The Turtles

1960s pop band The Turtles originally started out as The Crossfires, a generic surf rock group playing small gigs on the West Coast. In an effort to broaden their audience appeal they reinvented themselves as a folk rock group featuring prominent vocal harmonies reflecting the style created by bands like The Byrds. The new formula worked well and the band's breakthrough came when they released a version of Bob Dylan's 'It Ain't Me Babe' which reached the Billboard top ten. The band's follow-up singles failed to achieve the same commercial success until in 1967 when they released 'Happy Together', a Bonner and Gordon song which had been repeatedly rejected by numerous other performers. It proved to be The Turtles' defining single and has gone down in pop history as one of the most iconic songs of the era. An album of the same name was released shortly afterwards and went to number 25 in the charts. The group's next single 'She'd Rather Be With Me' was a transatlantic hit and actually outsold 'Happy Together'. 1967 would prove to be the zenith of the band's career and from then on they went into a steady decline despite receiving positive critical acclaim for the material they were releasing. The group disbanded in 1970 and the two vocalists, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, joined Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, along with bass player Jim Pons.

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