“Never played music again”: How a drunken encounter with John Lennon tore The Turtles apart
John Lennon, at his peak, had more power and influence than some dictators could ever hope to achieve. Both as a Beatle and in a solo capacity, the songwriter exercised an unparalleled influence over the airwaves and, in the case of The Turtles, could destroy the very fabric of a fellow group with a mere cutting remark.
For all the fresh-faced optimism presented by The Beatles during their early years, when their output was all about clean-cut romance, holding hands, and ‘Love Me Do’, the band became somewhat hardened by their experiences as the 1960s progressed. By 1967, after all, they had been chased out of the Philippines by a maniacal dictator, been sent death threats in Tokyo, caused riots in Hamburg, and spent the majority of their lives being hounded by the press or, in many cases, hysterical fans. Inevitably, that changed them as people.
In the case of John Lennon, his drug habits coupled with those formative experiences in his young life meant that he could often be quite abrasive, as The Turtles found out in 1967, within hours of landing on UK soil for the very first time. Taking core inspiration from the Fab Four and the British invasion, the Californian outfit had been around for a few years before they made the trip over the Atlantic, but they had only just struck upon their defining hit, ‘Happy Together’.
When the band arrived in London, having been led by Graham Nash to a club called the Speakeasy to meet Lennon and Paul McCartney, The Turtles found their musical icons rather inebriated, underneath the tables of the club, taking Polaroid photos up women’s skirts, according to Howard Kaylan in his book Shell Shocked.
Despite that incredibly creepy introduction to The Beatles, the two groups managed to hit it off. After exchanging pleasantries and joining in an impromptu rendition of the recently released ‘Happy Together’, Lennon got a little more combative. He apparently accused Kaylan of being “sappy” and “light in the loafers”, which paled in comparison to his verbal assault on the band’s guitarist, Jim Tucker.
Picking on Tucker for the quality of his shabby brown suit, Lennon teased, “Bad suit, son. And an even worse haircut,” moving on to the guitarist’s Beatles-inspired mop-top. “Did you tell your barber to give you a Beatle cut? It’s awful, man. You give rhythm players a bad name.” Things only got worse from there, with Tucker’s outspoken adoration of Lennon being returned with a deluge of vicious insults.
Exactly why John Lennon took such visceral umbrage with The Turtles is up for interpretation; it could certainly be true that the band were simply victims of the songwriter’s distinctive sense of humour, something which was often lacking on the other side of the Atlantic.
Either way, that doomed evening in the London club tainted The Turtles forevermore. After their sparse selection of English dates, Jim Tucker quit the band and, according to Kaylan, “Never played music again.”
Other hits followed ‘Happy Together’, and 1967 was a relatively successful year for The Turtles, but as far as the band themselves – and Tucker in particular – were concerned, the year had been tainted by the verbal assault delivered by their songwriting hero.
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