Warner’s wouldn’t give us our release yet, but Paul Almond kept telling us that the White Whale situation was cooling down—they’d settled with us in 1971, and the case was dismissed in ’72—so Mark and I began structuring a double-album Turtles hits release. I was on unemployment again.
A&M passed on Flo and Eddie and Allan MacDougal had to break the news to us. Only an advance from BMI revitalized my Christmas. Emily hated Diana; that made life weird. Enid Finnbogason was still around. Lixie was around too. As was Pamela. And now, somehow, it was okay to be friends with all of them. I should have known right there that something was wrong.
TWENTY-SIX
Lobster, Caviar, and Cocaine
Mark and I spent one Sunday evening crammed into a tiny broadcasting studio with a stack of our personal records and our pal Alice Cooper. The program was sent out live via a fledgling cable network in L.A. called the Z Channel. It was great fun, a ridiculously good time, and casual to the point of anarchy. We never made it through an entire record: We’d leave our mics on to comment over the tracks and when we got tired of it, we’d put on another one. The tracks ran together into little five-minute sets, and then we’d come out talking to Alice about anything but show business. A really fun night.
But, lucky us, Shadoe Stevens, program director of L.A.’s rebel radio station, KROQ, heard it. He asked us to come in for a meeting, and exactly one month later, the very first Flo and Eddie radio show hit the airwaves at 9 P.M. All of our celebrity friends phoned in. Alice promised to come in for the entire three hours the following week. We had lots of sponsors and the show was an underground hit.
To the casual observer, it must have appeared as though Mark and I had hit the jackpot. We would now do our column, Blind Date, for Phonograph Record Magazine—the very same format that Lulu had used to lambast us back in ’67—record spots at the radio station on Fridays, and then do the show live on Sundays. It might have looked like success, but I was still on unemployment. Of course, Diana wasn’t, so it was still lobster, caviar, and cocaine. There were other perks connected with her job as well. We spent a week at the Acapulco Princess hotel on Warner’s and went to red-carpet screenings and A-list parties where I’d nurse a cocktail as Diana flirted—for business, you understand.
By that time Ona had realized that she was a third wheel, and she’d moved out, so Diana and I were allowed to become, for better or worse, a couple. Unless, of course, Capricorn had an emergency requiring Diana to stay up all night, working, naturally, at Phil Walden’s bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
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Larry Heller had quit the management business and somehow Mark and I wound up with two new clowns running the show, Mike Kagen and John DeMarco. I really don’t know how it happened. They were mostly in the business of handling comics and dangled a lot of potential script and movie work in our faces. But they liked us and there really weren’t a lot of people in L.A. who seemed to like us.
Herb still did. We would still go down to watch Frank rehearse, now with Jeff, Ruth Underwood, and George Duke. It was really friendly. Plus, the Casting Office, a terrific seedy bar, was right next door, where we could share a few beers with Tom Waits.
I don’t think I could have made it through this post-Reprise era were it not for the radio show. I looked forward to it all week long. During our early weeks, when lining up guests was a daunting task, we’d save the show by doing Fondue Week or Mexican Night or Surfin’ Safaris, where all of the emphasis was placed on the most absurd of musical selections, listener call-ins, and irrelevant facts. On other nights, our cup runneth over; our third show featured Bobby Goldsboro, Richie Furay, Paul Williams, and Iggy Pop. The show’s appeal to celebrities was obvious. They weren’t being asked to sell anything. It was just for fun. The stars would bring their own favorite records to play, preparing for our insults and the irrelevant frivolity to follow. On Easter Sunday, we invited Rodney Bingenheimer, the unofficial mayor of the Sunset Strip, along with about a dozen glam kids from his English Disco and our old pal, Keith Moon. We didn’t really expect Keith to show up—he very often didn’t—but on this night he did, albeit a bit late. Our nine-to-midnight show was about an hour away from its frenetic conclusion when Keith stormed in with Ringo on his arm. KROQ stayed on the air long after its FCC-ordained midnight sign-off that night. The broadcast became legendary and its recording cemented our show’s inclusion on quite a few syndicated stations.
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Diana was smart. She foresaw the potential of these boys’ nights out and forced me to buy a professional Pioneer reel-to-reel tape recorder. Beginning with Alice, we taped every single program, which I later edited down to roughly seventy-two minutes to syndicate across the country as a ninety-minute weekly feature. The three of us—Mark, Diana, and I—formed a company, Earfull Productions, to make and sell the shows, which, when all was said and done, amounted to around two and a half years of Sunday nights. Still, her late evenings out continued and she’d get this faraway look sometimes.
We were fearless on the air. We had Albert Brooks and Suzi Quatro on the same show, Suzi trying to teach Albert how to be glam. We did a California night where we invited both Dean Torrence and Todd Rundgren to jam with us, brought on Joan Baez for Mother’s Day, and famously asked all of the feuding members of the original ELO to join us, without telling the other guys. When Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan saw Roy Wood and Rick Price, bodyguards from both camps jumped to their feet, but by the end of the show, the lads were all singing bawdy English music hall songs together.
Meanwhile, Mike and John were actually doing something. They were meeting with Clive Davis at Columbia and Seymour Stein at Sire Records. The Cheap movie, now renamed Dirty Duck, was just finishing up and I was editing and mailing out tapes to the stations that Diana had signed up to receive Flo and Eddie by the Fireside. And then the FCC pulled the plug on KROQ. We’d had such a great thing going. Not one to lose any momentum, Shadoe proposed an interesting plan: We would form a company, Big Bucks Corporation, or BBC, and produce our own shows. We drew up and signed the papers. We leased a studio on the corner of Sunset and Doheny, an expensive but beautiful space that Shadoe filled with state-of-the-art equipment. We would do our shows from there. Shadoe and his wife, Linda, could record commercials and radio plays from there and the shows would pay the rent.
So, in July, with the White Whale lawsuit behind us—we eventually bought out all of the other members’ interest in the Turtles too—Flo and Eddie signed with Columbia Records and Billboard magazine ran a photo of the two of us with Ted Feigin. We also leased the Turtles’ catalog to Seymour and the double-disc Happy Together Again! The Turtles’ Greatest Hits was put into motion. Simultaneously, we inked with a company called the Wartoke Concern for public relations. Shadoe became the program director of L.A.’s heaviest rock station, KMET, the Mighty Met. It was a different sort of success, but we loved it. Our show started running weekly on KMET just before Dr. Demento’s on Sundays at 9, our original time slot. The first installment was our interview with Harry Nilsson. It never got better than that.
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We didn’t have a band anymore, so when we found a song that we really needed to record, we called Aynsley in San Francisco and asked him to join Danny Kortchmar and Leland Sklar from the Section to record tracks at Cherokee. We recorded Albert Hammond’s “Rebecca” and our original Turtlesque “Let Me Make Love to You,” as well as a comedic B-side called “Youth in Asia.” Our original was picked for the single and Clive enlisted Joe Wissert to produce us. We were churning out “Happy Togethers” right and left. We were a hit machine. It would be like the Turtles were back and on a major label.
The Midnight Special people loved us. We would get a shot on this national music TV program. This, at last, would be it. Again. I flew into the shot on wires and covered in glitter as we did our glam opening on tape at NBC. It took me three days to get it off my face.
In August, we flew to New York to speak a
t the Billboard Radio Convention. Our panel, besides us, featured Clive Davis, Bobby Vee, Willie Mitchell, Bobby Colomby of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Peter Noone, and Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations. My nights were filled with Belushi.
For a minute, we were hot. Norman Seeff, the brilliant celebrity photographer, took our portraits for his book Hot Shots, and I bought a new VW bus. Diana and I celebrated our one-year anniversary. Flo and Eddie began a raunchy Advice to the Lovelorn column for the prestigious L.A. Free Press, which had the great nerve to place our joke column next to the works of such luminaries as Harlan Ellison and Charles Bukowski.
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By the mid-’70s we were gaining quite a reputation as background singers. David Cassidy made a fantastic album called The Higher They Climb, The Harder They Fall for RCA and we were there. We sang on Hoyt Axton’s Life Machine album along with Ronstadt and on Roger McGuinn’s Peace on You. But one record stands out from the pack.
We wound up recording Keith Moon’s 1975 solo LP, Two Sides of the Moon—twice: both times at the Record Plant in Los Angeles and both times the exact same songs. The first time we went in with Keith, Mal Evans, the Beatles’ former road manager, produced. It was great. Mal was such a wonderful man: a big ol’ gentle protective bear who looked after Keith as if he were a son. Keith sang the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” and the Beatles’ “In My Life” and you just wanted to cry.
Then MCA Records heard the raw, emotional record and threw Mal under the bus. Oh, they loved Keith and they loved the songs, but something about the production just wasn’t right. So they let Mal go—so sad—and the team of Skip Taylor and John Stronach was recruited to save the project. Same songs. Same drugs. I couldn’t tell the difference blindfolded. MCA, however, with their superior powers of perception, thought it was amazing and finally released the album in a beautiful die-cut foldout sleeve. It tanked. The single was “Teenage Idol,” the old Ricky Nelson hit. Go figure. I loved that wacky Brit. And we did many mad things together. That Record Plant will certainly never be the same. It was cocaine and caviar. First class, baby. Both times. Anywhere, anyhow, any way I choose.
There was a sadness to Keith though. Maybe that’s why he and Mal worked so well together. He was truly of a different time—hell, maybe even a different planet—but he never fit in. Not with all the chicks and butlers and driving the Rolls into the pool. Not even with his own band. But you felt the genius coming off the boy like electricity. He almost crackled. It was an honor and a pleasure being around rock royalty. I pity the fool who could have had my opportunities in this life and not taken advantage of knowing that, at that very moment, you were making rock history. Go ahead. I dare ya. Build a time machine, go back to Hollywood with Moonie in his maddest days and tell me you wouldn’t have partayed. Answer no and you’re a pussy. Beat it.
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On December 1, we rode down Hollywood Boulevard in the Santa Claus Lane Parade in an armored personnel carrier, along with the other KMET DJs. It felt nice to belong. But on the following Tuesday, the skies got a lot brighter. We were in the middle of an interview with the NME when the phone call came in from MRI studios. It was Marc Bolan. We literally ran there. We made up. We hugged. I cried a little. Tony Visconti was on hand, as was Marc’s new girlfriend, singer Gloria Jones. We sang on three of Marc’s tracks for T. Rex’s Futuristic Dragon LP including his classic “New York City,” and on one song for Gloria as well.
CBS decided that we should hit the road to promote the single, so armed with a new guitarist, Phil Reed, we wound up snowed in near Christmas in Vail, Colorado—now there’s a smart booking! Still, we needed the practice. We were to play over Christmas at the Troubadour in Hollywood, and while we had in many ways outgrown that venue, that particular club in that particular town was still a mighty big deal. It couldn’t have gone better. In attendance that evening: Albert Brooks, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Carly Simon, among others.
As the year came to an end, I nursed a missing voice, saw our nude photo appear in Creem, and left the austere offices of William Morris, the agency I’d signed with back in the White Whale days, the hypothetical assurance of CMA and a new deal. Life was good.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Skating on Thin Ice
It was a case of too much, too fast. On January 2, 1975, we had a meeting at Mutt Cohen’s office. Mutt and Herb shared an office, but Mutt was all business, no management for him. He knew everything there was to know about the law and was a total nightmare to go up against in court. And while that didn’t help in the case of my divorce, in the world of show business his name was revered and/or feared. We told him that we didn’t like our current management and he said, and I’ll never forget this, “Fuck ’em!”
Two days later, we shook hands on a management deal with our pal, Canned Heat manager Skip Taylor. Skip knew Diana, and Diana knew our new CMA agent, the guy who had repped Alice on the road, Johnny Podell. Plus, we had our weekly radio show going and columns in the Freep and Phonograph Record. Mondays would be for the lovelorn stuff; Wednesdays were usually spent at BBC with Shadoe, pretaping our Sunday KMET shows with whatever guests we could assemble; Thursdays were Blind Date days, when Ken Barnes would record our responses to his cross section of new releases.
We had great club dates, did three SRO nights at the Roxy, became critical darlings and friends with beautiful people like rock critic Lester Bangs, an early and vocal supporter. I thought I had finally gotten it right. On April 23, I tried to call home but got no answer. Curious. When I finally spoke to my wife, she apologized and reassured me that all was fine. Really?
But I was on the road. She knew that. I couldn’t fly off to be by her side. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; I was just already used to a lot of drama in my life. And I had shows to do. But when the tour was done, it was Diana’s turn to hit the road. She just had to get to Macon, Georgia, for important Capricorn meetings. When she did return to L.A., it was with Martin Mull, everybody’s best friend. Martin was a well-known comedic musician and Renaissance man. A great wit and a burgeoning artist, Martin was big on the nightclub circuit and made records for Capricorn. But hey, I was a big boy. And I liked Martin a lot. Still do. He passed out in our guest room one night after the three of us had stayed up late drinking wine and playing board games. She went to The Dinah Shore Show taping with Marty and he played the Troubadour on the next night.
Just to sweeten the situation, Martin was given the chance to do his own PBS special, one whole hour of the Chicago-based Soundstage series. He got to choose his guest stars. He chose Flo and Eddie. The program was called Sixty Minutes to Kill. It was funny. You can still see it online. I met Greg Hawkes there. He’s our current keyboard player and, of course, a founding member of the Cars. We had a great time. Everybody laughed a lot. When it was done, I flew to L.A. and checked into the Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, so I knew I couldn’t fall any lower.
The next day, I did. I rented an apartment behind the Hollywood Ranch Market. The place was a one-bedroom dump right out of a James Ellroy crime scene. Two stories, stucco, twenty units around a pool. The VW bus stopped running, so I drove to KMET in a rental wreck to do a live Sunday night funfest. The show must go on.
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Meanwhile, Columbia had been shocked by the lack of success of “Let Me Make Love to You”—it should have been as big as “Happy Together.” Perhaps the problem had been that our producer, Joe Wissert, hadn’t seen our act live since the mid-’60s. When he finally did catch us, along with the other members of the L.A. CBS brain trust, he couldn’t help but notice that we did comedy. Well, he hadn’t expected that. Armed with this new information and seeing how amazing our audience responses were, it was decided that our Columbia debut album—and believe me, we were lucky to get one—was to be recorded live and to be funny. Kind of.
We recorded a few songs in the studio and of course they were the songs that got released as singles, but the majority of
Illegal, Immoral and Fattening was done live at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard. We made cocktail glasses for the audience with our new logo etched in, and gave everybody in the crowd free chichis. It helped. The record was full of celebrity slams; no one was safe. Joni thought hers was hilarious. It was Volman in a wig doing his best impression, speaking of screwing Stephen and Neil and Graham—and maybe you?
Some artists were not so amused. In our parody of the recent George Harrison concert tour during which he famously lost his voice, not only did we have to pay for the use of “My Sweet Lord,” but we narrowly avoided being taken to court for libel and Harrison’s office actually threatened to stop the album from being released. Fleetwood Mac laughed but got paid anyway. When all was said and done, including, “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” which also cost a fortune and almost stopped the record, CBS had a rather expensive album on its hands.
Back at the crappy apartment, I was in full bachelor mode. I was lonely and sad and mentally licking my wounds—real bottom-of-the-barrel shit. I didn’t blame Diana, but ours was a true Hollywood marriage in all the worst ways and doomed to fail. Marty Fox was a kid right out of college when he became a junior partner in a huge Century City accounting firm. He was happy to handle the Flo and Eddie account, and together we’d prowl bars off Hollywood Boulevard or near his place at the Marina. I indulged my curiosity regarding the forbidden Asian woman and one or two ladies of color who wouldn’t ordinarily stand in line for a Turtles concert. It was sad and dramatic.
I gave up my two-month deposit on the apartment and moved back into Hollywood Hills with Diana, based on our mutual fear of loneliness, but we both knew that we were skating on thin ice.
And, of course, I was still a tremendous asshole.
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Flo and Eddie had been invited to play the Diamond Head Crater Festival in Hawaii in July and we had a wonderful time there with the lovely promoter Ken Rosene and Fleetwood Mac and recreational drugs. And while there, who should I run into but Steve Duboff’s adorable girlfriend Lynn. She looked spectacular in a green floral bikini. We spent three incredible nights together before the band left for our first trip to Australia.
Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. Page 22
