Per conoscere da vicino le complesse vicende musicali e personali che hanno segnato la carriera di Mark Volman (1947-2025), scomparso il mese scorso, ci si può affidare al biografico Happy Forever pubblicato nel 2023 da Jawbone Press, dove la pluralità di voci e commenti di colleghi amici e parenti - sostenuta dal paziente lavoro di John Cody nel ricostruire in forma di puzzle oltre dieci anni di interviste e dichiarazioni, spesso polemiche e contraddittorie - ben ritrae la vivacità, i diversi talenti e l'anticonformismo dell'estroverso personaggio. Che fino all'ultimo non manca di dire la sua.
Mark Volman has led a storied life, and many of those stories are contained in Happy Forever. A true son of Southern California, he has gone from topping the charts with The Turtles (‘Happy Together’) to underground cred with Frank Zappa and beyond. As Flo & Eddie, Mark and his longtime singing partner Howard Kaylan were the not-so-secret ingredient on many other artist’s records, taking Bruce Springsteen into the Top 10 for the very first time and helping T. Rex dominate the British charts. Then came The Ramones, U2, Blondie, Duran Duran, and so many more; the list of credits is long and varied. Happy Forever covers all of that, along with subsequent forays into animation, a stint as a radio personality in Los Angeles and New York, and a midlife return to academia, which led Mark to create and run innovative college programs in LA and Nashville. But this is not the world according to Mark Volman, and it is not your average musical autobiography. Alongside his own comments, this uniquely insightful book contains contributions from more than one hundred of Mark’s peers, friends, and lovers who share their thoughts on the man himself and on topics that span the social and cultural landscape of past half-century.
https://bio.site/markvolmanofficial
https://www.instagram.com/markvolmanofficial
http://jawbonepress.com/happy-forever