Posted on 08/08/2012 3:46:23 PM PDT by GSWarrior
Yeah, but they didn't have any half nekid teenage blonde chicks in the band.
I have a Davy Jones story. At college in 1977 for some reason the Associated Students decided it would be cool to show an X-rated movie in the Student Center. Davy Jones was in it, as was Andrea True.
Of course, they didn’t write or arrange any of their hits and most of the instruments in the recordings were played by crack studio musicians. When they finally insisted on having control and doing their own songs they failed miserably. I do like their stuff, but that’s the reality.
Peter Tork was a jamming buddy of Jimi Hendrix. No foolin’.
Jones was a musical actor for years before the monkeys. Nesmith was a musician on his own, as was Tork. Dolenz had been a kid version of a song and dance man in the movies.
So, I think the myth your are confusing is that they wanted to start writing their own songs— like every other egotistical singer.
They were not a band. I will give you that. But lessons? Not exactly.
Peter Noone tours with Herman’s Hermits Starring Peter Noone. Fun concerts.
I should have added in the US & Canada.
Yep, most of the songs were written by Boyce and Hart (although I think Neil Diamond wrote a couple) and the studio muscians who can be heard on Monkee tracks include Stephen Stills and, can you believe it, Jimi Hendrix!
so cool! I loved the Monkees :)
I have Elephant Parts on DVD. Great disc, the first winner of an award for best video, IIRC.
cheers,
Jim
Chubby Checker was manufactured as were the songs pumped out by Leiber-Stoller for “The” Coasters (with an ever changing lineup) and other acts.
Even Motown was corporate production line music with session artists playing behind a manufactured group who did not play their own instruments or write the lyrics.
Only the Monkees get grief for using the same Brill building songwriters and the “Wrecking Crew” to play on their albums that many other “artists” used.
It’s prolly because the Monkees were so openly prefabbed by Hollywood seeking actors to appear in the TV show, while all others before them, most prominently the Philadelphia “stars” of Dick Clark and the Cameo/Parkway factory, as well as the Leiber-Stoller stables that you mention had been assembled behind the scenes. The same things happened in England at the time, stables of teenage stars, with great made-up last names, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Rory Storm, Adam Faith (Great!), and others among whom only Helen Shapiro refused to change her name!
The Monkees were a tv show that was cast with a casting call.
The Archies were a studio band and when they became hitmakers, a touring band was auditioned and sent on the road.
The Electric Prunes were a real garage band discovery (someone driving by heard them playing in their garage and signed them). However shortly afterwards, their label would put together albums recorded by studio musicians and the band would have to learn the material to play it live and at promotional appearances.
Show-BUSINESS.
The Monkees franchise was at least as honorable as the other things being propagated on the public, whether it was Bobby singers in the early 60s or the poster idols of the 1950s. Even Elvis’ material became formula songbook stuff after he moved to RCA.
It’s funny to hear people complain about how Pat Boone “ruined” “black” music like Fats Domino’s (cover of) Blueberry Hill. Blueberry Hill, Blue Moon, Keep A Knockin’ et al were ALL songs from the 1920s and 1930s. The only thing rock and roll about them was the attitude applied to these songs of the yute’s parents’ generation...
The Band split up and the members started other Bands. Wikpedia has most of the information. Can't believe all this stuff happened thirty years ago.
I think Brandon has done a couple of reunion shows recently with the reconstituted Band. He stopped playing music to concentrate on his sobriety. It's tough being a child star.
R.I.P. Michael Nesmith
https://apnews.com/article/entertai...micky-dolenz-295ad7ec7fe69bbec9eaf0796b1232a0
Robert Michael Nesmith was born Dec. 30, 1942, in Houston, Texas, the only child of Warren and Bette Nesmith.
His parents divorced when he was 4 and his mother often worked two jobs, as a secretary and painter, to support her son and herself. It was that latter job that inspired her to whip up a typewriter correction fluid called Liquid Paper in her kitchen blender. By the mid-1970s it had made her a fortune, which she eventually left to her son and to nonprofit foundations she endowed to promote women in business and the arts.
I had forgotten how polarizing the Monkees were!
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