Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc.

by Howard Kaylan

  SIXTEEN

  As Good as It Gets

  On November 14, 1970, I drove by my old neighborhood in Westchester, just to ruminate on my life’s twists and turns and sadly watch as the giant destruction machines tore down Airport Junior High School to make way for a Hertz Rent a Car. The following afternoon, Mark and I sang with Linda Ronstadt on her new single before rehearsal, and the next day we were off again, this time to Spokane, Washington; Edmonton and Vancouver, Canada; and then Seattle.

  Girls and drugs were ever-present. Being in the hippest group in America didn’t hurt. After most rehearsals, I occupied my time with a lovely lady named Elizabeth who Frank and everyone else knew as Lixie. She was an adorable, petite groupie with long auburn hair and a body that could stop traffic. She hung out at Frank’s rehearsal hall and had obviously spent a lot of time with him. But now, with his hands full of tour and musical details, the poor little thing looked so lost. And everyone else was so married. Hell, so was I, but I was never one to turn my back on a helpless waif. We made love everywhere. It wasn’t easy in the back of a Volvo, but I was much more limber then. And, of course, I was an asshole.

  Once in Seattle, safely checked into the famous Edgewater Inn, I knew that a) not only could I fish out of my window for mud sharks to be used in unimaginable groupie sex activities, but b) I’d be spending a lot of time with another wonderful lady by the name of Lin. Judge me if you like, but life was zooming by pretty quickly and I was far too young to be exposed to this buffet of females and not sample as many dishes as I could. Of course, I had spent countless nights during the preceding five years with any decent girl who would take the time, but the girls that were coming around now were pretty special.

  Lin was amazing, and not just physically. It was all so new to me. I confess, especially as a resident of the area now, that Seattle held a great deal of mystery to me. It’s a beautiful place of sounds and inlets and lakes—not unlike Stockholm, I was soon to learn. And to sweeten the deal, Lin’s house was on Vashon Island, a remote locale accessible only by ferry and with no cars allowed. Being there was downright exotic, and waking up in the morning to the mist on my face and the aroma of homemade bread wafting up from the kitchen, Joni Mitchell coming from the old stereo, well, I was transported. I never wanted to leave. Worse, I felt no guilt whatsoever. What a creep.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We were playing some great shows around this time. In September, we’d played a club called Pepperland north of San Francisco, with Tim Buckley opening. I loved Tim. He was the gentlest, most beautiful angel ever to grace a stage. His music floated over you like warm honey and there wasn’t a woman in attendance at any Buckley concert who didn’t fall in love with Tim. Men too, I think. We also got to know Jefferson Airplane and made lifelong friends. The shows were great and the after-show hangouts were even better. This was top tier, man. This was as good as it gets.

  There was plenty of good old-fashioned perversion too. During our next little run of dates, Aynsley had some amorous and rather public displays of affection involving a comely lass and a very fizzy champagne bottle, vintage unknown. It was actually a lot more harmless than it sounds, except of course for the young lady participant, who actually seemed to be quite enjoying herself. We were all just voyeurs. Nothing wrong with that. The weird part was that afterward, I didn’t call home. I called Lin.

  And then I returned home and told Melita everything. I had no idea at all what I was doing. I was treading water at home. We bought a gorgeous Irish setter that we named Ralph and went out for fondue dinners and spent evenings with neighboring couples. There was trouble with our Laurel Canyon tenants: They were about three months late with the rent and nowhere to be found. I was able to find another renter just before Melita’s panic set in. This was a gentleman named Velvert Turner, an actual friend of Jimi’s, although I’ve learned since never to rent anything to anybody. You’ll see.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  In the fall, White Whale released the Turtles’ Wooden Head album posthumously. It was a rather depressing set of B-sides and incomplete tracks, but I ran by the Sunset Boulevard office to pick up a few copies in early November before the Mothers left to play at both Fillmores. Neither Lee nor Ted was around when I stopped by. It felt like going back to elementary school to pick up a misplaced book. I had grown past this.

  We laughed about it backstage at the Santa Monica Civic, where we were hanging with the Kinks at their gig before heading back to Manhattan for the first of many shows at the Fillmore East. Bill Graham had become a real buddy since the Turtles’ show at the original Fillmore. He loved this new incarnation of Frank’s band. I think it spoke to the vaudevillian in the man. He laughed through the shows in San Francisco, standing at the side of the stage with his hands in his jeans pockets. And he jumped onboard instantly when Frank suggested adding some heavy friends to the shows in New York.

  On Friday, November 13, I got up about 12:30 for a 2 P.M. sound check at the Fillmore East. Things went well. We actually had time to go back to the hotel at One Fifth Avenue before the concert. Mark and I met Joni Mitchell there and brought her up to Frank’s room for introductions.

  We’d known Joni for some time. On any given Friday night, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Mark, and whoever would sit around Joni’s living room in a circle and someone would play his newest heartbreaker. Everyone would comment on it and the guitar would be passed to the next writer. I was a happy witness to one such session. Mark and I previewed the songs that would become our first album as a duo there. It was an amazing time to be around all of this burgeoning talent and we all knew it. All of the guys there had an enormous crush on Joni, and she was magic to be around. Joni wrote the song “Conversation” about the strange relationship she and Mark had.

  That night at the Fillmore East, we played our first set with Sha Na Na opening and went back to the hotel to get Joni. All we knew was that she had prepared something for the show and, in the true spirit of the band, we’d hear it when she did it. We played our complete second show, which was stellar as usual. Then Frank nodded toward stage right and out walked this tall, blond vision to thunderous applause from a shocked audience.

  You could have heard a pin drop. Not even the sound of a nervous cough broke the silence. And this was a Zappa crowd. Softly and slowly, Joni spoke to an enraptured crowd.

  “Penelope wants to fuck the sky…” she began. Frank smiled from ear to ear as he lifted his arms to conduct the group. I don’t recall the rest of the piece, but it brought down the house and afterward, Joni went with Mark and me for pizza. It rained. It was wonderful. The next night, Grace Slick strolled onstage at the beginning of one of the sets and the band jammed while she did mostly nothing. We hung with her till dawn, but it wasn’t as transcendent as the previous night had been. We were just higher.

  That same week, we played a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto. It’s a cold, old theater with dressing rooms that resemble turn-of-the-century schoolrooms, replete with folding chairs and horrible glass transoms above the doors. We were in one of these industrial green rooms when we heard a commotion in the hall outside. Then we heard the glass breaking before we knew what had happened. From outside, a young male voice yelled, “I love you, Frank!” and crashing to the floor came the enormous severed head of an adult male pig. Fresh meat. Uncle Meat. It was supposed to be a loving gift. A bloody, wide-eyed loving pig. It was horrible. And I’m no vegetarian.

  Mothers of Invention fans were a little bit different. Deep in his heart, this idiot fanboy was doing something memorable and heroic for his biggest idol. It wasn’t supposed to gross us all out; I’m sure the kid thought Frank would probably bring the damned thing up onstage with him and make a hero out of this little Canuck to his classmates and his girlfriend (though, truth be told, none of the ladies who attended Zappa concerts were likely to have come to the show with him).

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  At home, the sex had ceased since my sincere confessional, and
Melita and I were civil to each other at best. But there wasn’t a lot of time to worry about such trivialities. In a matter of days, the laundry got done, the bank was visited, the baby was adored, and I was out of there again.

  For the first time and for no apparent reason, the Warner Bros. people were at every show of the new European tour. We had this amazing press agent named Barbara Scott (who later became Barbara DeWitt), who babysat all of us and made us feel a lot less stupid. There must have been some sort of buzz, because the shows were all sold out. We lived like kings in the capitals of the world as winter descended at the end of 1970. Back to London, like jet-setters. Only this time, while the band checked into the familiar Kensington Palace, Frank stayed at the Dorchester. Yikes! We all took a taxi over to his hotel for interviews on our second day in town.

  We had Thanksgiving in Liverpool and got sick in Manchester, but we lived out of London. On Saturday, Mark went out to Stephen Stills’s house in Surrey and I went with Marc and June Bolan to a T. Rex concert at the Roundhouse. Things had really changed for Marc. The girls were screaming now; he had switched his image to that of a glam rock god and the frenzy was only just beginning for Bolan. He was the self-proclaimed cosmic punk now, and he was laughing all the way to the bank. I sang with the band that night. It was amazing.

  The itinerary read like Around the World in 80 Days. From Stockholm to Copenhagen to the Amsterdam Hilton—yeah, we were there too. We did press conferences daily before our sound checks, and then we had a fifty-fifty shot at getting back to the hotel before the concert. Up early the following morning, no matter how much international partying was being done, to fly, go through customs, meet the new agent and the new Warner’s guy and get to the next, albeit four-star, hotel. I loved walking the streets of Wherever-We-Were. Truly at this time of year, with the falling snow and the tiny shops lining cobblestone avenues, clock towers chiming festive holiday carols and strange-tasting food from street vendors’ carts, it was even more magical than Central Park had been. Even our European promoter, Fritz Rau, was a jolly old elf of a character who only added to the illusion.

  Jean-Luc Ponty, the world-renowned jazz violinist, sat in with us at the Palais Gaumont in Paris for an extremely uncomfortable show of mostly instrumentals for a crowd of socialists, and then I hit London one more time to spend a sad-to-go evening with the Bolans before our Air India flight blew the fantasy right out of the water and once again plunged us into a curry-scented reality. Just like that.

  Home to the duplicity. Home to Emily developing a rather serious cough. Evenings spent with Spanky and her husband, Charly Galvin. Or Jerry and Judy (Henske) Yester. Or Jeff and Brina Simmons. Or Ian and Ruth Underwood. Or the Volmans: anything to avoid having to confront the elephant in the Woodland Hills room. We really weren’t getting along at all, and the more worldly I became (in my mind, at least), the more restless I became at home. The pace was just too slow. I found that I had only two settings—full-bore or disinterested. As 1970 came to an end, I couldn’t stop my engines from revving. I was all dressed up with no place to go. And despite Frank’s tantalizing hints of a 200 Motels movie project, there was trouble brewing on the horizon of the Kaylan household.

  SEVENTEEN

  A Car Shaped Like an Enormous Penis, Sounds Like Good, Clean Family Fun

  For the time being, all the domestic stuff was moved to the back burner. As the first of the year came and went, our attorney Paul Almond was poring over the contracts for Frank’s 200 Motels movie. We hadn’t read the script. Hell, there wasn’t a script. There was only Frank’s assurance that there would be a script by the time we arrived at Pinewood Studios, outside of London, to film what would now be a United Artists release.

  It was back to London, courtesy of Air India, on January 14 of what was to become a seminal year. We got to Kensington Palace around 1:30 and I was unpacked and in bed an hour later. But I was ready to party when June Bolan phoned at 9:30. Off to the Speakeasy for dinner and cognac. I ate, I laughed, I puked. I love London.

  We finally got our scripts on Saturday night, and by Sunday afternoon, Jeff Simmons had quit the band. He and his wife, Brina, had looked over Frank’s words and she, in particular, was convinced that Jeff would be throwing his life away if he participated in the making of this travesty. In the script, the character of Jeff is contemplating leaving the Mothers of Invention based on Frank’s desire to play comedy music. He expresses his contempt for the entire genre in a speech that both he and Brina had decided would make him look extremely bad.

  “No way I’m going to play this comedy music, man. I didn’t join this band to become a laughingstock. I want to play the blues, man. Zappa’s old. He’s almost thirty, for God’s sake. He just doesn’t get it. We should take up a collection and buy him a watch!”

  That’s how the script read.

  Brina was even more insistent than Jeff had been. “Jeff’s not going to say that stuff. It makes him sound like an idiot. He joined this band to be a musician, not a goddamned comedian. And he would never say anything like that. He’s got more class than that!”

  Frank was not amused. In fact, he was genuinely bewildered. He nodded toward Mark, who produced his own portable tape recorder and flipped it on. And we heard Jeff speaking in a taxi en route to the Dorchester last year.

  “No way I’m going to play this comedy music, man. I want to play the blues. Zappa’s old….” It was all there. Brina turned red and stomped out of the room. From the hallway she yelled, “Are you coming, Jeff? Let’s go home.”

  And he got up, said nothing, and followed her back to Seattle. Now we were all trapped in England without a major player in a movie that was to start shooting in just a few days. Without him, there would be no movie. How could that bastard do this to us? We were up Shit Creek and Simmons hadn’t even left us a paddle. He was intentionally sinking the entire ship because he didn’t want his handful of Northwest friends to see the blues boy compromised within the confines of a comedy band. What a jerk! And now there would be no movie. Thanks for nothing, asshole.

  However, the sadness I felt was nothing compared to the emotions running rampant in Mr. Zappa. This was the shot at mainstream success that he and Herb and even Frank’s wife, Gail, had awaited for almost a decade, and the damned bass player was putting the kibosh on the entire affair. Zappa, after momentary paralysis, calmly devised a plan. He was not going to give up on his feature motion picture debut without a fight. We had Ringo Starr signed and ready to go, Keith Moon was onboard, the London Philharmonic was about to start rehearsing, the massive sound stages at Pinewood had been booked, and the sets had been built and assembled. All we needed to do was to find another “Jeff.”

  Time wasn’t on our side, either. Frank soon realized that, no matter how quickly we shot the picture, we would never have time to shoot the elaborate ending he had written.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  This would be a good time to explain the genesis of that missing scene and the construction of 200 Motels itself.

  Many months before, traveling in some anonymous bus or train on the way to some foreign destination with Frank, I had told him about one particular groupie adventure that I had lived through back in the Turtle days. Back then, I had gotten to third base with some faceless fan who literally crossed her legs on our evening of lust and stopped the passion at a most crucial time. When I blustered out my frustration, she told me that she would go no farther unless I sang her my big hit record. What? Now? But…

  So there I had been, pants down at my ankles, and just about to do the nasty. And she was going to make me sing?

  That bitch!

  I could never demean myself like that. How could she expect me to lower myself like that?

  But she was so pretty. And I was so ready. “Imagine me and you. I do…” I wasn’t proud. But I did get laid, damn it.

  As I told the story to Frank that afternoon, I could almost hear the wheels turning inside the Master’s brain. The ultimate groupie story. Now Frank ha
d an ending for his movie. And the entire plot was shaping up based on my little groupie adventure.

  The Mothers were to travel to Centerville—a real nice place to raise your kids—and meet a bunch of amorous groupie types for motel adventures while Jeff threatened to quit and Don Preston, one of the original Mothers, brewed up mystical potions that turned ordinary cigarettes into mystery roaches that, when smoked, turned the movie into animated nightmares for the Jeff character and gave the rest of the band time to get ready for the teenage nightclub. There, my character was to run into the girl of his dreams, who was actually Mark in full drag, and take her back to my cheesy motel room in a car shaped like an enormous penis. Sounds like good, clean family fun, doesn’t it?

  But there was no movie without Jeff. Or someone to play Jeff. Quickly! And so the search was on. We found some very unusual casting choices. It certainly would have been a different film. The first suggestion came from Ringo. What if Wilfrid Brambell, Paul’s clean old grandfather from A Hard Day’s Night, played the part of Jeff? It was ridiculous, but it was nuts enough to work. So the following morning, Wilfrid Brambell arrived at Pinewood in an ill-fitting tweed suit, ready to become Jeff Simmons.

  We had a week to get it together. That meant everything. The acting, the music, the blocking, and the shooting. And shortly, Frank realized that we would never have enough time to shoot the ending of the movie as it had been written. We had only been given five days to shoot the entire movie, and there was no way in hell that we’d get to the tinsel-cock car and the fruition of the groupie saga. So Frank got to work immediately on a finale number that would wrap the entire story up in a song. He barely had time to write it and we were given even less time to learn it.