Let’s Talk About the Monkees

TV Sitcoms Versus the Hippies, Part 27

Let’s talk about the Monkees-

Yea, those guys. The band from that TV show. The one with all the songs.

I know, most of the story is well known, and, I’m bound to mention things many of you already know.

But, what often gets lost is the TV environment of the late 60s, when the ‘counter culture’- the hippies, and psychedelia was coming into vogue.

Let’s look at what was going on then, and how it all happened.

First, a little stage-setting.

There are bands and there are TV shows, and bands on TV shows and TV shows about bands and I forgot where I was going with this….oh yeah!

The dominant paradigm in pop music has long been producing an artist, usually a singer, by choosing songs from writers, and hiring musicians to back them up.

The Beatles ushered in a new level of respect for artists who write and play their own material. This became a wider norm for new bands, even as the side-man-producer system remained for solo artists. The group or artist is the point. The desire to create the art is the reason you’re there.

But, a TV show requires a starting premise. The main point of a TV show is to tell a story or showcase talents. They, by nature, require planned production and the creativity happens in the casting, writing, staging and performance.

Hollywood, in the heyday 1940-60s, made a lot of musicals and variety shows. They had a formula. Choose the performers by popularity. Choose the songs from top songwriters. Have pro musicians play the score. Telling the story- making a great show- is the only goal. Things happen by a production schedule, not by the artistic desires of the cast.

To TV execs, rock and roll was just a phenomenon to be commented on for ratings draw.

Most sitcom attempts at using rock music in the plot were pretty lame. Very lame. Well, ok, bad. Alright, completely pandering rock/psychedelic/hippy stereotype imagery of the time.

We had Boyce and Hart appear on Bewitched, mostly so producers could have Elizabeth Montgomery wear a hippie outfit, and on ‘I Dream of Jeanie’ mostly so, okay, same reason- so Barbra Eden could wear hippie stuff.

This kind of nonsense permeated the sitcoms of the late 60s and early 70s.

Most shows found it necessary to drag us through at least one ‘psychedelic’ rock and roll episode, often with a regular character becoming the rock star, or a band on the charts making a ‘guest appearance’.

Larry Storch guest starred as the ‘Groovy Guru’ in a memorable ‘Get Smart’ episode oozing with mock-rock licks from the ‘Sacred Cows’.

Even Opie had a rock band.

Many comedy shows, like ‘Green Acres’, Beverly Hillbillies, et al, exaggerated it sarcastically, and many dramas used it passively to establish the ‘hipness’ of the scene, with the Buffalo Springfield playing the ‘band at a party’ in an episode of ‘Mannix’. (Yes, that Buffalo Springfield.)

So, Hollywood musicals and sitcoms were big business on a formula and a tight schedule. Rock and roll was just a production element.

And then, the Beatles became big business, creating their own art.

With their Marx Brothers panache, and the rocketing popularity of their music and their two films, ‘A Hard Days Night’ and ‘Help’, they were a juggernaut of singable fun around the world.

Hollywood says- ‘I want a piece of that.’

And they got it.

With a now-legendary ‘cattle-call’ audition, they cast Davey Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork as ‘the Monkees’.

And, our stage is set.

The Monkees were in a unique position. Hollywood was used to spoofing hippies, but, serious rock music performance was gaining popularity. So, while rock and roll still took some punches in the form of the Monkees’ rival bands, the Monkees themselves were always allowed to let their music stand.

This is really all producer Don Kirshner was doing by launching ’The Monkees’- making a typical TV show about this crazy rock music kid stuff and letting them play the songs.

The result was a well contrived TV rendition of a Beatlesque local rock band. With top writers, top songwriters like Boyce and Hart, Goffin and King, Harry Nillson and Neil Diamond, they cast and produced a consistently (and perhaps, the only) good rock music sitcom for two seasons. Classic bits, a parade of great guest stars, like Rose Marie, Pat Paulsen and Arlene Martell, even an appearance by a young Mike Farrell, made for a very endearing show, even given its short run. (It should be noted that other stalwart rerun shows had similarly short lives, such as F Troop, Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek.)

Where the Beatles were mostly just their cheeky selves, and the timing and pace gave them their Marx Brothers zaniness, the Monkees were deftly executing pro TV vaudeville at the level of some of the top comedians in history, airing around and even against them. They held their own in an arena that included the likes of Andy Griffith, Don Adams, Dick Van Dyke, the Smothers Brothers, Lucy and a host of others.

But, for all this Hollywood production, the Monkees were a solid musical hit.

Why?

The thing about the Monkees was, the music outweighed the TV show. They were legitimate hit songs, some even rivaling the Beatles on the charts. They were tuneful, had broad appeal, and propelled the Monkees to amazing fame fairly quickly.

Turns out, in making a TV show, NBC had spontaneously formed a real band.

The ‘boys’ became adamant about wanting to write and play their tracks as well as sing them. And when they did, they were just as successful.

The first thing we hear in bios about them, and the first thing we forget, is that these four guys were already music or TV pros.

Davey Jones, we know, was the Artful Dodger in ‘Oliver’ on Broadway in 1964, famously appearing on Ed Sullivan the same night the Beatles made their debut there. Mickey Dolenz was the star of ‘Circus Boy’, a late 50s TV show, Mike Nesmith had a hit song, ‘Different Drum’ recorded by Linda Rondstat, and Peter Tork was a known player/guitar teacher in the LA and NY areas.

So, of course they gelled into a great band. And, with the level they were at when they started, the sheer exposure to the process and the level of talent executing it (the Wrecking Crew, no less), these four ‘boys’ walked right along with the top pro rigeur very quickly.

Cynically called ‘Pre-Fab Four’ by the snobbier critiques, the Monkees proved them wrong and became a part of the vocabulary of modern music. It went past just trying to put on a TV show. It was a space in the audience, created by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, et al, for a tuneful, accessible group to develop this way.

Surely, we all remember the next attempt to cultivate a musical group from a TV show about a musical group. I speak, of course, of the ‘Partridge Family’.

And, yes, many people loved it, remember it fondly, and watch the reruns today.

While there were a few hits and about double the output of episodes and albums- the show lasted four seasons and they produced nine albums in the meantime- we aren’t remembering and quoting ‘I Think I Love You’ the same way we are with ‘Last Train To Clarksville’, ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’, ‘I’m A Believer’, ‘Stepping Stone’ and ‘Daydream Believer’.

As big a stars as Shirley Jones or David Cassidy were, maybe even because of that, ‘Partridge’ was visibly a sitcom. Seeking to draw on the popular family group, the Cowsills, and being beholden to sit-com age parameters, as in young kids and teens, it simply always felt like a TV show, and not like a band appearing in one.

While David Cassidy was able to tour, actually performing and continuing to make records, the Partridge Family was not a viable band, with all but Cassidy and Jones lip-synching and miming instruments.

The Monkees, though, four guys of similar age, were fully capable as a band. And sharp enough to carry the music and the jokes. The non-sequiturs, the puns, the double entendres, and the over the top vaudeville bits carried the TV show, but, since the songs were good, they were successfully portrayed as serious music, rather than the mocking social reference audiences were used to.

And, as the guitar was becoming the world’s most popular instrument, and I was already taking lessons, I was at that point where I knew when an actor was completely, horribly faking it on a guitar. The Monkees all played the songs properly on camera, even while lip-synching.

The songs resonated throughout the ensuing week after the show.

For many boomers, especially those of us in the midwest, Monday night was sacred- the Monkees, I Dream of Jeanie and Laugh-In were all on in a row. For us in Detroit, that was on channel four, NBC, at 7pm.

It seemed to go on forever, every Monday, another Monkees song, crushing on Barbra Eden and then big laughs from Rowan and Martin. It was glorious and timeless and eternal and it only actually lasted two months. Eight months if you include reruns.

While ‘I Dream of Jeanie’ had begun in 1965 and played after the Monkees through both seasons, Laugh-In had only debuted as a single special in September, 1967, early during the Monkees second season, and started its first season in late January of ’68. The Monkees last new episode was aired in late March of ’68, and reruns played until September.

Still, I remember it like yesterday- those three shows in a row, forever.

Funny how that works.

Later, Mickey, Mike and Davey would show up on Laugh In.

But the Monkees were already bigger than the TV show. And they were growing into the music world, not the acting world, as evidenced by their featuring Frank Zappa and Tim Buckley in their last episodes, in fact- the coolest thing I ever saw a TV show do- giving Buckley the last word, performing solo with a 12-string guitar on the fender of a car that had been sledgehammered by Zappa and Nesmith.

And, they went on to tour and make best-selling records after the show ended, famously having Jimi Hendrix open for them to the boos of the young crowd, and their movie, ‘Head’, featured, among other things, Zappa and a cow.

Hollywood, in trying to exploit the success of the Beatles, had accidentally achieved it. Well, the record company and publisher had, but, NBC, not so much, so, after two seasons, adios!!

It never happened again. They tried. The Partridges? Nope. New Monkees in the 80s? Nope. Ron Howard, twice, on Andy Griffith and Happy Days? Nope.

Still, following the Beatles was no walk in the park, even with a hit TV show on a major network. It was equivalent to Beethoven’s shadow over the Classical Era composers, all gaping at what he’d left behind.

Having been put on that path with the TV show, the Monkees not only kept up, but walked side-by-side on the charts with them. They still hold the record for Billboard 200 albums, with 4 of them on the chart in 1967.

The two groups share a vaudeville heritage, evidenced by their accessible, tuneful songs and that Marx Brothers panache.

And they both helped to establish music video techniques that would become mainstays. Nesmith himself later invented and sold the concept of MTV to Turner Broadcasting, and his video company, Pacific Arts, released his influential award winning first videodisc album/show, ‘Elephant Parts’, a mix of cutting edge comedy skits and music videos that would play daily for years.

And, while it’s hard to tell the Monkees story without referencing the Beatles, it’s also incomplete to discuss the Beatles without mentioning the American TV homage that became a hit of its own.

And, in the end, the Monkees broke through that hippy TV barrier and stood on their own as a band.

Both groups were fans of each other. There was never a feeling of competition between them to us, in the audience. We were singing along with everything they both put out, anyway. We felt intrinsically that there was mutual respect.

And, having seen the Monkees last tour with Mickey, Mike and Peter, I know why. Even without Davey, who had long since passed on, they were spot on for every note. They played a short trio set with Mickey on the drums, and it just killed. Having seen Davey at Disney’s Epcot, I knew he was the real thing, that perfect, familiar voice and all.

At a time when original bands were peaking, the charts brimming with singable songs, many from performers that would become legends, there was this one cool rock and roll TV show that launched a great band with great songs and they both still stand up.

So, to the Monkees, Davey, Mike, Peter and the last survivor, Mickey- it was always fun to watch your show and cool to hear and play your songs.

Thanks doesn’t seem to cover it.

Think I’ll add a couple to the set.

C.2024 Cousin B