the Turtles

the Turtles, American band popular in the mid-1960s that specialized in vocally rich, craftily arranged pop music. The group’s best-known song is “Happy Together,” which was a number one hit in 1967.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1963 as a surf band, the Turtles underwent a series of name changes and passed through a British Invasion-influenced phase before registering their first hit single as folk rockers in 1965 with a version of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Period gems, the Turtles’ many hits included “You Baby” (1966), “She’d Rather Be with Me” (1967), “Happy Together” (1967), their biggest hit, and “Elenore” and “You Showed Me” from the ambitious 1968 album The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands.

At times musically adventurous, the Turtles experimented with psychedelic rock, exotica, odd time signatures, improvisations, theatrics, and satire. Although not a band with an overtly political message, in 1970 the Turtles recorded a version of “Eve of Destruction,” a protest song about the Vietnam War.

The band’s core, vocalists Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, continued as Flo (the Phlorescent Leech) and Eddie after the Turtles’ dissolution in 1970, working with Frank Zappa, providing backup vocals for other performers—notably British glam rocker Marc Bolan’s T. Rex—and recording and performing on their own.