What No One Ever Told You About The Monkees
Hey, hey, it's the
Monkees
! For a very brief period back in the late 1960s, wild pop-rockers theMonkees
ruled pop culture. Despite being made for TV to start out, theMonkees
eventually developed into a respected and quite popular band. Here's the untold
truth of theMonkees
. Some bands start in a garage. TheMonkees
started at Raybert Productions. Run by TV producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the company had a deal with Screen Gems to develop a sitcom about a rock band, inspiredby the madcap Beatles movies A Hard Day's Night and Help! That idea became The
Monkees
, a show about a group of funny guys who also played music. NBC was interested, and so Rafelson and Schneider hired Colgems Records executive Don Kirschner to oversee the musical aspects of the show. To find the actualMonkees
, Rafelson and Schneider placed an ad in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. It read: "Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series.Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview." Ben Frank's was a hip hangout on Hollywood's
Sunset Strip, and it set the tone for exactly the sort of show the producers wanted. They were channeling the spirit of not just
The Beatles, but of massive 60s juggernauts like the Lovin' Spoonful, who, incidentally,
Rafelson and Schneider had approached about doing the tv show. They said no,
recruiting ads were published,
and the
Monkees
were hired. The producers eventually auditioned 437 Los Angeles area actors and musicians, and finally found who they were looking for. Among the notable names who tried out were folk singer Stephen Stills; Danny Hutton, just before he joined the enormously successful Three Dog Night; and Paul Williams, who'd go on to appear in movies like Smokey and the Bandit and write award-winning songs like The Muppet Movie's "The RainbowConnection". And contrary to a famous urban legend, there's
one notorious individual who did not almost make it into The
Monkees
. Convicted mass murderer Charles Manson was in prison on a probation violation when auditions took place in 1965. Monkee Micky Dolenz takes credit for starting the rumor, once telling Gilbert Gottfried: "I just a made a joke. 'Ever
ybody auditioned for TheMonkees
, Stephen Stills, Paul Williams, and Charlie Manson!' Andever
ybody took it asgospel." Monkee masters Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider
found three band members through that extensive audition process, but
ever
yone knows theMonkees
were a four-piece band.What
happened? The fourth slot was supposed to go to seasoned folk musician Stephen Stills, before he became the "Stills" in the iconic trio Crosby, Stills & Nash. Stills turned down the chance to be a Monkee, but he was kind enough to recommend his potential replacement: Peter Thorkelson, a guyhe'd
played with in New York who he thought shared the look producers were after. Thorkelson, who adopted the stage name Peter
Tork, landed the part of "Peter Tork" while also singing and playing bass in the band. Shortly before his passing in 2019, he explained
to Rolling Stone: "I was hired to be an actor of a TV show. The producers did have hopes that something
musical would come out of us when they cast the four of us. But if we couldn't have done the music, they
would
have been all right with us just making the TV show." The
Monkees
debuted in 1966, joining an old-fashioned television universe that looked pretty much the same as it had a decade before. Among the hits of the day were Westerns like Bonanza and Daniel Boone, cornball variety shows like The Red Skelton Show and The Lawrence Welk Show, and sitcoms targeting an older, rural crowd, including The Bever
ly Hillbillies and Green Acres. And then along came TheMonkees
, and it was wildly creative andlow-key revolutionary. As opposed to the stodgier competition, The
Monkees
popped with vivid color and starred four young men with long hair who wore hippie-type clothes and slacked about in their crash pad playing rock 'n' roll music, still a frightening and strange concept to the Greatest Generation. It represented the growing influence of the counterculture. Moreover, the show chugged along at a frenetic pace, using quick cuts, asides, actors breaking character, camera tricks, andstandalone,
proto-music videos at the end of each episode to make a series that fully embraced and expressed
its rock 'n' roll sensibility. The
Monkees
may have gotten some grief over the years for not being in charge of their own music, but it wasn't their fault. That's how the producers wanted it, and it caused serious, behind-the-scenes tension over the years. Not only that, but showrunners also prevented them from having a say in the television series they starred in. Wheneach individual Monkee wasn't needed
on set, they were
told
to report to a black-walled room. There, they could dowhat
ever
they want as long as they headed back to the soundstage when their assigned call light started blinking. TheMonkees
put those experiences into art. In 1968, they were largely left to their own devices to make an experimental movie called Head. It was full of surrealism, symbolism, and general wackiness, and it was written with the help of the most unlikelyscreenwriter. "Here's Johnny!" Yes, that Jack Nicholson. The movie resulting from the partnership includes
so many bizarre sequences that fans weren't really sure
what
was going on, and some took it as a shockingly pro-Vietnam stance. But according towhat
Dolenztold
Mojo, it wasn't about that at all. " a metaphor for theMonkees
. We used to talk about being in a black box all the time. When we were on tour, especially but even being on the TV set. We couldn'tleave a room or hotel." The
Monkees
may have been designed as a corporate endeavor, but producers left writers with anti-war, hippie-leaning sentiments in charge of the Monkee house. Writers of both TheMonkees
and the band's songs expressed an anti-Vietnam War sentiment quite a few times … which is remarkable considering the aggressive censorship of network television in the late 1960s. CBS fired the hosts of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for too much anti-war content, yet TheMonkees
got away with it. How? Some smoke-and-mirrors. According to a show writer who spoke to academic Dr. Roseanne Welch, "The network executives didn't understandwhat
we were saying, so we got away with a lot." Take the episode "Monkee Mother", which features the band playing with dominos. Davy asks Peterwhat
he calls the game, and his response — "Southeast Asia" — is a clever
ly wry send-up of the domino theory, the Cold War principle that if Communismwere to take hold in one country in the region,
the rest would fall like dominos. And then there's "Last Train to Clarksville,"
the
Monkees
hit frequently replayed on the series. It's subtly about a young man drafted into the army, and he doesn't want to go. In fact, he wonders if he's "ever
coming home."Monkees
songwriter Bobby Hart eventually said of the song, and others: "We couldn't be too direct. We couldn't really make a protest song out ofit we kind of snuck it in." The
Monkees
made a lot of catchy, fun songs that millions of people enjoyed. Their style: straight-forward, jangly pop rock with the flavor of British bands like the Beatles and Herman's Hermits, exhibited on "Valleri," "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," "Daydream Believer
," and the theme song from TheMonkees
, which has to be the biggest banger of a sitcom openerever
. For all their charm, theMonkees
aren't regarded as aparticularly innovative band. "Boy, it's not fair… we’re as bad as any
other group in town." “Yeah, but all those other bands got invitations
to audition.” "Yeah, except us" Or were they? In 1967, when the band's handlers finally
allowed the members to write their own stuff, The
Monkees
released Headquarters, which includes a cut called "Zilch." A studio experiment, it involves each Monkee saying nonsensical phrases that were repeated and layered.Peter Tork's line: "Mr. Dobalina, Mr. Bob
Dobalina," was actually picked out of the real world when he heard it being repeated
at an airport. Non-singing vocals used to a rhythmic effect? "Zilch" is basically a prehistoric rap song. Even hip-hop luminary Del Tha Funkee Homosapien
thought so, sampling Tork's line for his 1991 hit "Mistadobalina." By early 1969, the
Monkees
began to unravel. Peter Tork left the band, spending $400,000 to buy out the last fouryears of his contract. Michael Nesmith departed in April 1970, and
later that year, Jones and Dolenz recorded the
Monkees
' final tracks… for a while, at least. Each Monkee then pursued their own path; some were more successful than others. Nesmith became the only Monkee with a solo hit, after his country rock group First National Band scored a #21 hit with the single "Joanne". He was also an early adopter of music videos, making them for his own projects and creating thecompilation show PopClips, which aired
on Nickelodeon in 1980. Parent company Warner Cable thought a 24-hour
cable network that aired just videos might be a good idea and created MTV, which they
asked Nesmith to help develop. Teen idol-looking Davy Jones took the predictable
teen idol route. "Rainy Jane" hit the lower reaches of the
Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, but most famously he was immortalized on an episode of The Brady
Bunch in which he sings "Girl" and meets Marcia
Brady, president of the Davy Jones Fan Club. He died in 2012, after suffering a massive
heart attack. As for Micky Dolenz, the child star of TV's
Circus Boy got back into acting and has done a ton of voice-over work for cartoons like
Batman: The Animated Series, The Tick, and The Scooby-Doo Show. He was a close second choice to play Fonzie
on Happy Days, but was ultimately deemed to tall for the role. In 1985, concert promoter David Fishof approached
Peter Tork about reuniting The
Monkees
for a 20th anniversary tour. Together, Fishof and Tork worked over the
rest of the band to join up. It took a few attempts to convince Davy Jones
and Micky Dolenz, while Michael Nesmith was even harder to convince. He was busy producing movies and TV shows
with his company, Pacific Arts Corporation, and agreed to join when he thought the tour
would consist of 10 to 20 dates. He later went public with his regrets, backing
out when those 20 dates became 200.
What
exploded the tour from a modest,nostalgic
affair into one of the most massive musical undertakings of the mid-80s? MTV. In early 1986, the network aired
ever
y episode of TheMonkees
in the form of a weekend marathon. MTV executive Tom Frestontold
Rolling Stone, "We've never
received such a volume of mail. We were dumbfounded by the whole thing." Suddenly the 20-year-old show was the biggest thing among kids who weren't alive when it first aired. Almostever
y date on theMonkees
reunion tour sold out, andnewly recorded single "That Was Then, This Is Now" hit the top 20. In 1986, the
Monkees
and MTV enjoyed a mutually agreeable relationship: Reruns brought huge ratings to the channel, and the exposure from MTV made theMonkees
' reunion tour the can't-miss event of the year. Scarcely a year later, things fell apart. After the success of "That Was Then, This Is Now," theMonkees
reconvened without Michael Nesmith. The product was the new album, Pool It!, with the single"Heart and Soul." But fans had a hard time finding the video,
as MTV refused to air it. According to Monkee Business Fanzine, the
Monkees
were slated to appear on an MTV Super Bowl special in January 1987, but there was a miscommunication. The band had no intention of playing the show because they had been booked for another engagement. The executive in charge of the show had only been with the network for a couple of months and didn't understand the unique and fond symbiosisbetween band and network, so he unceremoniously retaliated by banning "Heart
and Soul." It's no coincidence that with the utter lack
of promotion from the
Monkees
' previous champion, "Heart and Soul" faltered at #87 on the singles chart and sadly, Pool It! stalled at #72 on the album chart. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so youdon't miss a single one.