreciate it. That’s why it’s great that there are people like you who want to write it up to reach an audience, now, that we couldn’t have reached because YOU enjoy it. That’s what we were counting on—that there was going to be an audience out there, and not necessarily sixty-year-old music fans. It could be anybody who likes to go out and search through records!
