The Monkees
Encyclopedia
The Monkees are an American pop rock
group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966
by Robert "Bob" Rafelson
and Bert Schneider
for the American television series The Monkees
, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz
, Michael Nesmith
and Peter Tork
, and Englishman Davy Jones
. The band's music was initially supervised by producer Don Kirshner
.
At the time of the group's formation, its producers saw The Monkees as a Beatles
-like band. At the start, the band members provided vocals, but were given only limited performing and production opportunities. 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 to record music through 1970. The group reached the height of fame from 1966 to 1968, and influenced many future artists. In 1986, their 20th year, 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.
The Monkees had a number of international hits which are still heard on pop and oldies
stations. These include "(Theme From) The Monkees
", "Last Train to Clarksville
", "I'm A Believer
", "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
", "Pleasant Valley Sunday
". Their albums and singles have sold over 65 million copies worldwide.
and Bert Schneider
were inspired by The Beatles
' film A Hard Day's Night
to devise a television series about a rock 'n' roll group. As "Raybert Productions," they sold the show to Screen Gems television. Rafelson and Schneider's original idea was to cast an existing Los Angeles-based folk rock group, the Lovin' Spoonful. However, the Spoonful were already signed to a record company, which would have denied Screen Gems the right to market music from the show on record. So in September 1965, Daily Variety
and The Hollywood Reporter
ran an ad to cast the band.
, the Screen Gems head of music, 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 Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
to the project. The duo contributed four demo recordings to the pilot, featuring their own voices. One of these recordings was "(Theme From)The Monkees" which helped get the series the green light.
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
, composer 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 production 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. Former Turtles bassist Chip Douglas was responsible for both music presentation—actually leading the band, engineering recordings,
as well as playing bass on most of the TV-era recordings.
The Monkees' first single, "Last Train to Clarksville
", was released in August 1966, just weeks prior to the broadcast debut. 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 a month later and shot to the top of the charts.
Unlike most television shows of 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 concurred, 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.
.
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 "(I'm Not Your) 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 the episode.
In DVD commentary tracks included in the Season One release, 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. The four Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the live set. The most notable exceptions were 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 the UK (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, the group was 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).
; The Beatles, however, took it in their stride and hosted a party for the Monkees when they visited England. The party occurred during the time when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
; as such, the party inspired the line in the Monkees' tune "Randy Scouse Git
," written by Dolenz, 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 John Lennon
. During the conversation, Nesmith had reportedly asked Lennon "Do you think we're a cheap imitation of the Beatles, your movies and your records?", to which Lennon assuredly replied, "I think you're the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers
. I've never missed one of your programs." George Harrison
praised their self-produced musical attempts, saying, "It's obvious what's happening, there's talent there. They're doing a TV show, it's a difficult chore and I wouldn't be in their shoes for the world. When they get it all sorted out, they might turn out to be the best." (Tork was later one of the musicians on Harrison's Wonderwall Music
, playing Paul McCartney
's five-string banjo
.)
Dolenz was also in the studio during a session, which he mentioned while broadcasting for WCBS-FM in New York (incidentally, he interviewed Ringo Starr
on his program). Paul 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.
The Monkees had complained that the producers would not allow them to play their own instruments on their records, or to use their own material. These complaints intensified when Kirshner moved track recording from California to New York, leaving the Monkees out of the musical process until they were called upon to add their vocals to the completed tracks. This campaign eventually forced 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.
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, at Don Kirshner's self-congratulatory liner notes, 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, Kirshner, and Colgems lawyer Herb Moelis, which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in January 1967. Kirshner had presented the group with royalty checks and gold records. Nesmith had responded with an ultimatum, demanding a change in the way the Monkees' music was 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!" However, each of the members, including Nesmith, accepted the $250,000 royalty checks (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds).
Kirshner's dismissal came in early February 1967, when he violated an agreement between Colgems and the Monkees not to release material directly created by the group together with unrelated Kirshner-produced material. Kirshner violated this agreement when he released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", composed and written by Neil Diamond
, as a single with "She Hangs Out", a song recorded in New York with Davy Jones
vocals, as the B-side.
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 cel
s, 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—against the wishes of Don Kirschner—allegedly turned down "Sugar, Sugar
" in 1967, which became one of the biggest hits of 1969 as by The Archies
. However, producer and songwriter Jeff Barry, who cowrote "Sugar, Sugar" with Andy Kim
, denied in the late 90s that the Monkees had been offered the tune, saying it had not even been written at the time.
, with all four Monkees in the studio, now together at the same time, with very few guest musicians. 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 few, usually by Chip Douglas on bass). The album shot to number one, but was quickly eclipsed the following week 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 musician
s. The Monkees continued using additional musicians (including The Wrecking Crew
, Louie Shelton, Glen Campbell
, members of the Byrds
and the Association
, drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, Lowell George
, Stephen Stills
, Buddy Miles
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 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.
The next three albums featured a diverse mixture of musical style influences, including country-rock, folk-rock, psychedelic rock, soul/R&B, guitar rock, Broadway, and English music hall sensibilities. Nesmith's song-writing was heavily influenced by country music, while Tork contributed the piano introduction to "Daydream Believer
" and the banjo part on "You Told Me", as well as exploring occasional songwriting with the likes of "For Pete's Sake" (which was used as the closing theme music for the second season of the television series) and "Lady's Baby".
). 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, and the Monkees frequently socialized with the likes of The Beatles
, the Spencer Davis Group
, and The Who
.
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 (such as the Beach Boys
) habitually used session players on their recordings, including many of the very same musicians who performed on records by the Monkees. 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 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
, Jack Keller
, 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.
was released. Being released after the final season of the television series (the series was cancelled in February 1968, although new episodes continued to air each week through the spring & re-runs ran until september), 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.
(a then-standard on American sitcoms), with the bulk of Season 2 episodes airing minus 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 (except for Peter) had little desire to continue for a third season. 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".
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.
. 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 commentary for the DVD release, Nesmith said that by this time, everyone associated with the 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 the matter.
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 only Monkees album during their initial run 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?" and the Goffin/King composition "Porpoise Song
".
The remaining Monkees 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.
Reduced to a trio, the remaining members went on to record Instant Replay
and The Monkees Present
. Throughout 1969 the trio appeared as guests on 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 of the soul band "Sam and the Good-timers". 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 canceled due to poor ticket sales.
, 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, Jones said that he 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. The album spawned the single "Oh My My" which was accompanied by a music film promo (produced/directed by Micky).
September 22, 1970 marked the final recording session by The Monkees in their original incarnation, when Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz recorded "Do It In The Name of Love" and "Lady Jane". Not mixed until February 19, 1971, and released later that year as a single ("Do It In The Name Of Love" b/w "Lady Jane"), the two remaining Monkees then 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.
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
, Hong Kong
and Singapore
. They also released an album of new material as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart
. 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 due to legal reasons) 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). This was the first (albeit unofficial) Monkees single since 1971. 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.
") was broadcast on February 23, 1986, on the then 5 year old MTV
video music channel. In February and March, Tork and Jones played together in Australia. Then in May, Dolenz, Jones, and Tork announced a "20th Anniversary Tour" produced by David Fishof
and they began playing North America in June with Dolenz. Their original albums began selling again as Nickelodeon
began to run their old series daily. MTV promotion also helped to resurrect a smaller version of Monkeemania, and tour dates grew from smaller to larger venues and became one of the biggest live acts of 1986 and 1987. A new greatest hits collection was issued reaching platinum status.
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 appeared on stage with Dolenz, Jones, and Tork at the Greek Theatre, in Los Angeles, on September 7, 1986. In September 1988, the three rejoined to play Australia again, Europe and then North America, with that string of tours ending in September 1989. Mike again returned at the Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, show on July 10, 1989 and took part in a dedication ceremony at the Hollywood Walk of Fame
, when the Monkees received a TV star there in 1989.
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 #20 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.
Of note is that the 80s Reunion tours had been the most lucrative venture the three had ever seen in their days as a Monkee, far surpassing the monies they had made in the 1960s. Mike had little financial need to join in Monkees-related projects, mostly as his mother Bette Nesmith Graham
was the inventor of Liquid Paper
, leaving Nesmith over $25 million, upon her death in 1980.
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.
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.)
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 "in 1966, Nesmith had learned a reasonably good version of the famous "Last Train to Clarksville" guitar lick, but in 1996, Mike was no longer able to play it" and so Tork took over the lead guitar parts.
Nesmith's departure from the tour was acrimonious. Jones was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as complaining that Nesmith "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."
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.
Over the years, the Monkees have expressed admiration for each others' talents and contributions. However, the love/hate relationship between the members continues to persist. 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 invited him onstage to perform Nesmith's "Papa Gene's Blues" together, with obvious playful affection between them. Jones admitted via DVD commentary that despite all their differences, for better or worse, the other Monkees are "...the brothers I never had."
In October 2009, Jones again rejected the idea of any further reunions and, according to Digital Spy, "launched an attack on his former bandmates":
released "Mister Bob (featuring The Monkees)
" (see: Legacy, 2010). Despite his earlier statements rejecting any future reunions, Jones stated in October 2010 that a 2011 reunion tour was a possibility, presumably to mark the band's 45th anniversary. On January 29, 2011, at a Davy Jones Band concert at the Star Plaza Theatre, in Merrillville, Indiana
, it was announced that a Monkees Reunion Tour would indeed be happening, commencing on May 12, 2011 at the Star Plaza Theatre. On February 21, a 45th Anniversary Tour
was announced featuring Jones, Dolenz and Tork. It began in the United Kingdom in May before moving to North America in June and July. Michael Nesmith did not take part in the reunion.
On August 8, 2011, the Monkees cancelled the remainder of the tour "due to internal group issues and conflicts". While the original announced tour dates in June and July were honored, the ten August and September dates added once the North American tour was well underway were cancelled. This marked the third consecutive tour in which the Monkees as either a threesome or a quartet did not complete a tour without either losing members or cancelling advertised dates.
that Jann Wenner
had blackballed the Monkees from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in Cleveland, Ohio
. Tork asserted:
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 often 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.
Glenn A. Baker
, author of Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees, described the Monkees as "rock's first great embarrassment" in 1986:
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.
In 1995, Jones, Tork & Dolenz appeared in a Pizza Hut
Commercial with Beatle Ringo Starr
, and Ringo referred to them as "WRONG LADS!"
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, especially the adult chaperones when they realize their girlhood idol is on-stage. 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.
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.
In 2009, Britain's Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle
recorded "Daydream Believer."
In 2010, Nick Vernier Band
created a digital "Monkees reunion" through the release of "Mister Bob (featuring The Monkees)
", a new song produced under license from Rhino Entertainment
, containing vocal samples from the band’s recording "Zilch".
In 2011, ”Mister Bob” was released as a single to coincide with The Monkees’ 45th Anniversary Tour.
, which ran for seventeen issues from 1967 to 1969. In the United Kingdom
, a Daily Mirror "Crazy Cartoon Book" featured four comic stories as well as four photos of The Monkees, all in black and white; it was published in 1967.
Pop rock
Pop rock is a music genre which mixes a catchy pop style and light lyrics in its guitar-based rock songs. There are varying definitions of the term, ranging from a slower and mellower form of rock music to a subgenre of pop music...
group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966
1966 in music
-Events:*January 3 – Hullabaloo shows promotional videos of The Beatles songs "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work it Out".*January 8 – Shindig! airs for the last time on ABC, with musical guests the Kinks and the Who...
by Robert "Bob" Rafelson
Bob Rafelson
Robert "Bob" Rafelson is an Emmy Award winning American film director, writer and producer. He was an early member of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and is most famous for directing and co-writing the film Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, as well as being one of the creators of...
and Bert Schneider
Bert Schneider
Berton "Bert" Schneider is an American movie producer, who was behind a number of important and topical films of the late-1960s and early-1970s. The son of Abraham Schneider, onetime president of Columbia Pictures, the younger Schneider tended toward the rebellious. He briefly attended Cornell...
for the American television series The Monkees
The Monkees (TV series)
The Monkees is an American situation comedy that aired on NBC from September 1966 to March 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series...
, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz
Micky Dolenz
George Michael "Micky" Dolenz, Jr. is an American actor, musician, television director, radio personality and theater director, best known as a member of the 1960s made-for-television band The Monkees.-Biography:...
, Michael Nesmith
Michael Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the musical group The Monkees and star of the TV series of the same name...
and Peter Tork
Peter Tork
Peter Tork is an American musician and actor, best known as a member of The Monkees.-Early life:Tork was born Peter Halsten Thorkelson in Washington, D.C.. Although he was born in 1942, many news articles report him as born in 1944 in New York City as this was the date and place given on early...
, and Englishman Davy Jones
Davy Jones (actor)
David Thomas "Davy" Jones is an English rock singer-songwriter and actor best known as a member of the Monkees.-Early life:...
. The band's music was initially supervised by producer Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...
.
At the time of the group's formation, its producers saw The Monkees as a Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
-like band. At the start, the band members provided vocals, but were given only limited performing and production opportunities. 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 to record music through 1970. The group reached the height of fame from 1966 to 1968, and influenced many future artists. In 1986, their 20th year, 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.
The Monkees had a number of international hits which are still heard on pop and oldies
Oldies
Oldies is a term commonly used to describe a radio format that concentrates on music from a period of about 15 to 55 years before the present day....
stations. These include "(Theme From) The Monkees
(Theme from) The Monkees
" The Monkees" is a 1966 popular song, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart as the theme song for the TV series The Monkees. It later appeared on their album The Monkees. Originally intended as an album track, it was later released as a single in Australia, where it became a hit. It is still...
", "Last Train to Clarksville
Last Train to Clarksville
"Last Train to Clarksville" was the debut single by The Monkees, released August 16, 1966, and later included on the group's 1966 self-titled album, that was released on October 10, 1966. The song was recorded at RCA Victor Studio B in Hollywood, on July 25, 1966...
", "I'm A Believer
I'm a Believer
"I'm a Believer" is a song composed by Neil Diamond and recorded by The Monkees in 1966 with the lead vocals by Micky Dolenz. The single, produced by Jeff Barry, hit the number one spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 31, 1966 and remained there for seven weeks,...
", "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
" Steppin' Stone" is a rock song by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. It was first recorded by Paul Revere & the Raiders and appeared on their 1966 album Midnight Ride....
", "Pleasant Valley Sunday
Pleasant Valley Sunday
"Pleasant Valley Sunday" is a song by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, most famous for the version recorded by The Monkees in 1967. Goffin's and King's inspiration for the name was a street named , in West Orange, New Jersey where they were living at the time. The road follows a valley through several...
". Their albums and singles have sold over 65 million copies worldwide.
Conception
Aspiring filmmakers Bob RafelsonBob Rafelson
Robert "Bob" Rafelson is an Emmy Award winning American film director, writer and producer. He was an early member of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and is most famous for directing and co-writing the film Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, as well as being one of the creators of...
and Bert Schneider
Bert Schneider
Berton "Bert" Schneider is an American movie producer, who was behind a number of important and topical films of the late-1960s and early-1970s. The son of Abraham Schneider, onetime president of Columbia Pictures, the younger Schneider tended toward the rebellious. He briefly attended Cornell...
were inspired by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' film A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
to devise a television series about a rock 'n' roll group. As "Raybert Productions," they sold the show to Screen Gems television. Rafelson and Schneider's original idea was to cast an existing Los Angeles-based folk rock group, the Lovin' Spoonful. However, the Spoonful were already signed to a record company, which would have denied Screen Gems the right to market music from the show on record. So in September 1965, Daily Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
and The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
ran an ad to cast the band.
Developing the music
During the casting process, Don KirshnerDon Kirshner
Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...
, the Screen Gems head of music, was contacted to secure music for the pilot that would become The Monkees. Not getting much interest from his usual stable of Brill Building
Brill Building
The Brill Building is an office building located at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, just north of Times Square and further uptown from the historic musical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood...
writers, Kirshner assigned Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Boyce and Hart
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.-Early years:Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school, Upon discharge,...
to the project. The duo contributed four demo recordings to the pilot, featuring their own voices. One of these recordings was "(Theme From)The Monkees" which helped get the series the green light.
When The Monkees was picked up as a series, development of the musical side of the project accelerated. Columbia
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
-Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
and RCA Records entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records
Colgems Records
Colgems Records was a record label which existed from 1966 to 1971. It was a joint venture between Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, and RCA Records, to issue records by The Monkees and other artists affiliated with Screen Gems. The label would also issue soundtrack...
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
Snuff Garrett
Snuff Garrett is a retired American record producer whose most famous work was during the 1960s and 1970s. His nickname is a play on Garrett's Snuff, a brand of snuff....
, composer of several hits by Gary Lewis & the Playboys
Gary Lewis & the Playboys
Gary Lewis & the Playboys were a 1960s rock group fronted by Gary Lewis, son of comedian Jerry Lewis. They are best known for their 1965 Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "This Diamond Ring."-Original members:* Gary Lewis - Drums and vocals...
, 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
Jack Keller (songwriter)
Jack Keller A legend in his own right, Jack Keller wrote hit songs in every genre of music over a period of nearly 40 years with success in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville....
, to lend some production 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. Former Turtles bassist Chip Douglas was responsible for both music presentation—actually leading the band, engineering recordings,
as well as playing bass on most of the TV-era recordings.
The Monkees' first single, "Last Train to Clarksville
Last Train to Clarksville
"Last Train to Clarksville" was the debut single by The Monkees, released August 16, 1966, and later included on the group's 1966 self-titled album, that was released on October 10, 1966. The song was recorded at RCA Victor Studio B in Hollywood, on July 25, 1966...
", was released in August 1966, just weeks prior to the broadcast debut. 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
The Monkees (album)
The Monkees is the first album by the band The Monkees. It was released in October 1966 by Colgems Records in the United States and RCA Records in the rest of the world. It was the first of four consecutive U.S. number one albums for the group, taking the top spot on the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks....
, was released a month later and shot to the top of the charts.
From TV to stage
In assigning instruments for purposes of the television show, a dilemma arose as none of the four was a drummer. Both Nesmith, a skilled guitarist and bassist, 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 (who only knew how to play the guitar) was assigned to become the drummer. Tork taught Dolenz his first few beats on the drums, enough for him to fake his way through filming, but Micky was soon taught how to play properly. Thus, the lineup for the TV show most frequently featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, Dolenz on drums, and Jones as a frontman/singer/percussionist.Unlike most television shows of 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 concurred, 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.
On tour
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 HawaiiHawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
.
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 "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
" Steppin' Stone" is a rock song by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. It was first recorded by Paul Revere & the Raiders and appeared on their 1966 album Midnight Ride....
" 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
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
on January 21, 1967. Bob Rafelson wrote and directed the episode.
In DVD commentary tracks included in the Season One release, 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. The four Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the live set. The most notable exceptions were during each member's solo sections where during the December 1966 – May 1967 tour, they were backed by the Candy Store Prophets
Candy Store Prophets
The Candy Store Prophets were a 1960s rock band, headed by singer-songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Their lineup included Boyce and Gerry McGee on guitar, Hart on keyboards, Larry Taylor on bass guitar and Billy Lewis on drums....
. During the summer 1967 tour of the United States and the UK (from which the Live 1967
Live 1967
Live 1967 is a live album by The Monkees, compiled from show dates on their 1967 United States tour. The songs mostly feature the Monkees themselves singing and playing, although the "solo spots" for each member feature music by opening act The Sundowners.In 2001, Rhino HandMade Records released...
recordings are taken), they were backed by a band called the Sundowners. In 1968, the Monkees toured Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
The results were far better than expected. Wherever they went, the group was greeted by scenes of fan adulation reminiscent of Beatlemania
Beatlemania
Beatlemania is a term that originated during the 1960s to describe the intense fan frenzy directed toward The Beatles during the early years of their success...
. 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
Power trio
A power trio is a rock and roll band format where the traditional power trio has a lineup of guitar, bass and drums, leaving out the rhythm guitar or keyboard that are used in other rock music to fill out the sound with chords...
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 "Pre-Fab four", a made-for-TV knockoff of The BeatlesThe Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
; The Beatles, however, took it in their stride and hosted a party for the Monkees when they visited England. The party occurred during the time when The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
; as such, the party inspired the line in the Monkees' tune "Randy Scouse Git
Randy Scouse Git
"Randy Scouse Git" is a song written by Micky Dolenz in 1967, and recorded by The Monkees. It was the first song written by Micky Dolenz to be commercially released, and ended up a top 5 hit in the UK where it was retitled "Alternate Title" after the record company complained that the title was...
," written by Dolenz, which read, "the four kings of EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
are sitting stately on the floor." Nesmith attended the "A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life
"A Day in the Life" is a song by The Beatles, the final track on the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with orchestral additions...
" sessions at Abbey Road Studios; he can be seen in The Beatles' home movies, including one scene where he is conversing with John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
. During the conversation, Nesmith had reportedly asked Lennon "Do you think we're a cheap imitation of the Beatles, your movies and your records?", to which Lennon assuredly replied, "I think you're the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
. I've never missed one of your programs." George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
praised their self-produced musical attempts, saying, "It's obvious what's happening, there's talent there. They're doing a TV show, it's a difficult chore and I wouldn't be in their shoes for the world. When they get it all sorted out, they might turn out to be the best." (Tork was later one of the musicians on Harrison's Wonderwall Music
Wonderwall Music
Wonderwall Music is George Harrison's first solo album and the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall. The songs are virtually all instrumental, except for some non-English vocals and a slowed-down spoken word track. The songs were recorded in December 1967 in England, and January 1968 in Bombay, India...
, playing Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
's five-string banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
.)
Dolenz was also in the studio during a session, which he mentioned while broadcasting for WCBS-FM in New York (incidentally, he interviewed Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
on his program). Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
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
The Monkees (TV series)
The Monkees is an American situation comedy that aired on NBC from September 1966 to March 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series...
, while backstage.
Kirshner and More of the Monkees
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 by sight.The Monkees had complained that the producers would not allow them to play their own instruments on their records, or to use their own material. These complaints intensified when Kirshner moved track recording from California to New York, leaving the Monkees out of the musical process until they were called upon to add their vocals to the completed tracks. This campaign eventually forced Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner
Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...
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.
Nesmith and Tork were particularly upset when they were on tour in January 1967 and discovered that a second album, More of The Monkees
More of The Monkees
More of The Monkees is the second full-length album by The Monkees. It was recorded in late 1966 and released on Colgems label #102 on January 9, 1967. It was number one on the Billboard 200 for 18 weeks—the longest of any Monkees album. It also went to number one in the UK. In the U.S...
, 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, at Don Kirshner's self-congratulatory liner notes, 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
J.C. Penney
J. C. Penney Company, Inc. is a chain of American mid-range department stores based in Plano, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas. The company operates 1,107 department stores in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. JCPenney also operates catalog sales merchant offices nationwide in many...
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, Kirshner, and Colgems lawyer Herb Moelis, which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in January 1967. Kirshner had presented the group with royalty checks and gold records. Nesmith had responded with an ultimatum, demanding a change in the way the Monkees' music was 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!" However, each of the members, including Nesmith, accepted the $250,000 royalty checks (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds).
Kirshner's dismissal came in early February 1967, when he violated an agreement between Colgems and the Monkees not to release material directly created by the group together with unrelated Kirshner-produced material. Kirshner violated this agreement when he released "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", composed and written by Neil Diamond
Neil Diamond
Neil Leslie Diamond is an American singer-songwriter with a career spanning over five decades from the 1960s until the present....
, as a single with "She Hangs Out", a song recorded in New York with Davy Jones
Davy Jones (actor)
David Thomas "Davy" Jones is an English rock singer-songwriter and actor best known as a member of the Monkees.-Early life:...
vocals, as the B-side.
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
The Archies
The Archies are a garage band founded by Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones, a group of adolescent fictional characters of the Archie universe, in the context of the animated TV series, The Archie Show...
, which was an animated series – the "stars" existed only on animation cel
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
s, with music done by studio musicians, and obviously could not seize creative control over the records issued under their name.
Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
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—against the wishes of Don Kirschner—allegedly turned down "Sugar, Sugar
Sugar, Sugar
"Sugar, Sugar" is a pop song written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim. It was a four-week 1969 number-one hit single by fictional characters The Archies. Produced by Jeff Barry, the song was originally released on the album Everything's Archie. The album is the product of a group of studio musicians...
" in 1967, which became one of the biggest hits of 1969 as by The Archies
The Archies
The Archies are a garage band founded by Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones, a group of adolescent fictional characters of the Archie universe, in the context of the animated TV series, The Archie Show...
. However, producer and songwriter Jeff Barry, who cowrote "Sugar, Sugar" with Andy Kim
Andy Kim
Andrew Youakim, performing as Andy Kim, is a Lebanese Canadian pop rock singer and songwriter. He grew up in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Kim is known for a number of hit singles that he released in the late 1960s and early 1970s such as "Rock Me Gently", which topped the US singles charts. In 1968,...
, denied in the late 90s that the Monkees had been offered the tune, saying it had not even been written at the time.
Headquarters
After the end of their relationship with Kirshner, the Monkees went into Goldstar Studios in Hollywood determined to prove to the world that they were a bona fide group and could play their own instruments. What resulted was HeadquartersHeadquarters (album)
HeadquartersThe sleeve and record both render the title as The Monkees' Headquarters. was the third album issued by The Monkees and the first written and recorded primarily by the four members of the group, rather than by session musicians and professional songwriters...
, with all four Monkees in the studio, now together at the same time, with very few guest musicians. Produced by Chip Douglas
Chip Douglas
Douglas Farthing Walter Hatlelid, better known as Chip Douglas, is a songwriter, musician , and record producer, whose most famous work was during the 1960s...
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 few, usually by Chip Douglas on bass). The album shot to number one, but was quickly eclipsed the following week by a milestone cultural event when The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
.
Following Headquarters, they began what they referred to as "mix mode" where they played their own instruments but also continued to employ session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
s. The Monkees continued using additional musicians (including The Wrecking Crew
The Wrecking Crew (music)
The Wrecking Crew was a nickname coined by the drummer Hal Blaine after the fact for a group of session musicians in Los Angeles, California, who earned wide acclaim in the 1960s. They backed dozens of popular singers, and were one of the most successful "groups" of studio musicians in music history...
, Louie Shelton, Glen Campbell
Glen Campbell
Glen Travis Campbell is an American country music singer, guitarist, television host and occasional actor. He is best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for hosting a variety show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS television.During his 50 years in show...
, members of the Byrds
The Byrds
The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964. The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in 1973...
and the Association
The Association
The Association is a pop music band from California in the folk rock or soft rock genre. During the 1960s, they had numerous hits at or near the top of the Billboard charts and were the lead-off band at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival...
, drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, Lowell George
Lowell George
Lowell Thomas George was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, who was the main guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Little Feat.- Early years :...
, Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...
, Buddy Miles
Buddy Miles
George Allen Miles, Jr. , known as Buddy Miles, was an American rock and funk drummer, most known as a founding member of The Electric Flag in 1967, then as a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys from 1969 through to January 1970.-Early life:George Allen Miles was born in Omaha, Nebraska on...
and Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
) 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 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.
The next three albums featured a diverse mixture of musical style influences, including country-rock, folk-rock, psychedelic rock, soul/R&B, guitar rock, Broadway, and English music hall sensibilities. Nesmith's song-writing was heavily influenced by country music, while Tork contributed the piano introduction to "Daydream Believer
Daydream Believer
"Daydream Believer" is a song composed by John Stewart shortly before he left the Kingston Trio. The song was originally recorded by The Monkees, with Davy Jones singing lead vocals. The single hit the number one spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1967, remaining there for four...
" and the banjo part on "You Told Me", as well as exploring occasional songwriting with the likes of "For Pete's Sake" (which was used as the closing theme music for the second season of the television series) and "Lady's Baby".
Studio recordings controversy
When the Monkees toured the U.K. 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 ProphetsCandy Store Prophets
The Candy Store Prophets were a 1960s rock band, headed by singer-songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Their lineup included Boyce and Gerry McGee on guitar, Hart on keyboards, Larry Taylor on bass guitar and Billy Lewis on drums....
). 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, and the Monkees frequently socialized with the likes of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, the Spencer Davis Group
Spencer Davis Group
The Spencer Davis Group was a mid-1960s British beat group from Birmingham, England, formed by Spencer Davis with Steve Winwood and his brother Muff Winwood...
, and The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
.
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 (such as the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...
) habitually used session players on their recordings, including many of the very same musicians who performed on records by the Monkees. 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 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
Neil Diamond
Neil Leslie Diamond is an American singer-songwriter with a career spanning over five decades from the 1960s until the present....
, the Boyce-Hart partnership
Boyce and Hart
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.-Early years:Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school, Upon discharge,...
, Jack Keller
Jack Keller (songwriter)
Jack Keller A legend in his own right, Jack Keller wrote hit songs in every genre of music over a period of nearly 40 years with success in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville....
, Gerry Goffin
Gerry Goffin
Gerry Goffin is an American lyricist. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 with former songwriting partner and first wife, Carole King. he has co-written six Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers.-Career:Goffin enlisted with the Marine Corps Reserve after graduating from...
and Carole King
Carole King
Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...
, Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
, Barry Mann
Barry Mann
Barry Mann is an American songwriter, and part of a successful songwriting partnership with his wife, Cynthia Weil.-Career:...
, Cynthia Weil
Cynthia Weil
Cynthia Weil is a prominent American songwriter. She is famous for having written many songs together with her husband Barry Mann....
, 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.
The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees
In April 1968, The Birds, The Bees & The MonkeesThe Birds, The Bees & the Monkees
The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees is the fifth studio album by The Monkees released in April 1968. The first Monkees album not to reach Billboard's number one, instead charting at number three and eventually selling over a million copies.-History:...
was released. Being released after the final season of the television series (the series was cancelled in February 1968, although new episodes continued to air each week through the spring & re-runs ran until september), 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 became tired of scripts which they deemed monotonous and stale. They had already succeeded in eliminating the laugh trackLaugh track
A laugh track is a separate soundtrack invented by Charles "Charley" Douglass, with the artificial sound of audience laughter, made to be inserted into television programming of comedy shows and sitcoms.The term "laugh track" does not apply to the genuine audience laughter on shows that shoot in...
(a then-standard on American sitcoms), with the bulk of Season 2 episodes airing minus 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
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, Tim Buckley
Tim Buckley
Timothy Charles Buckley III was an American vocalist, and musician. His music and style changed considerably through the years; his first album was mostly folk oriented, but over time his music incorporated jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, avant-garde and an evolving "voice as instrument," sound...
and Charlie Smalls
Charlie Smalls
Charlie Smalls was an African-American composer and songwriter, best known for writing the music for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz....
(composer of The Wiz
The Wiz
The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is a musical with music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls and book by William F. Brown. It is a retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the context of African American culture. It opened on October 21, 1974 at the Morris A...
), performing on the show. However, NBC was not interested in eliminating the existing format, and the group (except for Peter) had little desire to continue for a third season. 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".
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 Pickle Brothers
The Pickle Brothers were a three-man comedy act which enjoyed considerable success during the 1965-1968 period. Their madcap style, characterized by fast patter and constant motion, encompassed sketch comedy, spoofs of TV shows and commercials, and social and political humor...
. The pilot had the same energy and pace of The Monkees, but never became a series.
Head
After The Monkees was canceled in February 1968, Rafelson directed the four Monkees in a feature film, HeadHead (film)
Head is a 1968 psychedelic comedy-adventure major motion picture, starring TV group The Monkees , and distributed by Columbia Pictures...
. Schneider was executive producer, and the project was co-written and co-produced by Rafelson with a then relatively unknown Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
. 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
Victor Mature
Victor John Mature was an American stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky to an Italian-speaking father from the town Pinzolo, in the Italian part of the former County of Tyrol , Marcello Gelindo Maturi, later Marcellus George Mature, a cutler,...
, Annette Funicello
Annette Funicello
Annette Joanne Funicello is an American singer and actress. She was Walt Disney's most popular cast member of the original Mickey Mouse Club, and went on to appear in a series of beach party films.-Early life and early stardom:...
, a young Teri Garr
Teri Garr
-Early life:Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1947. Her father, Eddie Garr , was a vaudeville performer, comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road...
, boxer Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston
Charles L. "Sonny" Liston was a professional boxer and ex-convict known for his toughness, punching power, and intimidating appearance who became world heavyweight champion in 1962 by knocking out Floyd Patterson in the first round...
, famous stripper
Stripper
A stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...
Carol Doda
Carol Doda
Carol Ann Doda was a topless stripper in San Francisco, California in the 1960s through 1980s, one of the first of the era....
, and musician Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
. It was filmed at Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
' Screen Gems studios and on location in California, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, and The Bahamas
The Bahamas
The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...
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
Boyce and Hart
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.-Early years:Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school, Upon discharge,...
'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 commentary for the DVD release, Nesmith said that by this time, everyone associated with the 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 the matter.
Over the intervening years Head has developed a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
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 only Monkees album during their initial run not to include any Boyce and Hart compositions) as one of the crowning achievements of the band. The highlights include Nesmith's "Circle Sky
Circle Sky
Circle Sky is a song written by Michael Nesmith of The Monkees, which appeared on their sixth album, the Head soundtrack, and also in the film Head as a live concert performance....
", an all-out rocker, Tork's psychedelic "Can You Dig It?" and the Goffin/King composition "Porpoise Song
Porpoise Song (Theme from Head)
"Porpoise Song " is a song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and performed by pop/rock quartet The Monkees on their album Head. The song was released as a single in 1968, and reached #62 on the Billboard Hot 100....
".
Early 1969: exit Tork
Tensions within the group were increasing. Peter Tork, citing exhaustion, quit by buying out the last 4 years of his Monkees contract at $150,000/year, equal to $ per year today. This was shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after completing work on their 1969 NBC television special, 33⅓ 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 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
The Monkees Present
The Monkees Present is The Monkees' eighth album.By the time recording had begun in earnest for this album, the Monkees had passed their popularity peak, and as Screen Gems cared less and less about the Monkees' activities, the members were given more control over the creation of this, the second...
) on which each Monkee would separately produce one side of a disc.
Reduced to a trio, the remaining members went on to record Instant Replay
Instant Replay (The Monkees album)
Instant Replay is the seventh studio album by The Monkees. Issued almost a year after the cancellation of the group's NBC television series, it is also the first album released after Peter Tork left the group and the only album of the original nine studio albums that does not include any songs...
and The Monkees Present
The Monkees Present
The Monkees Present is The Monkees' eighth album.By the time recording had begun in earnest for this album, the Monkees had passed their popularity peak, and as Screen Gems cared less and less about the Monkees' activities, the members were given more control over the creation of this, the second...
. Throughout 1969 the trio appeared as guests on television programs such as The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour was an American network television music and comedy variety show hosted by singer Glen Campbell from January 1969 through June 1972 on CBS. He was offered the show after he hosted a 1968 summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour...
, The Johnny Cash Show
The Johnny Cash Show (TV series)
The Johnny Cash Show was an American television music variety show hosted by Johnny Cash. The Screen Gems 58-episode series ran from June 7, 1969 to March 31, 1971 on ABC; it was taped at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The show reached No...
, Hollywood Squares
Hollywood Squares
Hollywood Squares is an American panel game show in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The "board" for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants...
, and Laugh-In. The Monkees also had a contractual obligation to appear in several television commercials with Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
for Kool-Aid
Kool-Aid
Kool-Aid is a brand of flavored drink mix owned by the Kraft Foods Company.-History:Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins in Hastings, Nebraska, United States. All of his experiments took place in his mother's kitchen. Its predecessor was a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack...
drink mix as well as Post cereal box singles.
In the summer of 1969 the three Monkees embarked on a tour with the backing of the soul band "Sam and the Good-timers". 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 canceled due to poor ticket sales.
March 1970: exit Nesmith
In April 1970, Nesmith left the Monkees and formed his own group called The First National BandFirst National Band
The First National Band was a short-lived American collaborative band, led by former Monkee Michael Nesmith, which issued three albums in the country rock genre in 1970–1971.-Pre-First National Band:...
, 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
Jeff Barry
Jeff Barry is an American pop music songwriter, singer, and record producer.-Early career:...
and Andy Kim
Andy Kim
Andrew Youakim, performing as Andy Kim, is a Lebanese Canadian pop rock singer and songwriter. He grew up in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. Kim is known for a number of hit singles that he released in the late 1960s and early 1970s such as "Rock Me Gently", which topped the US singles charts. In 1968,...
. In comments for the liner notes of the 1994 re-release of Changes, Jones said that he 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. The album spawned the single "Oh My My" which was accompanied by a music film promo (produced/directed by Micky).
September 22, 1970 marked the final recording session by The Monkees in their original incarnation, when Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz recorded "Do It In The Name of Love" and "Lady Jane". Not mixed until February 19, 1971, and released later that year as a single ("Do It In The Name Of Love" b/w "Lady Jane"), the two remaining Monkees then 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.
Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart - mid 1970s
In part because of repeats of The Monkees on Saturday mornings and in syndication, The Monkees Greatest HitsThe Monkees Greatest Hits (album)
The Monkees Greatest Hits was a 1976 greatest hits compilation album of songs by the Monkees released by Arista Records, and a reissue of an earlier Bell Records compilation, Re-Focus....
charted in 1976. The LP, issued by Arista
Arista Records
Arista was an American record label. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment and operated under the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records...
, 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
Boyce and Hart
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.-Early years:Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school, Upon discharge,...
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
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
and Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. They also released an album of new material as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart
Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart
Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart was an album released by the group of the same name, released in 1976. The group consisted of Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Dolenz and Jones had been members of '60s pop group/band The Monkees while Boyce and Hart had written many of the groups...
. 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 due to legal reasons) 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). This was the first (albeit unofficial) Monkees single since 1971. Tork also joined Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart on stage at Disneyland
Disneyland Park (Anaheim)
Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of the Walt Disney Company. Known as Disneyland when it opened on July 18, 1955, and still almost universally referred to by that name, it is the only theme park to be...
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.
MTV and Nickelodeon re-ignite Monkee-Mania
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 SundayPleasant Valley Sunday
"Pleasant Valley Sunday" is a song by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, most famous for the version recorded by The Monkees in 1967. Goffin's and King's inspiration for the name was a street named , in West Orange, New Jersey where they were living at the time. The road follows a valley through several...
") was broadcast on February 23, 1986, on the then 5 year old MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
video music channel. In February and March, Tork and Jones played together in Australia. Then in May, Dolenz, Jones, and Tork announced a "20th Anniversary Tour" produced by David Fishof
David Fishof
David Fishof is the founder of Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. Born in New York City, David began his career representing acts in the Catskill Mountains...
and they began playing North America in June with Dolenz. Their original albums began selling again as Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
began to run their old series daily. MTV promotion also helped to resurrect a smaller version of Monkeemania, and tour dates grew from smaller to larger venues and became one of the biggest live acts of 1986 and 1987. A new greatest hits collection was issued reaching platinum status.
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 appeared on stage with Dolenz, Jones, and Tork at the Greek Theatre, in Los Angeles, on September 7, 1986. In September 1988, the three rejoined to play Australia again, Europe and then North America, with that string of tours ending in September 1989. Mike again returned at the Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, show on July 10, 1989 and took part in a dedication ceremony at the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
, when the Monkees received a TV star there in 1989.
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 #20 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.
Of note is that the 80s Reunion tours had been the most lucrative venture the three had ever seen in their days as a Monkee, far surpassing the monies they had made in the 1960s. Mike had little financial need to join in Monkees-related projects, mostly as his mother Bette Nesmith Graham
Bette Nesmith Graham
Bette Claire Graham was an American typist, commercial artist, the inventor of Liquid Paper, and mother of musician and producer Michael Nesmith.-Biography:...
was the inventor of Liquid Paper
Liquid Paper
Liquid Paper is a brand of the Newell Rubbermaid company that sells correction fluid, correction pen and correction tape. Mainly used to correct typewriting in the past, correction products now mostly cover handwriting mistakes.- Brand history :...
, leaving Nesmith over $25 million, upon her death in 1980.
A new album by the touring trio, Pool It!
Pool It!
Pool It!, issued 1987 by Rhino Records, is a pop/rock album by The Monkees. It was the first "reunion album" by the band after their 1986 rebirth, and it marked the return of Peter Tork along with Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones...
(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.
New Monkees
In 1987, a new television series called New MonkeesNew Monkees
New Monkees was the name of both a US pop rock music group, and a 1987 syndicated television show featuring the group.-Background:The 20th anniversary of The Monkees in 1986 generated enough interest that New Monkees was conceived later that year, and launched the following year...
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.)
1990s reunions
In the 1990s, the Monkees continued to record new material. In 1993, Dolenz and Jones worked together on a television commercial, and another reunion tour was launched with the two of them in 1994. Perhaps the greatest reunion of sorts was released by Rhino Records re-issuing all the original LPs on CD, each of which included between three-six bonus tracks of previously unreleased or alternate takes; the first editions came with collectible trading cards.Their eleventh album Justus
Justus (album)
Justus is the eleventh and final studio album by The Monkees, recorded in celebration of their 30th anniversary. This album featured the return of Michael Nesmith. This was the first Monkees album since Head was released in 1968 to feature all four Monkees...
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
Wembley Arena
Wembley Arena is an indoor arena, at Wembley, in the London Borough of Brent. The building is opposite Wembley Stadium.-History:...
in London. The full quartet also appeared in an ABC television special titled Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees
Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees
"Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees" was a one-hour comedy special televised on the ABC Network on Monday February 17, 1997. It featured all four of the original Monkees. Michael Nesmith wrote and directed the program. The real now middle-aged Monkees make fun of plots of their own earlier TV series...
, 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 "in 1966, Nesmith had learned a reasonably good version of the famous "Last Train to Clarksville" guitar lick, but in 1996, Mike was no longer able to play it" and so Tork took over the lead guitar parts.
Nesmith's departure from the tour was acrimonious. Jones was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as complaining that Nesmith "made a new album with us. He toured Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
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 2001 when they once again reunited to tour the United States. 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 was quoted as saying that, as well as the fact he wanted to tour with his band Shoe Suede Blues. Tork told WENN News he was troubled by the overindulging of alcoholAlcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
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.
Over the years, the Monkees have expressed admiration for each others' talents and contributions. However, the love/hate relationship between the members continues to persist. 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
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
and invited him onstage to perform Nesmith's "Papa Gene's Blues" together, with obvious playful affection between them. Jones admitted via DVD commentary that despite all their differences, for better or worse, the other Monkees are "...the brothers I never had."
In October 2009, Jones again rejected the idea of any further reunions and, according to Digital Spy, "launched an attack on his former bandmates":
- Jones slammed Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz, accusing guitarist Nesmith of having his head "firmly up his ass".
- Jones told the National Enquirer: "[Nesmith's] not an entertainer in the sense that Micky, Peter and I are. He has his back to the audience half the time. [He's] a brilliant businessman [but] as a person, I haven't got time for him. He's very aloof and separate."
- The musician also criticised Tork for being too disagreeable to work with and said of Dolenz: "I couldn't imagine sharing a stage anymore with Micky Dolenz, who doesn't want to play the drums and wants to play the guitar at the front of the stage."
2010-2011 reunions
A virtual reunion of all four Monkees came about in 2010, when Nick Vernier BandNick Vernier Band
Nick Vernier Band is an alias for productions by Dutch musician and record producer Eric Van Den Brink. Although a ‘one man band’ in essence, featured collaborators include Probyn Gregory, Gerry Beckley , Stephen John Kalinich, Paul Jones, Iain Matthews, Matt Malley, Emitt Rhodes, Duncan Maitland,...
released "Mister Bob (featuring The Monkees)
Nick Vernier Band Sessions (album)
Nick Vernier Band’s Sessions is a collaborative album by an ensemble containing notable musicians, such as Probyn Gregory, Gerry Beckley , Matt Malley, Paul Jones, Iain Matthews, Emitt Rhodes, Pizza Delivery Boys, Janaki, The Monkees...
" (see: Legacy, 2010). Despite his earlier statements rejecting any future reunions, Jones stated in October 2010 that a 2011 reunion tour was a possibility, presumably to mark the band's 45th anniversary. On January 29, 2011, at a Davy Jones Band concert at the Star Plaza Theatre, in Merrillville, Indiana
Merrillville, Indiana
Merrillville is a town in Ross Township, Lake County, Indiana, United States. The population was 35,246 at the 2010 census. Merrillville is located in the east-central portion of Lake County.-Geography:Merrillville is located at ....
, it was announced that a Monkees Reunion Tour would indeed be happening, commencing on May 12, 2011 at the Star Plaza Theatre. On February 21, a 45th Anniversary Tour
An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour
An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour was the fourth reunion tour and sixteenth overall concert tour by American pop rock group, The Monkees. It was the group's first tour in nearly a decade following Monkeemania, which ran from 2001 to 2002. The tour visited the United Kingdom,...
was announced featuring Jones, Dolenz and Tork. It began in the United Kingdom in May before moving to North America in June and July. Michael Nesmith did not take part in the reunion.
On August 8, 2011, the Monkees cancelled the remainder of the tour "due to internal group issues and conflicts". While the original announced tour dates in June and July were honored, the ten August and September dates added once the North American tour was well underway were cancelled. This marked the third consecutive tour in which the Monkees as either a threesome or a quartet did not complete a tour without either losing members or cancelling advertised dates.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame snub
In June 2007, Tork complained to the New York PostNew York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
that Jann Wenner
Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.-Childhood:...
had blackballed the Monkees from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers and others who have, in some major way,...
in Cleveland, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
. Tork asserted:
Band members
- Davy JonesDavy Jones (actor)David Thomas "Davy" Jones is an English rock singer-songwriter and actor best known as a member of the Monkees.-Early life:...
– vocals, guitars, tambourine, maracas (1966–1971; 1986–1989; 1993–1997; 2001–2002; 2011-Present) - Micky DolenzMicky DolenzGeorge Michael "Micky" Dolenz, Jr. is an American actor, musician, television director, radio personality and theater director, best known as a member of the 1960s made-for-television band The Monkees.-Biography:...
– drums, vocals (1966–1971; 1986–1989; 1993–1997; 2001–2002; 2011-Present) - Michael NesmithMichael NesmithRobert Michael Nesmith is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the musical group The Monkees and star of the TV series of the same name...
– guitars, vocals (1966–1970; 1996–1997) - Peter TorkPeter TorkPeter Tork is an American musician and actor, best known as a member of The Monkees.-Early life:Tork was born Peter Halsten Thorkelson in Washington, D.C.. Although he was born in 1942, many news articles report him as born in 1944 in New York City as this was the date and place given on early...
– bass, banjo, vocals, keyboards (1966–1969; 1986–1989; 1995–1997; 2001; 2011-Present)
Impact and legacy
The Monkees, selected specifically to appeal to the youth market, as American Television's response to The Beatles , 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
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s 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
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...
and Minor Threat
Minor Threat
Minor Threat was an American hardcore punk band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1980 and disbanded in 1983. The band was relatively short-lived, but had a strong influence on the hardcore punk music scene, both stylistically and in establishing a "do it yourself" ethic for music distribution and...
both recorded versions of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was often played live by Toy Love
Toy Love
Toy Love was a New Zealand New Wave/punk rock band fronted by Chris Knox. Other members were guitarist Alec Bathgate, bass player Paul Kean, drummer Mike Dooley, and keyboard player Jane Walker...
. The Japanese new wave pop group The Plastics
Plastics (group)
Plastics—or, alternately, The Plastics—were a short-lived Japanese new wave music group prominent in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their music was a major influence on Japanese pop music and their songs have been covered by many bands, most notably Polysics and Pizzicato Five.Perhaps their...
recorded a synthesizer and drum-machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979 album Welcome Plastics.
Glenn A. Baker
Glenn A. Baker
Glenn A. Baker is an Australian journalist, commentator, and broadcaster well known in Australia for his vast knowledge of Rock music. He has written books and magazine articles on rock music and travel, interviewed celebrities, managed bands such as Ol' 55 and promoted tours of international stars...
, author of Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees, described the Monkees as "rock's first great embarrassment" in 1986:
In 1988 Run-D.M.C.
Run-D.M.C.
Run–D.M.C. was an American hip hop group from Hollis, in the Queens borough of New York City. Founded by Joseph "Run" Simmons, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels, and Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell, the group is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential acts in the history of hip hop culture.Run–D.M.C...
recorded "Mary, Mary
Mary, Mary (song)
"Mary, Mary" is a song written by Michael Nesmith. It was first recorded by The Butterfield Blues Band for their 1966 album, East-West. The Monkees, featuring Nesmith, would later record the song themselves...
" on their album Tougher Than Leather
Tougher Than Leather
Tougher Than Leather is a 1988 studio album for American rap group Run–D.M.C. and a follow-up to their hit Raising Hell. While the new record did not maintain the same popularity as its predecessor, it obtained platinum status and spawned the favorites "Run's House" and "Mary, Mary" .Tougher Than...
. Australian indie-rock bands of the 1980s such as Grooveyard
Grooveyard
Grooveyard was a legendary Den Haag disco located at a dodgy squat in The Hague. It opened on April 26, 1997 and closed in March 2005. They now put on exclusive private parties for the rich and poor movers and shakers of D'Hague...
("All The King's Horses"), Prince Vlad & the Gargoyle Impalers ("Mary, Mary", "For Pete's Sake", and "Circle Sky
Circle Sky
Circle Sky is a song written by Michael Nesmith of The Monkees, which appeared on their sixth album, the Head soundtrack, and also in the film Head as a live concert performance....
") and The Upbeat and The Mexican Spitfires
The Mexican Spitfires
The Mexican Spitfires were a Sydney, Australia-based indie rock–indie pop band formed in suburban Strathfield in the Strathfield Municipality in the mid 1980s...
("Mary, Mary") performed Monkees cover versions. Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. Described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating country, blues and folk music into her...
had an indie hit with "Last Train to Clarksville
Last Train to Clarksville
"Last Train to Clarksville" was the debut single by The Monkees, released August 16, 1966, and later included on the group's 1966 self-titled album, that was released on October 10, 1966. The song was recorded at RCA Victor Studio B in Hollywood, on July 25, 1966...
" in 1995. The alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
group Smash Mouth
Smash Mouth
Smash Mouth is an American rock band from San Jose, California. The band was formed in 1994, and was originally composed of Steve Harwell, Greg Camp, Paul De Lisle and Kevin Coleman as lead vocals, guitar, bass and drums respectively...
had a hit with "I'm a Believer" in 2001, and their version was featured in the blockbuster computer-animated movie Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
. Japanese indie rock band Shonen Knife
Shonen Knife
Shonen Knife, written in Japanese characters as 少年ナイフ, which transliterates as Shōnen Naifu, literally "Boy Knife," is an all-female Japanese pop-punk band formed in Osaka, Japan, in 1981...
recorded "Daydream Believer". Indie group Carter USM
Carter USM
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine is a British indie rock band formed in 1988 by singer Jim "Jim Bob" Morrison and guitarist Les "Fruitbat" Carter. They made their name with a distinctive style of power pop, fusing samples, sequenced basses and drum machines with rock 'n' roll guitars and...
recorded "Randy Scouse Git", which is also called "Alternate Title". The 1980s psychedelic rock band Bongwater
Bongwater (band)
Bongwater was a psych rock band formed in 1985 and dissolved in 1992. The group was founded by Ann Magnuson and Mark Kramer , who had worked together previously in Pulsallama. The group also featured drummer Dave Licht and guitarists [Dave Rick] and later Randolph A. Hudson III...
, featuring Ann Magnuson
Ann Magnuson
Ann Magnuson is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer who first gained prominence in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan...
and Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer , known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, record producer and founder of the New York City record label Shimmy-Disc...
, recorded "You Just May Be The One" and "The Porpoise Song". The Monkees also had a big influence on Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg is an American musician, best known as the former lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and songwriter of The Replacements, one of the seminal alternative rock bands of the 1980s. He launched a solo career after the dissolution of that band...
, 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
The Wedding Present
The Wedding Present are a British indie rock group based in Leeds, England, formed in 1985 from the ashes of the Lost Pandas. The band's music has evolved from fast-paced indie rock in the vein of their most obvious influences The Fall, Buzzcocks and Gang of Four to more varied forms...
recorded "Pleasant Valley Sunday
Pleasant Valley Sunday
"Pleasant Valley Sunday" is a song by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, most famous for the version recorded by The Monkees in 1967. Goffin's and King's inspiration for the name was a street named , in West Orange, New Jersey where they were living at the time. The road follows a valley through several...
" in the early 1990s.
The band's legacy was strengthened by Rhino Entertainment
Rhino Entertainment
Rhino Entertainment Company is an American specialty record label and production company. It is owned by Warner Music Group.-History:Rhino was originally a novelty song and reissue company during the 1970s and 1980s, releasing compilation albums of pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues successes...
's acquisition of the Monkees' franchise from Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
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
Head (film)
Head is a 1968 psychedelic comedy-adventure major motion picture, starring TV group The Monkees , and distributed by Columbia Pictures...
.
In the 1990s, three of the Monkees had minor roles in the family sitcom Boy Meets World
Boy Meets World
Boy Meets World is an American comedy-drama series that chronicles the events and everyday life lessons of Cory Matthews, played by Ben Savage, a kid from suburban Philadelphia who grows up from a young boy to a married man. The show aired for seven seasons from 1993 to 2000 on ABC, part of the...
. 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
Daydream Believer
"Daydream Believer" is a song composed by John Stewart shortly before he left the Kingston Trio. The song was originally recorded by The Monkees, with Davy Jones singing lead vocals. The single hit the number one spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1967, remaining there for four...
(known as The Girl Who Came Late
The Girl Who Came Late
The Girl Who Came Late aka Daydream Believer is a 1991 Australian romantic comedy film starring Miranda Otto, Martin Kemp and Gia Carides; and directed by Kathy Mueller. Otto was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for "Best Actress in a Lead Role"...
in some markets) was released in Australia.
In 1995, Jones, Tork & Dolenz appeared in a Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....
Commercial with Beatle Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
, and Ringo referred to them as "WRONG LADS!"
Jones, Tork and Dolenz also feature memorably as themselves in The Brady Bunch Movie
The Brady Bunch Movie
The Brady Bunch Movie is a 1995 American comedy film based on the 1969–1974 television series The Brady Bunch.The film features all the original regular characters, all played by new actors...
. 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, especially the adult chaperones when they realize their girlhood idol is on-stage. 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.
In 2005, eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
used "Daydream Believer" as the theme for a promotional campaign.
In 2006, Evergreen
Evergreen
In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...
used "Daydream Believer" in their adverts; the lyrics were adapted for the product.
In 2009, Britain's Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle
Susan Boyle
Susan Magdalane Boyle is a Scottish singer who came to international public attention when she appeared as a contestant on the TV programme Britain's Got Talent on 11 April 2009, singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from ...
recorded "Daydream Believer."
In 2010, Nick Vernier Band
Nick Vernier Band
Nick Vernier Band is an alias for productions by Dutch musician and record producer Eric Van Den Brink. Although a ‘one man band’ in essence, featured collaborators include Probyn Gregory, Gerry Beckley , Stephen John Kalinich, Paul Jones, Iain Matthews, Matt Malley, Emitt Rhodes, Duncan Maitland,...
created a digital "Monkees reunion" through the release of "Mister Bob (featuring The Monkees)
Nick Vernier Band Sessions (album)
Nick Vernier Band’s Sessions is a collaborative album by an ensemble containing notable musicians, such as Probyn Gregory, Gerry Beckley , Matt Malley, Paul Jones, Iain Matthews, Emitt Rhodes, Pizza Delivery Boys, Janaki, The Monkees...
", a new song produced under license from Rhino Entertainment
Rhino Entertainment
Rhino Entertainment Company is an American specialty record label and production company. It is owned by Warner Music Group.-History:Rhino was originally a novelty song and reissue company during the 1970s and 1980s, releasing compilation albums of pop, rock & roll, and rhythm & blues successes...
, containing vocal samples from the band’s recording "Zilch".
In 2011, ”Mister Bob” was released as a single to coincide with The Monkees’ 45th Anniversary Tour.
Notable achievements
- Had the top-charting American single of 1967 ("I'm a BelieverI'm a Believer"I'm a Believer" is a song composed by Neil Diamond and recorded by The Monkees in 1966 with the lead vocals by Micky Dolenz. The single, produced by Jeff Barry, hit the number one spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 31, 1966 and remained there for seven weeks,...
"). (Billboard number-one for seven weeks) with "Daydream BelieverDaydream Believer"Daydream Believer" is a song composed by John Stewart shortly before he left the Kingston Trio. The song was originally recorded by The Monkees, with Davy Jones singing lead vocals. The single hit the number one spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1967, remaining there for four...
" tied for third. - Gave the Jimi Hendrix Experience their first US concert appearances as an opening act in July 1967. Jimi HendrixJimi HendrixJames Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
's heavy psychedelic guitar and sexual overtones did not go over well with the teenage girl audience. During one of the shows, Hendrix gave the audience the finger and quit the tour. - Gene RoddenberryGene RoddenberryEugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...
was inspired to introduce the character of ChekovPavel ChekovPavel Andreievich Chekov is a Russian Starfleet officer in the Star Trek fictional universe. Walter Koenig portrayed Chekov in the original Star Trek series and first seven Star Trek films; Anton Yelchin portrayed the character in the 2009 film Star Trek.-Origin:Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry...
in his Star TrekStar TrekStar Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
TV series in response to the popularity of Davy Jones, complete with hairstyle and appearance mimicking that of Jones. - Introduced Tim BuckleyTim BuckleyTimothy Charles Buckley III was an American vocalist, and musician. His music and style changed considerably through the years; his first album was mostly folk oriented, but over time his music incorporated jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, avant-garde and an evolving "voice as instrument," sound...
to a national audience, via his appearance in the series finale, "The Frodis Caper" (aka "Mijacogeo"). - Last music artist to win the MTV Friday Night Video Fights by defeating Bon JoviBon JoviBon Jovi is an American rock band from Sayreville, New Jersey. Formed in 1983, Bon Jovi consists of lead singer and namesake Jon Bon Jovi , guitarist Richie Sambora, keyboardist David Bryan, drummer Tico Torres, as well as current bassist Hugh McDonald...
51% to 49%. - First music artist to win two Emmy AwardEmmy AwardAn Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s. - 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 the first artists achieving number-one hits in the United States and United Kingdom simultaneously.
- More of The MonkeesMore of The MonkeesMore of The Monkees is the second full-length album by The Monkees. It was recorded in late 1966 and released on Colgems label #102 on January 9, 1967. It was number one on the Billboard 200 for 18 weeks—the longest of any Monkees album. It also went to number one in the UK. In the U.S...
spent 70 weeks on the Billboard charts, becoming the 12th biggest selling album of all time. - Four number-one albums in a one-year span.
- Held the number one spot on the Billboard album chart for 31 consecutive weeks, 37 weeks total.
- Held the record for the longest stay at number one for a debut record album until 1982 when Men At WorkMen at WorkMen at Work are an Australian rock band who achieved international success in the 1980s. They are the only Australian artists to have a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United States . They achieved the same distinction of a simultaneous #1 album and #1 single in the United Kingdom...
's debut record album Business As Usual broke that record. - In 2008, The Monkees were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
- Between 1966 and 1970, The Monkees released 121 songs on 9 albums and 8 non-LP singles. The final song they recorded was "It's Got To Be Love".
Discography
- The MonkeesThe Monkees (album)The Monkees is the first album by the band The Monkees. It was released in October 1966 by Colgems Records in the United States and RCA Records in the rest of the world. It was the first of four consecutive U.S. number one albums for the group, taking the top spot on the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks....
(1966) - More of The MonkeesMore of The MonkeesMore of The Monkees is the second full-length album by The Monkees. It was recorded in late 1966 and released on Colgems label #102 on January 9, 1967. It was number one on the Billboard 200 for 18 weeks—the longest of any Monkees album. It also went to number one in the UK. In the U.S...
(1967) - HeadquartersHeadquarters (album)HeadquartersThe sleeve and record both render the title as The Monkees' Headquarters. was the third album issued by The Monkees and the first written and recorded primarily by the four members of the group, rather than by session musicians and professional songwriters...
(1967) - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
- The Birds, The Bees & the MonkeesThe Birds, The Bees & the MonkeesThe Birds, The Bees & The Monkees is the fifth studio album by The Monkees released in April 1968. The first Monkees album not to reach Billboard's number one, instead charting at number three and eventually selling over a million copies.-History:...
(1968) - Head (1968)
- Instant ReplayInstant Replay (The Monkees album)Instant Replay is the seventh studio album by The Monkees. Issued almost a year after the cancellation of the group's NBC television series, it is also the first album released after Peter Tork left the group and the only album of the original nine studio albums that does not include any songs...
(1969) - The Monkees PresentThe Monkees PresentThe Monkees Present is The Monkees' eighth album.By the time recording had begun in earnest for this album, the Monkees had passed their popularity peak, and as Screen Gems cared less and less about the Monkees' activities, the members were given more control over the creation of this, the second...
(1969) - Changes (1970)
- Pool It!Pool It!Pool It!, issued 1987 by Rhino Records, is a pop/rock album by The Monkees. It was the first "reunion album" by the band after their 1986 rebirth, and it marked the return of Peter Tork along with Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones...
(1987) - JustusJustus (album)Justus is the eleventh and final studio album by The Monkees, recorded in celebration of their 30th anniversary. This album featured the return of Michael Nesmith. This was the first Monkees album since Head was released in 1968 to feature all four Monkees...
(1996)
Tours
- North American Tour (1966–67)
- British Tour (1967)
- Pacific Rim Tour (1968)
- North American Tour (1969) (Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith)
- The Golden Hits of The Monkees (1975–77) (Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and HartBoyce and HartTommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.-Early years:Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school, Upon discharge,...
) - Sounds of The Monkees (1986; 1987) (Jones, Tork)
- 20th Anniversary World Tour (1986) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- Here We Come Again Tour (1987–88) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- The Monkees Live (1989) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- The Monkees Summer Tour (1989) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- Micky and Davy: Together Again (1994–95) (Dolenz, Jones)
- Monkees: The 30th Anniversary Tour (1996) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- Justus Tour (1997)
- North American Tour (1997) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- Monkeemania Returns Tour (2001–2002) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
- An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary TourAn Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary TourAn Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour was the fourth reunion tour and sixteenth overall concert tour by American pop rock group, The Monkees. It was the group's first tour in nearly a decade following Monkeemania, which ran from 2001 to 2002. The tour visited the United Kingdom,...
(2011) (Dolenz, Jones, Tork)
Comics
There was also "The Monkees" comic published in the United States by Dell ComicsDell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
, which ran for seventeen issues from 1967 to 1969. In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, a Daily Mirror "Crazy Cartoon Book" featured four comic stories as well as four photos of The Monkees, all in black and white; it was published in 1967.
Biopic
In 2000, VH-1 produced the television biopic Daydream Believers: The Monkees' Story. In 2002, the movie was released on DVD, and featured both commentaries and interviews with Dolenz, Jones and Tork. The aired version did differ from the DVD release as the TV version had an extended scene with all four Beatles but with a shortened Cleveland concert segment. It was also available on VHS.See also
- List of best-selling music artists
- List of The Monkees episodes
- The BeatlesThe BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...