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

by Howard Kaylan

  The next week, we moved into Herb Cohen’s office on Sunset Boulevard, wrote the spots for Alice Cooper’s upcoming Anaheim concert, and spoke to our friend, TV producer Lorenzo Music, about doing a comedy pilot over at Universal. We had nothing to show him, really, that would demonstrate our comedy potential except for 200 Motels. We had a screening of the film at Lorenzo’s office and it was enough to get a development deal. Richard Lewis, my neurotic comedian friend, called me to offer his congratulations. News travels fast in Hollywood.

  We were in the studio producing a group called the C. Y. Walkin’ Band. We left town long enough to fly and then helicopter for the Sunfest in Lakeland, Florida, where we shared the stage with Orleans, Canned Heat, Richie Havens, the Atlanta Rhythm Section, Leon Redbone, Earl Scruggs, Jimmy Buffett, Jonathan Edwards, and Pure Prairie League. Nice.

  We were still doing our Blind Date column and took about two weeks to do the soundtrack to an independent film called Texas Detour starring Patrick Wayne. Anything for a buck.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Universal Studios, based on Lorenzo’s recommendation, signed both Mark and me to a television development deal as he and his partner, Steve Pritzker, wrote our pilot episode. But hey, we couldn’t act—funny is just something we were. Hence, the studio signed us up for an improv class with the great director and actor Howard Storm. It was fantastic. Some great actors were in that class. My pal Mackenzie Phillips was in there too, although she already had her own television series.

  I was driving Nancy’s ’71 911 Porsche, which sucked money like a sieve, registering her daughter, Rebekah, at the pricy Immaculate Heart School, where Mary Tyler Moore famously attended classes, and hosting Alice Cooper’s Anaheim show within the same week.

  Nancy and I fought, and in June I wound up going solo to see the Doobie Brothers play a benefit concert at the Century Plaza Hotel. We sang the encore with them and I sat with Mackenzie, Candy Clark, Mo Ostin, and Dinah Shore. I loved Dinah. I went to the theater twice that week, once to see a new movie called Annie Hall and a second time for a film called Star Wars. Not a bad season for new films at all.

  On July 13, Dirty Duck opened citywide in Los Angeles to a resounding “So what?” but we were still taking classes, hosting concerts, and making ourselves feel useful on a daily basis, a practice that I still highly recommend. We wrote a song for Lorenzo and Steve called “Are You Ready,” but they both hated it. I was depressed enough and then Elvis died on Tuesday, August 16. I had never met the man, but when reporters described the scene at Graceland that night, Elvis had been listening to records and our Golden Hits was one of them. Respect, Brother E.

  ABC passed on us.

  Polydor passed on us.

  Groucho Marx died on Friday.

  Not a good week.

  We hosted again at Anaheim Stadium, this time with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ted Nugent, Foreigner, and REO Speedwagon.

  Lorenzo and Steve apologized for ragging on our song; there were hugs and words of encouragement and we kept on working for Universal and taking classes. That was the best part of my week. I loved doing the Viola Spolin space exercises and learning how to listen to other actors and still be funny.

  Mark and I put together a charity bowling event with our graphic artist friends at Pacific Eye & Ear, who had done our last few album covers, and went on local television with our bowling pals, David Cassidy; his wife, Kay Lenz; and Marcia Strassman from Welcome Back, Kotter to promote it. The following week, Alice Cooper, David, and fifty-one other stars with whom we had been in phone contact made Rock ’n’ Bowl a complete success.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  On Friday, September 16, the TV news announced the death of rock icon Marc Bolan and I cried for three solid days. I had never loved a man the way I loved Marc.

  Herb Cohen officially became our manager in September, the same day as Nancy’s final divorce papers came through. Lorenzo brought us down to CBS to meet Bud Grant and Bob Self, big cheeses in the TV department—we were moving ahead. The same week, we did our regular segment on 90 Minutes Live for the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Our guest: the Amazing Randi. Strange, right?

  We met our director, Doug Gordon, recorded the music for the pilot and shot Happy Together, the Flo and Eddie sitcom, along with our TV wives and families on October 6 at CBS Television City on Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood. Nancy and I celebrated with a fine Château Lafite Rothschild ’64.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Flo and Eddie were celebrities on Long Island. But still, we were somewhat shocked when we were contacted by somebody at Passport Records to produce local New York City heroes the Good Rats. They had released an album called Tasty on Warner Bros., so I sorta knew who they were. What they were, however, was astounding. The epitome of the band that doesn’t sound the way they look, these guys, like us, were no poster boys. But their songs were fantastic and their lead singer, Peppi Marchello, was one of the best hard rock singers I’d ever heard. Brother Mickey played EBow feedback electric lead guitar, years before his time.

  The label paired us up with engineer John Jansen, who proved to be magnificent, and, in a little studio on the Island, From Rats to Riches was recorded. “Taking It to Detroit,” “Dear Sir,” “Don’t Hate the Ones Who Bring You Rock & Roll”… Truly a triumphant recording to this day. The band was great—really funny guys, that is, until the weed ran out. That’s when the phone calls started. Eventually their “guy” came through, and in through the studio doors walked this Iggy Pop clone, complete with the requisite shoulder-length platinum Todd Rundgren hair.

  “That’s Joe Stefko,” said Peppi Marchello, paying Joe for the pot. “He’s a drummer.”

  Indeed.

  Sadly, From Rats to Riches, which came out in 1978, never delivered on its promise. But for us, Joe Stefko did. We grabbed him up to play drums for us and he’s still with us today.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We were still recording with the Rats when we got the call from Lorenzo. Not only had CBS decided against picking up the pilot, they were going to recast the program and do it without us. Hey, that’s showbiz. We really hadn’t expected much more.

  Back in New York, we checked into the swanky Drake Hotel on Park Avenue and walked over to the nearby Mayfair, where Bowie was waiting for us. Finally, that great long talk with David about the movie project. He explained his notes to us in greater detail. The movie was to be only a light exaggeration of David’s real life: He eschewed flying around the globe. He was a man of taste and leisure and much preferred to spend two weeks sailing to America than the harrowing seven-hour flight from London. Once onboard, he would take on one of many secret identities—a prince, an author, a thin white duke—and stay in character for the entire cruise. It was these vignettes, his individual fantasies, that David wanted to share. We could help him. Obviously. We were the guys.

  Volman borrowed a suit. We all went to Regine’s, a legitimate NYC hot spot where we wouldn’t have normally been allowed, but tonight we were cool. Tonight we were with Bowie.

  We spent the next day with David as well. That night, we met David’s assistant Coco Schwab and his friend King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and his wife, for a fantastic sushi feast.

  The next afternoon, we met John Martin, our producer at CBC-TV, along with an entire remote crew, to film an exclusive interview in David’s suite for our segment of 90 Minutes Live. It was fantastic. It was long. It was perfect. We hugged, said our goodbyes, and limoed to Kennedy for our weekly Toronto flight. David never did finish the movie and we never heard another word about it. But if he called tomorrow and asked to take a meeting in Dubai, I’d be there. It’s Bowie!!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Nancy had flown to the Dominican Republic to file for a divorce from her husband and we got married on November 14, 1977, at Albertson’s Chapel on Wilshire and La Brea. Instantly, the kids resented my presence, and I can’t blame them. I wasn’t Dad. And Nancy wasn’t about to force the issue. But the rumblings of discontent were already soundi
ng in the bedrooms down the hall.

  THIRTY

  Singers Don’t Get Desks

  The guys who had held a gun to Skip Taylor’s head had shot a hole directly through the actual target on a copy of the Moving Targets album cover. They meant business. Together with Phil Reed’s mysterious death, it was enough to make us give up the road for a good, long time. Luckily, the CBC was enamored of us as a comedy duo and gave us our own slot every Friday night on their 90 Minutes Live program. It didn’t pay a lot, but we got treated like stars and made new friends every week. We did a show with Harlan in Vancouver. The next week, it was Jay Leno and the following week, we brought up the Runaways and Kurt Vonnegut.

  We took a new young comic named Robin Williams on his first limousine ride and the producers flew a crew to Los Angeles to film Mark and me chatting with Peter Noone, the Moody Blues’ John Lodge, and the Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston. However, the icing on the cake was a long and soulful exchange with then bachelor and miscreant Tom Waits in his home in West Hollywood’s infamous Tropicana Motel. Amidst the piles of rubble, Tom shakily spoke of his hard life and times and performed a ballad, accompanied only by his tuneless upright piano, that made me cry.

  Meanwhile, NBC had been attempting to interview many of our friends for their Midnight Special Friday night show. However, they were having no luck securing the stars on their wish list who didn’t feel like fake talk with a phony TV personality. So they negotiated a deal with us and the CBC. The first interview that aired was our Bowie conversation. Lou Reed watched it and insisted that only we be allowed to do his upcoming Midnight Special as well. Soon we were interviewing second-stringers and introducing rock videos and it got stupid.

  But in Canada, we were still those Yanks on the telly every Friday.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Martin Mull hosted the Midnight Special that taped on June 7 of ’78 and his special guests were, guess who? Yep. Us again. We sang a great Australian hit song called “Natural Man” and did some memorable comedy shtick that still haunts me on YouTube. Still, I wonder to this day, why us? Guilt, I’m betting.

  The band, such as it was, played a few really good shows at the Roxy and out at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California. But best of all, Herb Cohen had given us an office to use however we saw fit, in his Moroccan-style complex on Sunset Boulevard, home to Frank’s famous rehearsal studio. My former roommate Ona was our secretary and Herb’s accountant, Dee, was helping with our finances, such as they were. Herb introduced us to his buddy Carl Gottlieb, who had cowritten the screenplay for Jaws. He had an idea for a script called Roadies, but had no time to actually write it, so he put us on a salary to sit in Herb’s suite and construct a masterpiece. It was wonderful having an office. I had never had a day job before. Just having somewhere to be, somewhere where I wouldn’t be underfoot at home, a desk and a parking space. It might not seem like much, but it imparted a false sense of importance to me. Singers don’t get desks.

  Things felt good. Then Melita got remarried and I had to sign a bunch of horrible papers. Emily wasn’t a Kaylan anymore.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Shortly after we finished the Good Rats project, Seymour Stein from Sire Records recruited us to produce a newly signed punk band from Boston called DMZ. We blindly accepted the challenge, being huge fans of the angry new genre. We booked a studio on Long Island and brought in our assistant engineer from the Good Rats project. This band, we were told, was hardcore. We didn’t really know what that meant until the sessions got under way and the screaming began. The de facto leader of the band was their singer, Jeff “Monoman” Conolly. Amazingly true to the sound of the Pacific Northwest, circa 1967, this dude demanded no effects and no stereo bullshit, as he called it, and commanded absolutely no sales potential. His influences were the Sonics and the Wailers (the original ’60s band, not the Bob Marley one), and if you didn’t get it, he had no time for you.

  On our third day in the studio, the biggest blizzard in twenty years hit the New York City area and we became snowed in to our subground studio. It was then that the band’s drugs ran out. Things got bad fast. We slept under packing blankets, spread out in the studio and the control room. There was no food. No one wanted more coffee. The next day, Clay Hutchinson, the engineer, was able to shimmy out a window and bring back some greasy burgers. We tried to keep recording. On the song called “Cinderella,” the drummer actually broke his hand. We left the sound of it happening on the album. It’s a very short, angry record.

  In the midst of the madness, something good did actually happen. We located those Chess Studios recordings that the Turtles had recorded way back in 1968 and that White Whale had shoved under some rug, never to see the light of day. And we took a meeting with our old Westchester High buddy Harold Bronson, who had graduated in my brother’s class and gone on to co-own a very hip local music store called Rhino Records. Harold and fellow Rhino Richard Foos had corralled Larry “Wild Man” Fischer, a neighborhood schizophrenic who’d once made a record for Zappa, and had him record “Go to Rhino Records” back in 1975.

  Harold, who had written about the Turtles for Rolling Stone and NME, knew exactly where these lost tunes fit into the history of the band and was anxious as hell to release them on his infant label, also called Rhino Records. Certainly, no one else cared. The best part was that this release was to be a picture disc—two beautiful photos of the band from back in the day pressed into the vinyl of the disc and packaged in a custom blue White Whale cardboard sleeve.

  The fledgling label released the disc, which sold moderately, but more important, the pairing of the Turtles and Rhino Records was established and would shortly play an important part of our ongoing career. Destiny plans ahead.

  Meanwhile, I was dropping Justin off at the Wagon Wheel, a school in Hollywood with approximately the same tuition as Harvard, and picking Rebekah up at Wonderland, fortunately a public school, but not for long.

  Days were spent writing and holding court in the Bizarre offices and alternately listening to our latest obsessions, German electro pop and authentic Jamaican reggae music.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Bowie asked us to do the radio ads for his latest album, so we worked on the copy, phoned our presentation to the RCA honchos in New York, went into tiny little Ascot Studios on Sunset, and had the resulting spots messengered to the city. Lodger was released the following Tuesday and our ads were national. It wasn’t like making a record, but at least we were on the radio.

  It was a stupid hot summer in 1979 but we had some giant shows booked on the East Coast in July. We appeared on Robert Klein’s national radio show along with Tim Curry and Nick Lowe and hosted/opened for the Beach Boys at Monmouth Park Racetrack in New Jersey for 30,000 fans. On Saturday, July 14, we, the Beach Boys, the Cars, and Eddie Money played at the Yale Bowl for 50,000. On Sunday we split a bill with Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen at Belmont Racetrack in the daytime and that evening found ourselves at that gross little club with squishy floors on Long Island called My Father’s Place. Michael “Eppy” Epstein, the owner, had a reggae barbecue party before the gig at his house with the infamous scuzzy hot tub, and the next afternoon I met his secretary, Susan Olsen. Flags should have been raised, but they weren’t.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  When we returned to L.A., we resumed our normal routine at Herb’s. Ona on the intercom. A call for us? Chuck Swenson, the animator from 200 Motels, was phoning from across the street at the Murakami-Wolf animation offices. Did the two of us have any interest in writing songs for a children’s animated special? American Greeting Cards owned this little girl character and was looking to sell dolls and lunchboxes through a saturation television and marketing campaign. We didn’t know what that meant, but if somebody needed a few songs and had cash in pocket, we were their guys.

  We had Andy Cahan bring his portable keyboard into the office on Monday afternoon, and Mark and I knocked out the three most important songs of the new project. The following day, we played the so
ngs for Chuck, and on Wednesday, we played the songs over the phone to the project’s producer, Romeo Muller, in New York. He loved them too. Romeo had written the timeless Rankin/Bass TV classics Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and others so this might actually work. We were writers for hire, but what the hell? Maybe this new character would take off.

  As it turns out, Strawberry Shortcake was and continues to be huge. Our song “Smile a Sunny Morning,” one of the three that we whipped off that afternoon, is still used in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade whenever the Strawberry float comes out of mothballs. We wrote and recorded the entire soundtrack for The World of Strawberry Shortcake and helped Chuck produce the voices, the amazing Russi Taylor as Strawberry and the hilarious Bob Ridgely as the Peculiar Purple Pieman. That first time, especially, was magical.

  We kept getting requests to return to My Father’s Place, the club with the squishy floors, but flying a band back and forth to New York seemed pretty impractical. Then a familiar figure stepped up to the plate: Joe Stefko, the guy who had brought weed to the Good Rats sessions. He had been all over the world playing drums for Meat Loaf on the Bat Out of Hell tour, worked with Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter, and even braved Europe with John Cale. Joe would put a band together for us. They’d learn the entire set and all we’d have to do is show up.

  We arrived a few days early to rehearse and had to pass by the New York Jets’ training facility between Joe’s house and the rehearsal hall. Jim Pons was now working there, having persuaded the Jets that they needed a film department to shoot isolated players for review during the week ahead. All the teams were doing it. With his media experience, Jim was hired on the spot and remained with the Jets until he retired and handed his position to—wait for it—our ex-drummer John Seiter, who only recently retired.