The Turtles’ Mark Volman Reveals Lewy Body Dementia Diagnosis

Mark Volman, singer and founding member of the Sixties hitmakers the Turtles, has revealed that he has been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.

However, despite being diagnosed with the disease in 2020, Volman told People he still plans on going on tour with the current version of the Turtles. “It’s the safest place for me to be. I can’t get lost or hurt,” Volman quipped.

The “Happy Together” singer’s revelation comes a week before the release of his new memoir, Happy Forever, out June 20.

Volman — also a veteran of Frank Zappa’s the Mothers of Invention, where he, along with the Turtles’ Howard Kaylan, performed under the names Flo and Eddie — talked about first realizing something was wrong in 2018 when he was a music professor at Nashville’s Belmont University.

“I remember slurring, and I wasn’t sure what was going on,” Volman told People. “My brain wandered. I’d go off track. It made no sense.” Soon, hallucinations followed, with the singer imagining everything from Civil War soldiers outside his house to seeing faces in the furniture. Volman also experienced tremors; LBD, as it’s called, shares some symptoms with Parkinson’s, which the condition is sometimes misdiagnosed as.

The comedian Robin Williams died by suicide in 2014, years after his diagnosis with LBD and suffering from its symptoms. Volman, however, has pledged to make “the most out of every day”: Medications have kept the tremors and hallucinations in check, while Volman also has a rigorous daily exercise plan at his local Y. 

“I got hit by the knowledge that this was going to create a whole new part of my life. And I said, ‘Okay, whatever’s going to happen will happen, but I’ll go as far as I can,’” Volman added.

“The challenges of this world affect everybody, and it’s been kind of fun being on the other side of a challenge like this and saying, ‘I feel good.’ My friends are here. I’m still here. And I want people to connect with me.”