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

by Howard Kaylan

  Several years later, Pamela married musician Michael Des Barres. They were happy for many years and remain close. I’m still close to Pamela too. She’s that kind of wonderful girl.

  But I was so in love with Dianne. We took an amazing drive up to Yosemite, picking up hitchhikers, camping on the river, and making love at every opportunity, whether mobile or stationary. We hiked to Vernal Falls and skinny-dipped with like-minded new acquaintances. Then it was back through San Francisco, with the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead as our soundtrack. We laughed in the bars of North Beach and then drove south and meditated at Nepenthe in Big Sur. We loved each other. I had never felt anything like it.

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Dianne was jealous too. While I rehearsed with the Mothers or worked with Frank’s studio engineer, Barry Keene, on a posthumous Turtles album at Whitney Studios in Glendale, Dianne was amusing herself by going to see James Taylor and the Moody Blues. The Mothers had shows to play, and already I was getting the “other girls” lecture. Dianne wasn’t cut out to be a housewife. Of course, no one wants to wait around for their better half, especially when he’s singing his filthy hit album to audiences of screaming groupies all over the world. To this day, she remains the only important lady in my life who didn’t know who or what I was when the relationship began, because even at my meager level of success, the fame attracted people. It still does. But it was never about fame with Dianne. Quite the opposite. She needn’t have worried, though. I was totally smitten.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Another week, another tour. This one was a doozy. We were in Virginia Beach to do a show at the Dome. The sound check was fine; the show was great, as usual, although certainly not a standout. So it was with wide-eyed innocence that Mark and I followed Frank off the stage after our traditional instrumental encore, only for both of us to get handcuffed and led away by the city’s finest. We were under arrest for obscenity. They threw the two of us into the back of a waiting cherry-top and carted us off to the hoosegow. They booked us, took mug shots of us, fingerprinted us, and locked us up as the band looked on.

  Our bail was paid, fortunately, by our tour manager, Dick Barber, at Herb’s request. I had only been singing and speaking the scripted words that were put before me. Both Mark and I were employees, for God’s sake. We were contracted to perform those supposed pieces of art and, whether or not they were to be judged as filth in the future, on this particular evening, we were free to go. They weren’t our words, after all: They had been Frank’s. A few hours in the Graybar Hotel and then back to the actual hotel, where Zappa took us into his room to put a positive spin on the night. No press was bad press and this was going to be huge! Herb and our publicist, Barbara DeWitt, would have a field day with this story. Frank’s legend would only grow.

  Indeed, the following day, a huge press conference was held in Boston, and the hotel conference room was packed with foreign journalists and television cameras. Barbara flew in from L.A. to monitor the proceedings. Was this a case of First Amendment constitutional rights? Did we feel like the American government was trying to censor the arts? Had Zappa gone too far with his brand of off-putting smut comedy? After all, Jane Fonda had walked out on our concert at the Santa Monica Civic: She couldn’t handle the pony harness dipped in enchilada sauce and shoved into a donkey’s ass, I suppose. To each her own. We were national news. One week later, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were booked to play for the first time at Manhattan’s legendary Carnegie Hall. The concert instantly sold out.

  It was Columbus Day, October 11, and, due to my late hours the night before, walking the Village in the rain, turning my collar to the wind and feeling very much like a Tom Rush album cover, I was hoarse and quite a bit the worse for wear. I had also spent a small fortune calling Dianne, and our multiple calls hadn’t ceased until 3 A.M. I nearly blacked out during the 2 P.M. sound check, but kept it together as news crews filmed us doing “The Mud Shark” up and down the hallowed halls of the renowned showplace. Both shows were fantastic. Carnegie Hall did not disappoint. The holy stage felt like home, and we didn’t repeat any material at all as we ad-libbed our way through every song in our impressive repertoire. Truthfully, we were terrific. Alice Cooper was there. More impressive, Bob Dylan was there. Bob fucking Dylan. He certainly wasn’t falling asleep in his pasta on this night. He laughed. He got it. The Zappa Family Trust, aka Gail, finally released the recordings in 2011. I’m so glad.

  There were press screenings of 200 Motels the following afternoon; more questions and more photographs. There was a farewell party for us at Sardi’s, of all places, and then we were back on the road, in Toronto again, at Massey Hall, home of the pig’s head incident, and drinking at the bar with Enid Finnbogason. Rangers, ho! But not for this guy. Not tonight. This guy is totally monogamous—it’s just an ever-changing monogamy.

  Frank liked it best when we could do just a few big dates at a time in the States and call it a tour. Those little dates just whizzed by, each one featuring a different opening act: Lee Michaels, It’s a Beautiful Day, Milwaukee with Fleetwood Mac. In Kansas City the familiar girls were waiting for us, but I was having none of that. I still had my Placidyls. I could still go right to sleep.

  We got our copies of the 200 Motels soundtrack album on October 26 and we all attended the L.A. premiere at the Doheny Plaza, a classy little art palace in West Hollywood. My parents came to see it. They were totally confused, as was most of the audience, but they supported their son, and it was great to know that they were still proud of my career. Sort of.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Something new and very dark was about to enter the picture. Dianne’s friends from the commune in Michigan began sending her care packages. About every two weeks, we would receive a shipment from Ann Arbor in a plain brown wrapper. It was an enormous quantity of synthetic THC, the active ingredient in weed. Holy shit! This crap was amazing. Why bother clogging your lungs with smoke when you could snort a little bit of this magic powder and be buzzed all day long? It wasn’t like coke. It was more like a small acid trip, one that would actually wear off after a couple of hours. Of course, it was hell on the old nasal passages, but it seemed to be worth it at the time. Dianne and I didn’t even think about it. We had so much of it that it just became normal to walk over to the table, do some THC, and continue doing whatever was on our schedule for the day.

  We dined out every night, and every month it still fell on me to collect the Hollywood Hills rent from Velvert Turner. In November, he didn’t have it. There were wax drippings over all of the carpeting and neon paint upon the walls. My place had turned into a rather infamous L.A. party house. I felt like a hooker, chasing the rent money, but I needed every cent. We were paid by the show. Touring came whenever Frank needed it. In Zappa’s world, cash was never the motivator, but then again, he never walked a mile in my Nikes.

  On November 11, the Mothers left again for New York City to tape The Dick Cavett Show. We stayed again at the fabulous One Fifth Avenue. The next day was the show. We got there early to rehearse. The sound was a little weird and we had to stay at ABC Studios all day with no food, but we did have drugs, and the 6 P.M. taping went wonderfully well. Cavett was a most immaculate gentleman, and being a part of this elite broadcast was a historic feather in our collective caps.

  The following day, the band, plus Dianne, flew to London on—you guessed it—Air India. We checked in to the Royal Garden Hotel and the two of us immediately started to fight. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was the singular lack of substances or the horrible transatlantic flight, but something in our chemistry shifted for a minute. Despite the strangeness, I had things to do and no time to get into this domestic shit. We went to the Speakeasy in the rain, but the band that was playing was no good and the magic was gone. Of all places, too. I had so wanted Dianne to experience this. Marc and June had promised to come around but were having problems of their own and never showed up, so Dianne and I walked the streets of Kensingt
on, getting more depressed with every raindrop that fell. It was about girls and long-distance loving and being the “old lady” waiting at home. I couldn’t reassure her enough. She saw the groupies; she sat in on the interviews; she felt disposable.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  200 Motels opened at the Pavilion in London to huge crowds and rave reviews. Go figure. There was a huge party afterward at the then-new Hard Rock Cafe, where I was allowed to become fantastically drunk on single-malt scotch with Roman Polanski. He told me that women had no place on the road. Now there’s some sage advice from a master of relationships. Back to the hotel to talk and cry until morning. This wasn’t going to work. Dianne couldn’t handle the road. Hangover time, noon the next day: We were checking out of the Royal Garden and they had no room for Dianne, so I phoned the Kensington Palace, which could accommodate her until she could find a flight out, and met the Mothers at the airport to continue our tour in Stockholm. I felt like hammered shit. It was pouring.

  No sooner did we land in Sweden than we were spirited off to a press reception on some floating boat/club thing, but I needed to punk out early and wound up cabbing it back to our hotel with Don Preston, who had returned to the band after Bob Harris’s brief stay. I needed real room service food. I needed to call Dianne, and she sounded great when I did. I needed to stop being so scared.

  Little things humble a man. Dianne called to wake me in the morning about 8:30. I didn’t mind feeling sleepy; her voice was a panacea for me. I walked the streets, shopping for pornography, until the band traveled by bus and ferry through Copenhagen to the town of Odense. As I said, the band traveled—the equipment truck didn’t. The damned thing broke down. On the second date of this sold-out European run, we had to refund all of the crowd’s money. But Frank was far too nice a guy to walk away and we had all traveled so darned far anyway….

  So we did the show with acoustic guitars, with Aynsley playing on tabletops and ashtrays. It lasted an hour and a half and we were all, including Frank, drinking Carlsberg Elephant beer throughout the performance. Great stuff, but try sleeping after downing a few, with one eye open and on the alarm clock and a mind somewhere between Michigan and Denmark. I sure couldn’t.

  But it didn’t matter. I was really happy. Dianne and I had identified the problem and eliminated it. It was just that simple. Easy to play two shows that day in Copenhagen; I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Besides, this tour was just getting started. Our printed itineraries were pages long. It was freezing, and I cursed the asshole who had stolen my coat from backstage, but there were other coats to be had and other adventures on the horizon.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Smoke on the Water

  What possible perversions would a band of scruffy American musicians participate in during an overnight train ride to Dusseldorf? The answer is: board games. Specifically, Speed Circuit, an auto-racing spinner thing. It was way more macho than Win, Place & Show, the horse-racing game that we played at home with our significant others. Zappa thought we were all nuts. Perhaps so, sir. Perhaps so.

  Lu, our German teacher, was along on the trip in some unofficial capacity, and the two of us went clubbing after the concerts there. Frank had told us to be careful in Germany; things were interpreted differently here. Frank was an antiestablishment hero, and therefore everything he said or did must certainly carry social significance. They didn’t get it. When Frank wrote about cars and girls, it wasn’t a veiled metaphor about the rising of the proletariat, it was generally about cars and girls. Germans, Frank cautioned, were not known for their sense of humor, and I remembered his words as I made friends in the local taverns. I didn’t mention World War II either.

  It took a lot of nerve to actually perform Frank’s “Holiday in Berlin” in Berlin, but despite all of the warnings and our walking-on-eggs attitude, the show there went down without a problem. The crowd was amazing. I walked the city, went to the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg Gate, and bought Dianne a beautiful handbag for her upcoming birthday.

  We were playing at the same glorious theaters that we had visited the year before: old-world opera houses and concert halls originally built for the resonance of a string section or a single pianist. Now we were assaulting Europe, finding gigantic pipe organs in classic halls and practically blowing out the ancient instruments by banging out “Louie Louie” for a throng of stomping Aryans.

  And then there were the girls. I wasn’t dead. I partied hearty in Hamburg. An interview with a stranger didn’t end up so strangely. But I knew that it didn’t count. I was just having fun.

  Amsterdam next, at the greatest Howard Johnson hotel in the universe: a seventeenth-century manor on a canal, replete with more wonderful dope than I could handle. I knew exactly where I was in this town. I could find my way in and out of the red-light district—just looking, of course—and to the museums, the restaurants, and each and every coffee shop in town. That’s where the legal weed and hash was sold, consumed, and treated with respect. I tripped down to the Paradiso just because I could.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sandwiches and beer on the bus ride to Rotterdam and Frank was now in the company of somebody new called Karen. This one was really lovely and very nice. Some were not. Frank had an amazing thing going at home and here’s how it worked.

  When Frank found a pretty young thing out on the road, he would often travel with her, treat her like a lady while she was in his company, and sometimes even bring her back with him to his home in Laurel Canyon to live in his basement or the guesthouse until he didn’t need her around anymore. Gail and her family were devout Catholics, as were Frank’s parents. The word divorce was not in their vocabulary. Frank knew it and took full advantage of the religion that he publicly ridiculed. Gail would never leave Frank, not even if she had to make tea or breakfast for this week’s belle de jour. It might have appeared awkward, but this lady wasn’t going anywhere, boyo. She knew it and she flaunted it.

  Now, years after Frank’s death, it’s Gail who administers the music that Frank spent his entire life producing. She can decide to publicize it and make it available to the waiting fans or to somewhat bury it and comfortably live on the money that Frank left her after leasing his master recordings to Rykodisc. So far, she has mostly chosen the latter (although a large chunk of the catalogue was recently reissued), and many kids only know Zappa from his pictures. It’s a dirty shame.

  Turnabout is fair play, I guess. Gail had been a groupie too when Frank met and married her. She knew what she’d be getting herself into. Now it’s her turn. My advice? Never cross Gail Zappa.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  KLM to Frankfurt and the InterContinental Hotel. Two more amazing shows. Lufthansa to Munich, one of my favorite cities. We checked into a Holiday Inn and promoter Fritz Rau treated us to an amazing dinner after an equally amazing show at the Circus Krone. Afterward, the fun continued as we all got thrown out of the Yellow Submarine nightclub for obscene dancing. Just like the Chunky Club in the Crossfires days.

  I got frisked by German police on my way out of the country, but much to my (and Frank’s) relief, there was nothing on me to discover. I was much more clever than that. Familiar faces greeted me in Vienna and I smoked hash in Barbara DeWitt’s room, drank beautiful black beer, and watched the skaters on the rink below me. The hotel maid sewed a pair of pants for me and I got high with some friends. By the time I called home, it was 4 A.M. and by the time I read myself to sleep, it was after 5.

  So I was completely disoriented when Dick Barber called my room to wake me eleven hours later. It was pitch-black outside and I truly didn’t know if it was day or night. But I showered, had room service food, and got high in Volman’s room before leaving at 7 for a great, long show at the Konzerthaus up the street. Too much sleep is very often a lot worse than too little, and that was the case on this occasion. I was so wired after the show that it took me hours to get to sleep, and even then, it was a fitful night with too many thoughts.

  The next morning, an early wakeup c
all and all ten of us flew Austrian Airlines through Zurich and into Geneva. Then it was a James Bond–style bus ride through the incredible Alps and into Montreux. The hotel was fantastic. I soaked in the tub before we ate and took a slippery bus ride followed by a perilous hike to an even more obscure restaurant. There was smoke in Barbara’s room and the last of a Vonnegut book I had read three times already. I slept like a baby, never expecting that, in a few hours, everything would change.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I woke about ten, walked the cobblestone streets of the gorgeous village, purchased a replacement suitcase, and walked back. Then, at noon, I walked over to the casino. The Montreux Casino was quite a famous place. It was the home of the Montreux Jazz Festival, of which we were a part, and the all the great jazz legends had played this beautiful room. On the floor below us, there was a recording studio where the British band Deep Purple was in the process of recording their new album. The performance space itself was on the second floor of the lakeside structure. The small stage sat against the far wall as the audience entered, and we performed with our backs to the plate-glass windows that framed fabulous Lake Geneva.

  The motif was strictly Pier 1: A bamboo ceiling hung suspended over the audience for ambiance and a bit of sound control. The stairway that led to the ballroom was the only way in or out of the place.

  Our show was at 2:30 in the afternoon, which was already a bit unusual. We were appropriately casual and had a really good set. It was during one of our final encores, “King Kong,” and Don Preston’s bizarre synthesizer solo, that—as Deep Purple famously sang in their classic song “Smoke on the Water”—“some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground.” He really did. A joker in the back of the crowd wanted to show his appreciation for the show with a bang and sent a flare straight up and into the bamboo ceiling, which ignited like tinder. Someone in the crowd yelled out, “Fire!” and, to be funny, I announced into the microphone, “Arthur Brown, ladies and gentlemen!” It wasn’t funny. Frank didn’t laugh. The audience panicked.