Poetic License

Yesterday, Mark Volman died. He was one of the original members of The Turtles, a US-based rock band of the 1960s. He was 78 years old. He was a bit of a hero, in my book.

It’s hard to tell exactly why some celebrity deaths hit the nostalgia button with us, but with Mark, it was because he evoked strong memories from when I was a young girl growing up in Texas. My older siblings, in 1967 (the Summer of Love), were 18, 16, and 12, and my baby sister would be born that December. Because it was a houseful of teenagers, it was also full of friends, parties, and food. The Ed Sullivan Show was a staple of our Sunday night television diet. We watched a wide range of musical acts and performance artists, long before America’s Got Talent was a thing.

Something about The Turtles’ music felt sweet to me. Can you think of anymore more poignant than “Happy Together”? Like my older siblings, I was drawn more to rock and pop music than to the country music our dad played. He and Mom loved Hee Haw and The Grand Ol Opry. We loved The Ed Sullivan Show and, later, The Sonny and Cher Show, because we got to hear more of our music.

The first time I saw The Turtles on television, Mark Volman stood out. He was a little pudgy and had glasses and big, frizzy-curly hair. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so odd. I had just been prescribed glasses, and my hair tended toward unruliness. I was developing some pudginess. Maybe, I thought, I wasn’t so ugly after all.

Unlike some of the stars I’d have a crush on later – David Cassidy, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor, Roger Daltrey – Volman wasn’t someone who inspired a crush. Instead, he felt relatable. He felt like a real person who happened to sing, and he was humorous on stage. I can’t tell you what else there was about him, but he was kind of a hero for me.

After the success and then the demise of The Turtles, Volman went on to perform in Flo & Eddie and with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and to write music and lyrics for movies. Volman and Kaylan, co-founders of The Turtles, found out after The Turtles broke up that not only could that not use the band’s name anymore, but they couldn’t use their own names! Hence, they became Flo (Volman) and Eddie (Kaylan).

At forty-five, Volman went back to college, studying at Loyola Marymount University, where he later earned his Masters of Fine Arts degree, with an emphasis in screenwriting. As valedictorian of his undergrad graduating class, he led his cohort in a rendition of “Happy Together”! Perhaps inspired by how he and Kaylan had lost the right to perform under their own names, he eventually taught courses in commercial music and music industry studies.

In the year of CoVID (2020), he announced that he had Lewy Body Dementia, which is a combination of dementia with Lewy Bodies (clumps of abnormal proteins that form in neurons in the central nervous system) and Parkinson’s Disease Dementia. He continued to perform, doing his last show this year. Mark Volman died yesterday after a brief illness.

He will always be the performer who made me feel less awkward and conspicuous, less hopeless. He embraced everything about himself, and he once even insured his frizzy locks for $100,000 against fire, theft, or loss from illness. He still had those locks when he died, though they were now white.

Shine on, Mark, and fly high, traveler!

Love, from the little girl with the glasses and frizzy hair.
~Jude