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

by Howard Kaylan

  Our promoter’s name on that tour was Ian Riddington. We flew a Qantas 747, eleven hours with a stop in Fiji. We did radio and TV in Melbourne and Sydney. Then we flew to Brisbane and drove an hour and a half to the tiny village of Toowoomba for the first show of the tour. About a dozen locals sat in the seats of the school auditorium as we did our sound check. We let them stay. Then we went to dinner. When we returned for the concert, our audience was the same twelve people. I thought it was funny. We sounded great. Volman had a cow. He was freaking out.

  We had a lot of dates on our itinerary. Of course, that meant nothing once we saw what we were dealing with. Ian had no money. No one was promoting these shows. CBS was literally invisible Down Under. They had a two-person office and no promotional staff whatsoever. Riddington took a meeting with us after shows in Brisbane, Gold Coast, and Sydney, where the only relief from reality at all was a chance encounter and a few glorious days spent with the hilarious Lou Reed. He sang with us and we sang with him.

  Ian was blunt. No money was coming in. We had no tickets home and that was many thousands of dollars and half a world away. Then luck saved us one more time. We had made friends with an Australian band called Skyhooks. These guys were a phenomenon in the Southern Hemisphere, sounded a bit like Rush, and drew crowds like the Beatles. Their label was called Mushroom, which was owned by Ray Evans and Michael Gudinski, the two biggest concert promoters in Australia. They liked us. They bought our contract from the nonexistent CBS Australia, and we played huge and successful shows in Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney.

  We had to stop in Hawaii on our flight home, so I called Lynn and we spent the night together. She was flying to L.A. the next day, so I changed my flight to be with her. We shared a cab home and I got dropped off first. Diana saw us kiss goodbye and that really wasn’t such a good start. But we were doomed anyway. It lasted a bit longer. Uncomfortable.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We played a wonderful show at the Mississippi River Festival near St. Louis where Andy Cahan, the keyboard clown, latched onto a comely lass who reminded me a lot of Joni—big points in her favor—and I immediately began flirting with her despite the million reasons not to. She was married, with kids. And her husband? Oh, no problem there: He was in prison.

  And she was Canadian! That was almost the deal breaker. Needless to say, that little voice in the back of my head started yelling at me instantly and I declared, once again, I Will Have Her!

  The blond girl’s name was Nancy Lauraine and she comforted me, long distance, once Diana found a house and moved out while I played a disastrous festival in Coos Bay, Oregon. The following week, Nancy met me at a show in Saskatoon. We went to her apartment in Toronto for a week; she made some babysitter arrangements, and flew into L.A. with me on September 12—I hate an empty house. She did have to return to Toronto eventually and I did have shows and career stuff to do, but we were together via the phone. I’d get updates about her husband’s prison status and his good behavior. I even spoke to him while he was in there; it was weird. He had been busted with a rented boat full of cocaine. If his deal had worked, they’d have been rich. It didn’t.

  I proposed over the phone on October 6 after three nights at the Bottom Line in full Belushi mode. On the 10th, Nancy’s husband was released from prison. Nancy and her children, Rebekah and Justin, moved to the United States. Of course they had to have a U.S. address and they did—mine. It was an instant family; the house would never be empty again.

  Our concert career was flying high, pun intended. We were an opening act, but a really good one. And that’s an admirable place to be. We alternated shows opening for Jefferson Starship and Stephen Stills, singing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” with the latter as the encore to every concert. The reviews were amazing. We played Pauley Pavilion again and sang the “Suite” with Neil Young on guitar.

  We did The Dinah Shore Show on November 17. I loved Dinah—I had the biggest crush on that lady. We flirted too. I was sooo close.

  We ate Thanksgiving dinner with Marc Bolan and Gloria Jones, which was a bit surreal. I was trying to pretend that everything was normal when I spent weekend time with Emily. I now had three kids but I barely felt like I had one kid. I just wasn’t the daddy type—yet. Rebekah was enrolled at Wonderland School now and singing in the Christmas pageant side by side with Mark’s daughter Sarina and it just felt wrong.

  New Year’s Eve found us in concert with the Tubes at Winterland in San Francisco. There was just enough time to pack a larger bag so that we could meet Stephen Stills and company at Jim Guercio’s Caribou Ranch in Colorado for one of the weirdest recording sessions ever.

  The album was called Illegal Stills, and man, it should have been. I’ve never seen so many drugs in my life. And this is me! I really enjoyed making that record, though it took hours to get even the simplest thing on tape. Plus, I got to listen to Stills’s imaginary war stories and sit outside of Volman’s room with Stephen and his huge vial and buck knife in hand. He was screaming as Mark was schtupping one of the studio managers: “It should be me in there, man. I’m the star here! It should be me!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Moving Targets

  For an L.A. minute, things were as normal as they could be on the domestic front. Skip was booking dates, albeit entry level, from time to time. But we didn’t mind, really. It was great to be back in the bars, with at least something to look forward to. And every once in a while, we’d do the giant dates that proved, at least to us, that we were still members of a rather elite show-business community. Hell, we were in the studio daily. Columbia now wanted to produce a second studio version of “Elenore.” They were certain that by making it part of the CBS catalog, the public connection would be complete and Flo and Eddie would be welcomed into America’s heart. Full circle. We said sure. I bought an Audi and consciously went on a diet and lost a ton of weight. Of course, the drugs helped a little, but I was just an occasional user at this point. I bought a white three-piece suit.

  Nancy loved being thrown into the limelight, though she would argue that now, I’m certain. She sure didn’t mind when Bowie called and she got to party with Alice, Ringo, Rod Stewart, and Linda Ronstadt after David’s show at the Forum. She got into an existential conversation with Ray Bradbury that she actually did write home about. We had babysitters.

  We played at the CBS Records convention in San Diego. The label still loved us. We began recording the tracks to the Moving Targets album at the Record Plant in L.A. and finished up at the Plant in Sausalito. They charged us a fortune to block out all these weeks of studio time, which we charged to Columbia, which charged them all back to us on paper. It was decadent. It was catered. We lived large—Mark, me, Skip, and the amazing Ron Nevison, our engineer. There was no one looking over our shoulders.

  There should have been a lot of hope connected with the project, but this was album four for us and the lyrics reflected our impatience and frustration with the music biz, no matter how optimistic we tried to be. My words to “Mama, Open Up” say it all: “Motel rooms and flying tombs / And food I couldn’t chew / From the Fillmore to the White House chasing fame / But nobody buys my records and my roof is leaking too / After all these years my life appears in vain.”1

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We were hanging up our rock ’n’ roll shoes. It was clear that we weren’t needed here. We felt sorry for ourselves and were going to take our balls and go home. Domestically, I was doing the same thing with Diana. We had spoken a lot over the months since our breakup, and on March 9, 1976, I drove down to the L.A. County Courthouse and filed divorce papers. It was strange and rather bittersweet, but of course I had mentally moved on. Now neither Diana nor Nancy would talk to me.

  Bowie flew Mark and me into New York at the end of the month to meet about his screenplay. It was a first-class journey that wound up at his Madison Square Garden concert, backstage. Then we went to the Village for more of the same. Limos took us everywhere, although we got to see David for all of abou
t ten minutes. Still, I don’t think there were any complaints about the trip. Whatever Bowie wanted.

  Meanwhile, over at CBS, Ethan Russell had been enlisted to take photos for the album and Dave McMacken, who’d illustrated the 200 Motels cover, was hired to design this elaborate shooting gallery painting for the cover. Both of these guys were top tier. Money was being spent. I was really impressed. The record was finally finished. We enjoyed our toots with champagne at the opulent home of our guitarist, Phil Reed, whose wife had inherited her fortune from her father’s interest in Daisy Air Rifles. Random, right? Those two had money to burn.

  There was a screening of The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring Bowie, at a theater in Westwood. David had sent us our invitations in a large cardboard box. What the hell? Ah, also enclosed were two copies, some 750 pages each, of David’s screenplay notes for a feature film to be called The Traveler. The film was to deal with the very real alter ego that Bowie had created for himself, that of the Thin White Duke. Eschewing air travel, David would only travel to and from America via ocean liner where, once onboard, he would assume a disposable two-week identity where his lines between fact and fiction blurred and he regaled the other passengers with amazing tales of his conquests and heroics.

  There was a lot to take and it offered a great many opportunities for fantasy and wordplay. I was excited. It took many hours to read this “outline,” as David called it, and I finished it onboard a 747 en route to London one more time. On this occasion, CBS England was taking a chance on Flo and Eddie as producers of a very promising Byrds-inspired rock band called Starry Eyed and Laughing.

  We checked into the Portobello but London was impossibly hot that summer, so there wasn’t much sleep to be had, despite the familiar surroundings. Wandering down to the lobby on the morning of the Fourth of July, I bumped into fellow American and miscreant Harlan Ellison, the writer, always looking for an ear to complain to. I loved this guy. Still do. We ate what passes for lunch together there and Mark and I got busy on the record the next day. CBS surprised us by hooking up a huge stereo system in our living room and we were both suitably impressed. The next night, we went out to a lovely French dinner on the label and brought one of the execs, our friend Dan Loggins, back to the hotel to hear Moving Targets. Loud. And late.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! The door almost rattled off of its hinges. “Open up! What the fuck is going on in there? Are you nuts?” It wasn’t the cops or the hotel security. It was Harlan.

  “Sorry, man. We didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t wake me, you assholes. I’m trying to save your butts. They’re about to call Scotland Yard downstairs!”

  He was right. They almost did. We turned down the volume. We hid the pipes. Ellison never lets me forget. “Hey, Kaylan. Remember the night I saved your life?” Yessir, I do. Thanks again.

  The records were great. The singles were called “Song on the Radio” and “Saturday.” Try to find them. I dare you.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  From London, we flew directly to Australia, where the guys at Mushroom Records had a contract on us—literally. We were theirs in the land Down Under for the next entire month. The place was still a slave colony, evidently. But we owed those guys big-time and they were going to release Moving Targets a full thirty days before Columbia in the U.S. It was a crazy month, as you might imagine. You’re a world away from the States and, in that separate reality, anything goes. I’m surprised that I survived. We made a video for “Mama, Open Up,” did tons of radio and television, and had sellout concerts and happy groupies. We flew home from Auckland, New Zealand, with all involved pleased.

  We played a great show with the Marshall Tucker Band at the Forum in Los Angeles, where, of course, Diana was, so a huge fight ensued. I had no time to worry about it. Meanwhile, WABC, the powerhouse New York City station, wanted to play “Keep It Warm” and Columbia wanted very much for that to happen. But the song was far too long and these verses about killing whales and smoking pot would have to go. Edits were done at the Record Plant and the song, for all intents and purposes was ruined. All the venom was removed.

  We hosted a huge concert at Anaheim Stadium with our buddies Aerosmith, Jeff Beck, and Rick Derringer and on September 15, KLOS officially added our album to its rather tight playlist. Amazing. We were on FM radio at long last. The very same day, I stood across Sunset Boulevard with my camera in hand as the workers from Pacific Outdoor erected the humongous Moving Targets billboard, complete with moving neon centerpiece, in the lot next to Tower Records. It felt like we were actually going somewhere.

  Back to the Roxy for three nights of star-studded sellout shows. I remember Grace Slick and Al Kooper and riding around in Stills’s Rolls-Royce after the shows. Alice was there and Bernie Taupin. The reviews were fantastic. This time, when we went to New York, the label put us up at the tony Warwick and I spent October 6 with Belushi at his NBC office, hanging with the writers and doing many naughty, un-network things.

  The whole next week was spent in the company of a Dutch film crew from VPRO, the same government broadcasters that had done our Zappa concert footage when we had first signed on in 1970. We took them on a tour of Flo and Eddie’s Hollywood, which consisted of a Jack in the Box burger purchase, the SIR rehearsal studios, and the iconic Hollywood sign. On October 22, we left to begin a coast-to-coast tour with the Doobie Brothers. The first stop was Salt Lake City—15,000 kids and a pretty good show, despite the lack of sound-check time. We had a couple of days off. Mark accompanied the Doobs to the Caribou Ranch aboard their Doobieliner private jet, but I stayed behind with the lads on the night of October 24. I couldn’t sleep.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The police called at 5:30 in the morning. I called Bob Truax, our road manager, to let him know. Then I phoned around Boulder until I located Mark. And then I called the band. Phil Reed, our guitarist, had been found on the sidewalk outside of the Hilton after having either fallen or been pushed from his ninth floor balcony. There was a suspicious entry made from the adjoining balcony, an unoccupied room, and fingernail marks running down the side of the building, as if someone were trying to hold onto something, anything, for dear life. The police agreed: The clues made it look very much like foul play. Did Phil have any enemies? Did he do drugs?

  I called Skip in Los Angeles. The previous night, he too had had visitors. He and his girlfriend were sitting at home when two armed men forced them to the floor and held guns to their heads. Skip was forced to empty his safe and warned to keep his nose clean, so to speak. If we can get to your biggest touring act, buddy, then we can certainly get to you.

  While we scrambled to pull our shit together, the hotel had the decency to move us to another wing and to post security guards at our doors 24/7. Truax stayed with me. We bolted our doors. We stayed on a very low floor. The next morning, Detective Johnson assembled us all in our drummer Craig’s room for a session of theories and possible suspects. Then, with barely enough cash to check out, we boarded a commercial jet and flew home. In our minds, the Moving Targets album had proven to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was over. Mama, open up. We’re comin’ back in. CBS, however, thought otherwise. They had paid for a tour and, by golly, they were going to get one.

  On November 19, armed with our new guitarist, Billy Steele, we opened for Frank Zappa at Cobo Hall in Detroit and performed four encore songs with his band. Frank knew what we were going through. So did Belushi, who phoned about Frank’s Saturday Night Live performance of the following evening. The entire rock community was very supportive and generous. I had always suspected as much, that when the chips were down, no real rocker would ever stand by and watch a brother in pain. I was correct.

  In Toronto, Nancy’s husband cornered me after our show at El Mocambo to speak to me, privately, of Nancy’s infidelities. Why would I believe this con? Columbus, Boston, the Bottom Line once again, this time joined onstage by Dave Mason and Nicky Hopkins. And the next night, December 6, found us onstage in the Village w
ith Mr. Zappa, himself, in the audience. He came up to do the encore with us, but our band knew none of his material, so that small part of history is, at least for me, disappointing in hindsight. I wish we had been more prepared.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Getting Spit On by the Boss Himself!

  On New Year’s Eve of 1976–77, we headlined a concert at the Santa Monica Civic with Sparks—Ron and Russell Mael—and went to the Rose Bowl the next morning to see Nancy’s Michigan lose. It had been one hell of a year.

  Later that week, while up at the CBS offices to check on Starry Eyed, Don Ellis, our rep there, told us that Skip had lied about our cash advances and that our services were no longer needed. Screw ’em! They never got us anyway. They paid us some cash to go away, but we were crushed. We still had our weekly gig in Canada though.

  One week in February, we were about to fly home from shooting the show in Toronto when we bumped into this weird, dreadlocked Caucasian kid who identified himself only as Natty Dreadlock. Sure, kid. Whatever. But this guy was a Springsteen roadie on his way to a gig in Cleveland and we had nothing better to do, so we went with him. By the time we got to the arena, the Boss was already onstage in the midst of one of his famous six-hour sound checks. Mark and I just hid in the audience, being as small as we could make ourselves. Ronnie Spector was there, onstage. We knew Ronnie. From the stage we heard, “Hey, Flo and Eddie! Are you guys out there? Come on up!”

  Which we did. The Boss embraced us. Us! We rehearsed “Walking in the Rain,” “Baby I Love You” and, of course, “Be My Baby.” Singing on the mics with Miami Steve and getting spit on by the Boss himself—shit, I didn’t even want to wipe the saliva off—was like a badge of honor. A great night. Bruce told us that we’d do it again soon. I was content with just this, but he was the one who was right.