howard kaylan interview

You were forced, especially if you were a little girl, to listen to that shit. We would work as long as it took to get it absolutely perfect. And they come away from a Happy Together concert seeing two-and-a-half hours of solid hit records sung by the actual people who made them famous, not the bass guitar player, not the original drummer, but the real, actual guys. Im thrilled to be touring with a bunch of people that I have respect for. He was a very gentle man and he did not threaten. (laughs) I thought my mike was off! Thank you very much. Probably our lack of proximity to each other. The sparse use of highs on that record, theres something very mystical about the mid-range and the effect that Joe put on the vocal and the background voices. Its true that the closer you get, the more youre looking at a portrait of Dorian Gray, but nobody gets that close. We had to spend a great deal of time together to prove to each other that we could actually physically separate and be cool, because we were really sort of attached at the hip for the better part of 40 years. Hed also bust me on things like, Id say we left on a Thursday night for a Friday show, and hed say, No, you didnt because I have the flyer. They dont know. Mr. Zappa used to say that America wasnt ready for music with a sense of humor. They were loud and obnoxious and drunk but they were The Beatles. VENTRELLA: You kept a diary all your life which helped a lot. So we made a record as if we were doing it for ourselves. They were still bitching and moaning that they hadnt gotten paid for their recordings. And hes still doing it all: hes currently on the road with the Happy Together tour for the rest of the summer, stopping all over the United States. Cafe! KAYLAN: Well no, youre absolutely right. That type of camaraderie doesnt come along in every medium. Examine them, see what you did right, see what you did wrong and you move on. And were only talking maybe seven, eight years ago. You wanna talk about it? Its whats going to happen. Are you meeting people afterwards and signing the book? And you played the Keep it Warm from the album with all the real verses in it, not the truncated bullshit 45 that Columbia released where they took out all the good verses, made the most uncomfortable edits I have ever heard, did it on their own, didnt call me, just did it, and it was really really bad. I hope it didnt disappoint because I told everything. Is that a frog? If youre doing a summer tour for instance, and getting four hours or five hours of sleep a night, theres one point in your week where youve gotta kind of say, Okay, this is it. You gotta get some bang for your buck. These are things you do as a team. They are so out of context that its like reading Johny Barbatas autobiography, where not one thing in there is factual. Awesome interview w/ great singer/performer. Allison lives in Los Angeles where she is a freelance music journalist, jug band enthusiast, and industry observer. Theres no way youre going to make money with this! He said, Im cool; I dont care.. I was going to ask if you had any regrets, but that might cover it. I was the program director of my college radio station, and I must have played Keep it Warm every time I was on the air. Youre signing off. Then you realize all those hits that he had, Count Me In, Green Grass, and Everybody Loves a Clown, and stuff that isnt This Diamond Ring, which was so huge you just think oh my God, this guy is going to be a giant draw. There are people so curious about what he looks and sounds like. It was outrageous! Hed seen Howard giving a taped interview earlier for a documentary by Henry Diltz and wanted to ask him a question. Enjoy an exclusive RCM interview with Kaylan below. When do we get paid? And I recommend that you go out and see a show where you can smile through it where youre not going Jesus, I cant believe I paid for this.. Im always thrilled to work with new directors, new producers, people I havent worked with, just to see how they work. KAYLAN: No, I dont have any other plans and thats the best part of my life. I think everybody is going to do this very, very soon, and Im just waiting until our rock n roll lives are kind of done. Taking a few years off never helps anybody get their shit together; it only distances you more from your audience and your bandmates, so thats a dumb thing to do. Kaylan who founded the California-bred hitmakers the Turtles in 1965 with longtime bandmate Mark Volman feels it's important to broaden your . And then, Gary Puckett is a mainstay. I dont think he had even opened up that mike yet; I dont think he had found that track. Flo and Eddies bass player was Pons. It has the Happy Together Stamp of Approval as far as Im concerned because if it says Happy Together without my Stamp of Approval, Ill fucking sue ya. It went to number one and I was shocked. VENTRELLA: I really appreciate it. Its really healthy. Its not like they have to look at the whole body of your work to understand that some things are a little tongue-in-cheek, they just have to understand from the get-go that not everything they see is quite as it seems. I think any time you put a bunch of clucking chickens and saws and trees falling from speaker to speaker which in stereo youve got to admit makes a big difference as opposed to the mono version of Sound Asleep which is Whats that? We had a very distinctive blend. That is gold. What has the reaction been from family and friends? (Photos and images courtesy Hal Leonard.). Is that a ratchet? VENTRELLA: Speaking of band names, you ended up with Flo and Eddie, which you were not very happy with as far as identification, but it was too late to change it at that point, right? Thats not what Im going to go out like, at all. KAYLAN: George Harrison. VENTRELLA: And with that, Ill thank you very much for the interview unless you have any final comments you want to make. Thats what happens to me I store up sleep hours. HOWARD KAYLAN: I had always planned on writing a book when it was later in my life but then I looked around and realized that it was later in my life, and if I didnt tell stories now, Id probably never get to tell the stories at all. Ive got nothing to gain by lying to any of these guys, and Im still around to sign your books if you send them to me. I would never slip in a song that wasnt heartfelt to me, so I applaud him for doing those things that he does, like his Vietnam salutes and his songs that go out to the veterans. I dont know that it did us any good but youre right we did have a couple of big hits off it. We gathered around their table and they actually made room for us to sit down. But at the time, thats what he wanted to do. It gets to the point after awhile where its like, Who cares, let them have their little trip, let them do what they want, its fine. They will pay karmically for what theyve done, and I cant worry about it. And I didnt even mention Roger Corman in the book at all, but Ive got to put him right up there with one of the big influences on my life. Im working on a fiction noir book now, but Im also contemplating getting my shit together to write a biography of a show business friend of mine, who I didnt get to spend very much time with in his life, but I really miss him Soupy Sales. A genuine, excited vibe. Its a really good tour this summer. HK: By that time wed had a couple of hits records besides It Aint Me Babe. You dont get asked back if you left a bitter taste in their mouth or if youre hard to work with or if youre prima donnas or any of that crap. We complement each other onstage as well as off. That was very successful at least in my mind. We could share that kind of thing. He can kick way over his head like a ballet dancer or something. You cant see your dark side and call it to attention of all these other people and then sort of say, Im a better person now, and move on, because youre not. This is when all three guys [Chuck Negron, Danny Hutton, and Cory Wells] were in the band. This is the same guy who, within the production of 200 Motels made everyone say This guy is crazy and then he came back with Strawberry Shortcake, thank you very much. We didnt do that. I dont want to meet anybody that Im working with. I gotta give credit where credit is due to Chip Douglas, who was our bass player at the time, for really getting it together vocally for and writing out horn parts, even though I think Jerry Yester wound up doing some of those. And yet, Pamela Miller [now Des Barres], writes me and says, Listen pal, for all that I went through with you, Id better be getting my book free! We had a real thing and it lasted a real long time. I think it made a big difference. Flo and Eddies keyboard player was Donnie. And I certainly wouldnt! All of my ex-wives, all of my ex-managers, everybody knows [everything]; they were put on the carpet because of this. RCM: You first met Bob Dylan in the mid 60s at The New York City club The Phone Booth. Of course, the band famously had a hit with Dylans It Aint Me Babe. If you didnt take advantage of the situation in the era of free love, you were a choir boy or by choice you made up your mind not to participate in the greatest event that probably ever happened to culture on this planet, which was total pre-HIV sexual and drug freedom. KAYLAN: OK then, its been great talking to you, Michael! Its cool. Howard Kaylan will never have to fudge to fill a gap in his resume; hes simply done it all. Oh, yeah. Id get too old or feeble or alzheimers would set in or lord knows so I decided to get it all off my chest. I am not Buzz Aldrin here. All of a sudden we were doing shows like the Mike Douglas Show or Merv Griffin and we were always doin the couch and getting interviewed by the hosts and that was rare. Are you going to take me to court? But I do know that the executive producer of the movie was Roger Corman, who I was thrilled to meet and work with over the course of this thing. Howard Kaylan interview - Part 1. But yes, sense of humor is very important in music. I wanted every fact in this book to be absolutely perfect. That was the end of the movie. It hasnt happened since, and it will never happen again. Lets listen to what it sounds like. To have passed that up, to have not participated in it because you were in a long-term relationship Im not sure that I buy it. VENTRELLA: (laughs) Which brings me to a point, about the sense of humor. That one looked improvised. They had us by the short and curlies but they were never the bosses of us. And years later, people discovered these things. KAYLAN: Interesting was the idea. The Loran Scholarship is one of the most prestigious awards in Canada, awarding a small group of outstanding Canadian students each year with $100,000 to pursue their undergraduate studies. VENTRELLA: Of course! KAYLAN: It truly wasnt improvised. Getting to work with him was stellar! In 1963 he joined high school classmate Howard Kaylan's band the Crossfires as a roadie, but his harmonizing talents soon elevated him to what he calls "second banana" status in the group.. We knew we had a very psychedelic record on our hands, not only lyrically and musically, but we had a statement to make in our Beatle-esque way. What are they going to do? (co-written with noted music scribe Jeff Tamarkin) Kaylan takes the reader on a wild and no-holds barred journey from his days skirting the heights of fame as lead singer of popular 60s hit makers The Turtles to touring as a member of Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, as well as his in-demand works as a session vocalist, excursions in radio, penning music for the childrens TV show Strawberry Shortcake and much more. We chatted for a few moments after I explained that I was slated to interview him, and he shared the history of his friendship with Graham, stemming from the Laurel Canyon days in the 1960s. I dont want to rehearse. We check out with the toys weve got at the end of our run, period. VENTRELLA: Thank you. Remember, were old. KAYLAN: How big is this town? But thats the kind of guys we are. They had no charge, but they were just trying to keep the streets clear from rock n roll hoodlums and had it not been for David Marks in the back seat yelling, Piggie, piggie! Yes, theres an audience and all of those things are on i-tunes and as I go through my BMI statement at the end of the year I cannot believe how many people have downloaded Can You Hear the Cows or Umbassa and the Dragon or these bizarre throw-away B sides that we did. Im not going to do any more stories even if I think about them even if encouraged to do like you just did moments ago. Australian dude, really helped on that. VENTRELLA: Isnt that amazing? Of course. It was very forgettable because you couldnt really sing along with it. We just felt like he was wasting his time and thought it was a throwaway bullshit B-side. You dont grow out of friendship with Gary Lewis or Chuck Negron or Mark Lindsay or Gary Puckett you dont. What made you decide to write a book now? Its just amazing. In his case, he was mostly right. Im too busy trying to do a show to really look into their hearts and figure out where they went wrong or whos fighting or what kind of condition their minds are in. KAYLAN: I dont think so. I spoke to Howard a few days later, after hed returned to his home in Seattle post-a whirlwind book tour. Have you recovered from your New York trip? I mean, he wasnt that much older than you but he had that sort of authoritarian but yet gentle nature about him. He had it opening up in XXX theaters and downtowns all over America next to XXX porno movies because he didnt know how to sell it. We told him from the get-go, Youre out of your mind. KAYLAN: What particular part are you talking about? From The Battle of the Bands to our B sides: Can You Hear the Cows all the way back to Umbassa and the Dragon were talking 1966 we were trying to do humorous, Stan Freberg kind of B sides on Turtles records and wondering if there was an audience for it. So theres a certain strata you get to. What keeps you vibing together as partners after all these years? That must have been a nice little paycheck. The Happy Together tour lineup is great this year. VENTRELLA: Its very small but its a big tourist area I dont live in that particular town, but its pretty central to other areas and lots of colleges and you might have a good crowd! Rock people on the road were treated like some kind of perverse royalty. I know for a fact that 99.9999% of the so-called committed people in a relationship during those years strayed almost on a nightly basis. And that was our last record. I did it at the Grammy museum, at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and several other museums and its really, really been great. Its a great, great thing for them and its a great, great thing for us. He does Kicks and he does the Paul Revere steps. I want to tell the story of the real way things happen, whether they happen to me in my generation or in Soupys generation. Youre doing the Happy Together tour which also is very successful. I do! With a song like Shes My Girl, it jumped right out. Howard Kaylan is an American rock and roll musician, best known as a founding member and lead singer of the 1960s band, The Turtles.-From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. To me, that should have been another of your huge hits. Our conversation was politely interrupted by a tall gentleman who tapped Howard on the shoulder. We had no choice. KAYLAN: Instant cult. Franks making me do all this!. Sound Asleep you talked about that a bit in the book about how much work went into it. His story of going to Vietnam, his father not saving him when he could have called the White House and just said, My kid doesnt wanna go, and it would have been fine. But I was a naughty person back then! Oh, were you? I was lucky enough to catch up with the legendary classic rocker Howard Kaylan in New York recently when he was in town promote his revealing autobiography Shell Shocked: My Life With The Turtles, Flo And Eddie and Frank Zappa from Backbeat Books (available on amazon.com). I recently saw Ronnie Spector do something similar here in New York where she told stories and sang and showed footage of her career. VENTRELLA: Guns was another of my favorites off that album that Id play a lot. Im proud of us all. RCM: One of the most fascinating stories in the book centers upon the bands disheartening meeting with The Beatles at the Speakeasy club in London in 1967. Where the hell is Jim Thorpe? I want to make sure that people realize how wonderful this guy was and what he went through. It had a luscious arrangement. Gail had ways of making sure that there would be a distance between us instead of the closeness we had. Ive been doing this for fifty years. I, so far, havent gotten any legal recourse from any of my actions, so Im assuming that its kind of better to let those allegations dissipate in the wind, rather than addressing them. On a cool night back in May, I ran into Howard Kaylan at the opening of Graham Nashs photography exhibition at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York City. If the order had been reversed and Shes My Girl was released before it, I think it would have been a bigger record. When we left the studio after recording Happy Together I absolutely knew it was a number one record. We played one show in Jones Beach, New York at this beautiful, big, outdoor auditorium right on the ocean and along with us on the bill were Three Dog Night among other acts and they were fighting offstage. He is the artiste, man. So Im pretty proud of the movie that would up as Down and Dirty Duck or whatever it was called in your X-rated theater. Your email address will not be published. It was like, Dont do this Mom, this is my shot. I know were getting ripped off but if we dont sign this piece of paper well never get this fucking chance so dont deny me my future or Im gonna go to UCLA and be miserable on your dime. It made for a lot better audience experience and it made Frank laugh! We moved as geographically far away from each other as we possibly could and thats what I think keeps us going as a duo. But that sort of pulled it all together at the end and turned it into a Mothers of Invention thing again. HK: It came naturally. And yet it was beautiful in its own way and sounded really great on the radio. Im not worried about other people doing this before me because I think my life has been so damned unique that its going to take quite a book of somebody elses memories to equal my time as a Crossfire, a Turtle, a Mother, a Flo and Eddie member, with my experiences with Bruce, [Marc] Bolan, Blondie, the Ramones and all of that. Mark and I went into the echo room in the studio and sat there working on the background vocal parts and they could hear us in their headphones singing all of these parts. We performed at her AFI benefit in Hollywood met some of the most amazing people in the world Ed Asner, Betty White, Cloris Leachman, Phyllis Diller and these people Mary had worked with her whole life you name it, they were there in the audience, from Dick Van Dyke on down. In any era to have a band with a sense of humor. Garys story has always been a little bit sad to me and it made his music a little melancholy. It was only around for those 25 or so years and it was awesome. Are you really going to call attention to yourself by taking me to court after all this time? If you can just keep yourself busy then you can hang out for the rest of your life doing what you like. Not that bad. But it wasnt anything to do with Howards long-lived career as a Turtle, or any of their monstrous hits (five in the top ten between 1965-69), nor was it regarding the time that Howard puked all over Jimi Hendrix, as detailed in his autobiopic, My Dinner With Jimi, nor did he ask any one of the plethora of FAQ from Howards time with the Mothers of Invention, including the age-old, Is it true that Frank Zappa never took drugs?, Instead, the man leaned down and asked, Are you famous?. No ones threatened by any of us in the band physically so we were able to sneak in while they were not looking and screw their girlfriends, metaphorically speaking. But, I dont think that my life would have altered that much, especially in the early days because I knew exactly what I wanted. All we were trying to say to White Whale records was Were sick and tired of your corporate producers. He never let his chops go away he sounds just like he ever did. What am I gonna get? Well, youre gonna get a lot of people who care a lot more, because everybody in this show is invested in not only making the audience go, Holy crap, but also in preserving their own careers and have done successfully for over 50 years. I think about that sometimes, what the next shift might be for legacy acts, although I hate that term. From hanging out with The Beatles in the Swinging Sixties to performing at The White House with The Turtles, encounters with a whos who of show biz, their acclaimed work in the duo Flo & Eddie (which also featured longtime Turtles cohort Mark Volman), to laying down backing vocals on such classic records as T-Rexs Get it On and Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen, Kaylans gift as a masterful storyteller makes Shell Shocked an exhilarating read. Speaking of your book, when I heard you were writing it, I said, God, I hope it comes out tomorrow.. Its been 50 years since we had our first hit record, for heavens sakes. You know what you want to do in this life. Were taking a bunch of interns with us like we did last year to handle the equipment, to do the lights, tour bus, all that crap with us. I cant look cute from the 10th row like Peter can. VENTRELLA: Moving Targets came out when I was in college. We got it after we released the single, You Know What I Mean. Every group goes through it. He was not at all that sort of authoritarian. In fact, Im positive he didnt listen to it for a very long time. HK: Sometimes you know if a songs a hit and sometime you dont know. You can see his stuff online now. Words and Photos By Anne M. Raso All of his words eventually were recycled into script that became a very good part of the show half of the time.

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