Mark Volman, who co-founded the Turtles and sang on Happy Together, passes away at 78

Mark Volman, singer and co-founder of the 1960s pop-rock band the Turtles, who rose to fame with their 1967 hit “Happy Together,” passed away on Friday, Sept. 5. He was 78.

His representatives confirmed his death to Rolling Stone, stating that he died in Nashville following what they described as a “brief, unexpected illness.” Volman had also been living with Lewy body dementia since being diagnosed in 2020. He continued to perform despite his illness and did not disclose his condition publicly until 2023.

Throughout most of his career, Volman worked side by side with his close friend Howard Kaylan, who was also a co-founder of the Turtles and the band’s lead vocalist. After the Turtles ended, Volman and Kaylan joined Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, where they adopted the stage name Flo and Eddie. Volman took on the nickname “Flo,” short for “The Phlorescent Leech.”

In addition to their work with Zappa, Flo and Eddie released several of their own records and created music for various movies and television shows. They also sang backing vocals for some of the biggest names in the 1970s and 1980s, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, T. Rex, Alice Cooper, Bruce Springsteen, Blondie, Stephen Stills, David Cassidy, Ray Manzarek, and Roger McGuinn.

Volman was born on April 19, 1947, in Los Angeles and began exploring music as a teenager. According to a band biography, he picked up the clarinet during junior high and studied with the same teacher who also gave lessons to Kaylan. The two did not officially meet until high school, when they both joined an a cappella group as tenors.

During high school, Volman, Kaylan, and friends, Al Nichol on guitar, Don Murray on drums, and Chuck Portz on bass, played together in a band called the Crossfires. After graduation, they formed the Turtles with the addition of guitarist Jim Tucker. The group gained experience by performing at clubs and college parties throughout Southern California before moving on to larger tours. Their first recordings came out in 1965, and their debut single, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe,” reached the Top 10.

After putting out two albums, It Ain’t Me, Babe in 1965 and You Baby in 1966, the Turtles released their most successful track, “Happy Together.” The upbeat love song with its joyful “ba-ba-baaaahh” chorus became a Number One hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in 1967 and is still recognized as one of the most iconic songs from that era.

Although “Happy Together” was the standout track on the Turtles’ 1967 album of the same name, it was not their only success. Songwriters Alan Gordon and Garry Bonner, who wrote “Happy Together,” also composed “She’d Rather Be With Me,” which reached Number Three on the Hot 100. They later contributed additional hits for the Turtles, such as “She’s My Girl” and “You Know What I Mean.”

In a 2023 interview with Goldmine, Volman reflected on the impact of “Happy Together,” saying that the song “held up so well that it became the record of our career.” He added, “Musically, I think ‘She’s My Girl,’ ‘You Know What I Mean,’ ‘Me About You,’ ‘The Story of Rock & Roll,’ and a few others are even better records. But every group hopes to have a ‘Happy Together’ and that makes us very fortunate.”

The Turtles went on to release two more records, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands in 1968 and Turtle Soup in 1969, before breaking up in 1970. Volman, Kaylan, and bassist Jim Pons, who had joined the Turtles in 1967, then became members of Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. They performed extensively with the group for many years. Flo and Eddie even performed a quirky version of “Happy Together” that appeared on Zappa’s live album Fillmore East – June 1971.

“Frank opened the door for us to explore and be involved with a lot of really grown-up music,” Volman told the Recording Academy. “I say ‘grown up’ because it had guitar changes and singing parts that we created for Frank. We couldn’t create those for any other place.” He also noted that Zappa “really turned us loose. He turned us loose to sing what we could bring to the different songs.”

In the following decades, Volman and Kaylan stayed consistently active. Alongside their collaborations with Zappa, they built reputations as sought-after session singers and released several Flo and Eddie albums, beginning with The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie in 1972. By the 1980s, they had also begun writing and recording music for films and television, contributing to children’s programming, such as The Care Bears series, as well as comedy films like Top Secret! by Zucker, Abrams, and Zucker.

Even while maintaining a music career into the 1990s, Volman returned to education. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University, then completed a Master’s degree, and later began teaching music business at the college level. He eventually taught for many years at Belmont University in Nashville, a school widely known for its music programs.

Volman and Kaylan were also central figures in several significant copyright battles. In 1991, they filed a lawsuit against De La Soul over the use of the Turtles’ song “You Showed Me” in “Transmitting Live From Mars.” The case ended with a settlement, although many in the hip-hop community argued that the decision set an unfair precedent, placing artists at risk of incurring heavy legal or licensing costs.

In 2013, they launched a class action case against SiriusXM, claiming the company had been playing pre-1972 recordings without compensating labels or artists. Federal copyright laws did not apply to recordings made before 1972, and there had long been uncertainty about what protections should cover them.

That lawsuit sparked a wave of similar actions from other labels, both large and small. Courts repeatedly sided with the artists and labels, and eventually SiriusXM agreed to multiple settlements, including a $99 million resolution with the Turtles in 2016. The case influenced the creation of the CLASSICS Act (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society), which became part of the Music Modernization Act of 2019. This law extended federal copyright protections to recordings made before 1972.

In 2015, Volman and Kaylan marked their 50th year performing together with a large-scale North American tour. Kaylan stepped away from touring in 2018 due to health issues, but Volman continued to perform. In 2023, he released his memoir, Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures With The Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More.