Mark Volman, the singer who co-founded the buoyant Sixties hitmakers the Turtles and was half of the humorous concord duo Flo & Eddie, has died. He was 78.
Representatives for Volman confirmed the demise to Rolling Stone, citing a “brief, unexpected illness.” In 2020, Volman was recognized with Lewy Physique Dementia, however continued touring and solely introduced his prognosis in 2023.
When selling his memoir “Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More” in 2023, Volman went public together with his 2020 prognosis of Lewy physique dementia, a illness that leads to a decline in cognitive capability, affecting reasoning, reminiscence and motion.
In a Folks journal story, Volman accepted his destiny: “I got hit by the knowledge that this was going to create a whole new part of my life. And I said, ‘OK, whatever’s going to happen will happen, but I’ll go as far as I can.’”
Volman’s companion in each the Turtles and Flo & Eddie was Howard Kaylan, a high-school buddy who become a lifelong inventive companion. Sharing a style for candy melodies, cultural fads and unrepentant silliness, Volman and Kaylan adeptly navigated the cultural adjustments of the Sixties, steering the Turtles from surf-rock survivors to psychedelic freaks over the course of a decade.
The group’s candy spot arrived within the second half of the Sixties, once they polished their Southern Californian folk-rock with studio savvy, creating hits — “Happy Together,” “She’d Rather Be With Me,” “Elenore” and “You Showed Me” — that appealed to mainstream listeners — they had been the favourite band of Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, even enjoying the White Home in 1970 — whereas winking at hipper audiences.
As they drifted away from the center of the street, the Turtles might often give the sense that they had been too good for the room; one in every of their greatest albums, 1968’s “The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands,” was constructed as an idea album the place the group adopted a special guise and musical model for every observe.
The Turtles in 1967, clockwise from high left: Al Nichol, Jim Tucker, Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan, Johnny Barbara and Jim Pon.
(Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Pictures)
Volman and Kaylan capitalized on this quirk once they rechristened themselves as Flo & Eddie, a moniker they devised after a bitter authorized battle with their former file label left them with out the fitting to carry out both because the Turtles or utilizing their very own names. Throughout this era, Frank Zappa invited Flo & Eddie to hitch his Moms of Invention, giving the duo a lift that led to an everlasting profession.
Flo & Eddie specialised in offering harmonic assist to excessive profile acts: they toured with Alice Cooper, sang on T. Rex’s landmark glam album “Electric Warrior” and had been recruited to sing on Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” when the Boss was searching for Seashore Boys-like harmonies. On their very own, Volman and Kaylan additionally honed their comedic shtick as recording artists, later taking their act to radio and, as soon as they reacquired the rights to the Turtles moniker, on the street, enjoying the oldies circuit into the 2010s.
Not like many different oldies acts, Volman and Kaylan possessed sharp enterprise abilities, acquired after their messy fallout with their file label, White Whale. As soon as they regained their grasp tapes, they licensed their catalog to reissue labels and saved a vigilant eye on how their recordings had been disseminated within the market.
On realizing that the Turtles’ “You Showed Me” supplied a pivotal pattern on De La Soul‘s 1989 debut album, “3 Feet High and Rising,” the duo sued the rap pioneers for $2.5 million in exemplary and punitive damages. The matter was settled out of court in favor of Volman and Kaylan; while the terms were not publicly disclosed, they reportedly were awarded $1.7 million in damages. The lawsuit and its fallout effectively ended the golden age of sampling in hip-hop.
Mark Volman during the 10th anniversary of the Happy Together tour at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2019.
(Scott Dudelson / Getty Images)
Born in Los Angeles on April 19, 1947, Volman grew up in a musical household in the neighborhood of Westchester. Even when he was young, relatives were struck by his exuberant personality. His aunt Ann Becker recalled in “Happy Forever”: “I can remember my mother shaking her head and saying, ‘That boy is so smart — he shouldn’t be so foolish.’”
By the point he enrolled at Westchester Excessive — his classmates included comic Phil Hartman and Manson Member of the family Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme — Volman had gravitated towards irreverence.
Assembly New York transplant Kaylan in choir, Volman quickly turned a part of the Crossfires, enjoying saxophone alongside his new buddy within the surf-rock combo. The Crossfires had two singles to their identify earlier than they signed to the fledgling White Whale Information in 1965. Already within the technique of abandoning surf for folk-rock — Volman and Kaylan swapped their saxes for lead vocals — the group’s members accepted their new label’s suggestion to rename themselves; they rejected the stylized spelling of the Tyrtles in favor of the Turtles.
Taking a cue from the Byrds’ hit model of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Turtles launched a revved-up cowl of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” that squarely hit the zeitgeist, climbing into the Billboard Prime 10 in summer season 1965. Volman later remembered, “I graduated from high school in February 1965 and was on tour in June with a Top 10 record and on the Dick Clark Show.”
A few spirited sequels, “Let Me Be” and “You Baby,” saved the band within the Prime 40 into 1966 however the Turtles’ scorching streak shortly cooled, as a collection of singles — together with “Outside Chance,” written by White Whale staffer Warren Zevon — barely scraped the charts. “Happy Together,” a music rejected by a variety of pop teams, revived the group’s fortunes, thanks partly to a sterling association masterminded by new bassist Chip Douglas.
“Happy Together” topped the charts and would develop into one of many requirements of its period, showing usually in commercials and movies. In 1967, it propelled the Turtles again to the higher reaches of the charts, a spot they’d keep by 1969, as they accrued such hits as “She’d Rather Be With Me” and “Elenore.”
By far the most important act on the small-scale White Whale, the Turtles had been subjected to stress by the label to file extra business materials, but Volman and Kaylan saved pushing the band to make hip music. When the label steered firing the remainder of the Turtles, the singers organized for the remaining three members to share songwriting credit on “The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands,” the primary album they launched after the success of “Happy Together.” On their last album, “Turtle Soup,” the Turtles employed Ray Davies as their producer; it was his first manufacturing exterior his primary band, the Kinks.
Tensions between the Turtles and White Whale escalated in 1970, main the group to disband. In flip, the label exercised a clause within the band‘s recording contract that prevented the members from performing either “individually or collectively,” effectively barring Volman and Kaylan from continuing to work either as a group or as themselves. The pair decided to call themselves the Phlorescent Leech & Eddie, a name that would swiftly be shortened to Flo & Eddie; Volman was the former, Kaylan the latter.
Zappa brought the duo into his Mothers of Invention ensemble not long after the implosion of the Turtles. They stayed with him through an eventful year that included a concert in Montreux, Switzerland, that ended with the venue engulfed in fire; Deep Purple memorialized the event in “Smoke on the Water.”
Alice Cooper, second from left, with Mark Volman (drinking beverage) and bandmates in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1972.
(Jorgen Angel / Redferns / Getty Images)
Beginning with 1972’s “The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie,” Flo & Eddie launched a collection of more and more facetious albums all through the Seventies, however that they had higher success singing harmonies for T. Rex and Cooper. “Hungry Heart,” Springsteen’s first Prime 10 hit, served as a curtain name for this era of Flo & Eddie’s profession. Quickly, the duo put their days as recording artists to relaxation. Whereas they nonetheless would contribute unique music to animated tv exhibits, together with specials specializing in “Strawberry Shortcake” and “The Care Bears” collection, the duo stopped writing and recording new Flo & Eddie music.
The transfer coincided with the duo lastly successful again the rights to their names. Volman and Kalyan started this course of in 1974, once they acquired the Turtles’ grasp recordings when White Whale property had been up for public sale.
A decade later, they had been capable of tour as The Turtles … that includes Flo & Eddie, a billing they’d retain into the 2010s, till Kaylan retired from the street in 2018. With Ron Dante filling in for Kaylan, Volman continued performing because the Turtles as a part of their common Completely satisfied Collectively bundle excursions.
Though Flo & Eddie embraced their standing on the oldies circuit, they hadn’t pale fully from fashionable music. When De La Soul sampled “You Showed Me” for his or her observe “Transmitting Live From Mars” in 1989, the trio didn’t clear the rights previous to launch, so Volman and Kaylan sued the group, successful a big settlement that established a precedent for pattern clearance in hip-hop.
The duo launched one other main lawsuit in 2013 once they filed swimsuit in opposition to Sirius XM for failing to pay sound recording royalties in California, New York and Florida. A California decide dominated within the duo’s favor in 2014, whereas a Florida decide dominated for Sirius XM in 2015. Though a settlement was reached in 2016, Sirius XM would win subsequent authorized appeals in Florida and California.
Volman went again to high school in 1992, pursuing a bachelor’s diploma at Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles. After incomes a grasp’s diploma in screenwriting in 1999 at Loyola Marymount, Volman quickly moved into instructing, ultimately turning into an affiliate professor on the Mike Curb Faculty of Leisure & Music Enterprise at Belmont College in Nashville, Tenn.
Volman is survived by his daughters, Sarina Marie and Hallie Rae, each from his marriage to Patricia Lee.
