Showing posts with label Howard Kaylan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Howard Kaylan. Show all posts

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Howard Kaylan on David Bowie, screenwriter (the Funhouse interview)

Yrs truly has been working on several blog posts at once and would like to get at least two of them up in the next week (I know, I know... good luck!). One is completely written but was suddenly made “less dated” by the other, which is my tribute to David Bowie, replete with rare clips, odd memories, and a serious (but short!) discussion of some of his obsessions.

In line with the latter, I wanted to present another fascinating chunk from my interview with Howard Kaylan, of the Turtles and Flo & Eddie (he was “Eddie”; Mark Volman was “Flo”). Howard and his partner knew everyone worth knowing in the late Sixties and early Seventies rock scene. This would include Bowie, from his Ziggy incarnation through all of his Seventies personas.

The pair conducted a good interview with David after the release of Heroes for Canadian TV. Part of it can be found here. They interviewed David initially on their “Flo and Eddie by the Fireside” radio show in L.A. and I fondly remember them catching up with him when they were DJ-ing on K-rock in NYC (the playlist was horrible, but they were wonderful hosts).

In any case, Howard brought up Bowie in terms of his work with Tin Machine (we had just been discussing Soupy Sales, whose sons Hunt and Tony were half of that band). He went on to discuss the screenplay that never was – Bowie's idea for a drama (or a thriller, he never made clear which) that would be set on a cruise ship. It sounds like it might've made an interesting concept for an anthology series or a series of cable movies – the “Passenger” character sounds like an update of the old “Whistler” character from old-time radio (who told us stories he beheld but never took part in).

According to Howard's autobiography, Shell Shocked (written with Jeff Tamarkin), this project began around the time Howard and Mark were recording their album Moving Targets, which was released in 1976.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Howard Kaylan: the Funhouse interview


I'm sure I heard the music of the Turtles all throughout my childhood on AM (and the burgeoning FM “oldies”) radio, but my first conscious memory of Howard Kaylan was in 1975, when he and Mark Volman, then and forever billed as “Flo and Eddie,” guested on an episode of the PBS series Soundstage hosted by Martin Mull. It was called “60 Minutes to Kill.”

I was blown away entirely by that show (at a very young age) and have been a big Flo and Eddie fan (as well as a major devotee of Mull's comedy) ever since. Thus I was quite pleased to recently have the opportunity, on the evening of Howard's signing of his thoroughly entertaining, anecdote-filled, new autobiography Shell Shocked at the Morrison Hotel gallery in Soho, NYC, to speak with Howard for a full 90 minutes (it was actually close to two hours, but the cameras were only on for 100 minutes, so why split hairs?).

It was a delight to find out that he's as funny and articulate offstage as he is on. The man has a LOT of stories to tell, and tell them he does in Shell Shocked (that sports a cover illustration by Cal Schenkel). I take particular pleasure, though, in the moments where I got him to tell tales that are not included in the book. For instance, the two items below, a wonderful account of time spent (on plenty of acid) with a young Warren Zevon, and Howard's account of his meeting with his TV hero Soupy Sales and their subsequent friendship (which involved plenty of laughter and, yes, the occasional partaking of certain “substances”).

Thus, I offer a preview of my interview with Mr. Kaylan. First his story about Zevon, and the “gift” that the Turtles gave to Warren:


And a nice chunk of our talk, wholly devoted to the subject of the one and only Soupy!!!