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The [Minimalist] Monkees

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EDIT/UPDATE:
Look what I found
www.monkeeslivealmanac.com/blo…

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Bigger than the Beatles. Two albums at the head (#1/2) of the charts.

The Monkees were a television pop/rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider (idea sold to Screen Gems). The series, "The Monkees", (inspired by the Beatles, "A Hard Day's Night") was aired from 1966 to 1968, cancelled at the succession of season two.

September 9 1965, a Hoolywood Trade Paper advertisement for auditions gathered 437 Hollywood hopefuls. It read:

"Maddness!!

 Auditions


Folk and Roll Musicaians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series.

Running parts for four insane boys, age 17-21.
Want spirited Ben Frank's types.

Have courage to work.

Must come down for interview.

CALL: HO. 6-5188"

Screen Tests, Pilot and first episode (for further interest)
Screen Tests: www.youtube.com/watch?v=63nhSF…
Pilot: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFX5FL…
Ep1: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Pv7C…

Four finalists (In October, after weeks of auditioning):

  • 19 year old, English actor, Davy Jones - He was already contracted with Screen Gems however had no place, that is untill the perfect role came olong with The Monkees.
  • 20 year old South Californian actor, Micky Dolenz, of who spent a small period as the lead of the band (singer/guitarist), "Mickey and the One Nighters" 
  • 21 year old folk musician, relocated from New York City's Greenwich Village, Peter Tork was recommended by his friend Stephen Stills (American instumentalist) to Bob Rafelson who asked, "Do you know anyone who looks like you, but has better hair and teeth and...some talent, who might work out for this?"
  • 22 year old Mike Nesmith, a Texan singer and song writer who already had two singles on Columbia's Colpix

Please Only read to this line (Unless you want the full story... a compiliation of the essentials)

**Summary** (Take note of only this summary instead)
Don Kirshner had music control (using songwriters e.g. Tommy Boyce and Booby Hart, Jeff Barry and Neil Diamond as the background music). The monkees only acted and sung the musics (not actually playing their own instruments). Mick Dolenz and David Jones were fine with this, they had no musical experience and were only actors in an imaginary Beatles wannabe band for a TV comedy series). Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith developed a law suit, backed by the producers (and entire studio team) against Kirshner.

With their own compositioning rights to the music, the band composed, distibuted/published and played live on stage at concerts (selcetions of songs used in season two of the show). It was npot the head-liner they thought it would be. The quality of music was notibly worse than Kirshner's system. Unbeknownst to the audience, the band hired professional instramentalists adding to the background music and quality to continue with positive feedback. Season three was cancelled over contasting ideas between Screen Gems and The Monkees. The band now played entirely under their own accord and name. Once an imaginary band, now legitamate (though only keeping up a front).

The movie, head, was then developed. At the time, it was considered neurotic, hanous and psychedelic, thus rated R[18+] (though now PG), opposite the innocent g-rated Monkees seen on the show. The movies goal, partially by the Monkees and almost entirely by co-workers, was to destroy the Monkees, to finally end the project.

Tork left the band after 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV presentation. Exhausted of pretending.

On April 14, 1970, Nesmith joined Micky and Davy for possibly the last time as part of the original incarnation of The Monkees to film a Kool-Aid commercial, with Nesmith leaving the group to continue recording songs with his own country-rock group called Michael Nesmith & The First National Band.

This left Micky and Davy to record the bubblegum pop album Changes as the ninth and final album by The Monkees released during its original incarnation. This may have been another attempt to kill off the Monkees (evident by the poor ratings of the album)

September 22, 1970 marked the final recording session by The Monkees in their original incarnation. The two remaining Monkees then lost the rights to use the name in several countries. Davy Jones would release a solo album in 1971, entitled Davy Jones, featuring the single "Rainy Jane" / "Welcome to My Love". Both Davy and Micky would release multiple singles as solo artists in the years following the original break-up of The Monkees. The duo continued to tour throughout most of the 1970s.

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    Originally , Don Kirshner, supervised the music production, having Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Jeff Barry and Neil Diamond assigned to the project. They along with other songwriters wrote music, then mimed and  sung by The Monkees. The Monkees had been complaining that the music publishing company would not allow them to play their own instruments or to use more of their own material. Dolenz's initial reaction, mentioned in the 2006 Rhino CD reissue of More of the Monkees, was "To me, these were the soundtrack albums to the show, and it wasn't my job. My job was to be an actor and to come in and to sing the stuff when I was asked to do so. I had no problem with that ... It wasn't until Mike and Peter started getting so upset that Davy and I started defending them ... they were upset because it wasn't the way they were used to making music. The artist is the bottom line." Nesmith once comented in an interview for the Rolling Stones Magazine” ... The [TV show's] producers [in Hollywood] backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did [with the music publishers] without the explicit support of the show's producers."

    A January 28, 1967 Saturday Evening Post article quoted Nesmith railing against the music creation process. “Do you know how debilitating it is to sit up and have to duplicate somebody else’s records?” he asked. “Tell the world we don’t record our own music... Our records are not our forté,” he added. The whistle blowing on themselves worked in forcing producer Don Kirshner out of the project and the band taking creative control for its third album. But when the Monkees toured the U.K. in 1967, the story that the band was recording their own music for its current album and playing their own instruments on stage was not the headline.

    The climax of the rivalry between Kirshner and the band was an intense argument between Nesmith, Kirshner, and Colgems lawyer Herb Moelis, which took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in January 1967. Kirshner had presented the group with royalty checks and gold records. Nesmith had responded with an ultimatum, demanding a change in the way the Monkees' music was chosen and recorded. Moelis reminded Nesmith that he was under contract. The confrontation ended with Nesmith punching a hole in a wall and saying, "That could have been your face!" However, each of the members, including Nesmith, accepted the $250,000 royalty checks (equivalent to approximately $1,800,000 in today's funds).

    Described by Dolenz as initially being "a TV show about an imaginary band [...] that wanted to be the Beatles, [but] that was never successful", the actor-musicians soon became a real band. However, these actors and limited musicians now had the rights to compose, release music and perform live on stage.

    At the height of their fame in 1967, they also suffered from a media backlash. Nesmith states in the 2007 Rhino reissue of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., "Everybody in the press and in the hippie movement had got us into their target window as being illegitimate and not worthy of consideration as a musical force [or] certainly any kind of cultural force. We were under siege; wherever we went there was such resentment for us. We were constantly mocked and humiliated by the press. We were really gettin' beat up pretty good. We all knew what was going on inside. Kirshner had been purged. We'd gone to try to make Headquarters and found out that it was only marginally okay and that our better move was to just go back to the original songwriting and song-making strategy* of the first albums except with a clear indication of how [the music] came to be ... The rabid element and the hatred that was engendered is almost impossible to describe. It lingers to this day among people my own age." Tork disagreed with Nesmith's assessment of Headquarters stating, "I don't think the Pisces album was as groovy to listen to as Headquarters. Technically it was much better, but I think it suffers for that reason." Both Headquarters and Pisces are highly revered by most Monkees fans.

*The band then employed professional instrumentalists to help back up the group when performing, unbeknownst to the audience.

Note: These two albums were used alongside the second season of the television show.

    After The Monkees was canceled in February 1968, Rafelson directed the four Monkees in a feature film, Head. Schneider was executive producer, and the project was co-written and co-produced by Bob Rafelson with a then relatively unknown Jack Nicholson.

The movie premiered in New York City on November 6 of that year (the film later debuted in Hollywood on November 20).

    The film was not a commercial success, in part because it was the antithesis of The Monkees television show, intended to comprehensively demolish the group's carefully groomed public image. Rafelson and Nicholson's Ditty Diego-War Chant (recited at the start of the film by the Monkees), ruthlessly parodies Boyce and Hart's "Monkees Theme". A sparse advertising campaign (with no mention of the Monkees) squelched any chances of the film doing well, and it played only briefly. In commentary for the DVD release, Nesmith said that by this time, everyone associated with the Monkees "had gone crazy". They were each using the platform of the Monkees to push their own disparate career goals, to the detriment of the Monkees project. Indeed, Nesmith said, Head was Rafelson and Nicholson's intentional effort to "kill" the Monkees, so that they would no longer be bothered with the matter.

    Over the intervening years Head has developed a cult following for its innovative style and anarchic humor. Members of the Monkees, Nesmith in particular, cite the soundtrack album as one of the crowning achievements of the band.

    Tensions within the group were increasing. Peter Tork, citing exhaustion, quit by buying out the last four years of his Monkees contract at $150,000/year, equal to about $960,000 per year today. This was shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after completing work on their 1969 NBC television special, 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee,

    In the summer of 1969 the three Monkees embarked on a tour with the backing of the soul band "Sam and the Good-Timers". The concerts for this tour were longer sets than their earlier concert tours, many shows running over two hours. However, it should be noted that the band squandered most of this time, pleading with the underage audience to go see Head which had been out of theaters for over a year. Another tour highlight was a teary eyed Peter Tork showing up at a couple of shows, only to be told by Jones, “this certain city has very strict by-laws concerning over capacitated stages, you better just go take your seat”. The 1969 Monkees' tour was not all that successful; some shows were canceled due to poor ticket sales. The tour concluded with four shows at the newly renovated Madison Square Garden; a bewildering decision made by both the venue and the tour promoter, considering none of the shows were even close to sold out.

    On April 14, 1970, Nesmith joined Micky and Davy for possibly the last time as part of the original incarnation of The Monkees to film a Kool-Aid commercial, with Nesmith leaving the group to continue recording songs with his own country-rock group called Michael Nesmith & The First National Band, which he had started recording with on February 10, 1970. His first album with his own band was called Magnetic South, and at the time he left The Monkees in April, he was recording songs for his second album with The First National Band, called Loose Salute.

    This left Micky and Davy to record the bubblegum pop album Changes as the ninth and final album by The Monkees released during its original incarnation. By this time, Colgems was hardly putting any effort into the project, and they sent Dolenz and Jones to New York for the Changes sessions, to be produced by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim. In comments for the liner notes of the 1994 re-release of Changes, Jones said that he felt they had been tricked into recording an "Andy Kim album" under the Monkees name. Except for the two singers' vocal performances, Changes is the only album that fails to win any significant praise from critics looking back 40 years to the Monkees' recording output.

    September 22, 1970 marked the final recording session by The Monkees in their original incarnation, when Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz recorded "Do It in the Name of Love" and "Lady Jane". Not mixed until February 19, 1971, and released later that year as a single ("Do It in the Name Of Love" b/w "Lady Jane"), the two remaining Monkees then lost the rights to use the name in several countries, the U.S. included. The single was not credited to the Monkees in the U.S., but to a misspelled "Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones", although some other countries would issue the single under The Monkees' name.

    Davy Jones would release a solo album in 1971, entitled Davy Jones, featuring the single "Rainy Jane" / "Welcome to My Love". Both Davy and Micky would release multiple singles as solo artists in the years following the original break-up of The Monkees. The duo continued to tour throughout most of the 1970s.


Ep 50 (S2 Ep 18) "Monstrous Monkee Mash" | January 22, 1968
Hey Hey, I'm a monkee (Mickey single): www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V2drY…

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terryman007's avatar
far out.... sweet .... awsome... etc.  love it