Mark Volman
Stardom is a curious thing, and no two paths are alike, but certain important elements need to be present: preparedness, passion, perseverance, persistence, and opportunity. But the main thing that must be present is—you guessed it—luck. I left out another critical element—talent, but to be honest, I worked with more successful lucky bands with limited talent than I did extremely talented bands with no luck. It was the mid-1960s and The Turtles, teens who had barely entered adulthood, were churning out the hits: “She’d Rather Be With Me,” “You Showed Me,” “You Know What I Mean,” “Elenore,” and their biggest hit and signature song, “Happy Together.” To give you an idea of how big of a smash the latter was, in 1999, BMI named “Happy Together” one of the top fifty songs of the twentieth century, with more than five million radio plays. The Turtles have sold approximately 40 million records to date, and they are one of the few acts of the 1960s that still has a successful fan base. The Turtles found an undiscovered niche that appealed to fans who lived just a little off the mark. They were a bit of everything, while there was nothing like them. They were quirky and they were smart. They were bubblegum with a joint hanging out of their mouths. The band had personality; their songs made you happy, and you could dance to them! They were on the money for the times, and it was great to be able to listen to creative, artful music while not being required to take it too seriously. That’s why their hits have lasted down through the decades. The Turtles not only dominated the radio airwaves but also became the darlings of ’60s family television as the networks did their best to bring younger viewers to the shows that needed a shot in the arm. They appeared on Hollywood a Go-Go, The Hollywood Palace, Shindig! and Kraft Music Hall, and they made multiple appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Their life consisted of beats, babes, Buds, buds, and the road. There wasn’t much time for spirituality, and these globe-trotting rock stars certainly didn’t feel they were missing out on anything. The eternally sophomoric Turtles loved every minute of it. “We were smoking pot and doing more psychedelics than the deadly drugs. That’s how we allowed ourselves to believe it was okay. We weren’t doing as much damage to ourselves as we could have. At that point, there hadn’t been a single rock and roll fatality, and everything the Establishment had warned us about hadn’t happened. The drugs challenged me to experiment, read, and pursue many different outlooks.”
