The Monkees
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Mary, Mary, where you goin' to?"--"Mary, Mary" (1966) by The Monkees |
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The Monkees were a pop-rock quartet created and based in Los Angeles in 1965 for an NBC American television series of the same name. The show, which ran from 1966 to 1968, helped make them one of the 1960s' most popular music acts.
The Monkees disbanded in 1970, but several reunions and semi-reunions have since taken place.
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History of the series
The television show first aired on September 12, 1966 on the American NBC television network and ran for two seasons; its final primetime episode ran on August 19, 1968. Modelled on the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, The Monkees featured the antics and music of a fictional pop-rock group which, due to the necessities of the program, became a real pop-rock group.
The four young men who became The Monkees were Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork. They were cast after ads were placed in trade publications calling for actors to play “4 insane boys” on a new television series. Among those rejected for the part was a then relatively unknown Stephen Stills. Rumors have circulated that Charles Manson also auditioned, but these rumirs have been criticised as false.
Nesmith and Tork were both already professional musicians, but Dolenz and Jones were better known as actors, and all four were trained in both improvisational comedy and performing musically as a group before the pilot episode was filmed, so that they could look and act like a cohesive band even though only their voices were being used on the initial recordings.
As a television show, The Monkees used techniques rarely seen on television — characters breaking the fourth wall and talking to the camera and sometimes even to people off-camera in the studio, fantasy sequences, jump cuts, and at least once a week a musical romp which might have nothing to do with the story line. In fact, many of the episodes included what now look very much like video clips: short, self-contained films featuring one of the songs from a Monkees album.
The Monkees was put together by a number of people who went on to great later success. The show was produced by Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, who later produced the film Easy Rider; Rafelson went on to direct such films as Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens. The pilot episode was co-written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, who later co-wrote the movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which Mazursky directed; he went on to direct such films as Harry and Tonto and Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
Beyond television
After the television show was cancelled, Rafelson directed the four Monkees in a film, Head, co-written by Rafelson and a then relatively unknown actor named Jack Nicholson. The film was not a commercial success, but it has developed a cult following in the years since.
The band itself
Critics of the Monkees complained that they were a made-for-TV knockoff of The Beatles (although John Lennon was allegedly a fan of the show), and that the Monkees were a group chosen by a casting director. The actual stars of the television show complained because the producers did not allow them to play their own instruments on their records, although they did their own singing and vocal arrangements. Led by Nesmith, the rest of the band rebelled against management, and beginning with their third album, Headquarters, the four Monkees did play most of the parts on the rest of their record albums.
Supporters of the group also point out that the Monkees had the good taste to use some of the best songwriters of the period, including Neil Diamond, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. The Monkees also deserve credit for helping bring American attention to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who they asked for as an opening act during a 1967 concert tour.
The Monkees had several hits, including "I'm a Believer," "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone," "Daydream Believer", "Last Train to Clarksville" — and even a number of social criticism songs, the best known of which is probably "Pleasant Valley Sunday". They produced five albums with the original lineup, which was supplemented by a series of successful tours. Three more would follow while Tork, and then Nesmith, left the group, leaving only Dolenz and Jones to record as The Monkees. Eventually, Jones too would depart from the group, and that left Dolenz as the sole remaining recording Monkee, and so marked the end of the first phase of The Monkees' recording career.
Impact of the Monkees
In point of fact, The Monkees, selected specifically to appeal to the youth market, with manufactured personae and carefully produced singles, can be seen to be the direct precursor to the modern proliferation of studio- and corporation-created bands. Millions of people still listen to their music, and it seems likely that Monkees singles will remain a staple on pop-rock and oldies stations for decades to come. In fact, their legacy has been further strengthened by Rhino Entertainment's acquisition of the Monkees franchise from Columbia Pictures in the late 1980s, with remastered editions of both the original television series and their music library now surfacing in stores.
Quotation
- Hey! Hey! We're the Monkees!
- People say we monkey around!
- But we're too busy singin'
- To put anybody down!
Albums
- The Monkees
- More of The Monkees
- Headquarters
- Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd.
- The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees
- Head (Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- Instant Replay
- The Monkees Present
- Changes
- Then And Now
- Pool It!
- Live 1967
- 20th Anniversary
- Live!
- Greatest Hits
- Justus
