We are the chimpions!

It’s time to look at the real story of The Monkees and lay to rest some of the myths and lies that have surrounded the group since the release of their first album in 1966. In particular, there’s the claim that they were pop’s first “manufactured group” put together purely in response to an advertisement in Variety seeking “Musicians, singers for acting roles in a new TV series”, a fake band who never played instruments on their own recordings, never composed songs and weren’t involved in the creative process, at any level, when it came to their music.

Apart from singing, that is, on what turned out to be a string of classic pop singles such as ‘Last Train To Clarksville’, ‘I’m A Believer’ and ‘Daydream Believer’.

And what of the origins of the famous TV series which gave the world The Monkees? Davy Jones, along with Micky Dolenz, the only remaining original members, rejects the popular perception that the series was a straightforward rip-off of The Beatles’ movie, A Hard Day’s Night.

“The Monkees were created as a spin-off of what we’d seen in that movie but Screen Gems also had experimented with teens shows featuring Ricky Nelson and Paul Peterson,” explains Jones. “In the Nelson family show, for example, Ricky would pick up his guitar and his success as a singer spun out of that. Then he went on the road. So that was our lineage too.

“But the Beatles movie was a huge influence on Bob Rafelson, the director of the Monkees TV show. As in all those jump cuts, fast editing, not really a great script, which was, in ways, the precursor of the pop video.

“Yet you have to remember that there were about five other pilot shows done around the same time that didn’t take off. The Beach Boys did a pilot. The Lovin’ Spoonful did one. In fact, for a time, it was thought that The Lovin’ Spoonful would be The Monkees. And the producers talked to Stephen Stills about doing it. And Danny Hutton from Three Dog Night. But they hadn’t got the acting ability so they settled for us. Because we were a mixture of two actors and two singers. And it must have worked! Because the series we did lasted fifty six episodes and went to forty countries around the world.”

Broadly speaking, Dolenz and Jones were the actors, Mike Nesmith and Pete Tork the musicians. And while Jones may still be rooted more in the acting aspect of The Monkees, fans of the band – including major rock acts like Michael Stipe, Pat Benatar and Tom Petty – would probably argue that it is the Monkees music that has kept the legend alive. And so would a long time Monkees fan like myself.

“From the start we had amazing songwriters working with us,” Jones recalls. “Neil Diamond, Carole King, Harry Nillson, Leiber and Stoller, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. And all those great songs were sitting around in the mid 60’s because so many bands that came after the Beatles were writing their own material. So we got the cream of the crop. ‘I’m A Believer’ was written by Neil Diamond. ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ was written by Carole King. So we had high quality input from all areas in the business.”

And not least from top quality studio session players, leading to much contempt from critics.

“The flak we always got was that we were manufactured and, at the start, didn’t play our own instruments or write our own songs,” Jones observes. “But in those days, believe me, groups like The Byrds, The Turtles, The Association, the Beach Boys – none of them – played their music in the studio. It was all done by studio musicians called The Wrecking Crew. Guys like Joe Osbourne and Larry Knetchel. So they and others, like Glen Campbell and Neil Young, played on our records. And David Crosby’d sit in and strum. But it wasn’t uncommon for that to happen in those days because of the huge studio costs. The truth is that musicians who play on stage are not necessarily good enough to play in the studio.”

Davy Jones’ claims in relation to the Wrecking Crew have been verified for this writer by Roger McGuinn, who admits he was the only member of The Byrds to play on their first hit ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’ Yet when it came to The Monkees, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, in particular, seem to have fought like fuck to write, play and produce the band’s recordings. Indeed, Micky Dolenz claims there were “really two groups” called The Monkees.

“Initially, when The Monkees started it was like a West End musical where the people you cast have to be able to sing, dance, act,” he explains. “But what happened was that Mike and Peter did want to write their own songs and play on all the stuff. And were simply not allowed to. Peter tells the story of going into the studio with his bass guitar and they said ‘what are you doing here?’ He said, ‘we’re recording, I’m going to play’ and they told him ‘no you’re not, go home and watch TV.’ So it wasn’t a case of us having any choice in the matter – at the start. We were not allowed to be part of the process. They even released the second Monkees album, More Of The Monkees, when we were on tour and didn’t consult us about the tracks.”

Not surprisingly, the Monkees rebelled against such fascistic madness. Particularly Nesmith who had already fought to have his songs included on the first two Monkees albums. One commentator even claims Nesmith invented country-rock with ‘Papa Gene’s Blues’ from the group’s first LP.

“The whole set-up, in terms of the music really bothered Mike,” says Dolenz. “So he said, ‘y’know guys, we should, and can, be writing and recording and performing our own tunes.’ It didn’t take much to convince me because I had a rock ‘n’ roll band before The Monkees. So we, collectively, put our foot down. And won. The producers fired Don Kirshner and from that moment we wrote and played and sang on it all.”

Well, not entirely true. In truth, The Monkees still used Brill Building songwriters and additional studio musicians but from this point onwards they certainly became more of a “real” band writing, recording and producing albums including Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones Ltd , which has been described as one of the best pop albums of the ’60s.

“It’s a great album,” Dolenz agrees. Furthermore, album titles like the soundtrack Head hint at the ever-increasing drugs references in Monkees material.

Indeed, Dolenz reveals that the Head movie came about after he “piled into Mike’s limo and met Bob, Bert and Jack at a golf resort in Ojai” where “for three days we got stoned and rambled into tape recorders.” The “Jack” in question was Jack Nicholson who is credited as the writer of the positively subversive and post-modern Head. But Dolenz bristles at the suggestion that, in creating Head, Nicholson was helping Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider kill the beast they had created. Or, at the very least, trying to undo their clearly limiting bubblegum image.

“You’d have to ask Jack what his agenda was,” says Dolenz. “Speaking for myself, I can only tell you I was happy to make a movie that wasn’t simply an extended episode of the television series. And that was in the style of so many movies at the time, that were deconstructing ideas and concepts in the broadest sense. I also liked the idea of breaking the illusions in the fourth wall, which happens a lot in the movie. But we also did that in the TV series where we’d talk straight to the camera.

“But what I really liked about the movie was that we could finally address some sensitive issues, which we were never allowed to do in the TV show. We weren’t, for example, allowed to even say hell in the episode – the one that won an Emmmy actually – called The Devil And Peter Tork. It was a reworking of the Faustian legend, where Peter sells his soul to the devil in order to learn to play the harp. And at one point we were supposed to say ‘that means at midnight you’re going to go to hell.’ But the network would not allow us to say ‘hell’ on national television. Bob Rafelson fought that but in the episode what we finally say is ‘Peter, that means at midnight, you’re going to have to go to the place we can’t name on national television.’ That was as far as we could go in the TV series. But we weren’t allowed to make any direct reference to drugs, free love, the Vietnam war. So we did all that – with a vengeance – in the movie.”

Head is often cited as having sounded the death-knell for the Monkees. Either because they were focusing too much on the movie or fighting among themselves after losing the “common enemy” of Don Kirshner. It’s also said they’d begun, on the album The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees, to operate in a Beatles-like post-Epstein solo mode. It certainly is one of their more fragmented later works. Either way, around this time The Monkees’ records stopped selling in large quantities.

“What happened, basically, was that the television show went off the air,” says Dolenz. “And, remember, this was a television show about an imaginary group. So when the show went off the air the cast of the show disbanded. That’s when the record sales did start falling because (a) there was no group to support the records and (b), obviously, we weren’t touring. So Peter was the first to quit. Then Mike and Davy and I recorded a few tunes to fulfil a recording contract. Mike was not happy about that but agreed to do it. Then he bought himself out of his contract and Davy and I continued because we still had that contract to fill. But then, eventually, we got fed up so it did all fall apart.”

But not before The Monkees recorded their last great single, the symbolically titled, Listen To The Band, which was released in April 1969.

Thirty-three years on, Davy Jones, now nearing sixty, has been married twice, divorced and is currently single. The one-time heartthrob is still searching for “the right woman”, still a romantic. “That’s the part I played in the show and that’s what I still am,” he laughs.

But is Davy also a drunk these days? The question arises following recent reports that Peter Tork left the current tour because he believed Davy and Mike were more interested in drinking booze than making music.

“Anybody who has a bottle of beer in their hands Peter thinks is an alcoholic,” Jones responds. “He’s been on the programme for about twenty years and to each their own. In the old days, whether Micky Dolenz and I were smoking pot or drinking beer – or whatever we were doing, as all lads do in their 20s and 30s – we no longer do that now. Because we don’t want to miss the show. But if we go into a bar after the show that’s our business. There are plenty of people who have drinking problems, we don’t.”

Nevertheless, bickering over booze in public is a long way from the early days when Davy described fellow Monkees, like Peter, as his

brothers. “It is,” Davy agrees. Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz touring as The Monkees is also a long way from their hey-day as America’s “fab four” which included Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, isn’t it?

“Maybe but The Monkees really always were Micky Dolenz and myself,” Jones insists. ”Mickey sang all the songs and I was the face of The Monkees. And though Mike was fun he’s difficult to deal with. He never thought as a team player. Peter was much the same. And he’s unpredictable. At this stage in our career we can’t have that. Peter just doesn’t have the star quality to be able to follow through. He doesn’t know how to perform, other than on stage. He’s not willing to take the time to break from his eggs and bacon in a restaurant to sign an autograph for a passer by. He’s not willing to do that part of what it takes to be a celebrity. All he wants to do is write, play and produce music. He can’t deal with the off-stage time. And we can’t take that anymore.”

‘Daydream Believer’ indeed! And after this comment by Davy Jones one can only say this sure is a sad coda to the story of The Monkees.

“I guess it is,” Davy agrees. “But I don’t see where we all are in 2002 as being the end of the story for The Monkees. Who knows what the future holds? And no matter what I said to you today about Peter Tork, he is still my brother, I’d still go to war for him. And I wouldn’t want anyone else saying anything derogatory about the guy. He is an amazing musician. But he just doesn’t fit into The Monkees thing anymore.”

So what about Mike Nesmith, who seemed to have lost interest in The Monkees when his mother – who invented Tippex – died and left him the family fortune? Nesmith was also relatively successful as a solo act before coming up with – and selling – the concept of MTV. Having sat in with the band in more recent times, why isn’t he on this tour?

“Mike, as I say, never really was a team player,” Jones repeats. “He really was only interested in using The Monkees to enhance his own career. Though, looking back I now see how stupid I was, not to have written tunes for The Monkees. If only to have insurance for my kids. Mike Nesmith did it. Though, at the time, I did wonder why he was in an El Dorado Cadillac and I was in a Volkswagen. That was why! He was getting advances from the publishing company and the record company and I was just taking my four hundred and fifty bucks a week wages for the show.”

Even so, Davy did write some Monkee recordings, such as ‘Hard To Believe’, for the Pisces... album.

“But they weren’t the ones that get played on the radio,” he says, laughing. “And a lot of my tracks are being released all these years later on albums called Missing Links . Because they are scraping the barrel. And I will get money from those. But not large amounts. Yet it really doesn’t matter that much. When I come to Ireland to do a gig, for example, it’s not necessarily about the money. Though it can be quite lucrative when we do gigs at Wembley – as we’ve just done – or as it will be when we open at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. But what it’s all about to me, in essence, is still being able to do gigs, as The Monkees, all these years later. I like bringing joy to people who come along to see our shows. Music mingles souls, music is a healer.”