Willard's Wormholes

It Ain’t Me Babe (1965)
Teenagers With A Record Contract

I’ve never quite understood my own interest in The Turtles. They weren’t especially unique and they certainly weren’t groundbreaking, offering a blend of folk-influenced rock and 50s folk harmonies. There are hints of The Byrds in their approach, but their reliance on outside songwriters early on – Dylan, Sloan and others – managed to diffuse their ‘band persona’ to the point of oblivion. They were a catchy, sing-along, almost fad-bound outfit that, save the hits, weren’t especially memorable. Granted, that’s not much of a ringing endorsement, but I’ve always liked them just the same. The best reasoning I can offer is the mysterious allure of Howard Kaylan’s lead vocals, which are unique… and distinctive… and first-rate. If, like me, you followed Howard and partner Mark Volman into Frank Zappa’s Mothers (after The Turtles initial run), you’ve probably also been brainwashed into perceiving everything Howie sings as cynically insincere. An attitude that inexplicably has filtered back to the pre-Frank years and even this album. Seems that all that crap they were singing about in 200 Motels about being stigmatized by playing “comedy rock” turned out to be true. This album, their first, was a quickly recorded affair to take advantage of a surprise hit single, a cover of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.” These days, however, it’s kind of hard to appreciate forgotten covers like “Eve Of Destruction” and “Like A Rolling Stone” (recorded the same year as Dylan’s), as they don’t offer much alternative to all the other covers. Personally, I cherished those two, blue and gold “Golden Hits” albums they released in the late 60s. It Ain’t Me Babe might be more for fans, but if you’re just Turtle curious, we’ve got a good 2CD best of, Solid Zinc, in the archives, as well as some Flo & Eddie if you’re interested (all HERE), along with something else tomorrow. For you hard-core types, you need to check out Howie & Mark’s video, “The Turtles Management Lecture” (HERE) where in 4 minutes they spell out, with the use of a blackboard, how they got screwed by management throughout their career. All music fans are advised to check out a rare 2 hour broadcast of Flo & Eddie’s By The Fireside radio show over at For The Love Of Harry (HERE). Find It Ain’t Me Babe at Amazon, HERE.

MONO
Wanderin’ Kind (2:09)
It Was A Very Good Year (1:57)
Your Maw Said You Cried (1:45)
Eve Of Destruction (2:45)
Glitter And Gold (2:09)
Let Me Be (2:23)
Let The Cold Winds Blow (2:19)
It Ain’t Me Babe (2:14)
A Walk In The Sun (2:14)
Last Laugh (1:47)
Love Minus Zero (2:54)
Like A Rolling Stone (3:15)
We’ll Meet Again (Single Version) (2:28) – Bonus Track
Gas Money (2:14) – Bonus Track
STEREO
Wanderin’ Kind (2:08)
It Was A Very Good Year (1:58)
Your Maw Said You Cried (1:44)
Eve Of Destruction (2:42)
Glitter And Gold (2:10)
Let Me Be (2:25)
Let The Cold Wind Blow (2:20)
It Ain’t Me Babe (2:13)
A Walk In The Sun (2:14)
Last Laugh (1:45)
Love Minus Zero (2:54)
Like A Rolling Stone (3:12)

SOMETHING TO LOOK FROWARD TO:
Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. (April 2013)

I can’t think of many better ways to spend $24.99 than to relive some of the twisted tales of Turtle Howard Kaylan, soon to be issued as Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. Actually, if you pre-order at Amazon (HERE), you can lock in the current price of $14.10 (or lower… discounts fluctuate prior to release), which is a bargain in any universe. (Oops… it’s already up to $14.19.) Here’s a taste of what to expect, from an excerpt printed in Rolling Stone, about The Turtles’ visit to Richard Nixon’s White House in 1969.

“I was snorting coke on Abraham Lincoln’s desk in the White House. Yes, that Abraham Lincoln and that White House. A bunch of hairy peacenik dopers from California though we were, it seems that Tricia Nixon, daughter of Tricky Dick himself, was a fan of the Turtles and had requested our presence. Our first instinct: you’ve got to be kidding! No way in hell!

Yet here we were, our noses vacuuming lines off the surface of Honest Abe’s very own workspace.

We had gone through several managers during the past five years and been on the charts far more often than anyone would ever have guessed, considering that we were the only ones looking out for us, and that White Whale Records wasn’t much of a label.

There had been the folk-rock years, and we had been lucky enough to score a few big hits; we were among the earliest children of Bob Dylan, putting our cover version of his tune “It Ain’t Me, Babe” into the Top 10.

Then we had become the good-time music boys, influenced by the Lovin’ Spoonful and determined not to protest anything. We’d made it to Number One with a song that’s still recognized today as one of the classic rock & roll love songs of all time. “Happy Together,” indeed.

And, now, finally, we had engineered our own success with “Elenore,” our first self-penned Top 10 record, and “You Showed Me,” which we had changed from a Beatlesque rocker into a lush ballad.

We were lucky and we knew it.

Of course, now we had the big-time management to prove it.

Gone were the friends of friends—we’d realized that we really weren’t in any position to manage ourselves—and hello to the new Superstar Management Team.

We had been courted, successfully, by Ron DeBlasio and Jeff Wald, who were, at the time, top reps for the Campbell-Silver-Cosby Corporation.

That’s right—Bill Cosby.

Mister Pudding Pops.

Fat Freaking Albert.

Bill, his own self, was a full partner in the firm that represented him.

And us.

And others.

And his sweaters.

And he was the number one comic in America.

Across the hall was the office of the appropriately named Artie Mogul, who ran the in-house record company, Tetragrammaton, home to Deep Purple and more.

Of course, he had nothing to do with us. Neither did Mr. Cosby, but his name promised to open a lot of doors in Hollywood and that was exactly what we needed.

But what, I asked, could these guys bring to the table for a band that had been around the block and, hypothetically, overstayed their welcome?

We didn’t have to wait long.

••••

We had heard, through the grapevine, that the Turtles were Tricia’s favorite band, and we’d all had a good chuckle over that.

Old Man Nixon was the creepiest Dick of his generation, the least popular president among the under-30 crowd that had ever been, and a killer of our young men and women, as far as we were concerned.

We were deeply anti-war and deeply self-conscious. We weren’t Nixonites, that’s for sure. We were everything he stood against.

So when the hand-engraved invitations to perform at Tricia’s coming out party arrived at the Cosby office, we were none too thrilled. In fact, we flat out refused to play.

They started to freak out.

“What do you mean, you refuse to play?! Who the hell do you think you are?! This isn’t a political thing. It’s like a goddamned royal proclamation, you idiots! You play the White House because you’re an American!”

Blah, blah, blah …

They shamed us into it.

Not only that, but to add insult to injury, management now was requesting that we each go out and buy a classy new suit. Can’t play for the president looking like the sewer rats that you really are.

Perfect. There it was, again.

Too bad Johny Barbata wasn’t the drummer in the band anymore. He’d have loved the sight of us clumsily trying on the very Brioni suits that he’d been trying to get us to wear for three-and-a-half years.

Now we had each bought one. Talk about fish out of water.

****

Came the big day, May 10, 1969, we flew into Washington, D.C. on the taxpayers’ dollar. There, we were met by five separate cars, replete with drivers all flying the American flag, and taken directly to the White House. Once there we discovered that the Secret Service had dossiers on each of us. They kept us in a holding lounge while going through our intimate details individually.

After we had all been cleared, it was time to unload the equipment that we had brought with us all the way from L.A.

But we didn’t do the unloading. Instead, the Secret Service guys did. And they didn’t know the first thing about large equipment cases. So as they began to unload the trap case from the drum set, the large case that holds the snare drum, percussion goodies and miscellaneous items, they tipped it to one side and, unknowingly, triggered the tiny switch on the electric metronome/tuner that we always carried with us.

“…..tick….tick….tick.”

Out came the guns.

“Up against the wall!”

Oh, we went there. Up against that wall it was as they carted off our little black box. We stood there, a rock group inside of enemy territory, the Nixon White House, looking down the crosshairs from the wrong direction. Guys in HAZMAT suits were brought in to deal with our little plastic tuner and their freak-out escalated yet another notch when someone hit the tuning switch and the 440 cycle “A” tone started shrieking from the metronome.

The term “shitting a brick” comes to mind.”