Mark Volman, ‘Happy Together’ Vocalist, Dies
The Co-Founder of the Turtles and Flo & Eddie Was 78
It is sad to note the passing after a brief illmess of Mark Volman, who teamed with Howard Kaylan to create happy, humorous hits with the Turtles and Flo & Eddie. While promoting his memoir Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More in 2023, Volman disclosed that he suffered from Lewy body dementia.
We spoke with Volman in 2023 about his career and hits that included the chart-topping “Happy Together.”
With their hits “It Ain’t Me Babe,” a Bob Dylan tune, and “Let Me Be,” the Turtles joined the long list of popular folk rock bands in 1965. A year later the Turtles made a successful shift to pop with “You Baby,” a Top 20 hit. The harmonies of founding members Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman produced a string of pop hits in the 1960s largely written by the songwriting team of Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon, which included the №1 smash “Happy Together.”
The Turtles abandoned their reliance on outside songwriters for their final original album, 1969’s Turtle Soup. The LP failed to produce a hit single and the Turtles disbanded in 1970.
Their contract with White Whale Records prevented Kaylan and Volman from using the Turtles name. The two singers rebranded themselves as Flo (Volman) & Eddie (Kaylan) and joined Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The new book recalls the night in June 1971 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined the Mothers onstage at New York’s Fillmore East. During the performance of the song “Scumbag,” a large canvas sack was placed over Ono’s body.
When Zappa suffered a serious injury at a December 1971 concert, Flo & Eddie struck out on their own. Volman and Kaylan also became in-demand background singers on sessions for T. Rex and Alice Cooper.
Volman recounted the dizzying history of his career in his new book, Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More. The oral history was written with John Cody, who over 10 years interviewed scores of Volman’s friends, lovers, family and bandmates. Volman’s comments are interspersed throughout the book, which includes recollections by Kaylan, Alice Cooper, Micky Dolenz, Chris Hillman, and Ray Manzarek.
In June 2023, Volman revealed in People magazine that he has been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder. The story explained that Volman experiences hallucinations, tremors, and struggles with concentration, but the disease did not stop Volman from living a full life. Volman continued to perform with the Happy Together tour, bringing the Turtles hits to life with Archies singer Ron Dante filling in for Kaylan. Other acts include Little Anthony, the Vogues, and the Classics IV.
We talked with Volman, who was in great spirits, during a tour stop shortly after his health issues came to light.
How did you come to write the book in an oral history format?
It’s something I have been noodling around with for about 10 years. It just grew out of that. We saw it slowly but surely begin taking form, and it started working for us in a manner that we hadn’t supposed it would. But it really paid off trying something new.
Why did the Turtles change from being a folk rock band?
It had a lot to do with the inevitable, which was that folk rock wasn’t going to have the substance that the pop music marketplace actually had. We stayed as long as we felt it was plausible financially. We started seeing that “You Baby” opened the door to the pop music industry as it was beginning to become more involved with the music business.
Was it an easy transition?
At the time, it was all happening so quickly. The problems that were happening were tied to making that change from the music that we were doing, “It Ain’t Me Babe,” and then flipping over into the pop thing. It caught us by surprise that it was going to have the repercussions that it eventually would have, “You Baby” being at the top of that list.
After “You Baby,” we started having songs offered to us that were just better than songs that we had before. It was songs like “Happy Together,” “She’s My Girl,” and “You Know What I Mean,” all of those really great songs came to us through offerings from other musicians. Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon were real good songwriters but hadn’t broken through in terms of the style of music they were writing. Our door opener would be that we had these offers to do their songs.
You can go back and look at things like “You Know What I Mean” and “She’s My Girl.” They were eclectic; they didn’t fall into the normal verse-chorus, verse-chorus songwriting patterns.
Roger McGuinn admitted that your slowed-down version of “You Showed Me” was better than the Byrds’ original.
Yeah, Roger and Gene [Clark] didn’t have to perform it; they just had to write it. We loved that. Their version really showcased why our version became so successful. The ballad portion of that, the feel on that song, they should have thought about.
They have a good version. There’s nothing wrong with it. They didn’t push the song at the company very well. Columbia was not pushing their music yet. When it finally came around to being used, it took an independent record done by independent artists, and there we were.
Your bassist, Jim Pons, says in the book that your insistence on writing your own songs caused the band to deteriorate. Do you agree?
We could have stayed on the path that groups like Three Dog Night and the Grass Roots took, groups that stayed very pop but were just doing traditional material. The material that we were choosing, what it didn’t have, was legs. I don’t think it had any substance that would give it longevity. It was one of those things that happened fast and furious, and those songs were a part of that style.
I keep coming back to “You Know What I Mean.” That was at the bottom of it one of the really experimental songs that we were dealing in. Here was a song without any choruses at all. It was just a whole bunch of verses and a lot of poetry.
I’m not sure Jim’s completely right but it’s a good point to make. It’s the perfect example of how the book works. Something can be taken completely on its own and turned into a discussion. I thought that’s what made the book fun.
I give you credit for putting in people that were critical of you.
You’re going to risk that happening if you take it out. Then it’s not offering how he felt about it. I would rather have him say what he ends up saying. There are a few people in the book that take off on me because it didn’t work out for them. You want to be transparent. We tried to be honest about how they felt and they felt that they were left out of the running.
What inspired you and Howard to become Flo & Eddie? Why didn’t you become Mark & Howard?
Flo & Eddie had an edge to it that Mark & Howard could never had gotten. We explained it in the album Moving Targets. Moving Targets demonstrates lots of different sides to our music. It had a lot of different things going on. It was very autobiographical. Lyrically it had music like “Keep It Warm,” which is very poignant about a period of time that needed to be unearthed a little bit. “Mama, Open Up.” I think that album was one of the most fun albums to be a part of.
What was the hardest thing about working with Frank Zappa?
I think for us and Frank it was expectations. I think Frank’s expectations were high. He really laid it on the line what kind of music he was doing and what he wanted to do. That was his way of dealing with the type of personality he was musically. His music was so creative yet challenging.
The challenges were extraordinary on an album-to-album basis. Live touring meant you had to take the structures of the lyrics and connect it to the music. It was always going to be a challenge. Frank was very challenging in terms of the music that we were trying to make.
Tell me about the Mothers’ appearance with John and Yoko at Fillmore East.
It was pretty organized. The week preceding John and Yoko joining us on stage at the Fillmore was pretty organized in our favor. The way they laid it out was that John and Yoko would join Frank at his house. Howard and I would join them. Frank wanted to make sure they understood what had to happen, which was he had to be the leader. You see that in almost all the reproductions of that particular piece of music. The Yoko thing where she ends up in the bag onstage, those were all set in motion.
We had actual songs pretty much rehearsed and ready to go. I think it made the show better. I think it made the material stronger by having it in organized shape. I think John had a better time with Frank leading the way.
It certainly could have been a lot better organized as a piece of music. The whole vibe of the thing could have been a lot better. But I think it came out the way Frank wanted it to. He would have never had let John and/or Yoko control the stage as much as he ended up doing. But he got his shots in and I think that that worked out.
Whose idea was putting a sack over Yoko?
That was Howard Kaylan’s idea. It was a good one.
“Keep It Warm” is some of Flo & Eddie’s best work. Why didn’t it become a big hit in 1976?
Radio has so much to do with it. And radio was really falling on the heavy metal side of things. There was a heaviness to radio then that didn’t allow that style of music to get on the radio. “Keep It Warm” took a lot of thought. What we are singing about, it has a lot of mechanics to it. A lot of things that had to do with what’s going on in the world today. That just didn’t fly with radio.
You and Howard have sung backgrounds on other musicians’ records. What is the secret of being a good background singer?
Part of it is that we get heard. When we get asked to perform on a record with Richie Furay or just about anybody who you sing with, it’s important to know their material. And know the strengths that they’re looking for when they’re going to make a record. What are they bringing you in to do?
They want us to arrange it. It makes it pretty easy to do a good set of backgrounds if you take a little time and know what they’re looking for going into the project. It’s always a little bit different.
Let’s do a Lightning Round. A Turtles song more people should have heard.
I would say “The Story of Rock and Roll,” which was on More Golden Hits. “The Story of Rock and Roll” was a really good piece of music. Great song and should have been a more well-known radio cut.
Favorite Beatles album.
Revolver.
A band you would have loved to perform with.
I like the Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere’s songwriting. He was a very good songwriter and I liked his material. They were doing it about the same time we were. Felix, I thought he was overlooked.
Let’s talk about today. I know that you’ve had health issues. Will you continue to perform on the Happy Together tour?
It’s gonna work because everybody out here knows what’s going on with me and so they are all helping out. When you’ve got a crew of people who are helping to get the tour up and on, we’ll definitely have our moments, I’m sure, but right now it’s in harmony. Everybody’s enjoying having the tour out.
We’ve got a great tour this year with really good people performing on it. So that always makes the tour more fun. And of course, this particular trip with Little Anthony is a big part of the success of this summer tour.
Little Anthony’s era from the early to mid-’60s is often overlooked.
It was a great era of music and Anthony deserves the longevity he’s had and the acknowledgement of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s not an unknown commodity. He just happened to be one of our favorites. When we start putting these things together every year, it’s pulling together the groups we want to hear night after night. That’s where you end up with the Vogues, you end up with the Classics IV, you’ve got great groups on this summer. I look forward to the rest of it.
The best line in the book is when Howard talks about the groups that passed on recording “Happy Together” — including the Vogues. He said, “When the Vogues pass on something, it can’t be good.”
It’s so typically Howard.
Frank Mastropolo is the author of Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever and the Greatest Performances series. Check out our latest release in a new mini book series, Rock and Roll Heroes: Hendrix. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
