Davy was once a jockey in Real Life, a skill he gets to use on camera in "Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth". He also shows off his boxing prowess in "Monkees in the Ring".
Mike takes up motorcycling to impress April Conquest in "Monkees Get Out More Dirt". Mike was an experienced biker, as he rode a motorcycle in his pre-Monkee days since he was not yet able to afford a car.
Channel Hop: The show originally ran on NBC. The Saturday morning reruns were broadcast on both CBS (1969-72) and ABC (1972-73). Then came syndication, the 1986 MTV run, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite in the late 80's and 90's, more syndication, and since 2010 Antenna TV. In early 2019, MeTV picked up the series, just in time to run two episodes in a tribute to Peter Tork, who had passed away a few weeks before the planned debut of the series on the network. On April 7, 2023, the series began airing in HD on AXS TV.
In "Art, For Monkees' Sake," not only does Mike collapse in laughter watching Liberace destroy a piano in an art museum, but the camera also helpfully zooms in on him as he does. And that's just one of the few examples that wasn't from the boys cracking each other up through ad-libbing.
In "Fairy Tale," Mike can't help but laugh when Peter says that he's too young to get married (in real life, Michael was already a married father and was younger than Peter, not to mention that Peter had already been married and divorced at that point).
Creator's Favorite Episode: Davy's favourite was "The Frodis Caper", Micky's was "The Devil and Peter Tork" and Peter and Mike's was "Fairy Tale".
The Danza: Each character was essentially a Flanderized version of the actor, with the exception of Peter, who played The Ditz on the show. However, they did all use their own names.
Dawson Casting: Some episodes indicate that Davy, Micky and Peter are supposed to be teenagers (In "I've Got a Little Song Here," Mike states that he's 21, though it's implied that he's the oldest). Davy was 20 at the time filming began, Micky was 21, Mike was 23, and Peter was 24.
Directed by Cast Member: Micky Dolenz ("Mijacogeo"/"The Frodis Caper") and Peter Tork ("The Monkees Mind Their Manor") each directed an episode of the series. Dolenz later had some success as a TV director in Britain.
The CBS/ABC reruns replaced some songs with tracks from the band's current releases.
When the show went into syndication, MTV and Nick at Nite kept the episodes intact, for the most part, but local stations tended to cut out stuff. The interview tags were always the first thing to go, and sometimes even a song would be cut if it was featured separately rather than integrated into the body of the episode.
Later syndication packages avoided the deletion of songs and interviews by Ramping; that is, randomly speeding up the film and songs to save time...except this gets extremely ANNOYING.
Executive Veto: According to Micky Dolenz, the show wasn't allowed to mention the Vietnam War, drugs or societal problems.
Famously The Monkees did this with The Beatles, but developed their own unique style. Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were inspired by A Hard Day's Night to develop a television series about a fictional rock and roll group.
The Partridge Family was an attempt by Screen Gems to reuse the successful methodology they'd found with The Monkees, only using The Cowsills as a role model rather than The Beatles. It worked for a while.
There were two bizarre stillborn attempts to create new franchises using the Monkee formula via movies, both from 1970. Toomorrow, co-produced by none other than Don Kirshner, was a science fiction comedy starring a group fronted by a pre-stardom Olivia Newton-John. The Phynx, a project instigated by longtime Warner (Bros.) Records executive Stan Cornyn, was a tongue-in-cheek story about the US government drafting four young men to start a rock band to act as a front for undercover operations.note There were even some slight arms-length connections with The Monkees, since Leiber and Stoller, who'd written "D.W. Washburn", wrote the songs, Head cinematographer Michel Hugo filled the same position for The Phynx, and Lou Antonio, who'd played Judd Weskitt in the "Hillbilly Honeymoon" episode, plays the government agent who organizes the band. Not only did they both use the Myspeld Rökband trope, both bands also featured black drummers. Both films experienced a Troubled Production and were given scant releases by their studios before disappearing. But they've both acquired followings based on their So Bad, It's Good reputations.
Funny Character, Boring Actor: According to Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork was the only one who didn't play himself in the series.
Three of us more or less play ourselves in the series. The odd one out is Peter Tork. Offstage he's a real serious guy who thinks a lot about things like religion and problems in the world. But in the show, he throws off all that and becomes a dumb-but-likable character who is always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. He kind of moons around with a lovesick expression on his face — not like the real Peter Tork at all.
Harpo Does Something Funny: The group was not only allowed, but encouraged to improvise, and gaps were often left in the script to facilitate this, especially where Micky Dolenz was concerned.
Davy Jones recalled that he and Peter Tork got into an argument that resulted in Davy punching him. In his memoir, he describes Michael Nesmith threatening "both Micky and Peter on a number of occasions when things got kind of tense around the set."
According to Nesmith, "Davy and Micky and Peter all fought - verbally and physically...The set would turn into a playground of entitled eight-year-olds at a private school."
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".
Hans Conried, guest-starring in "The Monkees' Paw", got so annoyed with their ad-libbing he messed up a take by announcing "God, I hate these fucking kids!" The censored version was shown as a Hilarious Outtake at the end of the episode.
When Tork died in 2019, Nesmith commented on his often difficult relationship with Tork. "I never liked Peter, he never liked me. So we had an uneasy truce between the two of us. As clear as I could tell, among his peers he was very well liked. But we rarely had a civil word to say to each other." Nesmith admitted, however, that the moment he learned of Tork's death, "I broke into tears. What are you going to do?"
And of course, the infamous "Nesmith punches his fist through the wall at the Beverly Hills Hotel after an uncomfortable exchange with Don Kirshner and a Screen Gems lawyer" incident at an early 1967 gold record awarding ceremony.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Reruns of Monkees episodes often replaced the songs from those episodes with more current ones in order to promote the band's most recent releases. Some songs were replaced multiple times. The syndication versions sometimes have the original songs and sometimes have the replaced songs, with no real pattern to it. Thus while all Monkees episodes are currently available on DVD with original songs intact, there are some fans who insist on trying to obtain copies of every variation of each episode they can, leading to a thriving tape trading market.
MTV ran a 24-hour marathon called Pleasant Valley Sunday on Sunday, February 23, 1986. The reaction was so positive that they ran a few more weekend marathons along with daily airings of the show through the rest of the year. Pleasant Valley Sunday is considered to be the event that launched their 1986 comeback.
Antenna TV aired every episode back-to-back followed by Head on March 3-4 2012 in honor of Davy Jones' passing.
The 2-part Japanese special "The Monkees In Japan." A concert performance from their Far East tour only aired once in October 1968, and hasn't been seen since. However, the audio from both parts can be heard in the bootleg Made In Japan.
Sammy Davis Jr. dropped by the set during the filming of "Monkees A La Mode" while he was on the Columbia lot for his guest appearance on I Dream of Jeannie, and taped a cameo bit with the guys, but it never got used and the footage has disappeared (photos of him with the band still exist).
Out of Order: The airing order of the episodes is all jumbled up. The first episode, "The Royal Flush" was the third one filmed, while the pilot aired as the tenth episode, and the first episode produced after the series was picked up, "Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth", aired as the eighth episode. "The Monkees Race Again" was the last episode filmed but debuted six weeks before the last aired episode, "Mijacogeo".
The series was filmed by Screen Gems, and many of the same sets and props from The Three Stooges short films made by the studio were used. For example, a pair of pajamas with a bunny design on the front that had been worn by Curly Howard were the same ones worn by Peter Tork in various episodes such as "A Coffin Too Frequent" and "Monkee See, Monkee Die".
NBC gave the series a really odd timeslot (Monday at 7:30pm, a few years before the FCC required networks to start prime time at 8:00), and several affiliates decided to air local programming instead, which hurt the show in the ratings. NBC refused to move it in the second season even when Gunsmoke started winning the slot after CBS moved it there.
No one was happy with the band's post-series TV special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, least of all NBC, which buried it opposite the 1969 Oscars. On top of the hopeless scheduling, the network also managed to broadcast the show's segments out of order. No one noticed or cared, save for the boys themselves (especially Mike Nesmith, who was livid about the screw-up).
Throw It In!: Ad libs and outtakes were frequently left in the finished product of the TV series. This was designed to be a part of the show from the very beginning; when they were casting the series, the producers made certain to hire actors with strong improvisational skills.
One odd little blooper ended up in "One Man Shy": Mike screws up the title of one of his own songs, introducing it as "You May Just be the One" (instead of "You Just May be the One").
In "The Monkees Blow Their Minds", Burgess Meredith is in the audience, dressed like the Penguin from Batman (1966).
In "Art For Monkees' Sake", Liberace appears in an uncredited cameo as a performance artist who smashes a piano with a sledgehammer.
For some reason, Severn Darden didn't get credited for his role as a German psychiatrist in "The Monkees' Paw".
Wag the Director: Midway through Season 2, the Monkees themselves insisted the show drop the laugh track. It became the first sitcom in the history of television not to have a laugh track at this point, and set the precedent decades later for the no laugh track trend followed by shows like Arrested Development, Community and Scrubs.
The series was originally going to feature the real band The Lovin' Spoonful, but lead singer-songwriter John Sebastian had already signed the band to another label, which meant the producers of The Monkees couldn't distribute their music. The Dave Clark Five were also considered, as was the folk group The Mitchell Trio (formerly the Chad Mitchell Trio, but with a young John Denver in Mitchell's place after he left).
One of the reasons the show was canceled was a disagreement with the network over the show's format. The band felt that the sitcom format had grown stale and tried to sell NBC on a variety show, with skits and special musical guests. Considering that they'd already managed to work appearances by Tim Buckley and Frank Zappa into the second season, the latter could have been especially interesting. Just one of these specials was aired, 1969's 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee, which was a ratings flop. Peter had actually left the group on the final day of filming, so further specials would have been down a Monkee anyway.
Word of God: "Mijacogeo" is a Shout-Out to the first names of Micky's immediate family: Micky, his mother Janelle, sister Coco and father George. The name "Frodis" came to him in a dream.
You Look Familiar: Many guest stars appeared in multiple episodes playing different characters.
Monte Landis appeared seven times on the show, playing a different character each time. In six of his seven appearances, he played the episode's villain.note Landis was actually under contract, and was allowed to go through the second season's scripts and choose which characters he wanted to play.
Rose Marie - who played Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show - appeared twice: once in "Monkee Mother" as a new tenant who moves into the Monkees' apartment, and in "Monkees in a Ghost Town" as "The Big Man".
Rip Taylor appeared in "Monkees on the Wheel" as the croupier at a roulette table and in "The Frodis Caper" as the episode's villain, Wizard Glick.
Lea Marmer played fraudulent psychic Madame Roselle in "Monkee See, Monkee Die" and Mrs. Smith the policeman's wife in "Monkees on the Line".
Vic Tayback, best known as Mel Sharples from Alice, appeared in three episodes as a henchman: "Your Friendly Neighborhood Kidnappers", "Son of a Gypsy", and "Art for Monkees' Sake".
Joey Forman appeared in "Captain Crocodile" as the title character and "Monkees Chow Mein" as the villainous Dragonman.
Richard Klein, who was Micky Dolenz's uncredited stand-in, appeared in 11 episodes, playing a handful of uncredited extras, as well as a horseman in "Fairy Tale", and a henchman in "Mijacogeo" (credited as Rick Klein for that episode).
Vincent Beck played henchmen in "Royal Flush" and "Son of a Gypsy" and the main villain in "Card-Carrying Red Shoes".
Henry Corden appeared in four first-season episodes as the boys' landlord Mr. Babbitt and Season Two's "The Wild Monkees" as hotelier Mr. Blauner.
Valerie Kairys played magazine assistant Toby Willis in "Monkees a La Mode", but also had bit parts in twelve other episodes.
Joy Harmon played a bank teller in "The Picture Frame" and Micky's love interest Zelda in "Monkees on the Wheel".
George Furth played Ronnie Farnsworth in "One Man Shy" and Henry Witherspoon in "A Coffin Too Frequent".
The band's real-life career:
Adored by the Network/Screwed by the Network: The series was unavoidable on MTV in 1986, running several times a day, plus weekend marathons every couple of months. Davy, Micky and Peter did lots of on-camera work, and even starred in the annual MTV Christmas video (with a surprise cameo by Mike). Then they pulled out of an appearance on an MTV Super Bowl Sunday special.note There are lots of conflicting stories on why this happened, but it boils down to lack of communication between the guys, their then-manager, and MTV executives. After that, The Monkees suddenly became personae non gratae on MTV. They refused to play the video for "Heart and Soul" despite it being among the most requested, which played a big role in both the single and the reunion album Pool It! tanking. In the 1989 The Decade in Rock special, MTV voted The Monkees as "Most Unnecessary Comeback of The 80s", blissfully ignoring their important role in that comeback (as well as Nesmith's own early involvement with the network's creation).
Nesmith was the only Monkee to have a Top 40 solo hit, with his 1970 #21 hit "Joanne". He became well known as a pioneer of the country rock genre and as an early adopter of both home video and the music video. His show Pop-Clips, which aired on the then-new Nickelodeon in 1980, is considered to be the direct predecessor of MTV, launched by Nickelodeon's then-owner Warner the next year.
Subverted with Davy Jones, who was widely tipped and heavily promoted to become a solo star after the Monkees broke up. Unfortunately, that never really happened for him. Despite Jones singing the entire song in an episode of The Brady Bunch, his 1971 single "Girl" was not a hit. The highest up the Hot 100 he ever got was with the Neil Sedaka song "Rainy Jane", which missed the top 40 and peaked at #52 the previous year.
Cash-Cow Franchise: Since 1970 they made an unusual journey from being out of favor to being considered a Cult Classic and finally ending up as this trope. It helps that the fandom now spans several generations: the original fans from The '60s, the fans they picked up via the syndicated reruns that began in 1975, and of course the MTV-fueled 1986 comeback, alongside those discovering them today. Rhino Records, who first reissued Monkees music in the The '80s, gained full rights to the Monkee music and video catalog in 1994 note they bought the rights from Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who won them in a court settlement with Columbia Pictures after they sued the studio for destroying the outtakes of Easy Rider they'd been storing and has issued numerous well-received collections, curated by Promoted FanboyAndrew Sandoval.
Contractual Obligation Project: Much of what the remaining Monkees did after Peter left at the start of 1969 counts, like the commercials for Kool-Aid, a series of concerts in Mexico done for Money, Dear Boy after a promoter gave them a huge offer, and the final few albums (with Changes recorded only because Davy and Micky owed the label one final album).
One reason that the group didn't last long past the end of the TV series was that the four members brought radically different musical preferences to the table. Tork was a folk singer, Jones favored showtunes and ballads, Nesmith favored either country-rock or straight-up country, and Dolenz was into rock and soul.
By the time the band recorded its fifth album, The Birds, the Bees, and The Monkees, the group had completely abandoned recording together. Each member chose his own songs and produced his own sessions with his own musicians of choice, then the results were pooled and the best songs chosen for the album.
None of the four were pleased with the album More of the Monkees, and Mike Nesmith especially never had a kind word to say about it. The album was compiled without any input from the group and released behind their back; reportedly, the band didn't find out about its existence until one of them saw it in a record store. Additionally, the album contained a few tracks which they felt were substandard. They also hated the cover shot, which featured them in what they considered to be extremely tacky JCPenney clothing.
Davy hated Changes, the only album he and Micky recorded as a duo, calling it "Jeff Barry and Andy Kim doing an Andy Kim album". Micky hasn't criticized the album directly, but admits that it was only recorded to fulfill a contractual obligation.
In the mid-80s, Micky and Peter teamed up to record some new songs for a Monkees compilation album. Peter expressed displeasure at having to record "Kicks", a Cover Version of a hit by the group's 60s contemporaries Paul Revere and the Raiders, comparing it to The Beatles reuniting and being forced to record "Ferry Cross the Mersey".note A hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers, Liverpool contemporaries of the Beatles, who enjoyed some success but were considered far below the Beatles in both popularity and musical ability.
Micky Dolenz's favourite song was "Pleasant Valley Sunday", while Peter Tork named "Randy Scouse Git" as one of his favourites.
Peter cited Headquarters as his favorite Monkees album, due to its homespun authenticity as a result of their recording it as a "real band", while Mike preferred Pisces, Aquarius... as it maintained the group's control over the music while re-incorporating session players to give the overall sound a more polished feel.
Cut Song: Peter Tork contributed four songs for The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees and all of them were rejected. "Can You Dig It?" and "Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?" would later appear on Head, while "Lady's Baby" and "Tear the Top Right Off My Head" would not be released until 1987 and 1991, respectively.
Defictionalization: Created for a TV series, the band recorded albums and did concert tours, and their career as a band continued past the end of the series. Singer/drummer Micky Dolenz will go on in every interview about how this was akin to "Leonard Nimoy becoming a Vulcan."
After their 80s comeback there were several attempts to do a new Monkees movie. Around 1987-88 there were preliminary announcements about one called The Monkees Save the World, with Mike even penciled in to rejoin the others for it, but it never got past the planning stage. In 1994, Columbia Pictures tried to get the ball rolling on a reunion film with a Putting the Band Back Together plot, and Jon Lovitz playing their ex-manager. After a few fruitless script meetings between potential writers and Rhino Records chief Harold Bronson (who, with Rhino now in control of the Monkees franchise, was the point man for any film project), the idea was dropped, but Bronson still wanted to do a movie. Boy Meets World writer Jeff Sherman wrote a spy-spoof script that Bronson liked, but no one was interested in backing it. Disney exec David Hoberman showed interest in a Monkees movie, but had Creative Differences with Bronson. An idea cooked up by Mike and former NBC president Brandon Tartikoff, an oddball comedy set in a town where the Weekly World News is the factual local newspaper, came close to getting greenlighted, but salary demands from band members proved unfeasible. Ultimately the band reunited for the 1997 Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees TV special, and Rhino got a movie about the Monkees made, the 2000 VH1DocudramaDaydream Believers: The Monkees' Story.
Bronson also tried to develop some Monkees TV projects around that time. One was a Band Toon, with the guys doing their own voice acting. Toonsylvania co-creator Jeff DeGrandis and Film Roman were both involved at various points, but nothing ever got produced. In 2003, Spice Girls/American Idol impresario Simon Fuller approached Bronson about doing a Monkees reboot series with an all-new cast. Unlike The New Monkees, though, this series would feature new versions of the original Monkee songs. A cast was lined up (with Jay Baruchel as the drummer), and ex-Simpsons showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein wrote a pilot script, but everyone was so busy with other projects that it never came to fruition.
The role each band member played in the TV show was arbitrarily assigned by producers, disregarding each member's actual musical skills. That's why Peter Tork, an experienced guitarist, played bass, Michael Nesmith, a trained bassist, played guitar, Micky Dolenz, who couldn't play percussion, played drums, and Davy Jones, who could play percussion, was the frontmannote Jones' assignment had a multi-pronged reason: with his good looks and strong singing voice, he could be the band's face, and he was much shorter than the other members and executives thought he'd be lost in the background if seated behind a drum set.
Largely the story behind the assembling of the group's second album, More of the Monkees. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, producers of the first album, recorded what they believed was to be the follow-up to the group's debut, not knowing that Don Kirshner was having the boys record lots of tracks with other writers and producers as well. Kirshner then assembled his own version of the album and released it behind everyone's back. Only two of the tracks Boyce and Hart recorded were included.
Hitless Hit Album: Headquarters, which reached #1 although it had no singles released in America (though several tracks got Top 40 radio airplay, with "Shades of Gray" and "You Just May Be the One" as the most popular). However, "Randy Scouse Git"/"Alternate Title" got to #2 on the British charts.
Inspiration for the Work: Roger Miller's 1965 Country Music crossover hit "One Dyin' and A-Buryin'" is about a man contemplating suicide, and includes the line "I wanna be free" in the chorus. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart took that line and made it the title of a more wistful ballad.
The reason why "Valleri" was released as a single. The version used during the first season became a big hit in some cities when DJs recorded it from the TV broadcast and played it on the radio (though there's evidence that Screen Gems leaked white label singles to stations as well). As a response, they went back in the studio and cut a more polished version.
Songs used on the show that never got released on the original albums note "All the King's Horses", the original takes of "Valleri" and "I'll Be Back up on My Feet", the uptempo "I Wanna Be Free" from the pilot, plus some 1969-era songs that got dubbed into the Saturday morning reruns, like "Steam Engine") were heavily bootlegged until Rhino gave them official releases on the Missing Links albums.
Limey Goes to Hollywood: Davy, both in-universe and real life. He started out as Limey Goes To Broadway with Oliver! and spent the rest of his life living in the United States, including properties in Pennsylvania and Florida.
Loads and Loads of Writers: More of the Monkees was a rare music example of this, with Don Kirshner desperately trying to get all the various songwriters in his publishing stable represented on the album. There's a cumulative total of 19 credited writers for the album's 12 songs.
Missing Episode: On the musical side, the first-ever Monkees recording session in June of 1966. Snuff Garrett, who was best-known at the time for producing Gary Lewis & The Playboys, brought all four members in to cut two songs (with arrangements by Leon Russell), but the group clashed with him (especially after he decided to designate Davy as the lead singer) and Garrett resigned from the project by mutual agreement after the session. While photos of the session have survived, the actual tapes have never turned up (and not for lack of searching, either).
Newbie Boom: At the end of 1985 Monkee Business Fanzine, which was the main source for news about them at the time, had a few hundred subscribers. At the end of 1986, it had around 11,000. (An increase of somewhere around 1,500%!!)
Promoted Fanboy: The rock luminaries who contributed songs to Good Times!, like Rivers Cuomonote Who shares an alma mater with Peter Tork, E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut, BenGibbard, Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, plus Adam Schlesinger, who also produced the album. They were all admirers of Monkee music and jumped at the offer to contribute material for a new album.
Andy Partridge is especially notable, since he was a fan in The '60s and had a drawing he made of Micky published in the official fan publication in 1968. Micky sings lead on Partridge's "You Bring The Summer".
Referenced by...: In the series premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks, Ensign Barnes tells her date Ensign Rutherford that she's a fan of a "classical band called the Monkees" (the group is over 400 years old from their late 24th-century perspective), and he responds, "Let's just say that I'm a believer."
They recorded two unrelated Davy Jones-co-written songs called "You and I". The first was written with Bill Chadwick and appeared on their 1969 album Instant Replay. The second was written with Micky Dolenz and was featured on the 1976 side project Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart and later rerecorded by the Monkees for their 1996 album Justus.
Changes was the original title of Head, plus a song Davy wrote and recorded for the movie (but it got passed over for inclusion), then became the title of their final first-run album in 1970. Not to mention a song by that otherDavid Jones.
Mike's "Good Clean Fun" was a Non-Appearing Title but the phrase "here I am" features prominently in the lyrics. A couple years later he released a completely different solo song called "Here I Am".
The Peter Tork-penned "Little Girl" on Good Times! isn't the same song as Micky's "Little Girl" from The Monkees Present.
The song "Gonna Buy Me a Dog" from the first album was intended to be a quirky novelty tune to wrap up the album on a light-hearted note. However, Micky and Davy found the song corny rather than funny, and used one take to goof off and just basically make fun of the song. This version was the one that got released.
The band included "Band 6" and "Zilch" (both of which were short clips of the boys cutting up in the studio) in the final track listing for Headquarters to add to the off-the-wall, spontaneous atmosphere of the project.
The single mix of "Daydream Believer" opens with this bit of Studio Chatter:
Chip Douglas: (This is take) 7A. Davy Jones: What number is this, Chip? Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz:Seven. A!!! Davy Jones: Okay, know what I mean, like, don't get excited, man. It's 'cause I'm short, I know.
More of The Monkees, their second album. Don Kirshner really became a Control Freak with this album. The debut album had been recorded in Hollywood, with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart handling most of the songwriting and production (with Michael Nesmith getting two songs as writer/singer/producer). After that, Kirshner moved recording to his home base of New York, with veteran songwriter and producer Jeff Barry in charge, effectively pushing Boyce, Hart and Nesmith to the sidelines (only four songs between them ended up on the second album). While the band hadn't been allowed to control the music on the first album, they had a cozy relationship with Boyce and Hart and still felt like they were a vital part of the process. Now, their only involvement was dubbing vocals onto pre-recorded music tracks shipped cross-country. Nesmith, whose relationship with Kirshner was already frosty, was livid over the change. Things came to a head during the recording of "I'm a Believer". The band had unanimously agreed that with its folkish sound, Nesmith was the best choice to sing it, but Barry and Kirshner didn't think he had a commercial voice and gave it to Dolenz. On top of that, Perfectionist Nesmith and more laid-back Barry had a big fight early on in the sessions. Then, Kirshner also got into a battle with Bert Schneider,note Who, being the son of Columbia Pictures president Abe Schneider, was not the wisest person for Kirshner to be picking fights with accusing him of trying to butt into the music end of the project too much. The Monkees only found out about the album's release when someone saw it in a store while they were out on tour. They especially loathed the packaging; the front cover was an unflattering shot taken from a shoot they did to promote a cheesy JC Penney Monkees clothing line, and the back cover contained outdated pics and liner notes from Kirshner celebrating the album's writers and producers and giving scant Damned by Faint Praise mention to the band. The ultimate firing of Kirshner had deep roots in the second album's drama.
Peter's song "Lady's Baby", recorded during the sessions for The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees, took 11 recording sessions stretching out over four months to complete, with Tork restarting from scratch a bunch of times, bringing in big-name buddies like Stephen Stills and Buddy Miles to help out, and ultimately racking up tens of thousands of dollars in studio fees (Nesmith joked that Tork spent all of the band's royalties on the song). RCA recording engineer Hank Cicalo, who'd worked closely with the band on their previous two albums, grew frustrated and refused to work with Peter anymore. Then, as the ultimate insult, the song wasn't even included on the album. It had to wait two decades until Rhino's original Missing Links album in 1987 to see the light of day (and even then, only the CD version of the album).
Pool It!, the 1987 reunion album. For starters, Nesmith declined to take part, meaning it wasn't a full reunion. Then Rhino Records and the band seemed to have different visions for the album. Rhino was looking for a Power Pop album that would please old fans and appeal to younger audiences alike (something along the lines of Squeeze). The band (Davy in particular) wanted a contemporary-sounding chartbuster. Davy even made the unaffordable and unrealistic suggestion that Rhino hire Quincy Jones to produce! The label approached Nick Lowe to produce, but he was busy and reluctantly said no. Lowe's frequent collaborator Dave Edmunds was asked, but wasn't interested. The job ultimately went to Roger Bechirian, who had worked with the likes of Lowe and Elvis Costello, but had a spotty record overall as a producer (he was better-regarded as an engineer). While they managed to book the prestigious Cherokee Studios in Hollywood for the sessions, the material wasn't anywhere near top notch. The majority of the songs were written by various cronies of Bechirian, ranging from good to dreadful. Davy was still envisioning the album as the Monkee version of Thriller. According to Rhino honcho Harold Bronson, Micky brought in his then-wife and deferred most of his decision-making to her. Bronson secured the rights to cover the Wreckless Eric Power Pop classic "(I'd Go The) Whole Wide World" specifically for Davy to sing, but he turned it down (Micky does the vocal on the finished version). Then, as luck would have it, The New Monkees were recording at the same studio, and great pains were taken to avoid a confrontation between the two groups. The end product only made it to #72 on the Billboard album chart.
Urban Legend: For years it was believed that Charles Manson (yes, THAT Charles Manson), was one of the aspiring musicians to have auditioned for a part in the show, but in reality Manson was in prison at the time. Additionally, since the casting notice called for boys ages 17 to 21 (though Peter was 23 and Mike was 22 when they were cast), the 30-year-old Manson likely wouldn't have been considered if he'd tried to audition anyway.
The selection process for the group was famously long and arduous, with a number of future notables auditioning, including Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, Danny Huttonnote later of Three Dog Night and Stephen Stills. Stills was turned down as he wasn't considered "telegenic enough", nor did he really have the chops to do comedy. However, Stills would go on to recommend his friend, Peter Tork, to Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. Williams would eventually write "Someday Man" for the Monkees and Nilsson contributed "Cuddly Toy".
For the screen test phase, the candidates were whittled down to eight, with Bill Callaway, Bill Chadwick, Dallas Williams and Michael Burns being the four who were rejected in favor of Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork. Callaway would go on to have a small appearance in “The Audition (Find The Monkees)”, while Chadwick (who'd been a bandmate of Nesmith in a Folk Music group called The Survivors) would contribute to the group as a songwriter and a touring manager.
The members felt the roles they had been assigned didn't fit their individual musical talents, particularly what instruments they were each good at. If they had had their way, Davy would have been on drums, Peter on guitar, Mike on bass, and Micky as the frontman (since they all agreed his voice was a signature element of the band). Mike and Peter could play all sorts of stringed instruments, but Mike was an accomplished bassist and he believed Peter to be a better guitarist than him. Their specific, preferred assignments appeared just once, in the promotional clip for "Words".
Bob Rafelson briefly considered calling them the Creeps or the Inevitables.
The Monkees Present was originally conceived in 1968 as a double album which devoted one side to each member of the group, who by now were recording virtually as solo artists. There was even talk of it being a 4-record set with each Monkee getting his own album. By 1969, though, with Tork now gone, and record sales waning, the decision was made to pare the track selection down to a single disc. The "simultaneous solo albums" idea was later used by KISS.
All four of them agreed to reunite to present an award at the Primetime Emmy Awards in 1980, but an actors' strike led to a mass boycott of the ceremony and Mike and Micky elected not to cross the picket line.
They were seriously considered to play at the Monterey Pop Festival, but after weeks of deliberation, John Phillips and Lou Adler decided not to invite them. However, Micky Dolenz (in full American Indian buckskins and headdress) and Peter Tork attended the festival and mingled with musicians backstage. Tork was asked to introduce Buffalo Springfield, his favorite group, for their set. Tork also introduced Lou Rawls and was involved in a bizarre incident where he walked out onstage in the middle of The Grateful Dead's set to try to stop fans from climbing on stage and dancing. Tork also informed the crowd that the Beatles were not at the festival in disguise.
As mentioned in Troubled Production, if the band had their way, Michael would've sung lead on "I'm a Believer". Micky was supposed to sing "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" but boycotted the session as a protest against Don Kirshner, who instead turned to Davy, who did show up, to take over.note Micky stopped off in New York before embarking on his famous February 1967 trip to London, where he met The Beatles and his future wife Samantha Juste, as chronicled in the lyrics of "Randy Scouse Git". His understanding was that he was only supposed to dub the vocal for "A Little Bit Me", but when he was informed that Kirshner wanted him to do other songs as well, Micky said Screw This, I'm Outta Here and never showed up. It was this incident, more than anything else, that started the chain of events leading to Kirshner's ouster
Before Kirshner was fired, he was supervising a third Monkees album using the same methodology as More of the Monkees—Jeff Barry producing songs in New York that the band would later dub vocals for. The songs that were worked on tended to be either pure bubblegum rock ("I Wanna Be Your Puppy Dog", "Sugar Man") or schmaltz ("If I Learned to Play the Violin", "Love is on the Way"). Basically, had Kirshner not been canned, the third album, rather than the intelligently-crafted Headquarters, would've sounded like an Archies album a couple years ahead of its time.note Though the story that The Monkees turned down "Sugar Sugar" around this time isn't true, since that song wouldn't be written for another year or so. Monkees archivist Andrew Sandoval thinks that the aforementioned "Sugar Man" might have been misremembered by Kirshner and Chip Douglas as being "Sugar Sugar". A few of the songs eventually received Monkees vocals and have been released as bonus tracks on various Rhino releases.
, co-produced by none other than Don Kirshner, was a science fiction comedy starring a group fronted by a pre-stardom Olivia Newton-John. The Phynx, a project instigated by longtime Warner (Bros.) Records executive Stan Cornyn, was a tongue-in-cheek story about the US government drafting four young men to start a rock band to act as a front for undercover operations.note Not only did they both use the Myspeld Rökband trope, both bands also featured black drummers. Both films experienced a Troubled Production and were given scant releases by their studios before disappearing. But they've both acquired followings based on their So Bad, It's Good reputations.