<\/p>\n
Mark Volman, who founded the pop-rock band the Turtles in the 1960s with his high school buddy Howard Kaylan and sang harmony on the group\u2019s many hit songs, including \u201cHappy Together,\u201d \u201cShe\u2019d Rather Be With Me\u201d and \u201cElenore,\u201d died on Friday in Nashville. He was 78.<\/p>\n
His publicist, Ame Van Iden, said he died in a hospital from a blood disease. Mr. Volman had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2020.<\/p>\n
With his thick, black-rimmed glasses, bushy hairdo and propensity to swing instruments around wildly onstage, Mr. Volman embodied the Turtles\u2019 feel-good sunshine pop sound, especially on the infectious \u201cHappy Together.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That song \u2014 which, like most of the Turtles\u2019 songs, featured Mr. Kaylan on lead vocals \u2014 was released in 1967 and became the Turtles\u2019 only single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It knocked the Beatles\u2019 \u201cPenny Lane\u201d from the top spot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201c\u2018Happy Together\u2019 has a little bit of an old-fashioned, oompah beat,\u201d Ray Manzarek<\/a>, the keyboardist for the Doors, was quoted as saying in Mr. Volman\u2019s oral history of his own life, \u201cHappy Forever\u201d<\/a> (2023). \u201cThey\u2019re like a two-man barbershop quartet, with a happy oompah band playing. And the song was just such a natural, it just exploded.\u201d<\/p>\n Called an \u201canthem of love and positivity\u201d<\/a> by The Houston Press, \u201cHappy Together\u201d (written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon) catapulted the Turtles to stardom.<\/p>\n They performed the song on \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show,\u201d<\/a> \u201cThe Smothers Brothers Show\u201d<\/a> and, somewhat incongruously, at a White House party hosted by President Richard M. Nixon\u2019s daughter Tricia.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we received the invitation to play at the White House, I was both excited and apprehensive,\u201d Mr. Volman told Parade magazine in 1969. \u201cAfter all, we don\u2019t look like strictly Republican types \u2014 Strom Thurmond, Roman Hruska, George Murphy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Somehow, they fit in.<\/p>\n \u201cFrankly,\u201d he told Parade, \u201cwe expected to be treated like outcasts, or at least defensively. But everyone handled us with courtesy and gentleness, especially the Secret Service guys. They didn\u2019t react one bit to our clothes, our looks, our jargon.\u201d<\/p>\n The Republicans were rocking.<\/p>\n \u201cLot of congressmen\u2019s sons were there,\u201d Mr. Volman told Rolling Stone at the time, \u201cand boy, were they wrecked!\u201d<\/p>\n For the Turtles, fame was fleeting. The band broke up in 1970 after a dispute over money and creative freedom with its record label, White Whale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Volman and Mr. Kaylan then embarked on a quixotic musical journey. Contractually forbidden to perform under their real names or as the Turtles, they reinvented themselves as Flo & Eddie. After touring with Frank Zappa\u2019s<\/a> Mothers of Invention and adopting much of Mr. Zappa\u2019s often cynical humor, they performed and recorded as a duo, with a repertoire heavy on satirical songs. They also recorded as background singers for a range of artists, including Bruce Springsteen on his hit single \u201cHungry Heart” (1980) and Alice Cooper on multiple albums.<\/p>\n \u201cTruly, two of the most talented guys I\u2019ve ever worked with,\u201d Mr. Cooper was quoted as saying in \u201cHappy Forever.\u201d<\/a> \u201cThey had such pure voices. Everybody wanted to work with Mark and Howard because they were so much fun. They\u2019d walk in a room, and it was party time. And I don\u2019t mean drug party \u2014 I mean they were fun. \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mark Randall Volman was born on April 19, 1947, in Los Angeles to Joe and Bea Volman. As a boy, he played baseball and was a prankster.<\/p>\n \u201cI realized very early how to get attention, and I loved making my family laugh,\u201d he said in his book. \u201cThe words \u2018Oh, Mark, stop\u2019 were used a lot in our house.\u201d<\/p>\n Music was constantly playing in the home, especially traditional jazz records his father collected by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith and King Oliver.<\/p>\n At Westchester High School, where his classmates included the future Manson Family member Lynette \u201cSqueaky\u201d Fromme<\/a> and the future \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d cast member Phil Hartman<\/a>, Mark sang tenor in the a cappella choir. Also in the choir was Howard Kaylan, another tenor.<\/p>\n Howard also had a surf-rock band, the Crossfires; Mark said he wanted to join.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s great. What is it that you do?\u2019\u201d Mr. Kaylan later recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018Nothing.\u2019 I said, \u2018Wow, sounds terrific.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At first, Mark was a roadie.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first or second time he was schlepping our equipment at one of these gigs,\u201d Mr. Kaylan said, \u201che literally dropped everything down a flight of stairs and fell down the stairs with it, and laughed the whole way down.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon, Mark was singing alongside Howard. With his bushy hair, beautiful voice and clumsy tambourine play, he was an instant crowd pleaser.<\/p>\n \u201cHe got very proficient, not in the playing of the tambourine particularly, but in the spinning of the tambourine, and the tossing it over his shoulders, and even the dropping of the tambourine, which I believe even back then he was perfecting to an art form,\u201d Mr. Kaylan said.<\/p>\n The Crossfires signed with White Whale Records and changed their name to the Turtles. Their debut single, a cover of Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cIt Ain\u2019t Me, Babe,\u201d was a Billboard Top 10 hit in 1965, the year Mark graduated from Westchester High.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were immediately pulled out of high school and flung into an entirely different world,\u201d he said in an interview with ClassicBands.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Decades later, in 1992, Mr. Volman enrolled at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in communications and a master\u2019s degree in screenwriting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He then became a professor at Belmont University<\/a> in Nashville, teaching classes on the music business. He also continued playing gigs with Mr. Kaylan, once again billed as the Turtles (they regained the use of the name after a protracted legal battle, although they also continued to call themselves Flo & Eddie).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m touring while I\u2019m teaching, so I\u2019m a living part of this class,\u201d Mr. Volman told<\/a> the newsweekly Nashville Scene in 2005. \u201cMy students get to visualize it firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Volman\u2019s two marriages ended in divorce, but the announcement of his death referred to his former wife Emily Volman as his \u201csignificant other.\u201d He is also survived by two daughters, Hallie Volman and Sarina Miller, from his marriage to Pat Hickey, which ended in divorce; and a brother, Phil. He lived in Nashville.<\/p>\n