Hey Hey, We were The Monkees!

An interesting story, was Michael Nesmith. The Monkees guitarist died last week at 78 after a career of many ups and downs.

First up was getting hired for the Monkees in the first place. Inspired by the madcap antics of The Beatles in their movie "A Hard Day's Night," two Hollywood types, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider (doing business as Raybert Productions) took a mind to recreate that Fab Four mania on tv.  They had a casting call and hired four musician/actor types: Davy Jones was a musical performer and former jockey in England, Micky Dolenz starred in the "Circus Boy" TV show as a kid in the 1950s, Peter Tork was a folk musician, and Nesmith was an motorcycle-riding Air Force veteran who had played guitar and sung at clubs here and there. None of them had great experience (or success) in show business, but under Raybert's productions and the music direction of Don Kirshner, the show flourished from the start after its debut on NBC in September, 1966.

The producers had copied the Beatle formula to a "T", even down to having a wisecracking funny guy (Dolenz as John Lennon), a "cute" guy (Jones as McCartney), a serious deadpan guy (Nesmith as George Harrison) and the odd-man-out guy (Tork as Ringo Starr).  And the mighty ears of Kirshner picked hit records, one after another 

( “I’m a Believer”, “Daydream Believer”, “Last Train to Clarksville”, “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday”) among others - the Pre-Fab Four, if you will.

So there they were, with hit records and a hit tv show and personal appearances. Everything was peachy-keen, you assume.

Left to right: Jones, Dolenz, Tork, Nesmith.





But, as Jones once told an interviewer, "We're not a band, we're an act." Professional musicians recorded the instrumental tracks for the band, who trooped in and sang, and then went home to wait for the Brinks truck, until Nesmith got all worked up and demanded that the band be allowed to play their own guitars and drums. He wanted creative control, which very few of us have ever had in any job.

That didn't work out so well, and by 1968, The Monkees were The Band That Used To Be On TV.  There would be periodic revivals, such as in 1986, when MTV started rerunning their original episodes for a whole new generation, and tours from time to time.

There's no telling how long the act and show could have gone on, had it not been for Nesmith's complaint. It turns out he, of the four, had the greater spark of music within him. He formed one of the first country-rock bands in 1970, the First National Band, and had hits with "Joanne" and "Silver Moon," he wrote "Different Drum" (The Monkees couldn't record it, as it was deemed too country, but Linda Ronstadt did and had a big hit) and Nesmith also produced videos and movies for others.

We now know that most pop bands in the 60s did not play their own instruments, using great session musicians instead. Most of them didn't kick up a fuss over it, preferring to drink the full wine of success before the bottle went dry.

But of course, most musicians were not the son of Bette Nesmith Graham, the inventor of Liquid Paper, the indispensable office tool in the typewriter era, who bequeathed Mike $25 million at her death.

Having that kind of money in one's back pocket means one can make mistakes and wite-them-out, if you will. Mike Nesmith had a good career and just recently toured with Dolenz for a final go-round (Tork died in 2019, Jones in 2012) and was determined to go out like a showman. Good for him; safe travels home.