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| Mike Nesmith ponders the age-old question: Can you make a Monkee out of a man? |
And I should know. I'm one of them.
So did John Lennon, who described the Monkees as a cross between the Beatles and the Marx Brothers. Mike Nesmith was cool enough to be invited to EMI studios the night that the orchestral track for "A Day in the Life" was recorded. Micky Dolenz hung out with Paul McCartney. Jimi Hendrix often dropped by Peter Tork's hippie crash pad mansion in L.A. Frank Zappa appeared on their TV show and movie.
After successfully fighting for control over their music, the Monkees peaked in 1967 with their psych-pop classic LP Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., followed a year later by the quite good if regrettably-titled The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees, which featured the classic "Daydream Believer".
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| Davey Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork climb the ladder of success. |
Despite their differences, the Beatles and the Monkees brought joy to their fans in a way few musicians ever do. The Rolling Stones were popular -- but does the word "joy" spring to mind when discussing them? Bob Dylan was the greatest American songwriter of the second half of the 20th century, but you don't listen to him to lift your spirits.
Another thing to remember is that while the wiseguy music critics of the time never missed a moment to diss the Monkees, the band itself won the respect of musicians. Just read what happens when Jerry Garcia refuses to take the bait of a too-cool music magazine writer:
He could have said the same thing about, say, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra -- two legends who weren't known for their musicianship or songwriting abilities. (Hey, the Beach Boys didn't play their own instruments for years, but nobody gave them crap for it.) But the point was made: Jerry Garcia thought the Monkees records were really pretty good.
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| Mike and Micky got closer to John and Paul than any of their critics. |
Whose respect, then, would you prefer to have: that of music critics, or the Beatles and Frank Zappa?
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| Hey hey, we're the potheads. |
But having never won the respect of the counter-culture they were courting, it was inevitable the Monkees would eventually crash and burn. At least they didn't go quietly into that stoned night. Their only movie, Head -- co-written and produced by Jack Nicholson -- was trippier than Magical Mystery Tour. The band's last hurrah as a quartet, the NBC special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, remains bolder, more bizarre and frankly more self-lacerating than anything on American network television today.
Peter Tork left the band before it even aired. Nesmith, the band's most prolific songwriter, exited a year later. Perhaps having inherited his mother's innovative skill -- she made her fortune creating White-Out -- he formed The First National Band, which created the foundation of today's alt-country movement. Several years later, his TV series Pop Clips evolved into MTV. (He would go on to win the first Grammy for Best Longform Video.) And in the early days of home computers, Nesmith made his new music available via download, at a time when most people had no idea what the hell that meant.
Through it all, Monkees reunions came and went. Five years ago, not long before Peter Tork's death (Davy died in 2012), the surviving Monkees recorded Good Times!, with songs contributed by longtime fans including The Jam's Paul Weller, Oasis' Noel Gallagher, and XTC's Andy Partridge. The Brits always had good taste.
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| Mike and his new band greet their fans. |
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| Mike and Micky in 2021: long-haired hippies no more. |
Mike Nesmith had just wrapped up a sold-out concert tour with Micky Dolenz at the time of his death. The end of the tour coincided with the premiere of the acclaimed streaming docuseries Get Back starring, of course, the Beatles. The moral of the story: Joy never goes out of style.
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From 1977, the pre-MTV music video that set the standard for all to follow: Mike Nesmith's "Rio".
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