Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

A revised and improved version of this essay appears in my book Monkee Music, available as paperback, hardback, PDF, Kindle (US), Kindle (UK) and ePub (all DRM-free).

A brief note for this one, I will be dealing with the Headquarters Sessions box set in the book, but won’t be posting that chapter here, because several pages of “yet another aimless jam session” don’t make for a good blog post…

After More Of The Monkees was a huge commercial success but (in the opinion of at least some of the Monkees, most vocally Nesmith) an artistic failure, the working relationship between the band (other than Davy Jones) and Don Kirshner, Screen Gems’ music supervisor reached breaking point.

The band were growing increasingly embarrassed by attacks on them for not playing the instruments on their records (attacks which ignored the fact that this was true for the majority of successful American bands of the time) and Nesmith intensely disliked the bubblegum music the band had been producing up until this point. Tork, meanwhile, had auditioned for the TV show because he wanted to be in a proper rock band, and wanted the four of them to play together, while Dolenz wanted to show solidarity with his colleagues.

The resulting rows, with Kirshner wanting the band to shut up and take the money and do as they were told, and the Monkees insisting on making their own music, led to Kirshner losing his job with Screen Gems and the Monkees being allowed to record as a band.

Headquarters was the first – and as it turned out, the only – album the band produced as a band. With producer Chip Douglas (who had never produced before, having previously been bass player in The Turtles), the band cut the basic tracks live, with Tork and Nesmith handling all guitars and keyboards (with a little help from Dolenz), Dolenz on drums, and Jones on hand percussion.

The only parts of the rhythm tracks that were performed by other musicians were the bass parts, which were mostly handled by Douglas but with Jerry Yester (a well-known LA musician who’d previously been in the Modern Folk Quartet and would later be in the Lovin’ Spoonful, as well as working with Tim Buckley, The Association and others) and Nesmith’s friend John London sometimes stepping in.

The band also, for the first time, provided all their own backing vocals.

The result was a huge success. While commercially the album did less well than its predecessors – it ‘only’ went to number one for one week, though it stayed at number two for the rest of the summer after being knocked down by Sgt Pepper – artistically it’s a fascinating work. It’s patchy, but the highs are higher than anything the band had previously released, while the lows are at least of the ‘interesting experiment’ type, rather than being nakedly manipulative. This was the start of a run of four albums that’s up there with the great runs of albums of the 60s, and the next two years would see the Monkees go artistically from strength to strength, even as their commercial career began its inevitable downward slide.

Unless otherwise noted, all tracks on this album feature all the Monkees, so the “Other Monkees Present” credit will be left off for this album. Likewise, Chip Douglas produced every track, so the “producer” credit is absent. The generic credits are:

Michael Nesmith: vocals, pedal steel guitar, 6-string guitar, organ

Davy Jones: vocals, percussion

Micky Dolenz: vocals, drums, guitar

Peter Tork: vocals, keyboards, 12-string guitar, bass, banjo

Chip Douglas: bass

Produced By: Chip Douglas

You Told Me

Writer: Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith

The first song we hear to feature all the Monkees instrumentally (though as on many songs on this album Jones’ instrumental contribution is limited to some token bits of hand percussion, buried in a bass-heavy mix) shows that Kirshner’s worries about them as instrumentalists were unfounded.

Dolenz is clearly the most limited of the bunch as a musician (unlike Tork and Nesmith, he was an actor first, a singer second and a musician a distant third) but even so his drumming here is perfectly competent. He’s a tad stiff at moments, and the tempo varies a little (only a very small amount, mostly due to getting excited at the good bits, so it ends up having a more organic feel anyway), so he’s clearly not up to the standards of Hal Blaine or Jim Gordon, but he’s playing with genuine energy, and his zither playing is an interesting addition.

Nesmith, on twelve-string guitar, turns in a good performance, but truth be told this would be a hard song to mess up on guitar, being just four major chords.

But Tork’s banjo playing is an absolute revelation, and the start of a brief period where Tork is truly allowed to shine as a musician. The song itself is a clear attempt to sound as much like George Harrison as possible – the bass-line is from Taxman (which is nodded to in the intro, parodying Taxman‘s “one, two, three, four” intro), while the melody line is a slightly more rangey version of the melody to Harrison’s I Need You, but Tork’s double-time bluegrass picking adds an incongruous, but perfect, element. (In fact Tork would shortly add banjo to a Harrison recording, the Wonderwall film soundtrack).

Other than a few production tricks (what sounds like backwards reverb on the backing vocals) and minimal overdubs, this is the sound of a very good Beatles-inspired garage band with an excellent vocalist, who’ve somehow managed to get a virtuoso banjo player to play along with them.

It’s a world away from the sound of the first two albums, but still an excellent piece of country pop music.

I’ll Spend My Life With You

Writers: Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

And this track shows that the Monkees (or at least Tork, who appears to have done much of the heavy lifting with the arrangements on this album) were also better arrangers than the professionals they’d been working with.

A pleasant Boyce and Hart mid-tempo ballad, this had originally been recorded with its writers producing during the More Of The Monkees sessions (and that version is available as a bonus track on the More Of The Monkees CD), but had, rightly, been turned down. That original version sounds like little more than a demo, with a badly double-tracked Dolenz backed by a couple of strummed acoustic guitars.

The version here, though, as well as having a much more sensitive performance from Dolenz, is much more subtly arranged. Rather than a drum kit, we have Dolenz providing Johnny Cash style boom-chicka-boom rhythm guitar and Jones adding tambourine. Nesmith adds subtle colouring on pedal steel, and Tork provides faint organ tones, a gentle celeste solo, and most importantly some technically quite demanding ragtime twelve-string guitar.

Tork’s musicianship gets neglected when people discuss the Monkees’ music – partly because he was allowed to display it so briefly – but his ability to play in a variety of folk and classical idioms added hugely to the band’s stylistic range. And more importantly, in a band full of huge egos, he seems to have had no problem at all with playing subtle, difficult parts that get almost buried in the mix but which add enormously to the finished product.

Forget That Girl

Writer: Douglas Farthing Hatfeild (Chip Douglas)

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Written by producer/bassist Chip Douglas, and originally intended to have a feel similar to Rescue Me by Fontella Bass, this ended up being the closest thing on the album to the sound of the first two albums, with a much softer, acoustic pop sound.

It’s also a genuine group performance of the type the band would mime on the TV – other than Douglas’ bass, this is the band all playing the instruments they were known for. Dolenz on drums, Nesmith on guitar, Tork on electric piano and Jones singing and playing maracas.

A lightweight song, with some slightly jazzy chords, this is lifted above mediocrity by a truly exceptional vocal performance by Jones. Usually the weakest of the band’s lead vocalists, here he manages to turn in a light, almost-whispered vocal right at the top of his range, shading into falsetto at several points.

Band 6

Writers: David Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: instrumental

A forty-second snippet, edited together from several sections of in-studio messing about, this consists of about twenty-five seconds of Dolenz on drums and Nesmith on pedal steel playing totally unrelated parts, before coming together to play a brief burst of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down (the Looney Tunes theme).

You Just May Be the One

Writer: Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith

Another full-group performance, this time with Tork on bass (double-tracked, with one bass sounding like a Danelectro bass – a trick Nesmith had used to give a country sound to several of his recordings over the previous year) this Nesmith song had originally been recorded with members of the Wrecking Crew and used in the TV show (that version is on The Monkees deluxe edition).

A catchy Beatlesque pop song, this is full of hooks, from the two extra beats dropped into the first line of the verses (which can be broken down into a bar of four, a bar of six and a bar of four), to the way the instruments drop out for the start of the title line, to the way the backing vocals all hold the same high note on the middle eight while the lead vocal descends down the scale.

Had there not been a de facto ban by the record label on releasing singles with a lead vocal by anyone other than Dolenz or Jones, this would have been an obvious hit single. Written by Nesmith before the Monkees formed, it manages perfectly to straddle the boundaries between country music and jangly powerpop in a way that few others could, pointing the way forward to bands like Big Star or mid-period REM, but with a lighter touch. Sublime.

Shades of Gray

Writers: Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill

Lead Vocalists: Davy Jones and Peter Tork

The only track on the album to feature instrumentalists other than the Monkees (plus a friend on bass), this has folk-rocker Jerry Yester providing bass, but also features ‘cello and French horn parts performed by session musicians (but arranged by Nesmith and Tork).

A clear attempt at being this album’s I Wanna Be Free, like that song this is hugely popular among Monkees fans, and also like that song I dislike it intensely. It’s a fundamentally callow song, the kind of thing best left to teenage poetry, written by people who clearly think they were being terribly profound.

Tork does, however, get to share the lead vocals with Jones on this one, making it only his second lead to be released.

I Can’t Get Her Off Of My Mind

Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Another song that had been recorded and rejected in the band’s early sessions (that version is available on The Monkees deluxe edition), this is a rather insipid music-hall style song of the type Jones seemed to enjoy doing.

This track has very little to recommend it, other than that it’s better than the original version, thanks to some nice barrelhouse piano from Tork. Jerry Yester again adds bass.

For Pete’s Sake

Writer: Peter Tork and Joey Richards

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

Tork’s first attempt at songwriting, this later became the closing theme for series two of the Monkees’ TV show. A simple, naive song of hippy hope (“in this generation, we will make the world a shine”), it’s a very strong construction as a recording and arrangement, with a powerful vocal by Dolenz and some simplistic but effective Hammond from Nesmith (and some surprisingly dodgy guitar playing, that’s buried quite far in the mix).

The combination of the great guitar hook at the beginning and the build from D to E to Fmaj7 on “we must be what we’re going to be” mean the record ends up being quite effective, but it’s still ultimately rather empty of content as a song.

Mr. Webster

Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

Another Boyce/Hart song, this had originally been recorded in a rather overwrought pseudo-baroque harpsichord-driven version (that version can be heard on the More Of The Monkees). This version is recorded in the same style as I’ll Spend My Life With You, though with Chip Douglas rather than Yester on bass. Otherwise it’s the same line-up – Tork on piano, Dolenz on rhythm guitar, Nesmith on pedal steel and Jones on tambourine.

One of Boyce and Hart’s better songs, this was their attempt to write a song like Eleanor Rigby, but in fact it sounds far more like some of Paul Simon’s early efforts – A Most Peculiar Man or Richard Corey. It tells the story of a bank employee (inspired by a security guard they saw at their local bank, but the employee’s job is not mentioned), constantly passed over for raises, who steals all the money in the bank on the day of his retirement.

Once again the Monkees and Douglas show themselves to be more effective arrangers than Boyce and Hart, with every element perfectly placed, and with a wonderful start-stop rhythm that works most effectively on the line “sorry STOP, cannot attend.”

Sunny Girlfriend

Writer: Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith

A full-band performance with long-time Nesmith collaborator John London joining on bass, this simple Nesmith country-pop song is enlivened by some great bluegrass-esque harmonies from Dolenz from the second verse on, and some backwards reverb on the cymbals on the intro. Tork provides the lead guitar.

Zilch

Writers: Peter Tork, David Jones, Micky Dolenz, & Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork, David Jones, Micky Dolenz, & Michael Nesmith

A simple spoken round, with each band member repeating a single phrase over and over. In order we have Tork saying “Mr. Dobalina, Mr Bob Dobalina” (a phrase Dolenz had heard over an airport tannoy, later sampled by rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien for the song Mistadobalina), Jones saying “China Clipper calling Alameda” (a line from the Humphrey Bogart film China Clipper), Dolenz saying “Never mind the furthermore, the plea is self-defence” (a line from Oklahoma! – “It was self-defence, and furthermore…” “Never mind the furthermore. The plea is self-defence.”), and Nesmith saying “It is of my opinion that the people are intending” (apparently from a political speech).

On the Headquarters Sessions box set, these spoken tracks can be heard isolated.

No Time

Writer: Hank Cicalo (Peter Tork, David Jones, Micky Dolenz, & Michael Nesmith)

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

Built around a jam session variously reported as being on a Chuck Berry or Little Richard song (given that the piano break is a very sloppy attempt at the guitar part from Berry’s Johnny B Goode that was probably the song they were attempting – the resemblance is closer on the early instrumental version that can be heard on the Headquarters Sessions set), this was given lyrics, mostly by Dolenz and Nesmith, referencing various counterculture-ish things (Andy Warhol, drug busts and so on), with the first verse being Bill Cosby nonsense words (“Hober reeber sabasoben/Hobaseeba snick/Seeberraber hobosoben/What did you expect?”)

Almost all the point of this track comes from the energy of the performance – not just from Dolenz’s screaming vocal but also from the backing vocals (Jones sounds permanently on the point of hysteria).

While the song evolved from a jam, the band decided to give the songwriting credit to engineer Hank Cicalo, in thanks for his work on the album.

Early Morning Blues and Greens

Writers: Diane Hildebrand and Jack Keller

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Strangely, after the Monkees disliked Your Auntie Grizelda, they accepted another song by the same writers. Luckily, this is much, much better than that. A meditative piece detailing Hildebrand’s impressions while drinking a cup of coffee, this actually bears a slight resemblance to Nesmith’s contemporaneous The Girl I Knew Somewhere.

And much like that track, much of the power of this comes from Tork’s musicianship. The song is driven by his soft electric piano arpeggios and Hammond playing, with the rest of the instrumentation coming from some simple muted twelve-string guitar from Nesmith, a simple, repetitive bass riff from Chip Douglas and a percussion part which seems to consist just of hi-hat from Dolenz and maracas from Jones.

The most interesting feature of this is the crashing sound every two bars in the later part of the song. This is actually two different instrumental parts, sometimes playing together and sometimes separately – one of them is the organ part, the other sounds like very heavily reverbed guitar, possibly with the strings being hit with a drumstick.

And Jones, in one of only two solo lead performances on this album, the fewest he would ever do, more than justifies his presence, providing some gorgeous harmonies with himself. Jones is generally the weakest of the four Monkees as a vocalist, but on this album he rises to the occasion.

Hildebrand later used this song as the title track of her only solo album.

Alternate Title (aka “Randy Scouse Git”)

Writer: Micky Dolenz

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

Dolenz’s first songwriting contribution to the band is also the highlight of the album, and maybe of the band’s career. Based on a simple four-chord progression (a broken up version of the standard doo-wop I-vi-ii-V progression) in the sixteen-bar verses, with a one-chord eight-bar chorus, this track is proof, if proof be needed, that harmonic sophistication is not needed to create a complex, rewarding piece of pop music.

The structure of the song breaks down as follows:

Intro by Dolenz on tympani, playing a rhythm – roughly five quavers followed by a beat and a half of silence, repeated over and over, that will later be heard in the chorus (we’ll call this the intro rhythm). The tympani then fades out.

Tork then repeats the intro rhythm on piano, twice, with Douglas adding comical single-note bass interjections in the silences, before playing a variation of the rhythm that leads into the first verse.

In the first verse we have just Dolenz on vocals, Tork playing syncopated piano chords, and Douglas adding a simple descending scalar bassline, leading to a ragtime feel.

In the second verse, Nesmith comes in, doubling the piano part on guitar, while Dolenz adds some woodblock percussion. Towards the end, the tympani becomes audible again, almost subliminally.

For the chorus, the piano all but drops out, and it turns into a guitar-led rave-up, with a full drum kit playing a fairly straightforward rock part while the tympani play the intro rhythm. Douglas meanwhile is playing a country bass part (similar to that of, for example, Rawhide). Jones allegedly joins in on backing vocals here.

We get another verse, with the same instrumentation as the second verse, but with added cymbals in the second half and an altogether looser feeling, and another chorus.

We then get a verse, taken at the same fast tempo as the choruses and with the same guitar-led instrumental, but Dolenz scatting wildly over the top, in a manner that was almost certainly influenced by the band’s friend Harry Nilsson (of whom much more later). We briefly get a tympani reprise of the intro rhythm before going into another, double length chorus.

This last chorus has a prominent organ holding the chord down, on top of the rest of the instrumentation, and has Dolenz multi-tracked singing both the first verse and the chorus at the same time (possibly inspired by the similar effect on When Love Comes Knocking At Your Door). We then get a repeat of the piano part of the intro, ending on a guitar dischord and what sounds like drumsticks dropping to the floor, and then the tympani fades in, and back out again, playing the intro rhythm. (Oddly, an early mix of the song, available on the Headquarters Sessions box set, features instead of the tympani fade, a hard edit into Tork and Dolenz singing the folk song I Was Born In East Virginia to banjo accompaniment. The box set also features the full performance of that song).

The whole thing lasts just two minutes and thirty-five seconds, and remarkably manages to stand up well against the great experimental singles of the period, like Good Vibrations or Strawberry Fields Forever, even though the Beatles and Beach Boys were moving towards greater use of studio musicians and trickery at precisely the point where the Monkees were, briefly, being a ‘real rock band’ (though Headquarters ended up being the only album on which all the Monkees performed on every track, and on which Dolenz was the only drummer).

Lyrically, the song is an elliptical description of Dolenz’s experiences visiting England, with lyrics referencing Dolenz’s first wife (the Mancunian Samantha Juste, then a TV host on BBC 1′s Top Of The Pops), the Beatles, and hotel doormen (“he reminds me of a penguin, with few and plaster hairs”). Unfortunately for Dolenz, the song’s title, another reference to his British trip (an overheard line from the sitcom Til Death Us Do Part), was considered obscene in the UK at the time, and so the song was given the alternate title Alternate Title for its release as a single in those countries that speak British English.

Bonus Tracks

All of Your Toys

Writer: Bill Martin

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

A bouncy, harpsichord-driven track written by a friend of Chip Douglas. A wonderful arrangement with a descending scalar bassline, harpsichord chords and 12-string arpeggios, with Dolenz singing lead and answering vocals, and a wonderful vocal harmony break, this sounds like an attempt to do something similar to the work Brian Wilson was doing at the time, but actually comes out slightly closer to soft-pop classics like Jan & Dean’s Carnival Of Sound or the contemporaneous work by Curt Boettcher and Gary Usher.

Unfortunately, this was never released at the time because of contractual problems – Martin was signed to a publisher other than Screen Gems, and so this had to wait two decades for release.

The Girl I Knew Somewhere

Writer: Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith/Micky Dolenz

One of Nesmith’s better pop songs, this story of a man who’s been betrayed before and is wary of getting together with someone similar was intended for single release – to the extent that Nesmith’s orginal vocal was replaced with one by Dolenz, because at this point only Dolenz or Jones vocals were considered for release on singles.

This was in most ways a shame – Nesmith’s original vocal is a more mature, stronger performance than Dolenz’s – but it did allow the wonderful touch in the last verse where Dolenz’s lines are echoed by Nesmith.

With a wonderful harpsichord break by Tork and its Beatlesque backing vocals, this is a sophisticated, strong piece of music that should have been a huge hit single. As it was, it ended up as the B-side of A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.

Peter Gunn’s Gun

Writer: Henry Mancini

Lead Vocalist: instrumental

A studio jam, based loosely round a rather incompetent rendition of the riff from Mancini’s Peter Gunn. This was never intended for release, and other than Tork’s spoken interjection “What are you, kidding me? Psycho Jello!” probably should have stayed in the can. This sort of thing is how every band in the world lets off steam, and it’s fun for the band, but not really for the listeners.

Jericho

Writer: trad.

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork

A bit of studio chatter – Dolenz attempts to play the French horn, and this reminds him of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. Dolenz and Tork then break into an impromptu a capella rendition of the gospel song Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho. It’s actually quite an extraordinary performance, and shows the musicality of both men, with Tork’s folk sensibilities combining to great effect with Dolenz’s James Brown inspired gospel shrieking. It’s only studio tomfoolery, but is much better than the previous track.

Nine Times Blue

Writer: Michael Nesmith

Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith

A contender for greatest song ever written, this has the simple, sparse, heartbreaking elegance of a You Don’t Know Me or I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and Nesmith here matches John Lennon or Brian Wilson in the portrayal of an angry, jealous man humbled by a woman who’s clearly better than him but loves him anyway.

Nesmith clearly realised it was good. He attempted it multiple times – a bizarre instrumental version on the tax write-off solo album The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, versions with both himself and Jones on lead vocals during the The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees sessions, and a version for a TV performance with Jones and Dolenz providing harmonies during the last days of the band’s career – before finally releasing it on his solo album Magnetic South.

Still, though, I think the best version is the acoustic demo version here, partly because the simplicity of the arrangement (two guitars, what sounds like one twelve-string and one six-string, and vocals) works well for the song, but also because between this and the later versions he changed the line “the lessons I’ve learned here is worth it all” to “the lessons I’ve learned here are worth it all”.

The latter is, of course, more grammatically correct, but the earlier version sounds more honest, like the product of a man who’s too overcome emotionally to bother about grammar.

But in every version, this is one of the truly great songs, and deserves much wider recognition.

A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You

Writer: Neil Diamond

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Other Monkees present: None

Producer: Jeff Barry

The Monkees’ third single, this was cut in New York at the insistence of Don Kirshner, who had promised Neil Diamond the next Monkees single after the success of I’m A Believer. Jones, who was the only Monkee still on speaking terms with Kirshner, cut several vocals on a trip to New York, of which this and its original B-Side She Hangs Out were two.

Unfortunately for Kirshner, he insisted on putting both tracks out on the same single, after the record company had agreed with the band that every single would have at least one track on which the Monkees themselves played, so the single was pulled, She Hangs Out replaced with The Girl I Knew Somewhere, and Kirshner lost his job supervising the band’s music. The single, the first not to feature Micky on lead, sold 1.5 million copies before it came out, and went gold on the day of release.

Not up to the standard of the band’s previous singles, this is still a pleasant, vaguely Latin-infused track, driven by acoustic guitars and handclaps . Jones’ vocal is not one of his most convincing, though, and he fails to sell the “oh no, hey now girl…” supposed ad lib ending.

Love To Love

Writer: Neil Diamond

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Other Monkees present: None

Producer: Jeff Barry

Another song from the same sessions, this is a slower, more moody Diamond song in the manner of Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon or Solitary Man, driven by a prominent bass and Hammond organ part. This would probably have been a better choice for single, had it not been for Jones’ rather flat vocals (he rerecorded them in 1969, and that version has been released, too, but the two performances are almost identical). The chorus, in particular, which is based on the standard Hang On Sloopy/Twist And Shout/Louie, Louie changes, is very effective.

The track remained unreleased until 1979, when the version with 1969 vocals came out. Of the different mixes of this available, by far the best is the stereo mix on the Headquarters Deluxe Edition, which has a boosted bass sound compared to the other mixes.

You Can’t Tie a Mustang Down

Writers: Jeff Barry, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Other Monkees present: None

Producer: Jeff Barry

Another song from the same New York sessions, this is a rare misstep from Leiber and Stoller, who wrote some of the best songs of the 1950s and 60s. This song about being a young, powerful man who can’t be tied down by women might possibly have passed muster for Elvis Presley, who could have infused it with a swaggering sexuality, and who had enough humour in his phrasing that he could even have sold the clunky last chorus line “You can’t keep an ocean in a cup/You can’t tie a mustang down…or up!”

Davy Jones, however, is far closer to a Shetland pony, or possibly a seaside donkey ride, than to a mustang. This song was wisely left unreleased until a cheap hits compilation in 1998.

If I Learned to Play the Violin

Writer: Joey Levine and Artie Resnick

Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones

Other Monkees present: None

Producer: Jeff Barry

Yet another song from the New York session, this was clearly another attempt at an I Wanna Be Free-style ballad showcase for Davy, who does easily his best vocal of this bunch of tracks here, especially with his Everly Brothers style harmony on the line “take up more discreet ways” in the middle eight (this harmony part is unaccountably mixed down on the version on the Headquarters deluxe edition, but can be heard on the original mix).

The main problem here is the lyric, from the point of view of a young, rebellious man offering to become respectable instead of a long-haired guitar-playing beatnik, so his girlfriend’s parents will accept him. It’s just, frankly, terrible – it’s hard to know which to dislike more, the sentiment or the execution (with some appalling scansion, stresses falling all over the place but rarely where they naturally should). It’s also, as mentioned above, quite difficult to imagine Davy Jones as a rebellious firebrand who needed taming.

The song, wisely, remained unreleased until it was sneaked out on a CD-ROM in 1996.

She’ll Be There

Writer: Unknown

Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz

Other Monkees present: None

One of several demos recorded early in the Headquarters sessions, this is Micky Dolenz and his sister Coco, backed by a single acoustic guitar, singing a close-harmony ballad very clearly modelled after those Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wrote for the Everly Brothers. A lovely, lovely performance of what is quite a slight song.