The Turtles had huge pop hits in the 60's with songs like "Happy Together" and Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe." They wanted to experiment with other sounds and styles of music by the later 60's, but their record company still wanted them to churn out pop hit singles. They wrote "Elenore" to stick it to their record company, it was supposed to be satire and full of pop cliches. The joke was on The Turtles because it turned out to be a pretty awesome song.