The Monkees were a pop rock quartet assembled by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider in Los Angeles in 1966 for the American
television series The Monkees, which aired from
1966 to 1968. The members were Americans
Micky Dolenz,
Michael Nesmith,
Peter
Tork, and Englishman
Davy
Jones, who were supervised and popularized by
Don Kirshner.
At the time of the band's formation, its producers saw The Monkees
as a
Beatles-like band. At the start,
the band members provided vocals, and were given some performing
and production opportunities, but they eventually fought for and
earned the right to collectively supervise all musical output under
the band's name. The group undertook several concert tours,
allowing an opportunity to perform as a live band as well as on the
TV series. Although the show was canceled in 1968, the band
continued releasing records until 1970. In the 1980s, the
television show and music experienced a revival, which led to a
series of reunion tours, and new records featuring various
incarnations of the band's lineup.
Conception
Aspiring filmmakers
Bob Rafelson and
Bert Schneider were inspired by the
Beatles' film
A Hard Day's Night to develop
a television series about a fictional rock 'n' roll group. The duo,
jointly calling their firm "Raybert Productions", sold the idea to
Screen Gems television and in September, 1965,
Daily Variety and
The Hollywood Reporter ran an ad
seeking "Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new
TV series". As many as 400 hopefuls showed up to be considered as
one of the "4 insane boys" who would be the stars of the show. From
this pool, four were chosen to become the fictional band The
Monkees.
George Michael "Micky" Dolenz had been
the 10-year-old star of the
Circus Boy
series in the 1950s, during which time he had used the stage name
"Micky Braddock", and was a working actor. He found out about
The Monkees through his agent.
Englishman
Davy Jones had
achieved some initial success on the musical stage. Already
recording for the Colpix record label and already under contract at
Columbia/Screen Gems, he had been identified in advance as a
potential star for the TV series. Indeed, he later acknowledged
that
The Monkees was initially created primarily around
him, even with its linkages to
A Hard Day's Night.
Texan
Robert Michael "Mike" Nesmith
was a songwriter and guitarist who had recorded for Colpix under
the name "Michael Blessing". He was the only Monkee who had come in
to audition from seeing the original advertisement. He repeatedly
denied having been the only musician in the team or, for that
matter, much of a musician.
Peter Tork, whose real name was Peter
Halsten Thorkelson, was recommended to Rafelson and Schneider by
friend
Stephen Stills. Tork, a
skilled multi-instrumentalist, had performed at various Greenwich
Village folk clubs before moving west, where he was a dishwasher
before becoming a Monkee. Nesmith subsequently called Tork a better
musician, by several orders of magnitude, than Nesmith himself
was.
Developing the music
During the casting process, Screen Gems head of music,
Don Kirshner was contacted to secure music for
the pilot that would become
The Monkees.
Not getting much
interest from his usual stable of Brill Building
writers, Kirshner assigned Thomas "Tommy" Boyce and Robert "Bobby" Hart
to the project. The duo contributed four demo recordings to
the pilot, featuring their own voices.
When
The Monkees was picked up as a series, development of
the musical side of the project accelerated.
Columbia-
Screen
Gems and
RCA Records entered into a
joint venture called
Colgems Records
primarily to distribute Monkees records. Raybert set up a rehearsal
space and rented instruments for the group to practice playing, but
it quickly became apparent they would not be in shape in time for
the series debut. The producers called upon Don Kirshner to recruit
a producer for the Monkees sessions.
Kirshner called on
Snuff Garrett,
helmer of several hits by
Gary Lewis & the Playboys,
to produce the initial musical cuts for the show. Garrett, upon
meeting the four Monkees in June 1966, decided that Jones would
sing lead, a choice that was unpopular with the group. This cool
reception led Kirshner to drop Garrett and buy out his contract.
Kirshner next allowed Nesmith to produce sessions, provided he did
not play on any tracks he produced. Nesmith did, however, start
using the other Monkees on his sessions, particularly Tork as a
guitarist. Kirshner came back to the enthusiastic Boyce and Hart to
be the regular producers, but he brought in one of his top east
coast men, Jack Keller, to lend some experience to the sessions.
Boyce and Hart observed quickly that when brought in to the studio
together, the four actors would try to crack each other up. Because
of this, they would often bring in each singer individually.
According to Nesmith, it was Dolenz's voice that made the Monkees's
sound distinctive, and even during tension-filled times Nesmith and
Tork voluntarily turned over lead vocal duties to Dolenz on their
own compositions, such as Tork's "
For Pete's Sake", which
became the closing title theme for the second season of the TV
show.
The Monkees' first single, "
Last Train to Clarksville", was
released in August 1966, just weeks prior to the broadcast and, in
conjunction with the first broadcast of the television show on
September 12, 1966, on the NBC television network, NBC and Columbia
had a major hit on their hands. The first long-playing album,
The Monkees, was
released in October and shot to the top of the charts.
From TV to stage
Developing a live act
In assigning instruments for purposes of the television show, a
dilemma arose as none of the four was an actual drummer. Both
Nesmith, a guitarist, and Tork, who could play several stringed and
keyboard instruments, declined to give the drum set a try. Jones
tested well initially as a novice drummer, but the camera could
barely capture him behind the drums because of his short stature.
Thus, Dolenz was assigned to become the drummer. Tork taught Dolenz
his first few beats on the drums and the producers hired him a
teacher.
Unlike most television shows at the time, the Monkees episodes were
written with many "setups", requiring frequent breaks to prepare
the set and cameras for short bursts of filming. Some of the
"bursts" are considered proto-
music
videos, inasmuch as they were produced to sell the records.
Eric Lefcowitz, in
The Monkees
Tale, pointed out—and Nesmith corroborated him—that the
Monkees were first and foremost a video group. The four actors
would spend 12-hour days on the set, many of them waiting for the
production crew to do their jobs. Noticing that their instruments
were left on the set unplugged, the four decided to turn them on
and start playing.
After working on the set all day, the Monkees (usually Dolenz)
would be called in to the recording studio to cut vocal tracks. As
the Monkees were essential to the recording process, there were few
limits on how long they could spend in the recording studio, and
the result was an extensive catalogue of unreleased
recordings.
Pleased with their initial efforts, Columbia, over Kirshner's
objections, planned to send the Monkees out to play live concerts.
The massive success of the series and its spin-off records created
intense pressure to mount a touring version of the group.
Against
the initial wishes of the producers, Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith, and
Tork went out on the road and made their debut live performance in
December 1966 in Hawaii
.
The band had no time to rehearse a live performance except between
takes on set. They worked on the TV series all day, recorded in the
studio at night, and slept very little. The weekends were usually
filled with special appearances or filming of special
sequences.
These performances were sometimes used during the actual series.
The episode "Too Many Girls (Fern and Davy)" opens with a live
version of "
Steppin'
Stone" being performed as the scene was shot. One entire
episode was filmed featuring live music.
The last show of the
premiere season, "Monkees on Tour", was shot in a documentary style by filming a concert in
Phoenix,
Arizona
on January 21, 1967. Bob Rafelson wrote and
directed that episode.
On tour
In commentary tracks included in the DVD release of the first
season of the show, Nesmith stated that Tork was better at playing
guitar than bass. In Tork's commentary, he stated that Jones was a
good drummer and had the live performance lineups been based solely
on playing ability, it should have been Tork on guitar, Nesmith on
bass, and Jones on drums, with Dolenz taking the fronting role,
rather than as it was done with Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass,
and Dolenz on drums, yet when they took over as instrumentalists
the members stayed in their known roles. (Jones mostly played
maracas and tambourine, filling in briefly for Dolenz on drums on a
song and for Tork on bass when he played keyboards.) The four
Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the
live set. The most notable exceptions being during each member's
solo sections where during the December 1966 – May 1967 tour,
they were backed by the
Candy Store
Prophets. During the summer 1967 tour of the United States and
Great Britain (from which the
Live
1967 recordings are taken), they were backed by a band
called the Sundowners. In 1968, the Monkees toured Australia and
Japan.
The results were far better than expected. Wherever they went they
were greeted by scenes of fan adulation reminiscent of
Beatlemania. This gave the singers increased
confidence in their fight for control over the musical material
chosen for the series.
With Jones sticking primarily to vocals and tambourine (except when
filling in on the drums when Dolenz came forward to sing a lead
vocal), the Monkees' live act constituted a classic
power trio of electric guitar, electric bass, and
drums (except when Tork passed the bass part to Jones or one of the
Sundowners in order to take up the banjo or electric
keyboards).
Meeting the Beatles
Critics of the Monkees observed that they were simply the "prefab
four", a made-for-TV knockoff of
the
Beatles, but the Beatles took it in their stride, and made the
Monkees welcome when they visited England.
John Lennon publicly compared the Monkees' humor
to
The Marx Brothers.
George Harrison praised their self-produced
musical attempts, saying, "When they get it all sorted out, they
might turn out to be the best." (Peter Tork was later one of the
musicians on Harrison's
Wonderwall
Music, playing
Paul
McCartney's five-string
banjo.)
During the time when the Beatles were recording
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band, the Monkees were in England and met the Beatles
at a party, partially inspiring the line in the Monkees's tune
"
Randy Scouse Git" which read "the
four kings of
EMI are sitting stately on the
floor". Nesmith attended the "
A Day in
the Life" sessions at Abbey Road Studios; he can be seen in the
Beatles' home movies, including one scene where he is conversing
with Lennon (who called him
Monkee Man). Dolenz was also
in the studio during a session, which he mentioned while
broadcasting for WCBS-FM in New York (incidentally, he interviewed
Starr on his program). McCartney can be seen in the 2002 concert
film
Back in the U.S. singing "Hey, Hey, We're The
Monkees", the theme from
The
Monkees show, while backstage.
Separation from Kirshner
The Monkees had complained that the producers would not allow them
to play their own instruments on their records. This campaign
eventually forced the series' musical coordinator
Don Kirshner to let the group have more
participation in the recording process (against his strong
objections). This included Nesmith producing his own songs, and
band members making instrumental contributions. The Monkees were
capable of playing their own instruments on the recordings and they
had written some material. Except for the few songs forced through
by the Monkees' campaigning, they were not allowed by Kirshner to
play or use their own material.
The animosity between Kirshner and the Monkees began in the very
early stages of the band. The Monkees' off-screen personalities at
the time were much like what became their on screen image (except
for Peter). This included the playful, hyperactive antics that are
often seen on screen. Apparently, during an early recording
session, the four Monkees were clowning around in the studio. The
antics escalated until Micky Dolenz poured a Pepsi on Kirshner's
head; at the time, Dolenz did not know Kirshner on sight.
Nesmith and Tork were particularly upset when they were on tour in
January 1967 and discovered that a second album,
More of The Monkees, had been
released without their knowledge. The Monkees were annoyed at not
having even been told of the release in advance, at having their
opinions on the track selection ignored, and also because of the
amateurish-looking cover art, which was merely a composite of
pictures of the four taken for a
J.C.
Penney clothing advertisement. Indeed,
the Monkees had not even been given a copy of the album; they had
to buy it from a record store.
The climax of the rivalry was an intense argument between Nesmith
and Kirshner
Colgems lawyer Herb Moelis,
which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in January 1967.
Kirshner had presented the group with royalty checks and Nesmith
had responded with an ultimatum, demanding a change in the way the
Monkees' music is chosen and recorded. Moelis reminded Nesmith that
he was under contract. The confrontation ended with Nesmith
punching a hole in a wall and saying, "That could have been your
face, motherfucker!" (However, all the band members, including
Nesmith, reluctantly accepted the royalty checks.)
Kirshner's dismissal came in early February 1967 when an agreement
was reached between
Colgems and the Monkees
to release material directly created by the group in addition to
Kirshner-produced material. Kirshner violated this agreement when
he released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", a selection of
Neil Diamond's authorship and
composition, as a single with "She Hangs Out", a song recorded in
New York with
Davy Jones vocals,
as the flipside. When the single was discovered, Kirshner was
immediately dismissed.
Kirshner was reported to have been incensed by the group's
unexpected rebellion, especially when he felt they lacked the
musical talent, and were hired for their acting ability alone. This
experience led directly to Kirshner's later venture,
The Archies, which was an
animated series – the "stars" existed only
on animation
cels, with music done by studio
musicians, and obviously could not seize creative control over the
records issued under their name.
Screen Gems held the publishing rights
to a wealth of great material, with the Monkees given first crack
at many new songs. Their choices were not unerring; the band turned
down "
Sugar, Sugar", which became one
of the biggest hits of 1969 when Kirshner recorded it with studio
musicians and released it under the name of
The Archies. A rumor circulated that a version
of "Sugar Sugar" was recorded using session musicians with Davy
Jones providing all the vocals that was never released. However,
when asked Jones confirmed that Kirshner had offered it to them,
but stated he never recorded it. The Monkees never had to record a
song they truly disliked, as Dolenz affirmed on
The Larry King
Show in 1987. (They would sometimes lampoon songs during
takes, though; their lighthearted version of "Gonna Buy Me a Dog"
ended up being picked for the group's first album.)
Independence
On their third album,
Headquarters (produced by
Chip Douglas and issued in May 1967), the four
Monkees wrote and played on much of their own material. Nearly all
vocals and instruments on
Headquarters were performed by
the four Monkees (the exceptions being only a few small parts
usually filled by producer Chip Douglas). The album shot to number
one, but was quickly eclipsed the following month by a milestone
cultural event when
The Beatles released
Sgt.
Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Following
Headquarters, they began what they referred to
as "mix mode" where they played their own instruments but also
continued to employ
session
musicians. The Monkees continued using additional musicians
(including
The Wrecking
Crew,
Louie Shelton, members of
the
Byrds and the
Association, drummer "Fast"
Eddie Hoh, and
Neil
Young) throughout their recording career, especially when the
group became temporarily estranged after
Pisces, Aquarius,
Capricorn & Jones Ltd. and recorded some of their
songs separately.

The Monkees performing "What Am I
Doin' Hangin' 'Round" in 1967.
(l to r: Nesmith, Jones, Dolenz, Tork)
The high of
Headquarters was short-lived, however.
Recording and producing as a group was Tork's major interest and he
hoped that the four would continue working together as a band on
future recordings. However, the four did not have enough in common
regarding their musical interests. In commentary for the DVD
release of the second season of the show, Tork said that Dolenz was
"incapable of repeating a triumph". Having been a musician for one
album, Dolenz no longer was interested in being a drummer, and
largely gave up playing instruments on Monkees recordings.
(Producer Chip Douglas also had identified Dolenz's drumming as the
weak point in the collective musicianship of the quartet, having to
splice together multiple takes of Dolenz's "shaky" drumming for
final use.) Nesmith and Jones were also moving in different
directions, with Nesmith following his country/folk instincts and
Jones reaching for Broadway-style numbers.
While the first two albums, produced under Kirshner's direction,
constituted prime examples of the traditional American pop music
industry, with its Brill Building composers and its skilled studio
session players, the next three albums, while not shining as
brightly in terms of polished commerciality, constituted high
class, original examples of the individual Monkees' country-rock,
folk-rock, psychedelic rock, soul/R&B, guitar rock, Broadway,
and English music hall sensibilities. Tork, free from Kirshner's
restrictions, contributed some of the most memorable and catchy
instrumental flourishes, such as the piano introduction to
"
Daydream Believer" and the banjo
part on "You Told Me". Nesmith dove into his country sensibilities,
producing a roots sound for popular consumption and contributed his
idiosyncratic poetry as lyrics to several pieces. Jones and
Dolenz's vocals continued to shine, even after
Head, when the project was
clearly falling apart.
When the Monkees toured Britain in 1967, there was a major
controversy over the revelation that the group did not always play
all of their own instruments in the studio, although they did play
them all while touring (except for the solo segments, which used
backing band the
Candy Store
Prophets). The story made the front pages of several UK and
international music papers, with the group derisively dubbed "The
Pre-Fab Four". Nevertheless, they
were generally welcomed by many British stars, who realized the
group included talented musicians and sympathized with their wish
to have more creative control over their music.
Many Monkees fans argued that the controversy unfairly targeted the
band, while conveniently ignoring the fact that a number of leading
British and American groups (including critical favorites such as
the Byrds and the
Beach Boys)
habitually used session players on their recordings. This
commonplace practice had previously passed without comment.
However, the Beatles had led a wave of groups who provided most of
their own instrumentation on their recordings (although they at
times used additional musicians such as
George Martin,
Eric
Clapton or
Billy Preston to
augment the Beatles' own instrumentation) and wrote most of their
own songs. The comic book quality of the Monkees' television series
(where they mimed song performances out of necessity) brought
additional scrutiny of their recorded music. But both supporters
and critics of the group agree that the producers and Kirshner had
the good taste to use some of the best pop songwriters of the
period.
Neil Diamond,
the Boyce-Hart partnership,
Gerry Goffin and
Carole
King,
Harry Nilsson,
Barry Mann,
Cynthia
Weil, and many other highly regarded writers had songs recorded
by the Monkees.
In November 1967, the wave of anti-Monkee sentiment was reaching
its peak while the Monkees released their fourth album,
Pisces,
Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd. In liner notes for the
1995 re-release of this album, Nesmith was quoted as saying that
after
Headquarters, "The press went into a full-scale war
against us, talking about how 'The Monkees are four guys who have
no credits, no credibility whatsoever and have been trying to trick
us into believing they are a rock band.' Number one, not only was
this not the case; the
reverse was true.
Number two, for the press to report with genuine alarm that the
Monkees were not a real rock band was looney tunes! It was one of
the great goofball moments of the media, but it stuck."
The Monkees went back into the recording studio, largely
separately, and produced a large volume of recordings, material
that eventually turned up on several albums. In April 1968,
The Birds, The
Bees & The Monkees was released. Being released after
the final season of the television series (the series was cancelled
in February 1968), this was the first Monkees album not to hit
number one, but it still went gold. The album cover—a quaint
collage of items looking like a display in a jumble shop or toy
store—was chosen over the Monkees' objections.
Beyond television
During the filming of the second season, the band tired of scripts
which they deemed monotonous and stale. They had already succeeded
in eliminating the
laugh track (a
then-standard on American sitcoms), with the bulk of Season 2
episodes sans the canned chuckles. They proposed switching the
format of the series to become more like a
variety show, with musical guests and live
performances. This desire was partially fulfilled within some
second-season episodes, with guest stars like musicians
Frank Zappa,
Tim
Buckley and
Charlie Smalls
(composer of
The Wiz), performing
on the show. However, NBC was not interested in eliminating the
existing format, and the group had little desire to continue for a
third season. Screen Gems and NBC went ahead with the existing
format anyway, commissioning
Monkees writers Gerald
Gardner and Dee Caruso to create a straight-comedy, no-music
half-hour in the
Monkees mold; a pilot episode was filmed
with the then-popular nightclub act
The Pickle Brothers. The pilot had the
same energy and pace of
The Monkees, but never became a
series.
After
The Monkees was cancelled in February 1968, Rafelson
directed the four Monkees in a feature film,
Head, originally titled "Untitled".
Schneider was executive producer, and the project was co-written
and co-produced by Rafelson with a then relatively unknown
Jack Nicholson. Rumors abound that the title
was chosen in case a sequel was made. The advertisements would
supposedly have read: "From the producers who gave you HEAD".
Nicholson also assembled the film's soundtrack album. The film,
conceived and edited in a
stream of consciousness
style, featured oddball cameo appearances by movie stars
Victor Mature,
Annette Funicello, a young
Teri Garr, boxer
Sonny
Liston, famous
stripper Carol Doda, and musician
Frank Zappa.
It was filmed at Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems studios and
on location in California
, Utah
, and
The
Bahamas
between February 19 and May 17, 1968 and premiered
in New York City on November 6 of that
year (the film later debuted in Hollywood on November 20).
Head was not a commercial success, in part because it was
the antithesis of
The Monkees television show, intended to
comprehensively demolish the group's carefully groomed public
image. Rafelson and Nicholson's "Ditty Diego-War Chant" (recited at
the start of the film by the Monkees), ruthlessly parodies
Boyce and Hart's "Monkees Theme". A sparse
advertising campaign (with no mention of the Monkees) squelched any
chances of the film doing well, and it played only briefly in
nearly-empty cinemas. In commentary for the DVD release, Nesmith
said that by this time, everyone associated with the Monkees,
including the four Monkees, "had gone crazy". They were each using
the platform of the Monkees to push their own disparate career
goals, to the detriment of the Monkees project. Indeed, Nesmith
said,
Head was Rafelson and Nicholson's intentional effort
to "kill" the Monkees, so that they would no longer be bothered
with having to deal with the matter. Tork said in DVD commentary
that everyone had developed such difficult personalities that the
big-name stars invited as guests on the show would invariably leave
the experience "hating everybody".
But they all proved later to have gotten it entirely wrong. For
over the intervening years
Head has developed a
cult following for its innovative style and
anarchic humor, and the
soundtrack album (long out of
print, but re-released by Rhino in the 1980s and now available in
an expanded CD version) is counted among their most adventurous
recordings. Members of the Monkees, Nesmith in particular, cite
Head (the first Monkees album not to include any Boyce and
Hart compositions) as one of the crowning achievements of the band.
The highlights include Nesmith's "
Circle
Sky", an all-out rocker, Tork's psychedelic "Can You Dig It?",
"Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?" and the
Goffin/King composition "Porpoise Song".
The Monkees had several international hits which are still heard on
pop and
oldies stations. These include
"
I'm a Believer", "
Steppin' Stone", "
Daydream Believer", "
Last Train to Clarksville", and
"
Pleasant Valley Sunday".
Despite their seemingly permanent reputation as a made-for-TV act,
their hits and many lesser recordings present an enduring quality
that has earned respect over the years.
Six albums were produced with the original Monkees lineup, four of
which went to number one on the
Billboard chart. This success was
supplemented by a series of successful world concert tours. But
tensions within the group were increasing, and Peter Tork quit
shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after
completing work on their 1969 NBC television special,
Thirty-Three And One-Third
Revolutions Per Monkee, which rehashed many of the ideas
from
Head, only with the Monkees playing a strangely
second-string role. In the DVD commentary for the television
special, Dolenz noted that after filming was complete, Nesmith gave
Tork a gold watch as a going-away present, engraved "From the guys
down at work." (Tork kept the back, but replaced the watch several
times in later years.)
The remaining Monkees had decided to pursue their musical interests
separately since
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones
Ltd.; they were no longer in the studio together—and planned a
future double album (eventually to be reduced to
The Monkees Present) on which each
Monkee would separately produce one side of a disc. No longer
getting the group dynamic he wanted, and pleading "exhaustion" from
the grueling schedule, Tork bought out his remaining
contract.
Reduced to a trio, the remaining members went on to record
Instant
Replay and
The Monkees
Present. Throughout 1969, the trio would appear as guests
on various television programs such as
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,
The
Johnny Cash Show,
Hollywood Squares, and
Laugh-In. The Monkees also had a contractual
obligation to appear in several television commercials with
Bugs Bunny for
Kool-Aid drink mix as well as Post cereal box
singles.
In the summer of 1969 the three Monkees embarked on a tour with the
backing soul band Sam and the Goodtimers. The concerts for this
tour were longer sets than their earlier concert tours: many shows
running over two hours. Unfortunately the 1969 Monkees' tour was
not all that successful; some shows were cancelled due to poor
ticket sales. In March 1970, Nesmith left the group, leaving only
Dolenz and Jones to record
Changes as the Monkees. By
this time, Colgems was hardly putting any effort into the project,
and they sent Dolenz and Jones to New York for the
Changes
sessions, to be produced by
Jeff Barry
and
Andy Kim. In comments for the liner
notes of the 1994 re-release of
Changes, Dolenz and Jones
said that they felt they had been tricked into recording an "Andy
Kim album" under the Monkees name. Except for the two singers'
vocal performances,
Changes is the only album that fails
to win any significant praise from critics looking back 40 years to
the Monkees' recording output. This would also mark the last
official Monkees single "Oh My My" which also became the last
Monkees music film promo (produced by Micky).
After a 1971 single ("Do It In The Name Of Love" b/w "Lady Jane"),
the Monkees lost the rights to use the name; in several countries,
the USA included, the single was not credited to the Monkees but to
Dolenz and Jones. The duo continued to tour throughout most of the
1970s but were unable to use the "Monkees" name.
Due in part to repeats of
The Monkees on Saturday mornings
and in syndication,
The Monkees Greatest
Hits charted in 1976. The LP, issued by
Arista, who by this time had custody of the
Monkees’ master tapes, courtesy of their corporate owner, Screen
Gems, was actually a re-packaging of an earlier (1972) compilation
LP called
Refocus that had been issued by Arista's
previous label imprint, Bell Records, also owned by Screen Gems.
Dolenz and Jones took advantage of this, joining ex-Monkees
songwriters
Tommy Boyce and Bobby
Hart to tour the United States.
From 1975 to 1977, as the "Golden Hits of
The Monkees" show ("The Guys who Wrote 'Em and the Guys who Sang
'Em!"), they successfully performed in smaller venues such as state
fairs and amusement parks, as well as making stops in Japan
, Thailand
and Singapore
. They also released an album of new material
as
Dolenz,
Jones, Boyce & Hart (they could not use the
Monkees name due to legal reasons). Nesmith had not been interested
in a reunion. Tork claimed later that he had not been asked,
although a Christmas single (credited to Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones
and Peter Tork) was produced by Chip Douglas and released on his
own label in 1976. The single featured Douglas' and Howard Kaylan's
"Christmas Is My Time Of Year" (originally recorded by a 1960s
supergroup, Christmas Spirit), with a B-side of Irving Berlin's
"White Christmas" (Douglas released a remixed version of the
single, with additional overdubbed instruments, in 1986).
Tork also
joined Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart on stage at Disneyland
on July 4, 1976, and also joined Dolenz and Jones
on stage at the Starwood in Hollywood, California
in 1977.
Other semi-reunions occurred between 1970 and 1986. Peter Tork
helped arrange a Micky Dolenz single, "Easy on You"/"Oh Someone" in
1971. Tork also recorded some unreleased tracks for Nesmith's
Countryside label during the 1970s, and Dolenz (by then a
successful television director in the United Kingdom) directed a
segment of Nesmith's NBC-TV series
Television Parts,
although the segment in question was not included when the series'
six episodes aired during the summer of 1985.
Revival
1980s reunions
Brushed off by critics during their heyday as manufactured and
lacking talent, The Monkees experienced a critical and commercial
rehabilitation two decades later. A Monkees TV show marathon
("
Pleasant Valley Sunday")
was broadcast on February 23, 1986, on the video music channel
MTV. In February and March, Tork and Jones
played together in Australia. Then, starting in May, Dolenz, Jones,
and Tork made a "20th Anniversary Tour". MTV promotion resurrected
a smaller version of Monkeemania, and tour dates grew from smaller
to larger venues.
Producer David Fishof reunited the trio which became one of the
biggest live acts of 1986 and 1987, with their original albums
selling again, and a new greatest hits collection reaching platinum
status. Mike Nesmith appeared on stage with Dolenz, Jones, and Tork
twice, both times in Los Angeles: at the Greek Theatre on September
7, 1986, and at the Universal Amphitheatre on July 10, 1989. By
now, Nesmith was amenable to a reunion, but forced to sit out most
projects because of prior commitments to his bustling Pacific Arts
video production company.
However, he did appear with the band in a
1986 Christmas medley music video for MTV, and took part in a
dedication ceremony at the Hollywood Walk of Fame
, when the Monkees received a star there in
1989. Because his mother
Bette Nesmith Graham was the inventor
of
Liquid Paper, Nesmith was wealthy
and had little financial need to join in Monkees-related
projects.
The sudden revival of the Monkees in 1986 helped move the first
official Monkees single since 1971, "That Was Then, This Is Now",
to the #19 position in
Billboard Magazine. The success,
however, was not without controversy. Davy Jones had declined to
sing on the track, recorded along with two other new songs included
in a compilation album,
Then &
Now... The Best of The
Monkees. Some copies of the single and album credit the
new songs to "the Monkees", others as "Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork
(of the Monkees)". Reportedly, these recordings were the source of
some personal friction between Jones and the others during the 1986
tour; Jones would typically leave the stage when the new songs were
performed. A new album by the touring trio,
Pool It! (the Monkees' 10th), appeared the
following year and was a moderate success.
From 1986 to 1989, the
Monkees would conduct major concert tours in the United States
, Australia, Japan
and Europe.
In 1986, a new television series called
The New Monkees appeared. Four young musicians
were placed in a similar series based on the original show, but
"updated" for the 1980s. The show, its accompanying album and the
New Monkees themselves all sank without a trace. (Neither Bob
Rafelson nor Bert Schneider were involved in the development or
production of the series, although it was produced by "Straybert
Productions" headed by Steve Blauner, Rafelson and Schneider's
partner in BBS Productions.)
Beginning in February 1987, Tork and Jones played in Australia
together. When they began playing North America in June, they were
joined by Dolenz and in September 1988, the three rejoined to play
Australia again and then Europe and then North America, with that
string of tours ending in September 1989. On July 9, 1989, the
three were joined in Los Angeles by Nesmith, the first time all
four played together since 1986.
1990s reunions
In 1993, Dolenz and Jones worked together on a television
commercial, and another reunion tour was launched with the two of
them in 1994.
In the 1990s, the Monkees continued to record new material. Their
eleventh album
Justus was
released in 1996. It was the first since 1968 on which all four
original members performed and produced.
Justus was
produced by the Monkees, all songs were written by one of the four
Monkees, and it was recorded using only the four Monkees for all
instruments and vocals, which was the inspiration for the album
title and spelling (
Justus = Just Us).
The trio of Dolenz, Jones, and Tork reunited again for a successful
30th anniversary tour of American amphitheaters in 1996, while
Nesmith joined them onstage in Los Angeles to promote the new songs
from
Justus.
For the first time since the brief 1986
reunion, Nesmith returned to the concert stage for a tour of the
United Kingdom in 1997, highlighted by two sold-out concerts at
Wembley
Arena
in London. The full quartet also appeared in
an ABC television special titled
Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees,
which was written and directed by Nesmith and spoofed the original
series that had made them famous. Nevertheless, following the UK
tour, Nesmith declined to continue future performances with the
Monkees, having faced harsh criticism from the British music press
for his deteriorating musicianship. Tork noted in DVD commentary
that while in 1966, Nesmith had learned a reasonably good version
of the famous "Last Train to Clarksville" guitar lick, that in
1996, Nesmith was no longer able to play it, and Tork had to take
over the lead guitar parts.
Nesmith's departure from the tour came with acrimony in the press.
Jones was quoted by the
Los
Angeles Times as complaining that "he made a new album
with us. He toured Great Britain with us. Then all of a sudden,
he's not here. Later, I hear rumors he's writing a script for our
next movie. Oh, really? That's bloody news to me. He's always been
this aloof, inaccessible person...the fourth part of the jigsaw
puzzle that never quite fit in."
2000s reunions
Tork, Jones, and Dolenz toured the United States in 1997, after
which the group took another hiatus, until the three regrouped
again in 2001. Dolenz, Jones, and Tork toured the United States
from March through September 2001. However, this tour was also
accompanied by public sniping. Dolenz and Jones had announced that
they had "fired" Tork for his constant complaining and threatening
to quit. Tork himself was quoted as saying that as well as the fact
he wanted to tour with his band Shoe Suede Blues. Most acutely,
Tork told WENN News he was troubled by the overindulging of alcohol
by other members of the tour crew:
Jones and Dolenz went on to tour the United Kingdom in 2002, but
Tork declined to participate. Jones and Dolenz toured the United
States one more time as a duo in 2002, and then split to
concentrate on their own individual projects.
With different Monkees citing different reasons, the group chose
not to mark their 40th anniversary in 2006, and it seems doubtful
that the Monkees will be sighted together again.
In June 2007, Tork complained to the New York Post that
Jann Wenner had blackballed the Monkees from the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Tork asserted:
Over the years, the Monkees have expressed admiration for each
other's talents and contributions. However, by 2008, it seemed that
their relationships had soured again. In a March 2008 interview
with the
Baltimore Sun, Jones
spoke bitterly about his fellow ex-Monkees. When asked about any
future reunions, Jones was not optimistic:
Nonetheless, that same month, Jones spotted Tork in the audience at
one of his shows in Connecticut, and he invited Peter onstage,
where they performed "Papa Gene's Blues" together, with obvious
playful affection between them.
Impact
The Monkees, selected specifically to appeal to the youth market
with their manufactured personae and carefully produced singles,
are seen as an original precursor to the modern proliferation of
studio and corporation-created bands. But this critical reputation
has softened somewhat, with the recognition that the Monkees were
neither the first manufactured group nor unusual in this respect.
The Monkees also frequently contributed their own songwriting
efforts on their albums and saw their musical skills improve. They
ultimately became a self-directed group, playing their own
instruments and writing many of their own songs.
The Monkees found unlikely fans among musicians of the
punk rock period of the mid-1970s. Many of these
punk performers had grown up on TV reruns of the series, and
sympathized with the anti-industry, anti-Establishment trend of
their career.
Sex Pistols and
Minor Threat both recorded versions of "(I'm
Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was played live by
Toy Love. The Japanese new wave pop group
The Plastics recorded a synthesizer and
drum-machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979
album "Welcome Plastics".
In 1985,
Monte Landis, who had appeared
in almost every episode of the television series, had a cameo in
Pee-wee's Big
Adventure, a feature film comedy in the style of the
Monkees' television show, and his appearance suggests the producers
wanted
Pee-wee's Big
Adventure to have a connection to it.
In 1988
Run-D.M.C. recorded "Mary, Mary"
on their album
Tougher Than
Leather. Australian
indie-rock
bands of the 1980s such as
Grooveyard
("All The King's Horses"),
Prince Vlad & the
Gargoyle Impalers ("Mary Mary", "For Pete's Sake", and
"
Circle Sky") and
The Upbeat and
The Mexican Spitfires ("Mary Mary")
performed Monkees cover versions.
Cassandra Wilson had an indie hit with
"
Last Train to
Clarksville" in 1995. The
alternative rock group
Smash Mouth had a hit with "I'm a Believer" in
2001, and their version was featured in the blockbuster
computer-animated movie
Shrek.
Japanese indie rock band
Shonen Knife
recorded "Daydream Believer". Indie group
Carter USM recorded "Randy Scouse Git", which is
also called "Alternate Title". The 1980s psychedelic rock band
Bongwater, featuring
Ann Magnuson and
Mark
Kramer, recorded "You Just May Be The One" and "The Porpoise
Song". The Monkees also had a big influence on Paul Westerberg,
lead singer/songwriter for The Replacements. "Daydream Believer"
and "You Just May Be The One" are staples at his live shows. The
British alternative rock band
The
Wedding Present recorded "
Pleasant Valley Sunday" in the early
1990s.
The band's legacy was strengthened by
Rhino Entertainment's acquisition of the
Monkees' franchise from
Columbia
Pictures in the early 1990s. The label has released several
Monkees-related projects, including remastered editions of both the
original television series and their complete music library, as
well as their motion picture
Head.
In the 1990s, three of the Monkees had minor roles in the family
sitcom
Boy Meets World.
Tork played Topanga's father Jedidiah; Jones played Reginald, an
old friend from Europe; Dolenz played Gordy, Mr. Matthews' best
friend. In the one episode that the three were in together, they
performed "My Girl".
In 1991, a feature film called
Daydream Believer (known as
The Girl Who Came
Late in some markets) was released in Australia.
Jones, Tork, and Dolenz also feature memorably as themselves in
The Brady Bunch
Movie. Jones is invited by Marcia to appear as the
surprise star guest at the high school prom. After a difficult
start, he proves a surprise hit with the modern-day audience.
Later, the Bradys themselves perform "Keep On Dancing", a
1960s-style "groovy" song, in the evening's "Search For A Star"
talent contest. Everyone is surprised when they win the award until
it is revealed that the judging panel consists of Jones, Tork and
Dolenz.
David Bowie, already under contract to
record his debut album, was forced to adopt the stage name of
"Bowie" in order to have any chance of having his music released in
the United States, his legal name being David Robert Jones. During
the early 1960s Bowie was performing either under his own name or
the stage name "Davie Jones", and briefly even as "Davy Jones",
creating confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees. To avoid this,
in 1966 he chose "Bowie" for his stage name, after the Alamo hero
Jim Bowie and his famous Bowie knife.
In 2005,
eBay used "Daydream Believer" as the
theme for a promotional campaign.
In 2006,
Evergreen used "Daydream
Believer" in their adverts; the lyrics were adapted for the
product.
Notable achievements
- Had
the top-charting American
single of 1967 ("I'm a
Believer"). (Billboard number-one for seven weeks) with
"Daydream Believer" tied for
third.
- First band to use a Moog
Synthesizer in a top-10 album (used on "Star Collector", "Daily Nightly" and "Love Is Only Sleeping"
from Pisces, Aquarius,
Capricorn & Jones Ltd., released in November
1967).
- Gave the Jimi Hendrix
Experience their first US concert appearances. It should be
noted that Hendrix's heavy psychedelic guitar and sexual overtones
did not go overly well with the teenage girl audience.
- Compelled another David Jones to change his surname to Bowie to avoid being confused with Davy Jones of
The Monkees.
- Gave the producers of Star Trek the
idea to introduce the character of Chekov in response to the popularity of Davy
Jones, complete with hairstyle and appearance mimicking that of
Jones.
- The Monkees reunion tour was the largest grossing tour of
1986.
- Introduced Tim Buckley to a national
audience, via his appearance in the series finale, "Mijacogeo,
Or--The Frodis Caper".
- Last music artist to win the MTV Friday
Night Video Fights by defeating Bon Jovi 51% to 49%.
- First music artist to win two Emmy
Awards.
- First television series to star teenagers living on their own
without parents.
- First rock band to use a multimedia live concert show (film,
stage choreography and music).
- First actual live concert footage to be featured in a motion
picture (Head, 1968).
- Had seven albums on the Billboard top 200 chart at the same
time (six were re-issues during 1986/87).
- The Monkees are one of only ten
artists achieving number-one hits in the United States and United
Kingdom simultaneously.
- More of The Monkees
spent 70 weeks on the Billboard charts becoming the 12th biggest
selling album of all time (Billboard.com).
- Four number-one albums in a year span. The only act to have
their first four albums go to number one on the Billboard
charts.
- Held the number one spot on the Billboard album chart for 31
consecutive weeks.
- Held the record for the longest stay at number one for a debut
record until 1982 when Men At Work's
debut record Business As Usual
broke that record.
Discography
Comics
There was also "The Monkees" comic published by Dell which ran from
1-17 (1967-1969) as well as a Daily Mirror "Crazy Cartoon Book"
(2/6, now 12.5p) which had four comic stories as well as four
photos of The Monkees, all in black and white. Published
1967.
See also
References
Bibliography
External links