Turtles – Elenore

I had this single as a kid. I had a cool cousin who had a lot of records in the sixties, and she gave many to me when she found out that I discovered the Beatles. She greatly influenced my young musical tastes. I will always be grateful to her. I still have that single packed away somewhere, and I remember her every time I hear the song.

The Turtles had become one of the biggest pop groups in America thanks to songs like Happy Together, She’d Rather Be With Me, and You Showed Me. Their record company wanted another smash that sounded just like those hits. The band had other ideas.

Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, along with songwriters Al Nichol and Jim Tucker, decided to have a little fun. They intentionally wrote this song as an exaggerated version of a Turtles love song. Every cliché was turned up a notch. The opening line, “You’re my pride and joy, etcetera,” was meant as a joke. Who starts a love song with “etcetera?” That was exactly the point. They figured the label would reject it.

Instead, the opposite happened. The record company loved it and released it as a single in 1968. It climbed to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became another gold record. The joke was on the band. Fans never realized it was a tongue-in-cheek parody. They simply heard another great pop song with one of the catchiest choruses of the decade. Kaylan later admitted they couldn’t believe people took it seriously, but they certainly weren’t complaining.

There was just something about that melody that stuck with me. And, of course, that unforgettable opening line. I still smile every time I hear “You’re my pride and joy, etcetera.” I can’t think of many hit songs that worked the word “etcetera” into the lyrics, yet somehow it fits perfectly. Whether it started as a joke or not, it became exactly what the band was trying to parody, another timeless pop classic. That’s one of the reasons I have always liked the Turtles; they never took themselves seriously.

Behind many of these singles is a story that’s every bit as entertaining as the song itself. And thanks to my cousin handing me that years ago, because it has always been one of those records that takes me right back to being a kid.

The song peaked at #1 in New Zealand,  #6 on the Billboard 100, #4 in Canada, and #7 in the UK in 1968.

Howard Kaylan: It was never intended to be a straight-forward song. It was meant as an anti-love letter to White Whale (their record company), who were constantly on our backs to bring them another ‘Happy Together.’ So I gave them a very skewed version. Not only with the chords changed, but with all these bizarre words. It was my feeling that they would listen to how strange and stupid the song was and leave us alone. But they didn’t get the joke. They thought it sounded good. Truthfully, though, the production on ‘Elenore’ WAS so damn good. Lyrically or not, the sound of the thing was so positive that it worked. It certainly surprised me.” 

Elenore

You got a thing about you
I just can’t live without you
I really want you Elenore near me
Your looks intoxicate me
Even though your folks hate me
There’s no one like you Elenore really

Elenore gee I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy et cetera
Elenore can I take the time
To ask you to speak your mind
Tell me that you love me better

I really think you’re groovy
Let’s go out to a movie
What do ya say now, Elenore can we?
They’ll turn the lights way down low
Maybe we won’t watch the show
I think I love you, Elenore, love me

Elenore, gee I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera
Elenore, can I take the time
To ask you to speak your mind?
Tell me that you love me better

One more time!

Elenore, gee I think you’re swell, ah-hah
Elenore, gee I think you’re swell, ah-hah-hah

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

51 thoughts on “Turtles – Elenore”

  1. Pingback: Turtles – Elenore – MobsterTiger

    1. Oh I love it…I like it more as well than Happy Together…the band also made more off of this one because they wrote it. If you ever get a chance…the Turtles made a documentary about themselves. I always reccommend it to anyone…fans or not…it tells you what they went through. It’s on youtube. They were hilarious…

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  4. Interesting! I haven’t heard this one for years and never paid a huge amount of attention to the lyrics, but even if I had I don’t think I would have picked up on them trying to make a parody with it. Fairly catchy pop tune

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      1. I get what you mean about it being really wonderful to you because of the history and your cousin and such; I’m sure a lot of the music of the ’70s I really love (like that fave of Obbverse’s, ‘Chevy VAn’) has more to do with memories than music itself. BUT- I thought, better than ‘Happy Together’ – no! THEN I listened to it again and … yeah, I think you’re right. Really good, hook-laden pop. Reminds me of the Monkees at their best. Great song to profile

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      2. You know…some other commenter…Nancy said the same thing. I think he just played the chords backwards for Happy Together…I’m almost sure that is true. Thats the melody. You are right…the chorus in this one well hook you…not that Happy Together isn’t…hell it was #1 all over…but this one has it’s own charm.

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  5. This song still sounds great today, Max. ‘Elenore’ was written as a parody of ‘Happy Together’ and it was never intended to be a straight-forward song.  ‘Elenore’ was pretty much the result of Howard Kaylan who wrote this song a half-hour in a hotel room in Chicago saying, “So you want clichéd simplistic pop songs, here is the most clichéd simplistic pop song ever!”  The Turtles sat down and shaped that song into a record that would eventually be produced by Chip Douglas.  In 1968, it became a top 10 hit from the L.A. band’s album The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands.  This album featured a pair of huge hits ‘Elenore’ and ‘You Showed Me’, but there are too many goofy comedy tracks flanking them (the album’s conceit finds the band impersonating various groups in various genres, Sgt. Pepper-style).  Kaylan said that he virtually rewrote the earlier hit as a joke, in order to show the label executives what dicks they were.  He threw in some nonsense like “pride and joy, etcetera” and “I really think you’re groovy” to make the song cheesier.  The “You’re my pride and joy etcetera” line is ingenious and pretty much the key point in recognizing that this song is sarcastic capturing the insouciance of 1968, that devil-may-care “tune in and drop out” ethos of the hippy era.

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    2. Yes, the movie/groovy line should jar but somehow the listener smiles internally at the joke, much like intoxicate me/hate me, it works in that flip ‘let’s just roll with it’ way. Shakespeare it is not- thats the Krafty cheesy charm of it.
      The schmalzy ‘aaaa-haaa-aahaaah’ ending is so close to tipping into complete parody too, yet it somehow still doesn’t. Quite.

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    1. LOL… yea they were confident and didn’t really care…there is a documentary that they made…it’s on youtube…it’s so worth a watch…they are very funny and went through like 12 different managers.

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  8. “Gee I think you’re swell”, should have been a clue. And “do me” was never an innocent phrase in my book. They later performed this song with the Mothers of Invention to try to bring home the parody.
    Thanks for covering this. I’m way too busy (having fun) to rad blogs this week, but this one I couldn’t resist.

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  11. I have loved every Turtles song I heard on the radio. Something so bright and shiny about it. Fit right in with the bubble gum playing at the time. So funny they tried to write a bad song and it became a hit. I remember REM’s song, “The One I Love” seems like a love song but it is anything but.

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  14. I have loved the Turtles since the first time I heard “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” Yeah, it was a Dylan song, but the Turtles made it their own, and took it beyond Dylan (which, uhm, ain’t easy to do).

    The Turtles were a pop machine who loved what they were doing and having fun doing it. Elenore, which in my mind is perfect as a song they performed when they appeared at Nixon’s White House, is RIGHT THERE. No, I don’t know what songs, if any, they did at the White House. But the Turtles playing Nixon’s White House is as incongruous as it gets. Kinda like, uhm, Elenore.

    I loved ’em when they (Flo and Eddie) joined up with Zappa. That is my favorite Zappa band. Not when they were being nasty and poking fun at groupies using “Happy Together” (not Elenore). The Just Another Band From LA record, with Billy the Mountain and all the rest. Sheer delight.

    Both Kaylan and Volman have books out. I honestly didn’t like Kaylan’s, and left it with a sour taste in my mouth for the author, whom I wanted to like. Haven’t gotten to Volman’s yet.

    Mark Volman, RIP

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    1. I do like a lot of Flo and Eddies stuff…my favorite by them is a song called Keep It Warm. It’s pretty much a parody but it’s such a great pop song as well…a lot like this.

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      1. I can’t hear that song (“Keep It Warm”) without thinking of the double entendre and firmly believing it was intentional.

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  16. My siblings had some of their singles and a greatest hits album, so I’ve always enjoyed them. I would have been too young at the time to catch the subversiveness (if that’s a word, the checker doesn’t think so) of it. I guess ignorance was bliss.

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  18. I love this one. They really did write some great late-sixties pop songs. And surely any song with ‘gee I think you’re swell’ in the lyrics isn’t to be taken altogether seriously!

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  19. I absolutely adore Elenore and the lyric highlight is def etcetera 🙂 It’s tongue in cheek but that arrangement, production and melody is brilliant. The humour went over my head as a 10-year-old but it doesnt in any way detract from the enjoyment as an adult in the same way Batman the TV show went over my head as a piss-take as a kid, but made it cult and huge all over again in the UK as the 60’s kids got the jokes in the 70’s.

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