I don’t have many vivid memories of the 60s. I can’t honestly say I remember Neil
Armstrong walking on the moon. I only
have vague memories of my younger sister being born and those memories are
mixed with dreams. My first memories,
and yes, they are pretty fuzzy, mostly involve The Monkees.
I was only a toddler when The Monkees premiered on NBC.
My parents enjoyed music and I guess that’s what led them to watch the
show, but I apparently loved it from the time I could talk. My father always enjoys telling of how I
loved Davy Jones, and how Dad would call him names, especially “the little
wart,” to see tiny me get indignant and stomp my foot. I had some kind of teenybopper magazine when
I was 2 or 3 and I’m told I took it to bed with me and Mom and Dad would hear
me from the hallway saying “Micky,” or “Davy,” followed by something
unintelligible. Whether I was talking to
them or about them isn’t clear. I loved
them all. Davy, Micky Dolenz, Mike
Nesmith, and Peter Tork were The Monkees.
They were my idols and my friends.
I’ve had many dreams through the years about hanging around with them,
and riding in the Monkeemobile.
I don’t remember watching the series as it aired in prime
time, but fuzzy memory number one involves a special titled “33 1/3 Revolutions
Per Monkee” that aired after the series went off the air. I’m not positive how we knew the show was
going to air, but the information most likely came from TV Guide, to which my parents probably have one of the longest standing
subscriptions in the U.S. I recall
having taken every toy out my toy box for some reason and creating a big
mess. I was told I had to clean up said
mess before I could watch TV. I was very
upset, but got it cleaned up in time and I remember watching the show and
eating my dinner on a TV tray, which was not common practice in our home. For years, I had some odd memories of the
guys entering the show in some kind of plastic tubes. In later years, I thought I must have made
that up, but when I saw a VHS of the show, I found that I’d remembered at least
partially correctly.
The next memory comes from a year later, after Peter had
left the band. I was the flower girl in
a wedding in Louisville and spent the night there with my grandparents (my
family lived in Shelbyville). The next
day, Na Naw and Ta Taw and I went to Pineville, Kentucky where Ta Taw’s mother and
twin sisters lived. I knew that the
Monkees were supposed to be on Laugh-In
that night and was very excited to watch the show. Grandma, the aunts and Na Naw and Ta Taw all
wanted to watch Lawrence Welk, however.
Even at 4, I think I had an inkling that this was not cool. I remember crying and falling asleep on a
couch; I do think I was probably a little homesick at being away for 2 nights
in a row, and not just upset over not seeing The Monkees. I also for some reason believe that the
episode of Laugh-In was a rerun, and
I’d already seen it, but as is proven over and over, children enjoy
repetition. Besides, we’re talking about
The Monkees, and this was in the days before DVRS, DVDs, or even VHS
tapes. You watched a show when it aired, or you didn't see it at all.
My best memories of watching The Monkees were on Saturday
mornings. My first album that was not a
Disney or other children’s LP was The
Birds, The Bees and The Monkees. I
still have it but the cover is pretty ragged, as it was well-loved by a little
girl. The vinyl was fairly heavy and is
in pretty good shape, considering. On my
6th birthday, one of my favorite gifts (other than a Dawn doll) was Barrel Full of Monkees. I still have that double album of
greatest hits, too. Wikipedia says it
was released in March of 1971, but that cannot be correct. My memory is NOT fuzzy about getting that album
on my birthday, which was in FEBRUARY.
20 great songs are on that album, which was the best I had until getting
the Listen to the Band CD box set in
the late 80s.
The Monkees TV
show was ahead of its time, breaking the 4th wall, using weird video
cuts, and having avant garde guest stars like Frank Zappa. It received Emmy Awards for Outstanding
Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in 1967. That was all way over the head of a
preschooler. I liked the bright colors,
the six-button shirts, the crazy romps, and cute Davy Jones. And the pop music. I have loved pop music, always. My mother insists that she turned on the
radio when I was 2 years old, and I said, “that’s Frank Sinatra” and she
realized I was right. When I was still
little, I heard the song Tracy on the
radio, and thought the DJ said it was sung by The Monkees, which made me so
very happy. In later years, I found that
he’d said The Cuff Links. Not the same
thing at all, but Ron Dante, the lead singer of The Cuff Links, fits into a
later musical chapter of my formative years.
According to Wikipedia, reruns of The Monkees ran on CBS Saturday mornings from 1969 to 1972, and
then on ABC from 1972 to 1973. I
remember watching the show on WHAS (Channel 11 in Louisville, KY, the CBS
affiliate until 1990), but don’t remember it emigrating to WLKY (Channel
32). My memories were that The Monkees
were replaced by Lancelot Link, a
live action show featuring chimps, with dubbed-in lines. This is probably not accurate, but I always
blamed Lancelot Link for bumping The Monkees, so I didn’t appreciate the
bubblegum music in that show that I might have normally enjoyed. Yes, I like bubblegum. No, The Monkees are not bubblegum. That is a LONG discussion for another time.
In the 70s, reruns of The
Monkees would sporadically pop up on TV stations, usually independent
stations, during the day. But the show
experienced its true rebirth on MTV when a marathon aired in 1986. Subsequently, Peter, Micky and Davy reunited,
had a Top 20 song (well, Davy wasn’t on the song) and a new album, and Mike
even joined them for some live concerts (that I didn’t see). Columbia Pictures decided to capitalize on The
Monkees new-found popularity and created a new series The New Monkees, which failed pretty quickly. I vaguely remember seeing
part of maybe one of those shows, and hating it. I own that show’s album, picked up on the
cheap after the show aired. I’m pretty
sure I’ve never listened to it.
I watched the reruns of The
Monkees whenever I could. I have VHS
tapes with many of the episodes that aired in the 80s. Of course, I have both seasons of the show on
DVD now (a Christmas gift from my husband in 2003, the year they were
released). I‘ve held on to the tapes
just for curiosities like old MTV promos and fun items like tampon commercials
featuring Courtney Cox. I had a very
good memory for the plots of the shows and enjoyed them in reruns as much as,
if not more than, I did when I was 4 or 5.
I understood the humor better as an adult, and appreciated the fine pop
tunes more, too. In the mid-80s it
suddenly hit me that The Monkees were closer to my parents’ ages than they were
to mine. In the 80s, I was the age that
the boys were when they filmed the shows. That was sobering. Several years later, a day came when I
realized that two of The Beatles were dead, and there would be a day when one of
The Monkees would pass away. I still
assumed they would be quite old and it was very far away.
In 1994, a touring production of Grease came to Louisville and I was doing the morning show at Lite
106.9 (WVEZ), and had press passes. Davy
played Vince Fontaine during that run of the show. He was walking through the audience and my
boyfriend (now husband) encouraged me to try to meet him. I didn’t, because I didn’t want to ruin my
illusion. To the perpetually 6-years-old
portion of my brain, Davy will always be 20 years old, and looking younger than
that due to his diminutive stature and seemingly hairless face. He seemed to age more quickly than the rest
of the guys after the show ended. Mike had
always seemed to be more adult, and he was married during the show, although
I’m sure I didn’t know that at the time.
Peter and Micky also seemed somewhat older, although Micky was born the
same year as Davy. Seeing Davy in Grease playing a middle-aged DJ who
flirts with high school girls bothered me a little, so I enjoyed the show from
a distance.
I enjoyed the show from a larger distance when I saw The
Monkees (Davy, Micky and Peter) after a Redbirds game in 1997. It was a fun show, although I don’t have many
specific memories other than wishing Mike would have been with them to make the
concert feel more complete. I do
remember thinking they looked and sounded quite fine on all of their many hits.
Those same three (no Mike again, of course) began a tour in
2011. I wanted to see them and I read
reviews saying they were better than they had any right to be. That tour ended early, with “business” mentioned
as the reason for the stoppage. I had
fears that Peter was ill, as he had been diagnosed with a rare form of head and
neck cancer in 2009. It seems now that
it actually was business, or possibly fighting amongst the guys. I regretted not having seen one of those
shows, especially a few months later.
On February 29th 2012, I came to dislike Leap
Day. I found out from Facebook that Davy
Jones had died of a heart attack. He was
66. Friends and family sent me
condolence messages. It really was a
kind of rite of passage for me. My first
crush, gone. As an adult, I’ve come to
realize that if I’d come to The Monkees later, Davy probably wouldn’t have been
my favorite. Not that I would have even
had to choose, but Micky Dolenz is one of the best pop singers ever, and
seriously underrated. I always thought
he was the funniest, even as a kid. But
they were all pretty gifted comedians.
Mike is a fine songwriter, and had a decent music career going before he
was cast in the show. Even though he and
Peter lacked acting experience, they were funny and appealing, and possessed
good comic timing. Peter plays multiple
instruments well and is also a fine songwriter.
Davy wrote fewer songs than the rest.
He was a showman, as opposed to a rocker. He was nominated for a Tony for his portrayal
of The Artful Dodger in Oliver! in
1964. He was a teen idol. And he was adorable. Watch any episode of The Monkees and see for yourself.
I was glad and sad to hear the surviving Monkees were going
to tour in 2012. They did several dates,
and I considered flying somewhere to see them, but couldn’t really justify the
expenditure. When I saw they’d decided
to do more shows this year and would be in Nashville, less than 3 hours from
me, I knew I had to go. But as a lot of
people have said, it would certainly have been nice if they have reunited for a
full-fledged tour before, when all 4 guys could have done it. Mike has never needed the money, with his
inheritance (his mother created Liquid Paper), and his much greater solo
success. It’s understandable to a
degree; I’m sure it would be hard to
spend most of your life defined by something you did for about 4 years,
especially for someone like him, whose video innovations preceded MTV and
helped to inspire that network. But
those few years meant a great deal to many people. Despite all the digs at the “Prefab 4” and
the fact that they didn’t play all the instruments on all their albums, there
is no denying that they made a lot of great pop music. Whether by choice or by dictation from record
labels and TV show producers, they performed some of the best-remembered and most-played
songs of the 60s. There are many current
petitions to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whether or not the politics of that
particular institution allow them in, which is highly doubtful, they will
always have their place in pop music, and it is a place they earned, regardless
of their origin.
There are times when musicians should call it a day. But as long as someone sounds good and feels
good about what they’re doing, they might as well go on doing it. A
couple of years ago when I heard Glen Campbell was going on tour after his
Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I questioned his family’s choice. I wondered if they were just trotting the guy
out to make a few bucks. But I heard
some clips from a new album on NPR and realized he sounded marvelous. I actually saw a show in Louisville last year
and he sounded fantastic. Not fantastic
for a 76-year-old man. Just fantastic. His guitar playing had lost its sharpness,
his daughter had to remind him he didn’t need a capo for a particular song and
he obviously used a teleprompter for lyrics, but he still did an excellent
show. And given the choice between
sitting on a porch waiting for that horrible curtain to be drawn across my
brain and playing some more shows, I’d choose the shows any day. Of course, I’d love to be singing and playing
for any audience, so maybe I’m not the most objective observer. My thought on this is, if you can, get
together and play.
The Monkees sound good.
Really good. Micky is 68 and his
voice still sounds great on all those hits.
I believe everything he sang in Nashville on July 24th was
done in the original key. If it wasn’t,
it was close. I’m always prepared for
artists to lower the pitch of songs so they can hit the notes, but I only felt
that might have been the case on a couple of Mike’s songs. Singing was never Peter’s strong suit, but I
think he sounds better now than he did in the 60s. His speaking voice is a bit raspy, possibly
due to his previous illness. Mike sounds
the same as ever, and seemed to enjoy himself during the show. My husband quipped that he had put Liquid
Paper on his hair. Yes, they all look
older, yet youthful and energetic. All
three played guitar at the beginning. Peter
also played banjo and keyboard, and Micky of course, played the drums during
the second set of songs. He had played
guitar prior to being cast as the drummer on the show, at which point he had to
learn to play drums. He learned pretty
well. The show lasted about 2 hours, consisted
of about 30 songs (when most of your songs are 2-3 minutes, you play a lot of
them at a show), and was highly entertaining.
As Mike says in the song Listen to
the Band, “Now weren’t they good?
They made me happy.” They always
will.
