Monkee Business
Randal C. Hill
50plus Magazine
In September 1965, both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter ran an attention-grabbing advertisement:
Madness! Auditions. Folk and Roll Musicians – Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for four insane boys, age 17 – 21.
From 437 hopeful applicants, the coveted roles were assigned to Mike Nesmith (22), Peter Tork (23), Mickey Dolenz (20) and Davy Jones (19).
The Monkees were created to ride the slipstream of Beatlemania and were hired to mimic the Beatles’ zany antics in their 1964 semi-documentary debut flick, A Hard Day’s Night.
The Monkees’ TV plotline involved a struggling rock quartet in search of their Big Break. The pilot was filmed in late 1965, and in early 1966, NBC-TV picked up The Monkees as a weekly prime-time series.
The four young men then embarked on a grueling schedule of improv classes, band rehearsals and filming. Early on, the Monkees were limited to vocal work, with professional session musicians providing the music.
The Monkees half-hour show hit big when it debuted in September 1966. Tunesmiths Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote the band’s first 45, which hit #1. “Last Train to Clarksville” featured a chord structure, jangly guitar lines and vocal harmonies lifted directly from the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.” The Boyce-Hart team would eventually create three more winning singles. Other professional songwriters (including Neil Diamond and Carole King) were rushed in to keep the hits flowing. The Monkees’ eponymous debut album also skyrocketed to the top of the Billboard charts.
The Pre-Fab Four (as sneering cynics often labeled them) were off and running.
By that December, growing pressure led the Monkees to begin touring, with each member hurrying to master an instrument well enough to perform onstage. No problem, as it turned out, since, akin to the Beatles’ shows, much of the music played was lost to the eardrum-piercing screams that tsunamied nightly from vast teenybopper audiences.
Making music was better than faking music, and the Monkees men worked hard to improve. In January 1967, a mere four months after “Clarksville” introduced them to the world, the Monkees held their first recording session as a fully functioning, self-contained band.
The Monkees TV show, though, was another story. By the end of the second season, the quartet had tired of the filming grind and pronounced the third-season scripts monotonous and stale. When they suggested a format change to a one-hour variety show, their idea was quickly squelched and the series was axed, undoubtedly crushing countless teen hearts.
During their two-year reign, though, when the foursome often successfully challenged the almighty Beatles, the Monkees sold more than 75 million records around the world.
Had they been just a bubblegum fantasy quartet, one that was never quite real, undeserving of any real respect? Not to everybody. Vanity Fair writer Mark Rozzo once opined, “They were a pop culture force…They created joy and wonderment and introduced the whole realm of pop music to a huge audience of young people.”