The Turtles

While hitting the Top 10 in 1965 with Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" and releasing a number of P.F. "Eve of Destruction" Sloan songs, this L.A. band proved too gigglesome an outfit for the philosophical strainings of folk rock; they moved on to infectious, and exuberantly slight, radio fluff. With Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, the Turtles possessed two strong lead singers -- of a visual mold riotously at odds with rock-star stereotypes -- and their combination of careful song selection and self-mocking humor made them successful and endearing. "Happy Together" (1967) remains their most memorable track; released the same year, "You Know What I Mean" and "She'd Rather Be With Me" were also crafty rock candy. With the same eccentricity that later found Volman and Kaylan recording with Frank Zappa, and, as "Flo and Eddie," singing backup for T. Rex, the Turtles expressed a laudable, if occasional, discontent with their limited role as hitmakers. They flexed this urge not only on the concept album The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands (the album has the group doing send-ups of a vast range of styles) but also in an artful choice of songwriters, Harry Nilsson and Warren Zevon among them. Rhino's 20 Greatest Hits exhaustively covers the straighter Turtles; Turtle Wax does the same for the bent. (PAUL EVANS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide