Hey, Hey, They Were the Monkees!

I liked the Monkees. There, I said it. Yes, they were put together for a TV show. (In fact, they made their debut on NBC 41 years ago this week.) They were dismissed by critics as “the Pre-Fab Four.” A couple of them were more actors than musicians, and most of them didn’t play their own instruments, either on the show or on their records.

No matter. They were cute; they were America’s most direct answer to the Beatles; they were on TV every week, doing a sitcom version of A Hard Day’s Night. And, so, they became big stars and reeled off a string of hits, and topped the charts with “Last Train to Clarksville,” “Daydream Believer” and “I’m a Believer.”

And, because of those songs, written by stellar composers like Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and the one and only Neil Diamond (“I’m a Believer” and A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You”), I was a fan.

Years later, I learned, first-hand, that Michael Nesmith was not. He was, by all accounts, the most musically accomplished and cerebral of the Monkees (he wrote their last hit, “Listen to the Band”), but, as he told me for a magazine profile in 1984, the Monkees weren’t a band.

“The four of us were hired as actors. And the show fell right onto the horns of a dilemma. It was perceived not as a TV show but as a rock ‘n’ roll group that had landed a series. We weren’t a rock ‘n’ roll band, but as the thing began to twist around, it became, ‘Here are these guys who’re nothing but a TV show coming on like they’re a group.’

“The fact that the press expected us to make serious music was strange. It was like condemning a Chevrolet station wagon for not performing well at the Indianapolis 500.”

Still, the Monkees scored eleven Top 40 hits, made an acclaimed movie, “Head,” and lasted two years on NBC (longer than most real bands), plus endless reruns. Not all that bad a dilemma.