The Turtles in concert tonight – recorded at Chicagofest on August 19, 1983 – recorded and preserved by one of many Chicago area stations at the time.
This has been an amazing year for loss, and we’re not even over.
Tonight, it’s a tribute to The Turtles and their co-founder Mark Volman who left us earlier today after after a brief bout with Lewy Body Dimentia at the age of 78.
Anybody who was around in the 60s, particularly the West Coast and specifically Los Angeles, will have any one of a number of songs by The Turtles firmly implanted in their brains. They were staples on top-40 Radio in L.A. and they were regular fixtures on the Sunset Strip – you couldn’t avoid them if you tried.
At first they were very much in the 60s Social Protest vein, after turning in their formative years as a dedicated Surf band. “It Ain’t Me Babe” which began life as a Bob Dylan classic got something of a makeover by The Turtles and it became their first sizable hit.
But as is the case with Rock n’ Roll – especially Rock n’ Roll in the 60s, evolving your sound was of critical importance. So after a few less successful stabs at top-10 status – which you would never know, since living in L.A. at the time, everything The Turtles did was on heavy rotation – there were personnel changes and inevitably direction changes. Not radical, but softer and perhaps more accessible to a broader audience than the legion of teenage fans.
It was during that “softer-gentler” period that they achieved their greatest success.
But as was also the case with most bands of the 60s, the party was over and it was time to move on. And in Mark Volman’s case, he along with co-founder Howard Kaylen wound up in the most unlikely (seemingly) collaboration with Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention – dubbed Flo & Eddie.
In 2015, Kaylan and Volman celebrated their 50th year, touring and performing more than 60 concerts a year, billed as “The Turtles … Featuring Flo & Eddie” with their Happy Together Tour, a classic revue-format show featuring some popular bands of the mid-to-late 1960s musical era. During this tour in 2015, Volman was diagnosed with throat cancer, but was declared cancer-free in 2016. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Volman and Kaylan have been “leading the charge against the uncompensated use of their music—and using state-based misappropriation, conversation and unfair competition claims because sound recordings only began falling under federal copyright protection in 1972.”
With Kaylan’s retirement due to health issues in 2018, Volman was the last original member of the Turtles who still performed with the band.
Another reminder that nothing in life ever stays the same and all we have left of The Turtles are the songs and the concerts and the memories of just how insane it all was.
May sound totally foreign and strange to you – to some of us, it feels just like home.
Enjoy.
