A recent listening of an outstanding interview with Mike Nesmith of The Monkees, The First National Band and Elephant Parts fame on Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast led to today's blogpost, as did a fun fact: today just happens to be the 55th anniversary of the premiere of The Monkees on NBC-TV on September 12, 1966.
The lads - Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork - still hold a soft spot for many of us of a certain age, those of us who were elementary school students when The Monkees TV show (a.k.a. A Hard Day's Night meets The Marx Brothers) and first three albums hit the pop culture zeitgeist.
For starters, we recommend watching the Hey Hey Were The Monkees documentary, directed by Alan Boyd & The Monkees. For those not steeped in the group's history and mid-1960's pop culture, this is an excellent primer.
As is the following. . .
Hit songs by The Monkees, musically closest to the contemporaneous Pacific Northwest garage rockers turned popsters Paul Revere & The Raiders, had an enduring impact and have been covered by very diverse recording artists. One enthusiastic and enjoyable example is Run DMC's cover of Mike Nesmith's song Mary Mary.
To answer the question of who, besides Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, were The Usual Suspects in the story of The Monkees, the short list includes Don Kirschner, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Jeff Barry, Chip Douglas, Paul Mazursky, Larry Tucker, Bob Rafelson, Burt Schneider, James Frawley, Gerald Gardner, Dee Caruso, The Wrecking Crew, (Brill Building songwriters) Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin . . . and none other than Jack Nicholson.
Kirschner, the hitmaker with the magic touch, produced the first two Monkees albums, which featured a slew of songs by Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart. Working with Kirschner: Jeff Barry.
Boyce & Hart wrote incredibly catchy tunes both for The Monkees 1966-1967 heydey and the later reunion albums and tours (Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart).
The Monkees TV show was developed by (future feature film director) Paul Mazursky, Larry Tucker, Burt Schneider and Bob Rafelson.
Among the scenarists on The Monkees TV show - in between stints on the U.S. variation on That Was The Week That Was and as head writers on season 4 of Get Smart - were Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso.
Hollywood studio virtuosos The Wrecking Crew provided inspired backing on darn near every pop record waxed in mid-1960's Los Angeles, from Brian Wilson to The Mamas & The Papas to Arthur Lee & Love. They're all over the first two Monkees albums, and appear to a lesser degree on subsequent records (after The Monkees demanded they be allowed to play on their own records and Kirshner was fired), beginning with Headquarters, produced by Chip Douglas.
Always wondered if that EPIC drum riff on The Monkees theme song was Hal Blaine and whether it was Glen Campbell or Tommy Tedesco who played the outstanding lead guitar break. Who wrote the hits (in addition to Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)? the Kingston Trio's John Stewart wrote one of their best songs, Daydream Believer, and Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin penned many more excellent tunes.
Rafelson and his friend Jack Nicholson concluded that it was time, after the cancellation of the TV series in 1968, to finish off The Monkees as surely as if the boys were a rival gang in a 1930's Warner Brothers crime flick starring Jimmy Cagney.
The plan: casting the beloved TV stars and bubblegum popsters in a bizarre stream-of-consciousness movie utterly counter to their wholesome image and titled Head. The objective: kill The Monkees once and for all. The uncredited scribes of Dangerous Minds wrote all about the film, which acheived its objective and then some.
This worked like a charm - this anti-Monkees experimental feature, written and produced by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson, and directed by Rafelson, bombed at the box office, but not necessarily with the group's 420-soaked fans.
Hopefully, there were pizzas, tacos and plenty of crunchy snack items available at concessions for whatever stoned-out audiences showed up.
We're fans of this psychedelic anti-movie, especially the scene in which the Prefab Four are dandruff in Victor Mature's scalp. This is with the full understanding that continuity as such and any links whatsoever between the various segments are not a factor at any point in the film.
As fate would have it Monkee $$$$$$ from record sales would fund two subseqent projects of Rafelson and Nicholsen. . . Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, which he followed with The King of Marvin Gardens (1972).
Their last TV appearance was on the special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, which aired on NBC on April 14, 1969. This is entirely a musical special and would be this writer's pick of all their TV work, much as The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees remains this music aficionado's favorite of all the Prefab Four albums.
After prog rockers Brian Auger & The Trinity introduce them, the lads do their individual specialties: Micky belting out r&b flavored rock/soul, Mike offering his spin on quirky country rock and Davy returning to his Broadway musical theatre roots. At one point, Micky sings with Brian Auger & The Trinity and does a duet with the group's commanding vocalist, Julie Driscoll.
As the Monkees were splitting up in 1969, with Peter Tork having already left, the band made a memorable appearance on The Joey Bishop Show. Micky's Stax-Volt take on "I'm A Believer" is a very good reimagining of the song.
The Monkees re-formed and toured again starting in 1986, after MTV revived their TV show to great popular success. Young fans who saw The Monkees for the first time on MTV and Nickelodeon got to see them in concert.
One can purchase Monkees albums at Rhino Records and buy Nesmith's records and videos on Michael Nesmith's Videoranch. It has been a few years since this blogger has revisited the music of The Monkees, its offshoots (Boyce & Hart) and especially Mike Nesmith’s solo records with First National Band and other groups. Like The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, the PreFab 4's best and most fully realized album, Nesmith's first solo record, The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, is a goody.
Thankfully, Mike (a.k.a. "Nez" "Wool Cap") and Micky are very much with us in 2021 and still making music, having just started the Monkees Farewell Tour.
The Monkees and The Box Tops share a certain era in pop music and cachet, along with the other pop/rock band with a TV show, Paul Revere & The Raiders (who Boyce & Hart also penned songs for). It’s tough to say whether the catchy as catchy can be songs from More Of The Monkees, the Raiders' Midnight Ride album or the hit Box Tops singles The Letter, Soul Deep and Cry Like A Baby win the prize for best ear worm ever; they may all be tied for that honor. Meanwhile, the post-1960's solo albums of The Monkees' Mike Nesmith and The Box Tops' Alex Chilton (with and without Big Star) remain Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog favorites.
While a year or two after The Monkees' first album, the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Yardbirds (morphing into Led Zeppelin), Traffic, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, the San Francisco bands (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother & The Holding Company) and the impassioned soul music of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and James Brown would be spinning repeatedly and emphatically on our turntables and in our brains en masse, along with The Beatles and Rolling Stones (alas, Brian Wilson's symphonic pop suite "SMiLE" would not see the official light of day until 1993), in 1966, The Monkees were the cat's meow for us 1956-1959 babies.
We extend respectful tips of the top hats worn in a Monkees episode to Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and the many backing band musicians who have contributed to their tours. Thanks, gentlemen, for making the transition from a TV show to a real touring band, starting in 1966, and entertaining succeeding generations well into the 21st century.
For more cool stuff on the Prefab Four, check out Michael Nesmith’s Videoranch on YouTube, the Culture Sonar website, The Monkees Live Almanac, Andrew Sandoval's book The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story, the numerous reviews of Monkees episodes by prolific writer on 1950’s and 1960’s television David Lawler posted on The Blissville Podcast.
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