Go Away From My Window

When I was in junior high school I used to rush home every day to watch Where The Action Is. Where The Action Is was a half-hour, five days a week, music program for teenagers. School let out at 3:15 PM and the show started at 3:30 PM so if I was lucky I would see about 15 minutes of the program.

Where The Action Is was pretty white bread with people like Paul Revere and the Raiders, Tommy Roe, and The Knickerbockers. A group called The Turtles was on it a lot too.

The Turtles were an example of how talent mattered more than looks or size at the time. Some popular people and groups from the 60's who probably would not be stars today include "Mama" Cass Elliot, Janis Joplin, Eric Burton of The Animals, and most of the members of The Rolling Stones.

I loved The Turtles and remember them singing their hit song It Ain't Me Babe on "Action":



It wasn't until a couple of years later that I found out it was a Bob Dylan song:



Holy Crap! How did I miss the fact that this song is so bitter? Dylan's poisoned Valentine to a woman he is about to dump. Was it- (a) because of the bouncy way The Turtles sing it? (b) because I never really listened closely to the lyrics, even when I sung them myself? (c) because I was just too young to understand what the song was about at all? or (d) all of the above.

D, all of the above. But I could not have been the only one who did not understand the song. It was a Billboard Top Ten Hit for The Turtles in the summer of 1965.

As "CorsairJock" over at YouTube said, "The Turtles, like other Rock n' Roll groups during early '60s, discovered the secret to success: take a Bob Dylan song and play it with electric guitars, preferably a Rickenbacker 12 string."

I won't begrudge The Turtles their success. If it wasn't for them I would have never discovered Bob Dylan.