Howard Kaylan

Howard Kaylan (born Howard Lawrence Kaplan; June 22, 1947) is an American retired musician and songwriter, who was a founding member and lead singer of the 1960s rock band The Turtles, and, with bandmate and friend Mark Volman, a member of the 1970s rock duo Flo & Eddie, where he used the pseudonym Eddie. He also was a member of Frank Zappa's band, The Mothers of Invention.

Kaylan was born in the Bronx to a Jewish family and grew up in Utica, New York, and Westchester, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. He studied choral music and clarinet, and won a Bank of America Fine Arts Award at age 16. He graduated early (as valedictorian) from Westchester High School, and briefly attended University of California, Los Angeles on a scholarship.

Kaylan and Mark Volman founded The Turtles, a popular band of the late 1960s, for which, despite the fact that not all of their songs were written by the band members, Kaylan has been a prolific songwriter, and co-wrote "Elenore" with his bandmates. In May of 1970, Kaylan and Volman signed on as members of Frank Zappa's band, The Mothers of Invention. The pair recorded tracks on five albums and appeared in the film 200 Motels, a semi-documentary film directed by Zappa. They were compelled to use the names Flo & Eddie ("Flo" being shortened from "Phlorescent Leech") and were not allowed legal use of their own names, or that of The Turtles, until multiple lawsuits from that band were settled in 1985.

In 1985 the name "The Turtles" reverted to Kaylan and Volman after fifteen years in litigation, as well as all of the master recordings they made. Thanks to Burger King, the NFL, Sony PlayStation, and countless other television advertisements and motion pictures, the Turtles' catalog remains a staple for licensing and reproduction in the twenty-first century.

Kaylan and Volman joined The Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa's band, after the Turtles broke up, but were contractually prevented from using their real names, and were thus given the names "The Phlorescent Leech" (Volman) and "Eddie" (Kaylan).

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.