Happy Together It Ain't Me Babe Turtles

Happy Together Album: Happy Together (1967)
It Ain't Me Babe Album: It Ain't Me Babe (1965)
by The Turtles

Happy Together is not a song about a couple in love. According to Gary Bonner, who wrote the song with Alan Gordon, the song is about unrequited love. Our desperate singer wants the girl to "imagine how the world could be so very fine," proposing what would happen "if I should call you up." The line in the fadeout, "How is the weather?" is when he realizes they will never be more than passing acquaintances, as he resorts to small talk to keep from bursting into tears.

The song's composers Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon were the bass player and drummer of the Boston area group The Magicians. Bonner became a regular member of Kenny Vance and the Planotones. Gordon, who died in 2008 at the age of 64, had songs recorded by Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa and The Lovin' Spoonful.

Talking about how the song came together, Alan Gordon said: "I had nearly half a song already written, mostly lyric ideas, but couldn't find the right melodic concept. The Magicians were in the middle of a week-long engagement at the Unicorn Club in Boston, and one early morning I was visiting my divorced father in nearby Ayer, Massachusetts after being up all night. I had stopped to have breakfast at the Park Street Diner in the town and was miserable with no sleep, the endless dumb gigs we were playing and having a songwriter's block. About the only melody that was throbbing in my tired, fried brain at that hour was the time-immemorial repeated open string pattern that Allen (Jake) Jacobs, the Magician's lead guitarist, would use as he incessantly tuned and retuned after, before, and frequently during each piece we played. Suddenly, some words began to fit and literally minutes later music and lyrics started to take shape. I excitedly and in fairness asked Jake to complete the song with me as co-writer, but he refused, saying it was all 'too simple' for him to be involved, so my regular partner Gary then helped me with the finishing touches. When Gary Klein at the Koppleman/Rubin office heard the result, he immediately knew the song would be perfect for the new and upbeat image being created for The Turtles, and it was his continued enthusiasm that convinced the group to record it."

After the song was turned down by a number of groups, Bonner and Gordon recorded a demo at Regent Sound Studio with some session musicians, including guitarist Ralph Casale and bassist Dick Romoff. It was Casale who came up with the main figure which set the groove for the song. He told us: "A chord sheet was placed in front of the musicians and we immediately proceeded to put this song together. I came up with what I considered and called a Lovin' Spoonful feel. I created the figure and all the other musicians including Bonner and Gordon immediately understood the direction. The vocal arrangements fell into place very nicely. Regent Sound was an excellent studio so the demo sounded like a finished product. I later told everybody, 'I just heard a hit record.' As Aunt Flo put it, the original demo was phenomenal. In fact the Turtles' recording sounds as though they used the basic demo track and overdubbed horns. The Bonner/Gordon vocal arrangement sounded a lot like the hit record also."

The Turtles were formed by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They were saxophone players who did whatever was trendy in order to make a living as musicians. They played surf-rock, acoustic folk, whatever was big at the time, and in addition to their own bands, played backup for The Coasters, Sonny And Cher and The Righteous Brothers. After a while, they gave up sax and became singers, signing a deal with White Whale Records as The Crosswind Singers. When British groups like The Beatles took over America, they tried to pass themselves off as British singers and renamed themselves The Tyrtles. The record company made them change the name to The Turtles, and tried to make them sound like The Byrds, who were leaders of the folk-rock trend. Like The Byrds had done before, The Turtles recorded a Bob Dylan song for their first single - "It Ain't Me Babe." They had a few more minor hits, and recorded the original version of "Eve Of Destruction," which became a #1 hit for Barry McGuire. They recorded some gloomy songs that completely flopped, so they decided to try some happier songs. After many other artists passed on "Happy Together," The Turtles decided to record it in an effort to change their image once again.
Bonner and Gordon also wrote other Turtles hits like "She'd Rather Be With Me" as well as "Celebrate" by Three Dog Night.

In the three years after The Turtles recorded this, they had several other hits, but disbanded in 1970. Volman and Kaylan joined Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention as "Phlorescent Leech and Eddie." After a few years with Zappa, they started recording as Flo And Eddie. They wrote music for the animated movies Dirty Duck, Strawberry Shortcake and The Care Bears, and hosted their own nationally syndicated radio show. They also played on many famous songs by John Lennon, Roger McGuinn, Hoyt Axton, Alice Cooper, Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, The Psychedelic Furs, Sammy Hagar, Duran Duran, and The Ramones. In 1984, they went on their "Happy Together Tour" as The Turtles Featuring Flo And Eddie.

The line "If I should call you up, invest a dime" harkens back to a time when telephone calls were often made at pay phones that cost a dime. These days, he would probably just call from his cell phone, which is much more convenient, but far less romantic.
Besides The Turtles, three other acts took this song to the US Hot 100:

Dawn featuring Tony Orlando [medley] (#79, 1972)
Captain & Tennille (#53, 1980)
The Nylons (#75, 1987)

In the UK, the Australian singer Jason Donovan made #10 in 1991 with his version, and in 1979, T.G. Sheppard made it to #8 on the country chart with his rendition.

Other artists to cover "Happy Together" include Mel Torme, The Ventures, Hugo Montenegro,
The Vogues, Buck Wild, Vikki Carr, Petula Clark, Melba Moore, Donny Osmond, David Cook, Percy Faith, Frank Zappa and Weezer.
This has appeared on the soundtracks to the movies Adaptation, Ernest Goes To Camp, Life Or Something Like It, and Freaky Friday.
This has been used in lot of commercials for clients like Burger King, The NFL, Nintendo, Red Lobster, Sony Playstation, Florida Orange Juice, Heineken, Clinique and Nickelodeon. (Thanks, Carlin America publishing for all above.)

In 1989, this was used in a movie of the same name starring Helen Slater, Patrick Dempsey and Brad Pitt.

This song was used in an episode of That '70s Show. The scene of the song's usage involved the character Fez imagining what his life would be like if his friends were his family. The sequence later transitions into the characters performing the song.

This opens the 12 Monkeys episode "45 RPM" (2018) as Cassie prepares to time travel to the '70s to assassinate a villain.

"It Ain't Me Babe" was written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan, who released the song on his 1964 album Another Side Of Bob Dylan. The lyrics find the singer telling a girl that he is not her true love, and that she should forget about him as he is just a temporary fix for her loneliness. Dylan is rarely forthcoming about his songs, but this may have been inspired by Joan Baez.

This was the first hit for The Turtles, who had several more hits in the '60s, including the #1 "Happy Together." Howard Kaylan of The Turtles explained how they came to record this in the Forgotten Hits newsletter: "When the Turtles first signed our original recording agreements with the tiny label that would become White Whale, we were all under the legal age of 18. Needless to say, the contracts required our parents' approval. This was all done before a judge in the county of Los Angeles who reviewed the paperwork about to be executed and told our parents that, "If you let your sons sign these papers, the court won't be responsible for the outcome. These are the worst contracts that I have ever seen." We didn't care. We wanted to make records and damn the consequences. So we signed. And our parents co-signed. And the judge had been right. It took many years and many thousands of dollars to win back our money and our self-respect. But, in the meantime, we had a record deal.

We had originally intended to break up our band, the Crossfires, on one particular evening in 1965, while playing our usual Friday night gig at the a teen club in Redondo Beach, California called the Revelaire. On my way upstairs with our resignation, two shady-looking entrepreneurs stopped me and asked if we were interested in making a record. They loved the way we sounded doing a cover of the new Byrds single (our guitarist had gone out and bought a 12-string guitar earlier that week) and thought that doing folk-rock was the key to our future.

It fell upon me to find the tunes to record. The Crossfires had been a surf band in high school, but together with a friend of ours, Betty McCarty, we had also done some folk singing as The Crosswind Singers. In fact, we opened a concert at Westchester High that starred the folk duo Joe and Eddie (a foreshadowing of things to come, many years before the names Flo and Eddie were to become our nom de plumes). I found Dylan's 'It Ain't Me Babe' on an album and, being blissfully unaware that anyone else had ever recorded it, thought that it would make a great rock song. So I literally 'lifted' the Zombies' approach to pop - a soft Colin Blunstone-like minor verse bursting into a four-four major chorus a-la 'She's Not There.'

Both of the B-sides to 'It Ain't Me Babe' and 'Let Me Be' were songs that I had originally written for the Crosswind Singers and that we had performed with Joe and Eddie on that most auspicious of occasions. 'The Wanderin' Kind' sounded like a total Byrds cop. I wasn't ashamed then and I'm not ashamed now. It was all jangly guitars and travelin' boot-heels. But, in my defense, it was written well in advance of the Byrds records and, in fact, was a Dylan cop. Hey, we were all doing it. We never said that we were trend setters. Sometimes, the smart follower is perceived as a leader too. 'Almost There,' on the other hand, had nothing to do with the world of folk rock. In fact, if stolen from anyone, it would have to be called a Kinks-style rocker. The guitar lick intro and the incomprehensible "you gettum, boys" mumbled at the start of the solo were stone giveaways. The Turtles' career was always, somehow, intertwined with the that of the Kinks lasting all the way to our final album in 1970, Turtle Soup, which Ray Davies, himself, produced." (Thanks to Kent at the Forgotten Hits newsletter.)

Also in 1965, Johnny Cash recorded this with his wife June Carter. The song appears in the 2005 movie Walk The Line, which is about Cash. Other artists to record the song include Joan Baez, Nancy Sinatra and New Found Glory.
Dylan's use of the word "Babe" gave Sonny Bono the idea to use the word in his 1965 Sonny & Cher hit "I Got You Babe."

Jim Pons (born March 14, 1943) is an American bassist, author, singer, and video director who most notably played for the Leaves (1964–1967), the Turtles (1967–1970), and the Mothers of Invention (1970–1971) and Flo and Eddie (1971-1973).

After leaving the music scene in 1973, he worked as a video director for the New York Jets, and briefly the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jim designed the team logo for the New York Jets, which lasted from 1978 to 1997.

In 1964, he formed the garage rock band The Leaves. The band was founded by Pons and guitarist Robert Lee Reiner, who were Fraternity students at Cal State Northridge (then known as San Fernando Valley State College).

They were originally called The Rockwells, prior to changing their names to The Leaves. They got the name Leaves when one of the members greeted another by saying “What’s happening?”, and the other responding with “The Leaves are happening”.

The Leaves eventually secured a regular gig replacing the Byrds as the house band at the popular nightclub Ciro's on the Sunset Strip. They signed with Mira Records after being heard by Pat Boone, who got them the position.

The Leaves are noted for recording an early version of the song Hey Joe, which they recorded along with their debut album in 1966. Their version of Hey Joe was #1 on the Los Angeles stations and peaked at #31 on the Billboard pop charts in May 1966.

Hey Joe would achieve greater popularity in 1967 when it was covered by Jimi Hendrix. Pons stayed in the Leaves until 1967.

Pons joined The Turtles shortly after the Leaves. He played bass on their hit songs She'd Rather Be With Me, Elenore, She's My Girl, and You Showed Me. As a member of the Turtles, he appeared on television on both of their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and American Bandstand, among many others. Jim continued to tour with the Turtles until they split in 1970. He played on their albums, Happy Together, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, Turtle Soup and The Turtles Greatest Hits Vols, 1 and 2.

Since the 2010s, he has occasionally guest-starred with The Turtles alongside Flo & Eddie. Pons will usually join them on stage if they are performing in Florida, where he lives.

Pons was a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention (1970-1971). He played bass on their albums "Live at the Fillmore East", "Just Another Band From L.A.", and "Playground Psychotics". Pons portrayed himself in Zappa's 1971 surrealist film 200 Motels, starring the members of the Mothers Of Invention.

In 1973 Pons left the music industry to become the film and video director for the New York Jets football team; he designed the team's 1978–97 team logo. He held this position until around the year 2000.

Pons and his family moved to Jacksonville, Florida in 2005, where he did game day video for the Jacksonville Jaguars, until he retired.

In 2017, Pons wrote an autobiography titled Hard Core Love: Sex, Football and Rock and Roll in the Kingdom of God which won the 2017 Florida Writers Association BOOK OF THE YEAR award. The book describes his spiritual journey during his careers in the music and sports industries.