“Madness!! Auditions.
Folk & Roll musicians-singers for acting roles in new TV series.
Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s-types. Have
courage to work. Must come down for interview.”
We all know
what happened after this ad was published in Variety and The Hollywood
Reporter in September 1965. Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and
Davy Jones may have had varying levels of success “coming down” for their
interviews, but interview they did, and one year later, they could all be seen glaring
out from the cover of their debut album and capering on a new hit series The Monkees, which
debuted on this very day in 1966.
Fifty years
later, The Monkees seem to be as popular as ever, and more importantly, have
finally gotten the critical approval they should have been getting
since Micky first crooned “Last Train to
Clarksville”. For many of us, The Monkees also provided an accessible
introduction to the pop world when we were still a little too young for The
Beatles’ complexity, the Stones’ luridness, or The Who’s violence (yet,
somehow, we were ready for “Writing Wrongs”. Go figure). I’ve been a Monkees
freak for thirty years now, and my obsession with the TV/recording/stage/screen
sensations has left me with a wealth of Monkee facts and figures I am about to
bounce off your million-dollar head in a feature I call…
Here we come...
OK, let’s address the big, smelly ape in the room with our very first entry. So, The Monkees did not form in a garage the way most bands do. They were put together by TV show producers for mostly commercial reasons, to cash in on the ongoing phenomenal success of The Beatles (see B), and to attempt to recreate the irreplaceable magic of A Hard Day’s Night and Help! for boob-tube audiences. This does not mean The Monkees weren’t artists. Micky had done his time in a garage band sometimes known as Micky and The One Nighters, and more coincidentally, The Missing Links, and possessed a voice of magnificent range and dramatics. Peter Tork was a hat-passing folkie with an extraordinary knack for picking up instruments (piano, guitar, banjo, bass, French horn, etc.) that made him The Monkees’ own John Entwistle or Brian Jones-style jack-of-all-trades. Davy Jones had been an acclaimed Broadway song-and-dance man, and Mike Nesmith was a composer, performer, and recording artist. The boys brought their individual talents to a project that didn’t necessarily need and really didn’t want them. By asserting their artistry on records that were going to sell millions whether or not Peter picked his banjo on the sessions, he, Micky, Mike, and Davy made the Monkees’ albums better than was necessary. Consequently, efforts such Headquarters; Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD.; and Head became albums as timeless as much of what The Monkees’ organically formed peers were making in the mid-sixties.
The guys’ original compositions also made for some of the
most interesting tracks on those records, and we’re not just talking about those of seasoned
composer Mike Nesmith, whose pure country (“Good Clean Fun”, “Don’t Wait
for Me”), pure rock (“Mary Mary”, “Circle Sky”), country-rock (“Sunny
Girlfriend”, “You Told Me”), and country-psychedelia (“Tapioca Tundra”,
“Auntie’s Municipal Court”) were consistently invigorating. Peter Tork’s “For
Pete’s Sake” was strong and vital enough to serve as the series’ closing theme
during season two, and his “Can You Dig It?” and “Long Title: Do I Have to Do
This All Over Again?” helped bring the ultra-hip Head soundtrack to life. Micky Dolenz’s “Randy Scouse Git” was
strong enough to become the first Monkee-composed single A-side (at least in
England where it was retitled “Alternate Title” and went to #2), and his “Mommy
and Daddy” was a piece of unflinching agit-prop aimed at pre-teen revolutionaries.
Even Davy Jones matured into a composer capable of such fine pieces as “Dream
World” and the tough-as-shit “You and I”. Had The Monkees never
expressed themselves as artists on songs such as these, it is likely I would
not be writing about them right now and you wouldn’t care to read about them.
