Fact #101417

Mark Volman (The Turtles) : One of the most interesting times in The Turtles' career. Personally, I think the best part of that project was the album design created by the photos of Henry Diltz and the graphic design work of Gary Burden. They did covers for the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash and many others. It was a beautiful album cover, both inside and out.


The Turtles were looking for a new producer to do a new type of project for us. We were trying very hard to establish ourselves as an album oriented recording act. Radio was changing so quickly and the groups that were having big success at this time were now, not the singles-oriented groups, like The Turtles, but groups who fit the culture's need for hip intellectual records. FM radio was replacing AM as the prime selling format and we wanted to continue the song writing growth we had begun to realize in the previous album, The Battle of the Bands.


We threw out a bunch of potential producers and Ray Davies, from The Kinks, would eventually be the chosen one. Derek Taylor, who was the press agent for The Beatles, happened to be a good friend, helped us make the contact. We asked Ray, who we would find out was a big fan of our hit songs, and he jumped at the opportunity. It would be Ray's first outside producing project. We loved his songwriting and the group's music, and we were very excited to get the chance to work with him.


We would not find out until after making that album that Ray used the Turtle Soup project as a way of doing two things: one, to get out of England during a time when he was having some personal problems and two, come to America to light a fire under the record company that The Kinks were on. The Kinks were releasing some really great records, but they were having some major difficulties getting their records promoted the way that they wanted. Ray used the trip to America to not only produce The Turtles, but to try and build up a better relationship with Reprise Records.


The problem was, I believe Ray let us have too much control of the album and never got involved enough with the editing process on the material we recorded. Looking back now it seems that the songs were, for the most part, rather mediocre and it would have been nice to have had him more involved in the re-writing, or the discarding of some of the poor songs. He was a bit too passive in his approach and it might be because of the many external things that were going on in his life and the Kink's career at the time.


I do want to emphasize that Ray was a very charming fellow and never showed signs of the external problems during the time we made that record. It only would manifest itself in the lack of involvement that took place. We didn't get to hang out much with him as he stayed to himself quite a bit. In the end result, I guess I hoped more would come out of that record collaboration and maybe I shouldn't have. We have never had any contact with him about that album, but it was not a successful project for either of us.


It sold poorly and any chance The Turtles had of cracking the album marketplace would not take place. It does remain a cult classic for the Turtle fans and I do enjoy listening to parts of it. Love In The City, Somewhere Friday Night, and a few others hold up very well, and Love In The City might be one of the great overlooked Turtle classics. Maybe it was a better record than I think it was. It's hard to compare it with the others but it brings back many great memories in The Turtles' history.

(Source : not known)