Episode 162: “Daydream Believer” by the Monkees

A history of folk music and 500 songs

by Andrew.

Episode 162

Daydream Believer

by The Monkees

When we left the Monkees, they were in a state of flux.

To recap what we covered in that episode, the Monkees were originally cast as actors in a TV show and consisted of two actors with some singing ability, the former child stars Davy Jones and Mickey Dolans, and two musicians who were also competent comic actors, Michael Nesmith and Peter Torque.

The show was about a fictional band whose characters shared names with their actors, and there had quickly been two big hit singles and two hit albums taken from the music recorded for the TV show's soundtrack.

But this had caused problems for the actors.

The records were being promoted as being by the fictional group in the TV series, blurring the line between the T V show and reality, though in fact for the most part they were being made by session musicians, with only Dolans or Jones adding lead vocals to pre-recorded backing tracks.

Dolans and Jones were fine with this, but Nesmith, who had been allowed to write and produce a few album tracks himself, wanted more creative input, and more importantly felt that he was being asked to be complicit in fraud, because the records credited the Four Monkeys as the musicians when, other than a tiny bit of inaudible rhythm guitar by Torque on a couple of Nesmith's tracks, none of them played on them.

Torque, meanwhile, believed he had been promised that the group would be an actual group, that they would all be playing on the records together, and felt hurt and annoyed that this wasn't the case.

They were by now playing live together to promote the series and the records, with Dolans turning out to be a perfectly competent drummer, so surely they could do the same in the studio.

So in January 1967, things came to a head.

It's actually quite difficult to sort out exactly what happened, because of conflicting recollections and opinions.

What follows is my best attempt to harmonise the different versions of the story into one coherent narrative, but be aware that I could be wrong in some of the details.

Neswith and Torque, who disliked each other in most respects, were both agreed that this couldn't continue, and that if there were going to be monkeys records released at all, they were going to have the monkeys playing on them.

Dolans, who seems to have been the one member of the group that everyone could get along with, didn't really care, but went along with them for the sake of group harmony.

And Bob Raifelson and Burt Schneider, the production team behind the series, also took Nesbith and Talk's side, through a general love of mischief.

But on the other side was Don Kirshner.

the music publisher who was in charge of supervising the music for the TV show.

Kirshner was adamantly, angrily, opposed to the very idea of the group members having any input at all into how the records were made.

He considered that they should be grateful for the huge paychecks they were getting from records his staff writers and producers were making for them, and stopped whinging.

And Davy Jones was somewhere in the middle.

He wanted to support his co-stars, who he genuinely liked, but also he was a working actor.

He'd had other roles before, he'd have other roles afterwards, and as a working actor, you do what you're told if you don't want to lose the job you've got.

Jones had grown up in very severe poverty, and had been his family's breadwinner from his early teens, and artistic integrity is all very nice, but not as nice as a check for a quarter of a million dollars, although that might be slightly unfair.

It might be fairer to say that artistic integrity has a different meaning to someone like Jones, coming from musical theatre and a tradition of the show must go on than it does to people like Nesmith and Torque who had come up through the folk clubs.

Jones' attitude may also have been affected by the fact that his character in the TV show didn't play an instrument other than the occasional tambourine or maracas.

The other three were having to mime instrumental parts they hadn't played and to reproduce them on stage, but Jones didn't have that particular disadvantage.

Burch Schneider, one of the TV show's producers, encouraged the group to go into the recording studio themselves, with a producer of their choice, and cut a couple of tracks to prove what they could do.

Michael Nesmith, who at this point was the one who was most adamant about taking control of the music, chose Chip Douglas to produce.

Douglas was someone that Nesmith had known a little while, as they both played the folk circuit, in Douglas's case as a member of the modern folk quartet, but Douglas had recently joined the Turtles as their new bass player.

At this point, Douglas had never officially produced a record, but he was a gifted arranger and had just arranged the Turtles' latest single, which had just been released and was starting to climb the charts.

Douglas quit the Turtles to work with the Monkees, and took the group into the studio to cut two demo backing tracks for a potential single as a proof of concept.

These initial sessions didn't have any vocals, but featured Nesmith on guitar, Torque on piano, Dolans on drums, Jones on tambourine, and an unknown bass player, possibly Douglas himself, possibly Nesmith's friend John London, who he'd played with in Mike and John and Bill.

They cut rough tracks of two songs, All of Your Toys by another friend of Nesmith's, Bill Martin, and Nesmith's The Girl I Knew Somewhere.

Those tracks were very rough and ready.

They were garbage band tracks rather than the professional studio recordings that the Candy Store Prophets, or Jeff Barry's New York Session Players, had provided for the previous singles, but they were competent in the studio, thanks largely to Chip Douglas' steadying influence.

As Douglas later said, they could hardly play.

Mike could play adequate rhythm guitar.

Pete could play piano, but he'd make mistakes.

And Mickey's time on drums was erratic.

He'd speed up or slow down.

But the takes they managed to get down showed that they could do it.

Raffleson and Schneider agreed with them that the monkeys could make a single together and start recording at least some of their own tracks.

So the group went back into the studio with Douglas producing and with Lester Sill from the music publishers there to supervise, and cut finished versions of the two songs.

This time, the lineup was Nasmith on guitar, Torque on electric harpsichord, Torque had always been a fan of Bark and would in later years perform Bark pieces as his solo spot in Monkeys shows, Dolans on drums, London on bass, and Jones on tambourine.

So

But while this was happening, Kirshner had been trying to get new monkeys material recorded without them.

He'd not yet agreed to having the group play on their own records.

Three days after the sessions for All of Your Toys and The Girl I Knew Somewhere, sessions started in New York for an entire album's worth of new material, produced by Jeff Barry and Denny Randell, and largely made by the same Red Bird Records team who had made I'm a Believer.

The same musicians who in various combinations had played on everything from Sherry by the Four Seasons to Like a Rolling Stone by Dylan to Leader of the Pack, and with songs by Neil Diamond, Jeff Barry and Ali Greenwich, Lieber and Stoller, and the rest of the team of songwriters around Redbird.

But at this point came the meeting we talked about towards the end of the last Train to Clarksville episode, in which Nesmith punched a hole in a hotel wall, in frustration as what he saw as Kirshner's obstinacy.

Kirshner didn't want to listen to the recordings the group had made.

He'd promised Jeff Barry and Neil Diamond that if I'm a Believer went to number one, Barry would get to produce, and Diamond Wright, the group's next single.

Chip Douglas wasn't a recognised producer, and he'd made this commitment, but the group needed a new single out.

A compromise was offered of sorts by Kirshner.

How about if Barry flew over from New York to LA to produce the group?

They'd scrap the tracks both the group and Barry had recorded, and Barry would produce new tracks for the songs he'd recorded with the group playing on them.

But that wouldn't work either.

The group members were all due to go on holiday, three of them were going to make staggered trips to the UK, partly to promote the TV series, which was just starting over here, and partly just to have a break.

They'd been working 60 plus hour weeks for months between the TV series, live performances, and the recording studio, and they were basically falling down tired, which was one of the reasons for Nesmith's outburst in the meeting.

They weren't accomplished enough musicians to cut tracks quickly, and they needed the break.

On top of that, Nesmith and Barry had had a major falling out at the I'm a Believer session, and Nesmith considered it a matter of personal integrity that he couldn't work with a man who in his eyes had insulted his professionalism.

So that was out, but there was also no way Kirchner was going to let the group release a single consisting of two songs he hadn't heard, produced by a producer with no track record.

At first, the group were insistent that all of your toys should be the A-side for their next single.

It's hard to remember to smile.

Just like all of your toys,

Don't you ever feel kind of sad?

Cause you're wondering.

Think about the love that we had.

Are you wondering?

Just like Dolly and Tor.

But there was an actual problem with that, which they hadn't foreseen.

Bill Martin, who wrote the song, was under contract to another music publisher.

And the Monkeys' contract said they needed to only record songs published by Screen Gems.

Eventually, it was Mickey Dolans who managed to cut the Gordian knot, or so everyone thought.

Dolans was the one who had the least at stake of any of them.

He was already secure as the voice of the hits.

He had no particular desire to be an instrumentalist, but he wanted to support his colleagues.

Dolans suggested that it would be a reasonable compromise to put out a single with one of the pre-recorded backing tracks on one side, with him or Jones singing, and with the version of The Girl I Knew Somewhere that the band had recorded together on the other.

That way, Kershner and the record label would get their new single without too much delay.

The group would still be able to say they'd started recording their own tracks.

Everyone would get some of what they wanted.

So it was agreed, though there was a further stipulation.

The girl I knew somewhere had Nesmith singing lead vocals, and up to that point, every Monkey's single had featured Dolans on lead on both sides.

As far as Kirshner and the other people involved in making the release decisions were concerned, that was the way things were going to continue.

Everyone was fine with this.

Nesmith, the one who was most likely to object in principle, in practice realised that having Dolan sing his song would make it more likely to be played on the radio and used in the TV show, and so increase his royalties.

A vocal session was arranged in New York for Dolans and Jones to come and cut some vocal tracks, right before Dolans and Nesmith flew over to the UK.

But in the meantime, it had become even more urgent for the group to be seen to be doing their own recording.

An in-depth article on the group in the Saturday Evening Post had come out, quoting Nesmith as saying, It was what Kirshner wanted to do.

Our records are not our forte.

I don't care if we never sell another record.

Maybe we were manufactured and put on the air strictly with a lot of hoopla.

Tell the world we're synthetic, because damn it, we are.

Tell them the monkeys are wholly man-made overnight, that millions of dollars have been poured into this thing.

Tell the world we don't record our own music.

But that's us they see on television.

The show is really a part of us.

They're not seeing something invalid.

The press immediately jumped on the band and started trying to portray them as con artists exploiting their teenage fans, though as Nesmith later said, the press decided they were going to unload on us as being somehow illegitimate, somehow false, that we were making an attempt to dupe the public.

When in fact it was me that was making the attempt to maintain the integrity, so the press went into a full-scale war against us.

Torque, on the other hand, while he and Nesmith were on the same side about the band making their own records, blamed Nesmith for much of the press reaction, later saying, Michael blew the whistle on us.

If he had gone in there with pride and said, We are what we are and we have no reason to hang our heads in shame, it never would have happened.

So, as far as the group were concerned, they needed to at least go with Dolans' suggested compromise.

Their personal reputations were on the line.

When Dolans arrived at the session in New York, he was expecting to be asked to cut one vocal track, for the A side of the next single, and, presumably, a new lead vocal for The Girl I Knew Somewhere.

When he got there, though, he found that Kirshner expected him to record several vocals, so that Kirshner could choose the best.

That wasn't what had been agreed, and so Dolans flat out refused to record anything at all.

Luckily for Kirshner, Jones, who was the most cooperative member of the band, was willing to sing a handful of songs intended for Dolans, as well as the ones he was meant to sing.

So the tape of A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, the song intended for the next single, was slowed down so it would be in a suitable key for Jones instead.

And he recorded the vocal for that.

Incidentally, while Jones recorded vocals for several more tracks at the session, and some would later be reused as album tracks a few years down the line, not all of the recorded tracks were used for vocals, and this later gave rise to a rumor that had been repeated as fact by almost everyone involved, though it was a misunderstanding.

Kirshner's next major success after the Monkees was another made-for-TV fictional band, the Archies.

And their biggest hit was Sugar Sugar, co-written and produced by Jeff Barry.

I'm funny, honey.

You got my cake, girl.

And you got me wanting you.

Oh, oh, oh, honey, honey,

sugar.

Sugar, sugar, sugar,

honey, and sugar.

Cause you got my candy, girl.

Both Kirshner and the monkeys have always claimed that the monkeys were offered sugar-sugar and turned it down.

To Kirshner, the moral of the story was that since sugar-sugar was a massive hit, it proved his instincts right and proved that the monkeys didn't know what would make a hit.

To the monkeys, on the other hand, it showed that Kirchner wanted them to do bubblegum music that they considered ridiculous.

This became such an established factoid that Dolans regularly tells the story in his live performances and includes a version of sugar-sugar in them, rearranged rearranged as almost a torch song.

Sugar

fructo

sugar

sugar

But in fact, Sugar Sugar wasn't written until long after Kirshner and the Monkeys had parted ways.

But one of the songs for which a backing track was recorded, but no vocals were ever completed, was Sugar Man, a song by Denny Randell and Sandy Lindser, which they would later release themselves as an unsuccessful single.

Over the years, the monkeys not recording Sugarman became the monkeys not recording Sugar Sugar.

Meanwhile, Dolans and Nesmith had flown over to the UK to do some promotional work and relax, and Jones soon also flew over, though didn't hang out with his bandmates, preferring to spend more time with his family.

Both Dolans and Nesmith spent a lot of time hanging out with British pop stars, and were pleased to find that despite the manufactured controversy about them being a manufactured group, none of the British musicians they admired seemed to care.

Eric Burden, for example, was quoted in the Melody Maker as saying, They make very good records, I can't understand how people get upset about them.

You've got to make up your minds whether a group is a record production group or one that makes live appearances.

For example, I like to hear a Phil Spectre record, and I don't worry if it's the Ronettes or Icantina Turner.

I like the Monkeys record as a grand record, no matter how people scream.

So somebody made a record and they don't play, so what?

Just enjoy the record.

Similarly, the Beatles were admirers of the monkeys, especially the TV show, despite being expected to have a negative opinion of them, as you can hear in this contemporary recording of Paul McCartney answering a fan's questions.

The thing is that uh if the if the monkeys weren't around there'd be no one to watch on T V.

You know, and I wanna watch T V and I want to see a nice programme and their programme is better than most things on T V, you know.

It's like watching you, isn't it?

Well, yeah, you know

that's okay.

I like'em, you know, I really do.

They're nice.

And but they've got so so worried now by because everyone says to'em, you know, well, you like the Beatles and uh it's crummy, you know, and you you you don't play your own instruments.

But so what?

You know, that doesn't mean that.

They're taking the place of something.

Yeah, they're great, they're great, you know, they're

you know, that's a great compliment.

You've heard that one about flattery being the what is it?

Yeah, station being

more flattery often.

But you know, that's that's beautif beautiful there, yeah,'cause I uh

I like the show, fellas.

Both Dolans and Nesmith hung out with the Beatles quite a bit.

They both visited Sergeant Pepper recording sessions, and if you watch the film footage of the orchestral overdubs for A Day in the Life, Nesmith is there with all the other stars of the period.

Nesmith and his wife Phyllis even stayed with the Lennons for a couple of days, though Cynthia Lennon seems to have thought of the Nesmiths as annoying intruders who had been invited out of politeness and not realised they they weren't wanted.

That seems plausible, but at the same time, John Lennon doesn't seem the kind of person to not make his feelings known, and Michael Nesmith's reports of the few days they stayed there seem to describe a very memorable experience, where after some initial awkwardness he developed a bond with Lennon, particularly once he saw that Lennon was a fan of Captain Beefheart, who was a friend of Nesmith, and whose Safe as Milk album Lennon was examining when Nesmith turned up, and whose music at this point bore a lot of resemblance to the kind of thing Nesmith was doing.

The following tone is a reference tone, recorded at our operating level.

dogs called to give the love.

Swile and children hate and joy.

Sunshine bright, girl and boy.

Dagger tricks and candy sticks.

Peppermint cotton for my toy.

Yellow brick, blackboard back.

Keep on walking and go look back.

Or at least, that's how Nesmith always told a story later.

Though Safe as Milk didn't come out until nearly six months later.

It's possible he's conflating memories from a later trip to the UK in June that year, where he also talked about how Lennon was the only person he'd really got on with on the previous trip, because he's a compassionate person.

I know he has a reputation for being caustic, but it is only a cover for the depth of his feeling.

Nesmith and Lennon apparently made some experimental music together during the brief stay, with Nesmith being impressed by Lennon's mellotron.

and later getting one himself.

Golans, meanwhile, was spending more time with Paul McCartney, and with Spencer Davis of his current favourite band, the Spencer Davis Group.

But even more than that, he was spending a lot of time with Samantha Just, a model and TV presenter whose job it was to play the records on Top of the Pops, the most important British TV pop show, and who had released a record herself a couple of months earlier, though it hadn't been a success.

The two quickly fell deeply in love and just would become Dolans' first wife the next year.

When Nesmith and Dolans arrived back in the US after their time off, they thought the plan was still to release A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You with The Girl I Knew Somewhere on the B-side.

So Nesmith was horrified to hear on the radio what the announcer said were the two sides of the new monkeys single, A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You and She Hangs Out, another song from the Jeff Barry sessions with a Davey vocal.

Don Kirshner had gone ahead and picked two songs from the Jeff Barry sessions and delivered them to RCA Records, who had put a single out in Canada.

The single was very, very quickly withdrawn, once the monkeys and the TV producers found out, and only promo copies seemed to circulate, rather than being credited to The Monkees, both sides are credited to My Favourite Monkey Davy Jones sings.

The record had been withdrawn, but A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You was clearly going to have to be the single.

Three days after the record was released and pulled, Nesmith, Dolans and Torque were back in the studio with Chip Douglas, recording a new B-side, a new version of The Girl I Knew Somewhere, this time with Dolans on vocals.

As Jones was still in the UK, John London added the tambourine part, as well as the bass.

As Nesmith told the story a couple of months later, Bert said, You've got to get this thing in Mickey's key for Mickey to sing it.

I said, Has Donnie made a commitment?

I don't want to go there and break my neck in order to get this thing if Donnie hasn't made a commitment, and Bert refused to say anything.

He said, I can't tell you anything except just go and record.

What had happened was that the people at Columbia had had enough of Kirshner.

As far as Rafelson and Schneider were concerned, the real problem in all this was that Kirschner had been making public statements, taking all the credit for the monkey's success.

and casting himself as the puppet master.

They thought this was disrespectful to the performers, and, unstated but probably part of it, that it was disrespectful to Rafelson and Schneider for their work putting the TV show together, and that Kirchner had allowed his ego to take over.

Things like the liner notes for Moore of the Monkeys, which made Kirshner and his stable of writers more important than the performers, had,

in the view of the people at Raybert Productions, put the monkeys in an impossible position and forced them to push back.

Schneider later said, Kirshner had an ego that transcended everything else.

As a matter of fact, the press issue was probably magnified a hundred times over because of Kirshner.

He wanted everybody thinking, hey, he's doing all this, not them.

In the end, it was very self-destructive because it heightened the whole press issue and it made them feel lousy.

Kirshner was out of a job, first as the supervisor for the Monkeys, and then as the head of Columbia Screen Gems Music.

In his place came Lester Sill, the man who had got Lieber and Stahler together as songwriters, who had been been Lee Hazelwood's production partner on his early records with Duane Eddy, and who had been the Les in Philes records until Phil Spector pushed him out.

Sill, unlike Kirshner, was someone who was willing to take a back seat and just be a steadying hand where needed.

The reissued version of A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You went to number two on the charts, behind Something Stupid by Frank and Nancy Sinatra.

produced by Sill's old colleague Hazelwood.

And the B-side, The Girl I Knew Somewhere, also charted separately, making number 39 on the charts.

The Monkees finally had a hit that they'd written and recorded by themselves.

Pinocchio had become a real boy.

My friends are still burning, but my hands are unburning.

And if you love what's not the game, I only have myself to claim.

That

At the same session at which they'd recorded that track, the Monkees had recorded another Nesmith song, Sonny Girlfriend, and that became the first song to be included on a new album, which would eventually be named Headquarters, and on which all the guitar, keyboard, drums, percussion, banjo, pedal steel, and backing vocal parts would for the first time be performed by the monkeys themselves.

They brought in horn and string players on a couple of tracks and the bass was variously played by John London, Chip Douglas and Jerry Esther, as talk was more comfortable on keyboards and guitar than bass, but it was, in essence, a full band album.

Jones got back the next day and sessions began in earnest.

The first song they recorded after his return was Mr.

Webster, a voice and heart song that had been recorded with the Candy Store Prophets in 1966 but hadn't been released.

This was one of three tracks on the album that were re-recordings of earlier outtakes, and it's fascinating to compare them to see the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.

In the case of Mr.

Webster, the instrumental backing on the earlier version is definitely slicker.

attend.

I've flown away and taken all your money.

Wish you were here to help me spend.

And one by one, all the people left the party.

And Mr.

Frisbee locked the door.

But at the same time, there's a sense of dynamics in the group recording that's lacking from the original, like the backing dropping out totally on the word stop, a nice touch that isn't in the original.

I'm only speculating, but this may have been inspired by the similar emphasis on the word stop in For What It's Worth by Talk's old friend Stephen Stills.

taken all your money.

Wish you were here to help me speak.

And one by one, all the people left the party.

And Mr.

Frisbee locked the door.

Headquarters was a group album in another way, though.

For the first time, Torcondolans were bringing in songs they'd written.

Nesmith, of course, had supplied songs already for the two previous albums.

Jones didn't write any songs himself yet, though he'd start on the next album, but he was credited with the rest of the group on two joke tracks: Band Six, a jam on the Merry Melodies theme, Merrily We Roll Along, and Zilch, a track made up of the four band members repeating nonsense phrases.

Zilch, Mr.

Davolina, Mr.

Bob Davolina, Mr.

Davolina, Mr.

Bob Davolina, Zilch, China Keep a Calling Alamita,

China kept a calling Alamita, Zilch, never furthermore, the police self-defense.

Never mind the furthermore the police self-defense.

Never mind the film of the Pete Davolina.

It is of my opinion that the people are intending.

It is of my opinion that the people are intending.

It is of my opinion that the people are intending.

It is of my opinion that the people are intending.

It is of my opinion that the people

are

doubtful.

Oddly, that track had a rather wider cultural resonance than a piece of novelty joke album filler normally would.

It's sometimes covered live by They Might Be Giants.

double in it, shut the labels,

shut the double in it,

shut the lava in the boss double in, shed the lovely bars, shepherd,

check out the bar double, shut up on his checklist.

Well, the rapper Del the Funky Homo Sapien had a worldwide hit in nineteen ninety-one with Mr.

Double Ina, built around a sample of Peter talk from the track.

Bob Devil, and Mr.

Mr.

Devil, and Mr.

Bob Devil,

Mr.

Doubleen and Mr.

Bob Devil, Mr.

Deppeline and Mr.

Bob Devil, Mr.

Dopplina, Mr.

Bob Devil.

Mr.

Dabelina, Mr.

Bob Dabolina, Mr.

Bob Dabolina, want to quit?

You really make me sick with your fraudulent behaviour.

You wanna make me slipping in an army fit to save you.

Why don't you behave, you little rugrat?

Take a little tip from the tabloid.

Because I know I'm not paranoid.

When I say I thought it's a good idea, I'm not sure if I can do it.

three songs, all of them combining Beatles-style pop music and country influences, none more blatantly than the opening track, You Told Me, which starts off parodying the opening of Taxman before going into some furious banjo-picking from talk.

You told me you'd always say you told me

You told me you never stray, you told me

All these things you said you said seemed silly

So I am waving

you and find a boy Torque meanwhile voted for Pete's sake with his flatmate of the time

and that became the end credits music for season two of the TV series.

In this world and time

But while the other band members made important contributions, the track on the album that became most popular was the first song of Dolan's to be recorded by the group.

The lyrics recounted, in a semi-psychedelic manner, Dolanz's time in the UK, including meeting with the Beatles, who the song refers to as the Four Kings of EMI.

But the first verse is all about his new girlfriend, Samantha Just.

She's a wonderful lady, and she's mine, all mine.

And there doesn't seem a way that she won't come and lose my mind.

It's too easy humming songs to a girl in a yellow dress.

It's been a long time since the party, and the room is in a mess.

The four kings of EMI are sitting stately

The song was released as a single in the UK, but there was a snag.

Dolans had given the song a title he'd heard on an episode of the BBC sitcom Till Deathers Do Part,

which he'd found an amusing bit of British slang.

Till Deathers Do Part was written by Johnny Spate, a writer with Associated London Script,

and was a family sitcom based around the character of Alf Garnet, an ignorant, foul-mouthed reactionary bigot who hated young people, socialists, and every form of minority, especially black people, who he would address by various slurs I'm definitely not going to repeat here, and was permanently angry at the world and abusive to his wife.

As with another great sitcom from ALS, Steptoe and Son, which Norman Lear adapted for the US's Sanford and Son, till Death was Dupart was also adapted by Lear and became all in the family.

But while Archie Bunker, the character based on Garnet in the US version, has some redeeming qualities because of the nature of US network sitcom, Alf Garnet has absolutely none, and is as purely unpleasant and unsympathetic a character as has ever been created, which sadly didn't stop a section of the audience from taking him as a character to be emulated.

A big part of the show's dynamic was the relationship between Garnet and his socialist son-in-law from Liverpool, played by Anthony Booth.

himself a Liverpoolian socialist who would later have a similarly contentious relationship with his own decidedly non-socialist son-in-law, the future Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Garnet was as close to foulmouth as was possible on British TV at the time, with Spate regularly negotiating with the BBC bosses to be allowed to use terms that were not otherwise heard on TV, and used various offensive terms about his family, including referring to his son-in-law as a Randy Scouse Git.

Dolans had heard the phrase on TV, had no idea what it meant but loved the sound of it, and gave the song that title.

But when the the record came out in the UK, he was baffled to be told that the phrase, which he picked up from a BBC TV show after all, couldn't be said normally on BBC broadcasts, so they would need to retitle the track.

The translation into American English that Dolans uses in his live shows to explain this to Americans is to say that Randy Scouse Git means horny liver puddley and puts, and that's more or less right.

Dolans took the need for an alternative title literally, and so the track that went to number two in the UK UK charts was titled Alternate Title.

Welcome to the free.

It's probably the other hair.

Why don't you go there?

The album itself went to number one in both the US and the UK, though it was pushed off the top spot almost straight away by the release of Sgt.

Pepper.

As sessions for headquarters were finishing up, the group were already starting to think about their next album.

Season 2 of the TV show was now in production, and they'd need to keep generating yet more musical material for it.

One person they turned to was a friend of Chip Douglas.

Before the Turtles, Douglas had been in the modern folk quartet, and they'd recorded This Could Be the Night, which had been written for them by Harry Nilsson.

time is again.

Oh, each time it music takes a little bit longer.

And my love can

get a little bit stronger.

And I feel like I'm a sick longer.

Nilsson had just started recording his first solo album proper at RCA Studios, the same studios that the Monkees were using.

At this point, Nilsson still had a full-time job in a bank, working a night shift there while working on his album during the day.

But Douglas knew that Nilsson was a major talent, and that assessment was soon shared by the group when Nilsson came in to demo nine of his songs for them.

door.

And in 45, the mom and son were still alive.

But who could tell in 46 if the two were to survive?

Well, the years were passing quickly, but not fast enough for him.

So he closed his eyes till 55, then he opened them up again.

And when he looked around, he saw a clown and the clowns were.

According to Nilsson, Nesmith said after that demo session, you just sat down there and blew our minds.

We've been looking for songs, and you just sat down and played an album for us.

While the Monkeys would attempt a few of Nilsson's songs over the next year or so, the first one they chose to complete was the first track recorded for their next album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones Limited, a song which, from the talk back at the beginning of the demo, was always intended for David Jones to sing.

la

la la la la

La la la la

la la la

la la la

You're not the only cuddly toy that was ever enjoyed

by any boy

You're not the only choo-choo train that was left out in the rain the day after Santa Oddly, given his romantic idol persona, a lot of the songs given to Jones to sing were anti-romantic, and often had a cynical and misogynistic edge.

This had started with the first album's I Want to Be Free, but by Pisces it had gone to ridiculous extremes.

Of the four songs Jones sings on the album, Hard to Believe, the first song proper that he ever co-wrote, is a straightforward love song, but the other three have a nasty edge to them.

A remade version of Jeff Barry's She Hangs Out is about an underaged girl, starts with the lines, How old you say your sister was, you know you'd better keep an eye on her, and contains lines like, She could teach you a thing or two, and you'd better get down here on the double before she gets her pretty little self in trouble, she's so fine.

Goffin and King's Star Collector is worse, a song about a groupie with lines like, How can I love her if I just don't respect her?

And it won't take much time before I get her off my mind.

But, as is so often the way, these rather nasty messages were wrapped up in some incredibly catchy music, and that was even more the case with Cuddly Toy, a song which at least is more overtly unpleasant.

It's very obvious that Nilsson doesn't intend the protagonist of the song to be at all sympathetic, which is possibly not the case in She Hangs Out or Star Collector.

But the character Jones is singing is viciously cruel here, mocking and taunting a girl who is coaxed to have sex with him, only to scorn her as soon as he's got what he wanted.

You're not the kind of girl to tell your mother

It's a great song if you like the cruelest of humour combined with the cheeriest of music, and the royalties from the song allowed Nilsson to quit the job at the bank.

Cuddly Toy and Chip Douglas and Bill Martin's song The Door into Summer were recorded the same way as Headquarters, with the group playing as a group.

But as recordings for the album progressed, the group fell into a new way of working, which Peter Torque later dubbed mixed mode.

They didn't go back to having tracks cut for them by session musicians, apart from Jones' song Hard to Believe, for which the entire backing track was created by one of his co-writers overdubbing himself, but Dolans, who Torque always said was incapable of repeating a triumph, was not interested in continuing to play drums in the studio.

Instead, a new hybrid Monkees would perform most of the album.

Nesmith would still play the lead guitar, Torque would provide the keyboards, Chip Douglas would play all the bass and add some additional guitar, and Fast Eddie Ho, the session drummer who had been a touring drummer with the modern folk quartet and the Mammas and the Poppers among others, would play drums on the records, with Dolans occasionally adding a bit of acoustic guitar, and this was the line up that would perform on the hit single from Pisces.

Pleasant Valley Sunday was written by Jerry Goffin and Carol King, who had written several songs for the group's first two albums, and who would continue to provide them with more songs.

As with their earlier songs for the group, King had recorded a demo.

Previously and subsequently, when presented with a Carol King demo, the group and their producers would just try to duplicate it as closely as possible, right down to King's phrasing.

Bob Rafelson has said that he would sometimes hear those demos and wonder why King didn't just make records herself, and without wanting to be too much of a spoiler for a few years' time.

He wasn't the only one wondering that.

But this time the group had other plans.

In particular, they wanted to make a record with a strong guitar riff to it.

Nesmith has later referenced their own Last Train to Clarksville and The Beatles' Day Tripper as two obvious reference points for the track.

Douglas came up with a riff and taught it to Nesmith, who played it on the track.

They serenade the weekend squad who just came out to Mohammed's lawn.

Another pleasant valley Sunday.

Charcoal burning everywhere.

The track also ended with the strongest psychedelic, or psychogello as the group would refer to it, freak out that they've done to this point, a wash of saturated noise.

King was unhappy with the result, and apparently glared at Douglas the next time they met.

This may be because of the rearrangement from her intentions, but it may also be for a reason that Douglas later suspected.

When recording the track, he hadn't been able to remember all the details of her demo, and in particular, he couldn't remember exactly how the Middle Eight went.

This is the version on King's demo.

My thoughts all seem to stray to places far away.

I don't ever want to see

another pleasant valley song.

Well, here's how the monkeys rendered it with slightly different lyrics.

Creature of comfort goes,

I only know my soul.

Don't make it hard for me to see.

My thoughts don't seem astray

to places far away.

I need a change of scenery.

I also think there's a couple of chord changes in the second verse that differ between King and the Monkeys, but I can't be sure that's not my ears deceiving me.

Either way though, the track was a huge success, and became one of the group's most well-known and well-loved tracks, making making number three on the charts behind All You Need Is Love and Light My Fire.

And while it isn't Dolan's drumming on the track, the fact that it's Nesmith playing guitar and talk on the piano, and the piano part is one of the catchiest things on the record, meant that they finally had a proper major hit on which they played, and it seems likely that Dolans contributed some of the acoustic rhythm guitar on the track, along with Bill Chadwick.

And if that's true, all three monkey instrumentalists did play on the track.

Pisces is by far and away the best album the group ever made, and stands up well against anything else that came out around that time.

But cracks were beginning to show in the group.

In particular, the constant battle to get some sort of creative input had soured Nesmith on the whole project.

Chip Douglas later said, When we were doing Pisces, Michael would come in with three songs.

He knew he had three songs coming on the album.

He knew that he was making a lot of money if he got his original songs on there.

So he'd be real enthusiastic and cooperative and real friendly and get his three songs done.

Then I'd say, Mike, can you come in and help on this one we're going to do with Mickey here?

He said, no, Chip, I can't.

I'm busy.

I'd say, Mike, you've got to come in the studio.

He'd say, no, Chip, I'm afraid I'm just going to have to be ornery about it.

I'm not coming in.

That's when I started not liking Mike so much anymore.

Now, as is so often the case with the stories from this period, This appears to be inaccurate in the details.

Nesbith is present on every track on the album except Jones' solo Hard to Believe and Torque's spoken word track Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky.

And indeed this is by far the album with the most Nesmith input, as he takes five lead vocals, most of them on songs he didn't write.

But Douglas may well be summing up Nesmith's attitude to the band at this point, listening to Nesmith's commentaries on episodes of the TV show.

By this point he felt disengaged from everything that was going on, like his opinions weren't welcome.

That said, Nesmith did still contribute what is possibly the single most innovative song the group ever did, though the innovations weren't primarily down to Nesmith.

it takes to pay the dancer.

Once again

such anxious men find questions but no answers.

The night has gone and taken me.

Nesmith always described the lyrics to Daily Nightly as being about the riots on Sunset Strip, but while they're oblique, they seem rather to be about streetwalking sex workers, though it's perhaps understandable that Nesmith would never admit as much.

What made the track innovative was the use of the Moog synthesizer.

We talked about Robert Moog in the episode on Good Vibrations.

He had started out as a thermin manufacturer and had built the ribbon synthesizer that Mike Love played live on Good Vibrations.

And now he was building the first commercially available easily usable synthesizers.

Previously, electronic instruments had either been things like the Clavioline, a simple monophonic keyboard instrument that didn't have much tonal variation, or the RCA Mark II, a programmable synth that could make a wide variety of sounds, but took up an entire room and was programmed with punch cards.

Moog's machines were bulky but still transportable, and they could be played in real time with a keyboard, but were still able to be modified to make a wide variety of different sounds.

While, as we've seen, there had been electronic keyboard instruments as far back as the 1930s, Moogs instruments were, for all intents and purposes, the first synthesizers as we now understand the term.

The Moog was introduced in late spring 1967 and immediately started to be used for making experimental and novelty records, like Hal Blaine's track Lovin, which came out at the beginning of June.

And the Electric Flags soundtrack album for The Trip, the drug exploitation film starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, and written by Jack Nicholson we talked about last time, when Arthur Lee moved into a house used in the the film.

In 1967, there were a total of six albums released with a Moog on them, as well as one non-album experimental single.

Four of the albums were experimental or novelty instrumental albums of this type.

Only two of them were rock albums, Strange Days by The Doors and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Limited by the Monkees.

The Doors album was released first, but I believe the Monkeys tracks were recorded before the Doors overdubbed the Moogue on the tracks on their album, though some session dates are hard to pin down exactly.

If that's the case, it would make the Monkees the very first band to use the Moogue on an actual rock record, depending on exactly how you count the trip soundtrack.

This gets back again to my old claim that there's no first anything.

But that's not the only way in which Daily Nightly was innovative.

All the first seven albums to feature the Moogue featured one man playing the instrument, Paul Beaver, the company's West Coast representative, who played on all the novelty records by members of the Wrecking Crew, and on the albums by The Electric Flag and the Doors,

and on the notorious Bird Brothers by the Birds, which came out in early 1968.

And Beaver did play the Moog on one track on Pisces, Star Collector.

But on Daily Nightly, it's Mickey Dolans playing the Moog, making him definitely the second person ever to play a Moog on a record of any kind.

Sucking the hands and minds of soul are moving even

faster.

Tombing down

someone who's found the question to my

side.

Dolans indeed had bought his own Moog, widely cited as being the second one ever in private ownership, a fact I can't check, but which sounds plausible given that by 1970 less than 30 musicians owned one, after seeing Beaver demonstrate the instrument at the Monterey Pop Festival.

The Monkees hadn't played Monterey, but both Dolans and Torque had attended the festival.

If you watch the famous film of it, you see Dolans and his girlfriend Samantha in the crowd a lot, while Torque introduced his friends in the Buffalo Springfield.

As well as discovering the Moog there, Dolans had been astonished by something else.

Hey, Johnson.

Where are you gonna run to now?

We're gonna run.

Hey, Santa!

I'm going without some.

Without, let's go away.

As Peter Torque later put it, I didn't get it.

At Monterey, Jimmy followed the Who and the Who busted up their things and Jimmy bashed up his guitar.

I said, I just saw explosions of destruction, who needs it?

But Mickey got it.

He saw the genius and went for it.

Dolans was astonished by Hendrix and insisted that he should be the support act on the group's summer tour.

The pairing might sound odd on paper, but it made more sense at the time than it might sound.

The Monkeys were, by all accounts, a truly astonishing live act at this point.

Frank Zappa gave them a backhanded compliment by saying they were the best sounding band in LA,

before pointing out that this was because they could afford the best equipment.

That was true, but it was also the case that their TV experience gave them a different attitude to live performance than anyone else performing at the time.

A handful of groups had started playing stadiums, most notably, of course, the Beatles, but all of these acts had come up through playing clubs and theatres, and essentially just kept doing their old act with no thought as to how the larger space worked, except to put their amps through a louder PA.

The Monkees, though, had started in stadiums and had started out as mass entertainers, and so their live show was designed from the ground up to play to those larger spaces.

They had costume changes, elaborate stage sets like oversized fake Vox amps that they burst out of at the start of the show, a light show and a screen on which film footage was projected.

In effect, they invented stadium performances as we now know them.

Nesmith later said, in terms of putting on a show, there was never any question in my mind, as far as the rock rock'n'roll and era is concerned, that we put on probably the finest rock and roll stage show ever.

It was beautifully lit, beautifully costumed, beautifully produced.

I mean, for Christ's sakes, it was practically a review.

The Monkees were confident enough in their stage performance that at a recent show at the Hollywood Bowl, they'd had Icantina Turner as their opening act.

Not an act you'd want to go on after if you were going to be less than great.

And an act from very similar Chitlin circuit routes to Jimi Hendrix.

So from their perspective it made sense.

If you're going to be spectacular yourselves, you have no need to fear a spectacular opening act.

Hendricks was less keen.

He was about the only musician in Britain who had made disparaging remarks about the monkeys.

But opening for the biggest touring band in the world isn't an opportunity you pass up.

And again, it isn't such a departure as one might imagine from the bills he was already playing.

Remember that Monterey is really the moment when pop and rock started to split, the split we've been talking about for a few months now, and so the Jimi Hendrix experience was still considered a pop band, and as such had played the normal British pop band package tours.

In March and April that year they'd toured on a bill with the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdink, and Hendrix had even filled in for Humperdink's sick guitarist on one occasion.

Nesmith, Dolans and Torque all loved having Hendrix on tour with them, just because it gave them a chance to watch him live every night.

Jones, whose musical tastes were more towards Anthony Newley, wasn't especially impressed, and they got on well on a personal level.

There are reports of Hendrix jamming with Dolans and Steve Stills in hotel rooms, but there was one problem, as Dolans often recreates in his live act.

The audience response to Hendrix from the Monkees fans was so poor that by mutual agreement he left the tour after only a handful of shows.

After the summer tour, the group went back to work on the TV show and their next album, or rather, four individuals went back to work.

By this point, the group had drifted apart from each other and from Douglas.

Torque, the one who was still keenest on the idea of the group as a group, thought that Pisces, good as it was, felt like a Chip Douglas album rather than a Monkeys album.

The four band members had all by now built up their own retinues of hangers-on and collaborators, and on set for the T V show they were now largely staying with their own friends rather than working as a group.

And that was now reflected in their studio work.

From now on, rather than have a single producer working with them as a band, the four men would work as individuals, producing their own tracks, occasionally with outside help, and bringing in session musicians to work on them.

Some tracks from this point on would be genuine monkeys, plural, tracks, and all tracks would be credited as produced by the monkeys, But basically, the four men would from now on be making solo tracks, which would be combined into albums, though Dolans and Jones would occasionally guess on tracks by the others, especially when Nesmith came up with a song he thought would be more suited to their voices.

Indeed, the first new recording that happened after the tour was an entire Nesmith solo album, a collection of instrumental versions of his songs called The Witcher R-Train Whistle Sings, played by members of the Wrecking Crew and a few big band instrumentalists, arranged by Shorty Rogers.

Hal Blaine, in this autobiography, claimed that the album was created as a tax write-up for Nesmith, though Nesmith always vehemently denied it and claimed it was an artistic experiment, though not one that came off well.

Released alongside Pisces, though, came one last group-recorded single.

The B-side, Going Down, is a song that was credited to the group and sung by Diane Hildebrand, though in fact it developed from a jam on someone else's song.

Nesmith, Torque, Douglas, and Ho attempted to record a backing track for a version of Moz Allison's jazz blues standard, Parchment Farm.

Well, I'm sitting over here on Parchment Farm.

Well I'm sitting over here on Parson Farm

Well I'm sitting over here on Parsman Farm and I ain't never done no man no harm

But after recording it they'd realized that it didn't sound that much like the original and that all it had in common with it was a chord sequence.

Nesbith suggested that rather than put it out as a cover version, they put a a new melody and lyrics to it, and they commissioned Hildebrand, who'd co-written songs for the group before, to write them, and got Shorty Rogers to write a horn arrangement to go over their backing track.

The eventual songwriting credit was split five ways between Hildebrand and the Four Monkeys, including Davy Jones, who had no involvement with the recording, but not including Douglas R.

Ho.

The lyrics Hildebrand came up with were a funny patter song about a failed suicide, taken at an extremely fast pace, which Dolans pulls off magnificently.

Going down,

I'm going down.

I'm coming up for every fretty stuff under there.

I'd like to say I didn't care, but I forgot to leave a loader.

It's the hotest there, floating, soaking wet without a motor.

And I knew I should have taken off my

The A-side, another track with a rhythm track by Nesmith, Torg, Douglas and Ho, was a song that had been written by Jon Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who you may remember from the episode on San Francisco as being a former songwriting partner of John Phillips.

Stewart had written the song as part of a suburbia trilogy and was not happy with the finished product.

He said later, I remember going to bed thinking, all I did today was write Daydream Believer.

Stewart used to include the song in his solo sets to no great approval, and had shopped the song around to bands like We Five and Spanky and Our Gang, who had both turned it down.

He was unhappy with it himself because of the chorus.

Stewart was ADHD, and the words tour, coming as they did slightly out of the expected scansion for the line, irritated him so greatly that he thought the song could never be recorded by anyone.

But when Chip Douglas asked if he had any songs, he suggested that one.

As it turned out, there was a line of lyric that almost got the track rejected, but it wasn't the tour.

Stewart's original second verse went like this.

And our good times starting in

without

one

to spend.

But how much, baby, do we

RCA Records objected to the line, now you know how funky I can be, because funky, among other meanings, meant smelly.

And they didn't like the idea of Davy Jones singing about being smelly.

Chip Douglas phoned Stewart to time they were insisting on changing the line and suggesting happy instead.

Stewart objected vehemently.

That change would reverse the entire meaning of the line, and it made no sense.

And what about artistic integrity?

But then, as he later said, he said, Let me put it to you this way, John.

If you can't sing Happy, they won't do it.

And I said, Happy's working real good for me now.

That's exactly what I said to him.

He never regretted the decision.

Stewart would essentially live off the royalties from Daydream Believer for the rest of his life, though he seemed always to be slightly ambivalent and gently mocking about the song in his own performances, often changing the lyrics slightly.

Cheer up, sleepy tea.

Oh, what can it be?

They dream deceiver, and

oh, closet flee.

The monkeys had gone into the studio and cut the track, again with Torque on piano, Nesmith on guitar, Douglas on bass, and Ho on drums.

Other than changing Funky to Happy, there were two major changes made in the studio.

One seems to have been Douglas' idea.

They took the bass riff from the pre-chorus to the Beach Boys' Help Me Ronda.

And Douglas played that on the bass as the pre-chorus for Daydream Believer, with Shorty Rogers later doubling it in the horn arrangement.

Cheer up sleepy cheek.

What can it mean

to a daydream Believe I'm under

Ogar

You once thought of me as a white knight on his steed

Now you know how happy I can be

And the other is the piano intro, which also becomes an instrumental bridge which which was apparently the invention of Torque, who played it.

7A.

What number is this, Jim?

7A.

Okay, no, I mean I don't get excited, man.

It's because I'm short, I know.

Oh, I could hide beneath the wings of the bluebird as she sings.

The six o'clock alarm would never ring,

But it dreams and I ran wide asleep by.

The track went to number one, becoming the group's third and final number one hit, and their fifth of six million sellers.

It was included on the next album, The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkeys, but that piano part would be talk's only contribution to the album.

As the group members were all now writing songs and cutting their own tracks, and were also still re-recording the odd old unused song from the initial 1966 sessions, The Birds, the Bees and the Monkeys, was pulled together from a truly astonishing amount of material.

The expanded triple C D version of the album, now sadly out of print, has multiple versions of 44 different songs, ranging from simple acoustic demos to completed tracks, of which 12 were included on the final album.

Torque did record several tracks during the sessions, but he spent much of the time recording and re-recording a single song, Ladies' Baby, which eventually stretched to five different recorded versions over multiple sessions in a five-month period.

He racked up huge studio bills on the track, bringing in Steve Stills and Jewey Martin of the Buffalo Springfield and Buddy Miles to try to help him capture the sound in his head, but the various takes are almost indistinguishable from one another, and so it's difficult to see what the problem was.

Ladies baby pulls my hair,

lets me know he's really there.

Baby's mother touches me,

and that last I really

saw

running there by

was much one.

Either way, the track wasn't finished by the time the album came out, and the album that came out was a curiously disjointed and unsatisfying effort, a mixture of recycled old Boyce and Heart songs, some songs by Jones, who at this point was convinced that Broadway rock was going to be the next big thing, and writing songs that sounded like mediocre show tunes, and a handful of experimental songs written by Nesmith.

You could pull together a truly great 10 or 12 track album from the masses of material they'd recorded, but the one that came out was mediocre at best, and became the first Monkeys album not to make number one, though it still made number three and sold in huge numbers.

It also had the group's last million-selling single on it, Valerie, an old Boyce and Heart reject from 1966 that had been remade with Boyce and Heart Producing and their old session players, though the production credit was still now given to the Monkees.

There's a girl I know who makes me feel so good.

And I wouldn't live without her, even if I could.

Nesmith said at the time he considered it the worst song ever written.

The second season of the TV show was well underway, and despite, or possibly because of, the group being clearly stoned for much of the filming, it contains a lot of the episodes that fans of the group think of most fondly, including several episodes that break out of the formula the show had previously established in interesting ways.

Torque and Dolans were both also given the opportunity to direct episodes, and Dolans also co-wrote his episode, which ended up being the last of the series.

In another sign of how the group were being given more creative control over the show, the last three episodes of the series had guest appearances by favourite musicians of the group members who they wanted to give a little exposure to, and those guest appearances sum up the character of the band members remarkably well.

Torque, for whatever reason, didn't take up this option, but the other three did.

Jones brought on his friend Charlie Smalls, who would later go on to write the music for the Broadway musical The Wiz, to demonstrate to Jones the difference between Smalls' black soul and Jones's white soul.

Tell me, why don't I have soul?

You've known me all these years.

Why don't I have soul?

You do have soul, but I have to explain it to you rhythmically.

That's the only way I can really talk is in music.

Your soul would emanate on the accented beats one and three.

Where my soul emanates on the accented beats two and four.

And to give you a a good example of that, the Beatles play hard and funky on one and three.

Really, Ringo plays the hardest one and three I've ever heard in my life.

Now if you clap four, I'll show you.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four, one.

Yeah, right.

That's the whole thing.

It swings.

As long as it swings.

That's one and three, right?

Right.

Now, an example of two and four would be Motown.

Now, one and three is one and three is like is white soul, right?

Right.

And two and four is

Motown Soul Brothers.

So, you know, I'm giving you something two and five of the year.

It would be the Motown Soul, which would be...

Clap again.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, skit three, two.

Four.

One, two.

Oh, yeah.

The accent now is on the two and a four.

Nesmith, on the other hand, vote on Frank Zappa.

Zappa put on Nesmith's monkey shirt and wool hat and pretended to be Nesmith, and interviewed Nesmith with a false nose and moustache pretending to be Zappa, as they both mercilessly mocked the previous week's segment with Jones and Smalls.

You know that after I quit the show, I'm going to join the birds, don't you?

No, I didn't know that.

When you quit the Mothers, who are you going to join?

I may join the Birds, too.

I wanted to get into a very serious area that, of course, appeals to me as Frank Zampa, sometimes thought of as creative genius, especially in the area concerning your monkeys' music, which appears to me to be banal and insipid.

And you think that our music, the monkey's music, is banal and insipid?

Well, words like that are hard to read, especially side by side.

Have you ever tried reading Mike and Frank?

I wanted to know where the soul of your music was.

Is it on the one and the seven?

Or is it on the one and the...

The soul of your music is on the one and the seven, sometimes on the three and the five.

The soul of our music, the the monkeys music lies somewhere in between the one and a half the two and a half the three and three quarters and the giant c major chord on the piano which i'll demonstrate for you we have wonderful music match cut here we go we turn over and we all take our positions in front of the camera because this is the monkeys and we're really tricky nesmith then conducted zappa as zappa used a sledgehammer to play a car parodying his own appearance on the Steve Allen show playing a bicycle to the presumed amusement of the monkeys fanbase who would not be likely to remember a one-off performance on a late-night TV show from five years earlier.

And the final thing ever to be shown on an episode of the Monkees didn't feature any of the Monkees at all.

Mickey Dolans, who directed and co-wrote that episode, about an evil wizard who was using the power of a space plant named after the group's slang for dope, to hypnotise people through the T V, chose not to interact with his guest as the others had, but simply had Tim Buckley perform a solo acoustic version of his then-unreleased song, Song to the Siren.

This is Tim Buckley.

Long afloat on

shipless oceans,

I did all my

best to smile

Till your singing

eyes and fingers

drew me loving

to your aisle

By the end of the second season everyone knew they didn't want to make another season of the TV show.

Instead, they were going to do what Waifelson and Schneider had always wanted and move into film.

The planning stages for the film, which was initially titled Changes but later titled Head, so that Rafelson and Schneider could build their next film as From the Guys Who Gave You Head, had started the previous summer, before the sessions that produced The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkeys.

To write the film, the group went off with Rafelson and Schneider for a short holiday.

and took with them their mutual friend Jack Nicholson.

Nicholson was at this time not the major film star he later became.

Rather, he was a bit-part actor, who was mostly associated with American International Pictures, the ultra-low-budget film company that has come up on several occasions in this podcast.

Nicholson had appeared mostly in small roles, in films like The Little Shop of Horrors.

Most people don't like to go to the dentist, but I rather enjoy it myself, don't you?

I mean, there's such, there's a real feeling of growth, of

progress when when that old drill goes in.

I mean, I'd almost rather go to the dentist than anywhere, wouldn't you?

Yeah.

Now, no, no, Bakane, it dulls the senses.

This is gonna hurt you more than it is me.

So goody-goody, here it comes.

He'd appeared in multiple films by Barbara Jacoman, often appearing with Boris Karloff,

and by Monty Hellman.

But despite having been a working actor for a decade, his acting career was going nowhere.

And by this point he had basically given up on the idea of being an actor and had decided to start working behind the camera.

He'd written the scripts for a few of the low-budget films he'd appeared in, and he'd recently scripted The Trip, the film we mentioned earlier.

The wildest of pleasures possess you.

It will blow your mind.

So the group, Raethelson, Schneider, and Nicholson, all went away for a weekend, and they all got extremely stoned, took acid, and talked into a tape recorder for hours on end.

Nicholson then transcribed those recordings, cleaned them up, and structured the worthwhile ideas into something quite remarkable.

If the Monkees TV show had been inspired by the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, and by Richard Lester's directorial style, the only precursor I can find for Head is in the TV work of Lester's colleague Spike Milligan.

But I don't think there's any reasonable way in which Nicholson, or anyone else involved, could have taken inspiration from Milligan's series Q.

But what they ended up with is something that resembles, more than anything else, Monty Python's Flying Circus, a TV series that wouldn't start until a year after Head came out.

It's a series of ostensibly unconnected sketches linked by a kind of dream logic, with characters wandering from one loose narrative into a totally different one, actors coming out of character on a regular basis, and no attempt at a coherent narrative.

It contains regular examples of channel zapping, with excerpts from old films being spliced in, and bits of news footage juxtaposed with comedy sketches and musical performances, in ways that are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes distasteful, and occasionally both.

As when a famous piece of footage of a Vietnamese prisoner of war being shot in the head hard cuts to screaming girls in the audience at a monkeys concert, a performance which ends with the girls tearing apart the group and revealing that they're really just cheap-looking plastic mannequins.

The film starts and ends, with the monkeys themselves attempting suicide, jumping off a bridge into the ocean.

But the end reveals that in fact the ocean they're in is just water in a glass box, and they're trapped in it.

And knowing this means that when you watch the film a second time, you find that it does have a story.

The monkeys are trapped in a box which in some ways represents life, the universe, and one's own mind.

and in other ways represents the TV and their TV careers.

Each of them is trying in his own way to escape, and each ends up trapped by his own limitations, condemned to start the cycle over and over again.

The film features parodies of popular film genres like the boxing film, Davy is supposed to throw a fight with Sonny Liston at the instruction of gangsters, the Western, and the War film, but huge chunks of the film take place on a film studio backlot, and characters from one segment reappear in another, often commenting negatively on the film or the band, as when Frank Zappa, as a critic, calls Davy Jones's soft shoe routine to a Harry Nilson song, Very White, or when a canteen worker in the studio calls the group God's Gift to the Eight-Year-olds.

The film is constantly deconstructing and commenting on itself in the filmmaking process.

Torque hits a canteen worker whose wig falls off revealing the actor playing her to be a man, and then it's revealed that the behind-the-scenes footage is itself scripted.

As director Bob Raifelson and scriptwriter Jack Nicholson come into frame and reassure Torque, who's concerned that hitting a woman would be bad for his image.

They tell him they can always cut it from the finished film if it doesn't work.

While Ditty Diego, the almost rap rewriting of the monkeys theme that we heard earlier, sets out a lot of how the film has to be interpreted and how it works narratively, the spiritual and thematic core of the film is in another song, Torque's long title, Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?

which in later solo performances Torque would give the subtitle The Karma Blues.

Do I have to make this kind of night

and night?

Head is an extraordinary film, and one it's impossible to sum up in anything less than an hour-long episode of its own.

It's certainly not a film that's to everyone's taste, and not every aspect of it works.

It is a film that is absolutely of its time, in ways that are both good and bad.

But it's one of the most inventive things ever put out by a major film studio, and it's one that rightly secured the monkeys a certain amount of cult credibility over the decades.

The soundtrack album album is a return to form after the disappointing Birds Bees, too.

Nicholson put the album together, linking the eight songs in the film with collages of dialogue and incidental music, repurposing and recontextualising the dialogue to create a new experience, one that people have compared with Frank Zappa's contemporaneous We're Only In It for the Money.

The while the collage elements of Head are similar to what Zappa did, the songs are much more accessible, as in the Carol King and Tony Stern song As We Go Along,

which features a bank of guitarists including King Herself, Raikuda, and Neil Young.

You shouldn't

be shy,

for I

don't try

to hurt you, or heal you,

or steal your star.

Open

Unfortunately, while Head is one of the great art films of the 60s, and an artistic highlight of the career of everyone involved, it had one major problem.

The Monkeys fan base was mostly children between the ages of about 10 and 14.

And while while there are, of course, some exceptions, very few 11-year-olds want to see art films influenced by the French New Wave and Eastern philosophy, deconstructing themselves, the nature of consumer culture, the media, and karma.

Conversely, in 1968, very few intellectuals and artistic types were at all interested in anything from the Monkees.

who they disdained as plastic, commercial, and fatini boppers, and weren't persuaded to come and see the film, even by trailers which showed the unblinking, unsmiling, black-and-white face of literary agent and, later sadly, associate of Jeffrey Epstein, John Brockman, looking into the camera rather than footage from the film itself.

Head made only $16,111 at the box office, on a budget of $790,000, without promotion from the TV show.

Their previous single, D.W.

Washburn, a song Lieber and Stoller had also given to the coasters almost simultaneously, simultaneously, had only made number 19, but Porpoise Song, the single from Head, only made number 68, and the album made number 45.

At this point, pretty much everyone washed their hands of the monkeys.

Rafelson and Schneider continued with their film career, and would go on to be among the most important filmmakers of their generation, producing films like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and The Last Picture Show, and becoming the nucleus around which the movement known as New Hollywood formed.

It's outside the purview of this podcast, but I would recommend anyone who hasn't read it read the book Easy Rider's Raging Bulls to see how much of the modern film industry owes its existence directly or indirectly to Rafelson and Schneider, and to the start they got with the monkeys.

The group still had a contract to make a series of TV specials.

They ended up only making one.

33 and a third revolutions per monkey is possibly the most despised piece of media that will be discussed in this series, and it's easy to see why, even though I have more time for it than most.

Production on Head had been problematic and caused a final rift in the band, when Dolans, Jones, and Nesmith had gone on strike at the beginning of filming, saying they weren't going to work without getting screenplay credit.

Torque refused to join them because he didn't believe they deserved the credit, leading to the bizarre situation of Nesmith the Rockefeller Republican falling out with Torque the Socialist over a labour dispute in which Torque was the one breaking a picket line, albeit an informal one.

The management dispute had been rectified, but this had only hastened Rafelson and Schneider's decision to part with the group once and for all, and Torque and Nesmith were no longer on speaking terms.

Rather than being produced by Rafelson and Schneider, 33 and a third Revolutions per Monkey was co-written and produced by Jack Goode, who seemed far more interested in guest stars Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll than in the monkeys.

Use them for commercial exploitation

Create a new four-part phenomenon for simple lads of talent, little or none.

And through the latest flat of rock,

under all

conduct experiments in my control

on an unsuspecting public, they'll be heard.

I'll brainwash them

and they'll brainwash

33 and a third is basically what you get if you try to remake Head with the production values of a sub-par primary school play and with a half-written script by someone who watched Head and didn't understand it, and who thinks the peak of music was 1957, and any movement away from 1950s rock and roll has been a terrible example of moral decadence.

I find it fascinating, but I can't say it's good, though there are good moments, like a medley featuring Fats Domino Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, all playing pianos one stacked on top of another, singing their classic hits.

The one dissenting voice on the special came from George Melley, a more perceptive cultural critic than most, who said in his review, quoted in his great revolting to style, What made this film worthwhile was that it demonstrated with a certain brilliance how yesterday's revolutionary can turn into today's reactionary.

Good's enthusiasm is reserved for rock and roll.

Sexy, extrovert, good dirty fun.

When Pop went highbrow it lost him.

I dare say Sergeant Pepper was his Waterloo.

And he used this film to make this point with considerable panache.

The monkeys were originally computerised into existence as plastic beetles, but have become not only adequate performers, but discontented with their lot.

Goode used this discontent as the vortex of an inventive piece of nostalgia and attack.

The final sequence in which he evoked chaos with great discipline was remarkable.

As it happened, Torque was so discontented with his lot that he paid a reported $100,000 to buy out his contract and quit the Monkees right after making 33 and a third, which was put up against the Oscars as the network realised nobody would be interested in watching it.

The rest of the group continued as a three-piece and recorded two more albums together: Instant Replay and The Monkees Present.

Those albums had some fine music, but nobody was listening.

Possibly the most interesting track is one on instant replay, You and I, a song Jones co-wrote with Bill Chadwick, which is the howl of anger of a teen idol who's been cast aside, with some scorching guitar from Neil Young, recorded just before Jung started recording in this style on his own records.

There'll be another song,

another voice, another

prince in playing.

After the Monkees Present, Nesmith bought his contract out too, and the final album released as By the Monkees before they split for good, Changes, was largely a collection of tracks Jeff Barry and Andy Kim had produced for a rejected Andy Kim album, onto which Dolans and Jones overdub vocals.

Torque tried to start a band with his girlfriend and Lowell George, who had briefly been a member of the Mothers of Invention and would go on to form form Little Feet.

Tork tried to submit a song to the soundtrack of Rafelson and Schneider's next film, but it was summarily rejected, though he would go on to record it as a solo artist decades later.

the wheels, I'm a rider's head.

Yes, it's time,

easy rider.

The song they chose instead, incidentally, worked a little better in the film, which finally brought Peter Fonder, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson to stardom.

Yeah, I gotta go make it happen.

Took the world in a love embrace.

Filipino buttons

exploded into space.

Like a true nature's child.

But we were born born to be wild.

But

Torque quit music and became a teacher for a while, though over the next 15 years or so he would make occasional ventures back into the music industry.

But any chance he had of rebuilding his career was derailed by drug and alcohol dependency.

Dolans and Jones, meanwhile, started up solo careers, though unsuccessfully.

Jones did make a famous appearance on the Brady Bunch singing his solo track Girl, while Dolans made several quite decent singles, but neither made a dent, and Dolans spent much of the early 70s going out and partying with a group of rock star friends nicknamed the Hollywood Vampires, a loose group of people including Harry Nilson, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, and Alice Cooper.

In the mid-70s there was talk of a monkeys reunion, but when Nesmith wasn't interested, Dolans and Jones instead teamed up with Boyce and Hart, who had had a few hits as performers themselves after stopping World With the Monkees, and formed Dolans, Jones, Boyce and Hart, who toured as the great golden hits of the Monkees Show, the guys who wrote them and the guys who sang them, and recorded an album of new material, which flocked.

me high as the ceiling.

Yes, I remember the feeling.

Yes, I remember the feeling

of hairs rocking and reeling.

And all the kiss of me was feeling.

Yes, I remember the feeling.

After that group split up, Dolans and Jones performed in a stage musical in London based on the album The Point by their old friend Harry Nilson.

There's a jungle out there.

It's jungle out there.

There's a jungle

But the two fell out during the production and didn't speak to each other for a decade.

Jones went on the nostalgia circuit, while Dolan stayed in the UK and became a TV director, directing children's shows like Metal Mickey and From the Top, the latter of which starred Bill Oddy, whose own comedy series The Goodies owed more than a little to the monkeys.

The reason they started talking to each other again actually had to do with their old bandmate Nesmith.

Nesmith, unlike the others, had something of a successful career outside the Monkees.

After quitting the group, he formed the First National Band,

who are now regarded as one of the great pioneers of country rock, and he had some minor hits with them, like Joanne.

and she touched me for a moment with a look that spoke to me of her sweet love.

Then the woman that she was drove her on with desperation,

and I saw as she went a most hopeless situation for Joanne and the man

in the time

that made them.

His early 70s records didn't sell in huge numbers, but they got a great deal of critical respect and stand up very well to this day.

He also though formed a company called Pacific Arts and got into the home video distribution business, becoming one of the major players in the business in the 80s, though the company got stuck in various lawsuits by the 90s.

Part of the success of Pacific Arts was down to Nesmith inheriting a fortune from his mother in 1980, which allowed him to branch out into film production, producing cult films like Repo Man and Tapeheads.

But even before that, he'd been interested in the possibilities of music video, especially when he made a video for his late 70s single Rio and had a surprise hit with it as a result.

There's nothing I know all of in Rio

But it's something to do with the night

It's only a whimsical notion

To fly down to Rio tonight

But I probably won't fly down to Rio

But even again

I'll

Nesmith got very involved in music video production, putting together his own video special, Elephant Parts, which won the first Grammy for Music Videos, and his company would also later produce videos for Lionel Vitchie and Michael Jackson.

And he created a TV series called Pop Clips, which just featured music videos hosted by a video jockey, or VJ.

Popclips was shown on Nickelodeon, and Nickelodeon's parent company, Warners, decided to start an entire cable channel inspired by the format, which became MTV.

And given the lack of music videos available at the time, MTV started showing old episodes of the Monkees.

The group got a new fan base and reformed, without Nesmith, who was busy running his companies, and even had one last hit, though it was released as by Mickey Dolans of Beater Talk of the Monkeys, as the musicians didn't own the trademark on the name and could only license it for touring at time.

I give my love,

I'll give it more than a try.

That was it,

that was it.

This is that.

Let me prove my love, girl.

I'll make you proud.

I never made,

Dolan's Torque and Jones toured off and on for the next 15 years and put out a new monkeys album, Pool It, in 1987.

They even briefly reunited with Nesmith for the group's 30th anniversary, doing a short tour together, making a TV special written and directed by Nesmith, and recording a final final album as a four-piece, Just Us, which, as the title suggests, is the only Monkees album to be entirely made by the four members, who wrote every song and played every instrument without any outside assistance at all.

Torque quit again in 2001, and the remaining duo split up soon after, but they reformed in 2011 for a 45th anniversary tour, where they gave some of the greatest performances of their career, performing sets that included the whole head album, and which featured Torque playing keyboards, banjo, guitar, and French horn.

When Davy Jones died suddenly in 2012, it seemed like it might be the end of the Monkees, but then rather remarkably, Michael Nesmith decided to rejoin the band, and the group toured as a trio for a few years.

Both Nesmith and Torque started having health problems, though, and also seemed to have not got on with each other.

And so, in 2015 and 2016, Torque and Dolans toured as the Monkeys Without Nesmith.

Nesmith did, though, contribute to the group's final studio album proper, 2016's Good Times, an astonishing return to form produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, which featured completed versions of songs they'd left unfinished in the 60s, plus new songs written for them by writers they'd influenced, like Schlesinger, Andy Partridge of XTC,

Ben Gibbard of Death Camp for Cutie, and this one by Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller.

Where we go

to the night and maybe

where we go.

It was a great final album, though sadly they spoiled it somewhat by later releasing a Christmas album put together by the same team.

But by that point both Nesmith and Torque were clearly struggling with their health, and the music suffered as a result, with most of it just being Dolans performing solo.

In 2017, Torque became too ill to tour, and Nesmith joined Dolans in his place for a tour in 2018 as The Monkeys Present The Mike and Mickey Show.

Torque died of cancer in 2019 and Nesmith and Dolans toured as the Monkees in 2019 and 2021 and released a live album as a duo.

Play the drums a little bit louder.

Tell me I can live without her

Nesmith was himself having health problems though, not helped by the fact that he was raised a Christian scientist and so didn't like going to see doctors even when in serious pain, though he did eventually relent and have a quadruple bypass in 2018.

The Monkees played their final show on November 14th, 2021, and Nesmith was clearly extremely unwell on the final tour.

He died less than a month later, finally bringing the Monkees to an end, though Dolans now tours with his solo show, paying tribute to his former colleagues.

The Monkees were the first manufactured pop band of the rock era, and they have often been despised for that reason.

But when you look at their work in its own right, and at their own lives and history, you find a group of people who consistently chose to try new and different things,

and who, whatever their origins, ended up making some remarkable records, and a film which is one of the great sixties psychedelic masterpieces.

They were four very different individuals who were in many ways totally incompatible, and who would never have come together organically, but precisely because of that, they had a catalogue that spans more genres than any of their contemporaries I can think of, and does most of them remarkably well.

There will still, I know, be a portion of the audience for this episode who don't understand why I've spent so much time on a band they consider worthy of contempt.

To them, all I can do is suggest that you do as the song says and listen to the band.

Weren't they good?

They made me happy.

I think I can't leave alone.

A history of rock music and 500 songs is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon.

Each week, Patreon backers will get a 10-minute bonus bonus podcast.

This week's is on Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf.

Visit patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey to sign up for as little as a dollar a month.

A book based on the first 50 episodes of the podcast, from Savoy Swingers to Clock Rockers, is now available.

Search Andrew Hickey 500 Songs on your favorite online bookstore or visit the links in the show notes.

This podcast is written and narrated by me, Andrew Hickey, and produced by me and Tilt Ariser.

Visit 500songs.com.

That's 500 the numbers songs.com to read transcript and liner notes and get links to hear the full versions of songs excerpted here.

If you've enjoyed the show and feel it's worth reviewing, please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

But more importantly, tell just one person that you liked this podcast.

Word of mouth, more than any other form of promotion, is how creative works get noticed and sustain themselves.

Thank you very much for listening.