Mark Volman, the singer who co-founded the buoyant Nineteen Sixties hitmakers the Turtles and was half of the humorous concord duo Flo & Eddie, has died. He was 78.
Representatives for Volman confirmed the dying to Rolling Stone, citing a “transient, surprising sickness.” In 2020, Volman was identified with Lewy Physique Dementia, however continued touring and solely introduced his analysis in 2023.
When selling his memoir “Comfortable Ceaselessly: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and Extra” in 2023, Volman went public along with his 2020 analysis of Lewy physique dementia, a illness that ends in a decline in cognitive capacity, affecting reasoning, reminiscence and motion.
In a Individuals journal story, Volman accepted his destiny: “I acquired hit by the data that this was going to create an entire new a part of my life. And I mentioned, ‘OK, no matter’s going to occur will occur, however I’ll go so far as I can.’”
Volman’s associate in each the Turtles and Flo & Eddie was Howard Kaylan, a high-school buddy who became a lifelong inventive associate. Sharing a style for candy melodies, cultural fads and unrepentant silliness, Volman and Kaylan adeptly navigated the cultural adjustments of the Nineteen Sixties, steering the Turtles from surf-rock survivors to psychedelic freaks over the course of a decade.
The group’s candy spot arrived within the second half of the Nineteen Sixties, once they polished their Southern Californian folk-rock with studio savvy, creating hits — “Comfortable Collectively,” “She’d Moderately Be With Me,” “Elenore” and “You Confirmed Me” — that appealed to mainstream listeners — they had been the favourite band of Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia, even enjoying the White Home in 1970 — whereas winking at hipper audiences.
As they drifted away from the center of the highway, the Turtles might sometimes give the sense that they had been too good for the room; considered one of their finest albums, 1968’s “The Turtles Current the Battle of the Bands,” was constructed as an idea album the place the group adopted a unique guise and musical model for every monitor.
The Turtles in 1967, clockwise from high left: Al Nichol, Jim Tucker, Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan, Johnny Barbara and Jim Pon.
(Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Pictures)
Volman and Kaylan capitalized on this quirk once they rechristened themselves as Flo & Eddie, a moniker they devised after a bitter authorized battle with their former file label left them with out the precise to carry out both because the Turtles or utilizing their very own names. Throughout this era, Frank Zappa invited Flo & Eddie to hitch his Moms of Invention, giving the duo a lift that led to a permanent profession.
Flo & Eddie specialised in offering harmonic help to excessive profile acts: they toured with Alice Cooper, sang on T. Rex’s landmark glam album “Electrical Warrior” and had been recruited to sing on Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Coronary heart” when the Boss was searching for Seashore Boys-like harmonies. On their very own, Volman and Kaylan additionally honed their comedic shtick as recording artists, later taking their act to radio and, as soon as they reacquired the rights to the Turtles moniker, on the highway, enjoying the oldies circuit into the 2010s.
In contrast to many different oldies acts, Volman and Kaylan possessed sharp enterprise expertise, acquired after their messy fallout with their file label, White Whale. As soon as they regained their grasp tapes, they licensed their catalog to reissue labels and stored a vigilant eye on how their recordings had been disseminated within the market.
On realizing that the Turtles’ “You Confirmed Me” supplied a pivotal pattern on De La Soul‘s 1989 debut album, “3 Toes Excessive and Rising,” the duo sued the rap pioneers for $2.5 million in exemplary and punitive damages. The matter was settled out of court docket in favor of Volman and Kaylan; whereas the phrases weren’t publicly disclosed, they reportedly had been awarded $1.7 million in damages. The lawsuit and its fallout successfully ended the golden age of sampling in hip-hop.
Mark Volman throughout the tenth anniversary of the Comfortable Collectively tour at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in 2019.
(Scott Dudelson / Getty Pictures)
Born in Los Angeles on April 19, 1947, Volman grew up in a musical family within the neighborhood of Westchester. Even when he was younger, family had been struck by his exuberant character. His aunt Ann Becker recalled in “Comfortable Ceaselessly”: “I can keep in mind my mom shaking her head and saying, ‘That boy is so good — he shouldn’t be so foolish.’”
By the point he enrolled at Westchester Excessive — his classmates included comic Phil Hartman and Manson Member of the family Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme — Volman had gravitated towards irreverence.
Assembly New York transplant Kaylan in choir, Volman quickly grew to become a part of the Crossfires, enjoying saxophone alongside his new buddy within the surf-rock combo. The Crossfires had two singles to their identify earlier than they signed to the fledgling White Whale Data in 1965. Already within the means of abandoning surf for folk-rock — Volman and Kaylan swapped their saxes for lead vocals — the group’s members accepted their new label’s suggestion to rename themselves; they rejected the stylized spelling of the Tyrtles in favor of the Turtles.
Taking a cue from the Byrds’ hit model of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Turtles launched a revved-up cowl of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” that squarely hit the zeitgeist, climbing into the Billboard Prime 10 in summer time 1965. Volman later remembered, “I graduated from highschool in February 1965 and was on tour in June with a Prime 10 file and on the Dick Clark Present.”
A few spirited sequels, “Let Me Be” and “You Child,” stored the band within the Prime 40 into 1966 however the Turtles’ sizzling streak shortly cooled, as a sequence of singles — together with “Exterior Likelihood,” written by White Whale staffer Warren Zevon — barely scraped the charts. “Comfortable Collectively,” a tune rejected by plenty of pop teams, revived the group’s fortunes, thanks partially to a sterling association masterminded by new bassist Chip Douglas.
“Comfortable Collectively” topped the charts and would develop into one of many requirements of its period, showing typically in commercials and movies. In 1967, it propelled the Turtles again to the higher reaches of the charts, a spot they’d keep by means of 1969, as they gathered such hits as “She’d Moderately Be With Me” and “Elenore.”
By far the largest act on the small-scale White Whale, the Turtles had been subjected to stress by the label to file extra industrial materials, but Volman and Kaylan stored pushing the band to make hip music. When the label instructed firing the remainder of the Turtles, the singers organized for the remaining three members to share songwriting credit on “The Turtles Current the Battle of the Bands,” the primary album they launched after the success of “Comfortable Collectively.” On their closing album, “Turtle Soup,” the Turtles employed Ray Davies as their producer; it was his first manufacturing exterior his essential band, the Kinks.
Tensions between the Turtles and White Whale escalated in 1970, main the group to disband. In flip, the label exercised a clause within the band‘s recording contract that prevented the members from performing both “individually or collectively,” successfully barring Volman and Kaylan from persevering with to work both as a bunch or as themselves. The pair determined to name themselves the Phlorescent Leech & Eddie, a reputation that might swiftly be shortened to Flo & Eddie; Volman was the previous, Kaylan the latter.
Zappa introduced the duo into his Moms of Invention ensemble not lengthy after the implosion of the Turtles. They stayed with him by means of an eventful 12 months that included a live performance in Montreux, Switzerland, that ended with the venue engulfed in hearth; Deep Purple memorialized the occasion in “Smoke on the Water.”
Alice Cooper, second from left, with Mark Volman (ingesting beverage) and bandmates in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1972.
(Jorgen Angel / Redferns / Getty Pictures)
Starting with 1972’s “The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie,” Flo & Eddie launched a sequence of more and more facetious albums all through the Nineteen Seventies, however that they had higher success singing harmonies for T. Rex and Cooper. “Hungry Coronary heart,” Springsteen’s first Prime 10 hit, served as a curtain name for this era of Flo & Eddie’s profession. Quickly, the duo put their days as recording artists to relaxation. Whereas they nonetheless would contribute authentic music to animated tv reveals, together with specials specializing in “Strawberry Shortcake” and “The Care Bears” sequence, the duo stopped writing and recording new Flo & Eddie music.
The transfer coincided with the duo lastly profitable again the rights to their names. Volman and Kalyan started this course of in 1974, once they acquired the Turtles’ grasp recordings when White Whale belongings had been up for public sale.
A decade later, they had been capable of tour as The Turtles … that includes Flo & Eddie, a billing they’d retain into the 2010s, till Kaylan retired from the highway in 2018. With Ron Dante filling in for Kaylan, Volman continued performing because the Turtles as a part of their common Comfortable Collectively bundle excursions.
Though Flo & Eddie embraced their standing on the oldies circuit, they hadn’t pale completely from trendy music. When De La Soul sampled “You Confirmed Me” for his or her monitor “Transmitting Stay From Mars” in 1989, the trio did not clear the rights previous to launch, so Volman and Kaylan sued the group, profitable a big settlement that established a precedent for pattern clearance in hip-hop.
The duo launched one other main lawsuit in 2013 once they filed swimsuit towards Sirius XM for failing to pay sound recording royalties in California, New York and Florida. A California choose dominated within the duo’s favor in 2014, whereas a Florida choose dominated for Sirius XM in 2015. Though a settlement was reached in 2016, Sirius XM would win subsequent authorized appeals in Florida and California.
Volman went again to highschool in 1992, pursuing a bachelor’s diploma at Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles. After incomes a grasp’s diploma in screenwriting in 1999 at Loyola Marymount, Volman quickly moved into educating, ultimately changing into an affiliate professor on the Mike Curb School of Leisure & Music Enterprise at Belmont College in Nashville, Tenn.
Volman is survived by his daughters, Sarina Marie and Hallie Rae, each from his marriage to Patricia Lee.
