Monkee Music: The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees
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).
For this album, unlike any of the others under discussion, I’m afraid I have to discuss a lot of music which can not, at present, be legally acquired.
By late 1967, the Monkees were working to all intents and purposes as four solo artists, with only minimal involvement with each other’s work. And by the time The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees came to be released, each man had recorded almost a full album’s worth of material, which was cut down into one fairly strong single album, though some of the best tracks were left off.
Some of the tracks made their way onto future albums or onto compilations, but in 2010 Rhino Handmade released a comprehensive, exhaustive three-CD box set which showed the sheer depth of talent that went into making this album. And they made it a limited edition. So much of this music became unavailable within a month of two of release. Apparently Rhino Handmade don’t like money.
But if you can manage to obtain the music (I would of course never countenance the illegal downloading of music, and would suggest instead you purchase one of the vastly overpriced second-hand copies which occasionally come up for sale at a hundred pounds or more, and from which all of the money would go to a speculator and none to the artists or record label) you can see that The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees should have been the Monkees’ White Album.
The album released at the time, though, wasn’t as strong as its immediate predecessor. While Nesmith’s tracks, in particular, are outstanding, the album suffers from having far too many Davy Jones ‘Broadway rock’ tracks, and from the near-complete absence of Peter Tork (whose only contribution to the album as released is a piano part on Daydream Believer). It’s much as if the White Album had been cut down to a twelve-track album by someone with a vendetta against George Harrison tossing coins.
While the album’s production credit is to The Monkees (with the exception of the previously-released Daydream Believer, credited to Chip Douglas), in reality a variety of producers worked on the album, though usually employed as ‘arrangers’ to keep up the pretence, including Boyce and Hart, Shorty Rogers and Lester Sill, though band members did also produce their own tracks.
Dream World
Writers: David Jones & Steve Pitts
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
The album opens with the best of Jones’ Broadway-rock tracks, one of several songs written in collaboration with his friend Steve Pitts, apparently for submission for the Monkees’ forthcoming film.
The song seems to have been an attempt at writing in the pre-Beatles early-60s style of Jones’ pre-Monkees Colpix solo album, and has a whiff of Adam Faith about it, though the lyric is at times quite biting (“Always pretending that everything’s fine when it’s not/Why must you lie when you know that you’ll always get caught?”). However, Shorty Rogers’ arrangement, with its harpsichord part and horn solo, brings it up to date.
Still among the weaker tracks on the album, this is a pleasant enough opener.
Auntie’s Municipal Court
Writers: Michael Nesmith and Keith Allison
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Michael Nesmith (guitar and backing vocals)
Nesmith’s first composition on the album, a jangly guitar-led country-psych song, is one of only two songs on the album that could legitimately be called a track by the Monkees, plural, rather than a Monkee singular, having as it does two band members on it – along with several of the band’s regular recent collaborators, like Harry Nilsson, Bill Chadwick and Eddie Hoh.
This is Nesmith at his most psychedelic, stringing together words almost without regard for meaning, in a vaguely skipping-rhyme rhythm (“fine man, crazy man, he can’t see/Sound of the sunset, sound of the sea”), rather than the precise, affecting choices of his earlier and later work. However, the country guitar-picking clearly grounds this in Nesmith’s comfort zone, at least until the psychedelic freak-out reverbed ending.
We Were Made for Each Other
Writers: Carole Bayer and George Fischoff
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
This is actually the Monkees’ third attempt at this track. The first version, recorded three months earlier, and available as a bonus track on the box set version of the album, is quite an interesting track, driven by fast picked banjo, though it’s missing a lead vocal.
The finished version, on the other hand, is horrible. It sounds like Jones’ voice has been sped up, making it sound ridiculously thin, and it’s just a wash of bad strings and tinkling harpsichord, over which Jones sings Bayer’s banal lyrics. The stereo version is moderately better than the mono version in this respect, with the rhythm section more to the fore, and the strings being used as colouring rather than the major feature of the track, but that just elevates it from terrible to bearable.
Tapioca Tundra
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
Another of Nesmith’s forays into psychedelia, this is a surrealistic poem (“Silhouettes and figures stay/Close to what we had to say/And one more time a faded dream/Is saddened by the news”) over a vaguely Latin-inflected backing track (almost all played by Nesmith, apart from the drums by Eddie Hoh), a wash of acoustic guitars and hand percussion.
The music seems to show the influence of both the pre-rock country music Nesmith had been listening to recently (especially in the fingerpicked-and-whistled intro, but it shows up more consistently in the acoustic demo of this track, which could almost be Jimmie Rodgers at times, and doesn’t have the psychedelic effects on the intro) and of the newer hard rock music that was becoming popular.
In particular, the between-verses riff, although similar to a lot of the playing with suspended chords that the Byrds and the Searchers did in their early folk-rock songs (and the feel of this track is such that the first comparison that would spring to mind is the Byrds’ Feel A Whole Lot Better), is identical to that used by LA bands Love and The Leaves in their proto-punk versions of Hey Joe from 1966.
It also actually shows Nesmith self-plagiarising slightly, as the melody for the middle eight of this (“Sunshine, ragtime, blowing in the breeze…”) is near-identical to the middle eight of The Girl I Knew Somewhere (“Someway, somehow, the same thing was done…”).
There’s a very strange alternate mix of this with a double-tracked vocal, with one of the vocals emoting very differently to the performance used in the finished version, and with reverb drenched all over everything, but the finished version, with a filter on Nesmith’s single-tracked vocal, is one of the most interesting records the band ever made. Certainly, I can think of very few other surrealist garage-punk Latin country-psych tracks to have made the top forty.
Davy Jones has claimed in recent years that Nesmith got his songs regularly on the B-sides of the band’s singles, and that this made Nesmith far more money than the rest of the band, but in fact this was only the second of his songs to be released as a B-side (as the B-side of Valleri) and the first lead vocal he’d ever taken on either side of a single. Valleri was so popular that this reached number 34 in the US charts on the back of that success.
Daydream Believer
Writer: John Stewart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals), Michael Nesmith (guitar), Peter Tork (piano)
In many ways, this is the last Monkees record. It’s certainly the last studio recording of an actual song to feature all four band members until 1996′s Justus reunion album. It’s also the last track produced by Chip Douglas to be released during the band’s career, though several of the bonus tracks on the CD versions of this album feature Douglas’ bass playing.
Written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, this became the band’s fifth consecutive gold single, and remains probably their most-loved track. Everything about the track is precisely right, from the audio verite at the beginning (“7a” “What number is this, Chip?”, “7A”, “OK, no need to get excited man, it’s ’cause I’m short, I know”), to Tork’s simple arrangement, to the oblique lyric.
The piano part and arrangement for this track turned out to be the only contribution Tork made to the finished album (several of his songs were considered for it, including the two that eventually made the Head soundtrack), but given that this record is such an absolute pop classic, one has to wonder what would have happened had the four members continued to work together, rather than drifting apart.
Incidentally, there was one lyrical change that was made by the band from Stewart’s demo – where he sang “now you know how funky I can be”, the word ‘funky’ was changed to ‘happy’, presumably because the idea of Davy Jones ever being funky was such an absurd one. In later recordings, Stewart himself changed the lyric of the last chorus, singing “and an old closet queen”.
This track was reissued in the 1980s, in a remixed version with a new drum part (full of gated reverb and ‘sonic power’) and handclaps. That version should be avoided at all costs.
Writing Wrongs
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
And here we get to possibly the most controversial record in the Monkees’ ‘canon’.
There are two schools of thought about this track. One of them (which seems to be the one to which almost every Monkees fan belongs) thinks this is dreadful. The other (to which I, and very few others, belong) considers this possibly the best single track the Monkees ever recorded.
An epic at 5:05 (for the mono mix) or 5:09 (for the stereo), this is very much the Monkees’ equivalent of A Day In The Life or Surf’s Up. Nesmith here plays all the keyboard and guitar parts on what is easily his most ambitious Monkees track.
Starting with a two-chord tick-tock rhythm on piano, Nesmith comes in on vocals with his most impenetrable lyrics yet. Seemingly apocalyptic (“Did you know the water’s turning yellow?/Had you heard the sky was falling down?”) the lyrics seem to reference things that have some meaning at least to Nesmith (“Have you heard about Bill Chambers’ mother?”), while the piano keeps tick-tocking and an organ drones underneath.
Suddenly the piano changes to straight fours – “You have a way of making everything you say seem unreal…” – as the organ rises in volume. This, what we must consider the chorus, lasts for two lines, then we get eleven beats in 3/4 time, and a sudden stop.
We then enter the jazz freak-out section. Over latin flavoured drums and a single, briskly strummed, guitar chord, the piano starts playing around with a couple of three- and four-note scalar riffs, while the organ plays different variations of the same patterns.
The whole thing is almost wilfully difficult. There is a consistent pulse to the music, but each instrument is playing against that pulse, rather than with it, and against the other instruments. Were one to listen to this instrumental piece out of context, the first thought might be that it was by Sun Ra or someone rather than The Monkees.
After two minutes and ten seconds of this – the length of many normal Monkees songs – we return to a shortened version of the original musical material, with similarly oblique lyrics (“And I hope Bill Chambers’ mother’s better/Oh dear, the moon just disappeared”), and fades on a repeat of the instrumental section.
It’s a draining, exhausting piece of music, quite unlike anything else the band recorded, but quite astonishingly good.
I’ll Be Back Up On My Feet
Writers: Sandy Linzner and Denny Randell
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
This is a remake of a track that had originally been recorded during the More Of The Monkees sessions with Jeff Barry producing. This version is much better, being faster paced, and with a very interesting arrangement by Shorty Rogers, especially a bizarre sound in the bass register which comes from a percussion instrument called a quica which is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
The song itself is not hugely impressive, though, being patterned after the kind of material with which Sandie Shaw was having some success at the time, a sort of cod-Bacharach without Bacharach’s harmonic or rhythmic unpredictability.
What is impressive, though, is the stylistic range of this album, where something like this could follow something like Writing Wrongs and have neither track sound more out of place than the other.
The Poster
Writers: David Jones & Steve Pitts
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Easily the worst song on the album by a long way, this is Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite as rewritten by a very literal-minded five-year-old with no sense of poetry or imagery, and sung slightly out of tune. Except not as interesting as that sounds.
Jones got the idea for this song from one Edith Sidebottom, a woman in her mid-eighties who had written a song that ended ‘and the circus is coming to town’. She later threatened to sue him, but he settled out of court.
P.O. Box 9847
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
This is actually a cover of a track Boyce and Hart had previously released under their own names, as a B-side. Boyce and Hart’s original is actually rather better than the Monkees’ version.
This song came from an idea by Bob Rafelson, one of the producers of the Monkees’ TV show, about someone writing a classified ad. It’s actually one of Boyce and Hart’s cleverer songs, with each verse being a classified ad leading up to the chorus, which is just the title repeated, leading back into the verse with a different line each time, but all along the lines of “I’ve described me very poorly, better try again”.
Not only is it an extremely good song as a song, it also manages to work very cynically on the teenage girl listener. Each verse is slightly more grounded and realistic than the one previous, and it’s easy to imagine poor Micky trying vainly to describe himself, while only you – yes YOU teenage American girl – can really understand him.
Listening to Boyce and Hart’s original version, it’s very obviously inspired by John Lennon and George Harrison’s work on Revolver, but the two versions by the Monkees move further from that inspiration (though the piano part in the released version bears a family resemblance to the Taxman riff).
There are two very different versions of this song recorded by the Monkees (both based on the same basic take, but with very different overdubs). The more conventional of the two, driven by an eerie Bernard Herrman-esque string part, is the one that made it on to the album, but the other version, based around a Moog rather than the strings, is slightly better in my view. Either way, though, this is, other than Daydream Believer, the strongest non-Nesmith track on the album.
Magnolia Simms
Writers: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
The most straightforward of Nesmith’s songs on the album, this is a note-perfect attempt at recapturing the feel of 1920s and 30s ‘old-time’ music, from a time when country music and jazz were much closer than people now think (see for example Jimmie Rodgers and Louis Armstrong recording together).
There was a brief fad for this kind of nostalgia at this time, more in Britain than in the US, with bands like the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band recording 1920s novelty songs, and even the Beatles would follow a few months later with Honey Pie, which, like this song, had added surface noise to replicate the sound of an old 78. Nesmith also has a filter on his vocal, to sound more like the 1920s singers who used a megaphone to be heard above their bands.
The stereo mix of this song, in fact, only plays in one channel, because the music it was emulating was in mono. However, the box set reissue of this album contains a true-stereo remix, without the noises.
This is Nesmith’s slightest piece on the album, but accessible and catchy, and shows his mastery of this style, both as a songwriter and a vocalist.
Valleri
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
This is another remake of a song recorded earlier in the band’s career. In this case, the song had featured on the TV show, and was being played by DJs, but had never been released commercially.
The original version, produced by Boyce & Hart, was deemed unusable as all tracks now had to have a ‘produced by the Monkees’ credit. So Boyce & Hart were called back in to re-record it, as close as possible to the original recording, but had to give the Monkees credit for production.
The song itself has been called by Nesmith “The worst song I’ve ever heard in my life,” and there’s some truth to that assertion. Its genesis began when Boyce & Hart were asked by Kirshner if they had a girl’s-name song for the TV show, said ‘of course’, then wrote it in the car on the way to see him. As a result, the song just consists of four chords repeated over and over – a descending sequence by whole tones from I to V7 – with the most moronic possible lyrics (rhyming good with could and door with before, with the chorus just being the word “Valleri”).
However the production and arrangement are a truly impressive piece of turd-polishing, with a fuzz-guitar riff inspired by Satisfaction (though sounding more like Hungry Freaks, Daddy by the Mothers Of Invention), a Stax-esque horn section and blisteringly fast acoustic guitar playing from Louie Shelton. While the song may be dreadful, the record is a great piece of pop music.
This was the Monkees’ last top ten single in the US, peaking at number three and going gold. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the last single they released to feature in their TV show.
Zor and Zam
Writers: Bill & John Chadwick
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
A rather intense nursery-rhyme like song telling the story of two kingdoms preparing for a war that never happens because nobody showed up, this song is possibly best known for popularising the anti-war slogan “what if they gave a war and nobody came?”, a paraphrase by the Chadwicks of “Suppose they gave a war and no-one came?”, the title of a magazine article, which was itself a misremembering of a line from a poem by Carl Sandburg.
The line as used by the Monkees became one of the most powerful slogans of the Vietnam era, though few remembered where it had come from.
Bonus Tracks
Alvin
Writer: Nicholas Thorkelson
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
A charming 24-second a capella piece by Tork’s brother, about missing a pet alligator who’s been flushed down the toilet.
I’m Gonna Try
Writers: David Jones & Steve Pitts
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Described (accurately) by Jones as ‘just a throwaway thing, really’ [FOOTNOTE: quote taken from Sandoval, p. 172], this harmlessly pleasant example of Jones’ ‘Broadway rock’ style would nonetheless have made a much better track than The Poster, which was recorded at the same time.
Lady’s Baby
Writer: Peter Tork
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
This simple ballad by Tork, which went unreleased until the 1990s, was his obsession at this period, taking twelve sessions to record, including musicians like Stephen Stills, Dewey Martin (the drummer from Buffalo Springfield) and Buddy Miles.
It’s odd it took so long, and went through so many versions (of which several are included on the box set version, and one more on a bonus single that came with the initial copies of the box set), as the basics of this simple song were in place from the start, and any of the multiple takes and mixes that have seen the light could easily have been released.
A nice, gentle song about being at peace with his then-girlfriend and her son, this is much better than much of the material that made it to the finished album, and it’s a shame Tork’s perfectionism drove him past a point of diminishing returns.
D.W. Washburn
Writers: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
This was the first Monkees song to be a flop, ‘only’ reaching number 19 on the US singles charts, thanks to being the first single the band released not to be featured on the TV show, and to The Coasters releasing a version almost simultaneously.
It’s a shame, because this is an enjoyable Dixieland pastiche in a style that was suiting the Monkees well at the time, being stylistically close to Cuddly Toy in its mixture of rather dark lyrics (from the point of view of a homeless alcoholic refusing the help of the Salvation Army) and upbeat music. And Leiber and Stoller were one of the most reliable songwriting teams of their age.
Nonetheless, while this was not a big hit (though still far more successful than any singles from the rest of their career), it’s still a great track, with the clanking banjo and Dolenz’s mannered vocal bringing the song to life beautifully.
It’s Nice to Be With You
Writers: Jerry Goldstein
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Written by the co-writer of I Want Candy and My Boyfriend’s Back, this sappy ballad unfortunately has little of those tracks’ energy, being exactly what you imagine Davy Jones singing a song called It’s Nice To Be With You would sound like, with a plinky, over-orchestrated background. As the B-side of D.W. Washburn this scraped to number 51 in the US charts, but did better internationally.
Carlisle Wheeling
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (banjo)
Musically, this is almost a rewrite of Nine Times Blue, although lyrically it is very different, looking back with age at a happy romance that has almost but not quite dulled into complacency.
Nesmith was never very happy with this song, but nonetheless he attempted recording it several times – this version, a similar version during the Instant Replay sessions, a version on his big band instrumental album The Wichita Train Whistle Sings and a solo version in the early 70s.
It’s easy to see both why he was unhappy with it and why he tried to make it work. Melodically it’s quite beautiful, but lyrically the metaphors at times grow very strained. But then there are also moments of lyrical brilliance – “So forgive me my dear if I seem preoccupied/And if the razor edge of youth filled love is gone” is as good a couplet as Nesmith has ever written.
Rosemarie
Writer: Micky Dolenz
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (acoustic guitar)
This horn-driven riffy soul track is as close to being funky as the Monkees ever got, and wouldn’t sound out of place on an early-70s blaxploitation film. There are three versions of this track, all with different lyrics. The version on the The Birds… box set is an early mix with no lyrics at all on the bridge, the version on the Missing Links CD has the most properly-thought-out lyrics, but the best version by far is the version released as a bonus track on Instant Replay.
That version has Dolenz singing gibberish lyrics and imitating various musical instruments vocally, and is just superb. But all the versions of this – all of which derive from the same basic track – are an intriguing look at a musical direction the Monkees never really took, but which Dolenz in particular was well suited for.
My Share of the Sidewalk
Writers: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones/Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
Lyrically, this is about as simplistic as Nesmith gets, but musically it’s more interesting. This is the most metrically irregular thing the Monkees ever released.
Starting with an intro of four bars of five/four, it then goes into a first verse which breaks down as two bars of seven/four, two of four/four and one more of seven/four. The second verse, while sounding similar, is actually six bars of four/four and one of seven/four. There’s then a vocal bridge of eight bars of twelve/eight, an instrumental break of four bars of twelve/eight, then the whole thing repeats from the start, then repeats again til end of verse two and fades on a repetition of the five/four intro.
What’s interesting about this as well is it shows what a difference each Monkee could make vocally. When Nesmith sings this, in a rough version without the full orchestration, it sounds like a cool jazz piece, like it could be sung by Mose Allison or someone. By contrast, when Jones sings it, it sounds like the kind of all-round family entertainment that could easily have been used on any variety show of the period.
And while I’ve sometimes been harsh on Jones’ vocals in this book, this shows that when he puts his mind to it he can do a remarkable job. He sings this in his ‘Broadway-rock’ style, but manages to navigate these horrendous changes (and some bad syllabics – the stresses to this lyric don’t fall at all well) without sounding like he’s even trying, as well as managing the rangey melody far better than Nesmith (who croaks his way through the high notes in what is, admittedly, a demo).
Little Red Rider
Writers: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
There are two versions of this recorded as The Monkees. The version on the The Birds…box set is a simple acoustic demo, while the version on Missing Links vol 3 is a country-soul number that sounds a lot like the music Elvis Presley was making at the time, or the country-soul blend Dan Penn, Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham had come up with. An enjoyable track, it’s possibly more of a stylistic experiment than a proper song (though again, like Rose Marie, it’s interesting to see the soulful direction various band members were taking). Nesmith later rerecorded this with The First National Band on his first solo album, Magnetic South.
Ceiling in My Room
Writers: Don DeMieri, Robert Dick and David Jones
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
A dreadful, dreadful song, this is some kind of self-pitying cross between My Way (though of course this was before that horror was ever written) and It’s Nice To Be With You, with some inspiration from the Beach Boys’ In My Room, and with backing vocals that are more bellowed than sung. Abysmal.
Come On In
Writer: Jo Mapes
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
This song, in a sunshine pop version, was a hit for harmony-pop band The Association, but this is a drastically different arrangement. In fact, this track sounds like Lady’s Baby part two, having the same slow/fast tempo changes, and like that track features Stephen Stills and Lance Wakely on guitars, along with Dewey Martin.
A nice, gentle song performed by excellent musicians, with a heartfelt vocal, this is nothing mindblowingly special, but it’s a nice track. This kind of music would become incredibly popular a couple of years later, performed by people like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jackson Browne or James Taylor, but by that point Tork had retired from music.
Tear the Top Right Off My Head
Writer: Peter Tork
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals)
On the other hand, this kind of thing never became hugely popular, being as it is a novelty banjo-and-harmonica driven love song which occasionally turns into a hippy comedy hard rock number for a few bars.
There are a few versions of this track on the box set – Tork’s original vocal, a version with Dolenz singing which doesn’t really work, and a version (with Tork’s vocal) sped up to be about a tone faster, which comes together much better than the other versions, but this never quite works, though no matter how often I listen to it I can’t put my finger on why.
Merry Go Round
Writers: Peter Tork and Diane Hildebrand
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
Musically an interesting track, this mournful organ-and-piano driven waltz was recorded in a few different versions. Easily the best version is the solo acoustic version on this box set. The two fuller versions that have been released, here and on Missing Links Vol 3, both have interesting production choices, but are taken at too slow a speed for Tork’s comparatively weak voice, and then fatally damaged by Tork double-tracking himself sloppily. There’s an interesting idea in here, but other than the acoustic demo it’s not something you’d want to listen to regularly.
War Games
Writers: David Jones and Steve Pitts
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Michael Nesmith (acoustic guitar, version one only)
Attentive readers will have noticed that I’m not the hugest fan of the songwriting talents of Jones and Pitts, and the two of them trying to write an anti-war protest song is about as poor as you’d expect.
But in fact, one of the two versions of this, the first version, works quite well. With a backing band led by Nesmith, the two-chord verse is slashed through at quite a fast pace, and the arrangement is a straight rip-off of 1965 Dylan, all Hammond organ and acoustic rhythm guitar.
Version two, though, is taken at a much slower speed, and mixes tinkly harpsichord with a marching band feel, to horrible effect.
Laurel And Hardy
Writers: Jan Berry and Roger Christian
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
This isn’t actually a Monkees track at all. It’s a Jan And Dean one, though neither Jan nor Dean appear.
To explain – Jan And Dean were a successful pop duo in the early and mid sixties, consisting of Jan Berry, who was a driven, unpleasant, ambitious man who wrote their hits (usually in collaboration with Roger Christian, Don Altfeld and/or Brian Wilson), produced them and sang on them, and Dean Torrence, a nice person everyone liked, who didn’t. [FOOTNOTE: This is probably an exaggeration. But the vocal parts Torrence took live were, often, performed in the studio by P.F. Sloan or, less frequently, Brian Wilson].
Jones was friendly with both of them, and when Berry was seriously brain-damaged in a car accident stepped in to help, spending a lot of time helping Berry re-learn basic life skills.
Both Jan and Dean, separately, decided to record new ‘Jan and Dean’ material to try to keep the brand alive, with Torrence’s solo concept album Save For A Rainy Day being released as a Jan And Dean album while Berry was still in hospital.
Berry responded with Carnival Of Sound , a psych-pop album that remained unreleased until 2010, and Jones assisted with some of the vocals, as Berry was at the time unable to sing.
This track, which is based on a sitar rendition of the Laurel And Hardy theme before going into more familiar Jan And Dean musical territory, was written by Berry with lyricist Roger Christian, who had co-written many of Berry’s previous hits as well as Beach Boys songs like Little Deuce Coupe and Don’t Worry Baby.
The track is very much in the novelty vein of albums like Jan And Dean Meet Batman, although this version, with Jones singing lead, doesn’t go so far in the novelty direction as the version, with a different lead vocalist, released on the Carnival Of Sound CD, which has a verse about Laurel And Hardy on a roller-coaster with the Maharishi.
Don’t Say Nothin’ Bad (About My Baby)
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
A generic twelve-bar rock-and-roll track, this sounds like the kind of thing that could have been a minor hit for Danny And The Juniors in 1958 or Shakin’ Stevens in 1981. It has absolutely no distinguishing features.
Shake ‘Em Up and Let ‘Em Roll
Writers: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
There are two different versions of this track, both identical but for the vocal take used. It’s a pleasant R&B number with an incongruously amusing trad jazz clarinet part, and in fact was recorded in 1970 as a single by Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen.
Astonishingly, though, this is the second time, after D.W. Washburn, that Dolenz would sing a Leiber/Stoller song very shortly after the Coasters recorded a version. In this case the Coasters’ version was recorded less than a fortnight before the Monkees’ version, and one has to wonder what they were thinking. Perhaps wisely, after the Coasters’ release had helped sink Washburn on the charts, this remained unreleased despite being a very pleasant, though outdated, song.
Changes
Writers: David Jones and Steve Pitts
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
A Jones/Pitts collaboration intended as a title track for the Monkees’ forthcoming film (later retitled Head), this is actually not half-bad. The arrangement is in the same sort of muscular soul-rock range as that of Little Red Rider, and while the song itself isn’t particularly good, this has a nice Dusty In Memphis feel to it.
I Wasn’t Born to Follow
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Monkees present: None
An instrumental backing track of a country-rock (with harpsichord) song which had recently been released by The Byrds, no vocal was ever recorded for this.
The Party
Writers: David Jones and Steve Pitts
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
A very pleasant track, and one of the better Jones/Pitts collaborations, this has something of the feel of Changes about it, but a less impressive (and more string-dominated) arrangement. A minor piece, but enjoyable on its own terms.
I’m A Man
Writers: Barry Mann & Cynthia Weill
Monkees present: None
An unused backing track, produced by Chip Douglas in clear, blatant imitation of Phil Spector’s style, this is actually one of the better Spector imitations I’ve heard, though the instruments are much clearer and more separated than Spector’s usual style.
Monkee Music 4(5th Anniversary!) – Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd
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).
Today is the 45th anniversary of the debut of the Monkees’ TV show, so I saved this piece on their masterpiece, which I was originally going to post on Saturday, til today. Which is quite handy, as I’ve been off ill with a migraine today and wouldn’t have been able to write a proper post.
Also, I’ve got a mock-up of the cover to the book of these I’m doing. Let me know what you think:
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.
The second and last of the albums where the Monkees provided the bulk of the instrumentation is their absolute masterpiece. While Dolenz was no longer playing much on the records, the band were still working as a unit in the studio, albeit an augmented one, and all four members were contributing creatively.
The result is one of the great mid-60s albums, that easily stands up with Revolver, Absolutely Free, Forever Changes, Smiley Smile and so on as a serious piece of work. The fact that this was recorded by a band who were being dismissed as pre-teen pabulum (and who were having to work on a TV show full time at the same time) is nothing short of extraordinary.
If you want a sense of what was possible in popular music as 1967 drew to a close, you could do far, far worse than Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd, where influences as diverse as Frank Zappa, the Beatles, bluegrass, Mose Allison and Robert A Heinlein collide, and the result is something unlike anything else in popular music.
All tracks produced by Chip Douglas.
Salesman
Writer: Craig Smith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz & Davy Jones (percussion and backing vocals), Peter Tork (possible guitar).
One can see from the very first song on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd that this is something very different from the earlier Monkees albums. For the first time ever, Nesmith is taking a lead vocal on a song he didn’t write. In fact, Nesmith dominates this album vocally, after previously having taken no more than three leads per album, here he takes five, of which he only wrote one.
This song was written by Nesmith’s friend Craig Smith, of the psych-pop band The Penny Arkade. Smith later changed his name to Satya Sai Maitreya Kali and recorded his own version of this with Mike Love of the Beach Boys singing lead.
The recording is loosely modelled on She’s About A Mover by The Sir Douglas Quintet (which was itself based on She’s A Woman by the Beatles), which Nesmith liked for its “Tex-Mex oompah”, and like both those earlier records is driven by a prominent bass-line with stabbing guitars on the off-beat.
This song caused some controversy for the drug references (more blatant in the extended mix, which features a monologue by Nesmith about different cigarette-rolling machines), with NBC not wishing to feature it on the TV show. Actually, the song is at least moderately anti-drug, or at least anti-dealer, with its portrayal of a salesman selling ‘every pot’ and ‘sailing so high’ but who has a ‘short life span’.
On many of the band’s other albums, this would have been a highlight, but on an album where nearly every song is a minor masterpiece, this is ‘just’ an album track.
While the Monkees were no longer playing together as a band in-studio, this album does feature a band of sorts, with Nesmith on guitar, Tork on guitar and keyboards, Chip Douglas on bass and Eddie Hoh on drums on almost every track. In this case it’s unsure whether Tork played on the track, but this studio unit would feature on nine of the thirteen tracks on the album.
She Hangs Out
Writers: Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Michael Nesmith (electric guitar), Peter Tork (organ), Micky Dolenz (backing vocals)
Pisces, Aquarius almost alternates between two very different types of song. The first type is either sung or written by Nesmith, and is a country-psych-pop track with oblique lyrics. Salesman, the opening track, is an example of this type.
The other type features Jones on vocals and is at least mildly misogynist. This great pop track is an example of the second type. One could write an entire thesis on the attitude towards women displayed on Jones’ tracks on this album, which is all the more bizarre when one considers that they were all written by different outside songwriters, and two of them were co-written by women.
Either way, this is one of the less offensive of these tracks, and the catchiest, being based around a warning – “How old you say your sister was? You know you’d better keep an eye on her” – about a young girl ‘hanging out’ with an older crowd, but its lascivious attitude (“I know you taught your sister to boogaloo…well, she could teach you a thing or two”).
This had originally been released as a quickly-withdrawn B-side to A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, in a version featuring only Jones and produced by Jeff Barry. This version, re-recorded with the Nesmith/Tork/Douglas/Hoh backing band, keeps the best bits of that arrangement (the answering vocals and ‘doo da ron day ron day’s) while expanding the organ part (which in Barry’s version had been very similar to those in I’m A Believer or his later hit Sugar Sugar), getting rid of the incongruous fuzz guitar and adding a horn section. The result is a great, and for the Monkees quite funky, dance record, with Jones’ sleazy, strained vocals working perfectly in this context.
The Door Into Summer
Writers: Chip Douglas and Bill Martin
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals, additional drums), Peter Tork (keyboards)
One of only two songs on this album to feature Dolenz on drums (he plays one of the two drum parts audible on the record, with Hoh playing the other), this song by the band’s friend Bill Martin seems musically to have been inspired by some of Love’s music at the time – the acoustic guitar intro sounding very like many of the acoustic parts on the Forever Changes and Da Capo albums.
Lyrically, the inspiration is more obvious – the title of the song comes from the Robert A. Heinlein novel of the same name. In the first half of the book, before it descends into the usual late-Heinlein sexual creepiness (though for a change it’s paedophilia, not incest, that Heinlein advocates in this one), the protagonist makes a lot of money from sales of stock in a company he founded, before going into cryogenic suspension and waking up in the future.
Douglas and Martin seem to have taken elements of this basic idea and used them as a metaphor for a businessman giving up most of his life and constantly postponing doing what he wants to advance his career for no real reason.
Easily one of the best tracks the band ever did, everything on this track works well, from Dolenz and Nesmith’s harmonies on the chorus, to the interplay between the banjo (played by Doug Dillard) and Tork’s keyboard, to the wonderful pseudo-Indian melismatic wailing on the end (by Dolenz, possibly with Harry Nilsson adding some extra vocals) in imitation of the Beatles’ Rain.
Love is Only Sleeping
Writers: Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals), Davy Jones (percussion, backing vocals), Peter Tork (keyboards)
Another Nesmith-sung psych-pop track, this one seems to be modelled on some of John Lennon’s songs on Revolver, with their odd time signatures (the verse for this is in 7/4) and driving guitar riffs. One of the slighter actual songs here, this becomes a worthwhile track thanks to the production tricks, and to one of Nesmith’s very best vocal performances.
Nesmith here really shows off his versatility, from the low, speak-sung, “once I loved but love was dead” to the near-falsetto ‘sleeping’ at the end of the middle eight, he sings in a number of different voices, each one chosen perfectly for the section of the song in question. Dolenz – rightly – gets a lot of acclaim for his actorly phrasing, but Nesmith is at least as sensitive a vocalist here.
Cuddly Toy
Writer: Harry Nilsson
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (drums and backing vocals), Peter Tork (piano), Michael Nesmith (guitar)
The last Monkees studio track to feature Dolenz on drums for nearly thirty years, this song was brought to them by their new ‘discovery’ Harry Nilsson.
Nilsson had been working as a bank clerk while submitting songs to various people for several years, writing songs like the Lovin’ Spoonful rip-off This Could Be The Night for Phil Spector. (That song was given to The Modern Folk Quartet , who had featured both Chip Douglas and sometime Monkees studio bass player Jerry Yester).
But at a time when the Monkees were drifting apart musically as a band, Nilsson’s astonishing talents were something they could all agree on, appealing as they did both to Nesmith’s desire to expand his musical palette (both Nesmith and Nilsson were equally influenced by both pre-rock popular music and by the Beatles’ contemporary work) and to Jones’ desire to make ‘Broadway rock’ his father’s generation could enjoy.
Not that Jones’ father’s generation would approve of the lyrics – or at least one would hope not. This song has been variously described as being about various sordid practices up to and including gang rape, but in fact seems pretty clearly to ‘only’ be someone callously dumping a girl after taking her virginity – “You’re not the only cherry delight that was left in the night and gave up without a fight”, “I never told you that I loved no other, you must have dreamed it in your sleep.”
Not quite as callous a performance as Nilsson’s own recording (which includes tossed-off ‘sob sob’ asides), this song still works because of the way the jaunty, upbeat, vaudeville style music, and Jones’ cheerful performance (doubled almost all the way through by Dolenz) contrast with the vicious psychopathy of the lyrics.
Very, very far from a pleasant song, but still a great one.
Words
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: Michael Nesmith (guitar), Davy Jones (percussion)
One of the few occasions on which Tork actually plays bass on record, this track, which closes side one, was originally recorded during the More Of The Monkees sessions with Boyce and Hart producing and the Candy Store Prophets backing, before being remade during these sessions.
There are very few differences between the two performances – the original has some extra lead guitar, a small bit of backwards recording, and has a flute part rather than Tork’s hammond organ solo, but otherwise the two tracks are almost identical, even down to the chimes that can be heard faintly (going across the stereo spectrum in the stereo mix).
Starting with a verse that stays on one minor chord for the whole verse, Dolenz and Tork overlap vocal lines (Tork’s only vocal leads on a Boyce and Hart song), in a moody downbeat manner, before Dolenz becomes sole lead vocalist for the bridge (which by the time this came out would have sounded like it was based on Heroes & Villains by the Beach Boys, having the same bass riff as that song, but which was probably, like the Beach Boys’ track, inspired by the version of Save The Last Dance For Me that Phil Spector had recently produced for Tina Turner).
The chorus is one of Boyce & Hart’s garage-psych classics – a two-chord riff played for four bars, then repeated a tone up, with a bassline that’s playing a variation on a boogie line (going constantly up instead of up then down), and is just ridiculously exciting.
This became the B-side to Pleasant Valley Sunday and charted in its own right at number 11.
Hard to Believe
Writers: David Jones, Kim Capli, Eddie Brick and Charlie Rockett
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: none
Side two of the album opens with the song that marks the end of the Monkees as a recording group. The first song Jones ever co-wrote with anyone outside the band, this was written with two members of the band’s tour support band The Sundowners, plus Rockett, their roadie, while on tour.
A bossa nova-lite track that fits in with the ‘Broadway rock’ idea Jones had been discussing in interviews for a while, this is the only proper song on the album to feature no Monkee involvement other than the lead vocalist. Instead Kim Capli plays the whole rhythm track, building up from the (excellent) drum and percussion parts.
Actually quite a catchy song (and the heavy breathing in the tag sounds like it may have inspired the similar effect in Time Of The Season by The Zombies), this could easily have been a hit for Tom Jones or Dusty Springfield at the time. But a faultline was appearing in popular music by this point, with Vegas-style singers like those on one side, and rock music on the other, and Jones was trying firmly to ensconce himself on one side of that line, while his bandmates were all on the other.
Possibly because it was the only song to feature none of the rest of the band, this is the only song from the album never to be featured in the TV show. But it points the way to the future of the band – by their next album they would be working independently of each other more often than not, and solo tracks like this would become the norm.
What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?
Writers: “Travis Lewis and Boomer Clark” (Michael Martin Murphey and Owens Castleman)
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones (backing vocals)
In its own way, this track also shows the way the band were falling apart as a recording unit. While the track features Nesmith on guitar, Douglas on bass and Hoh on drums, the standard rhythm section for this album, the banjo is supplied not by Tork (who had played the banjo on Headquarters) but by bluegrass legend Doug Dillard.
While it sounds like a fairly standard country song, this is far more harmonically sophisticated than was normal in country music at that time. Nesmith points out (in an interview quoted in Andrew Sandoval’s liner notes to the deluxe edition of this album) the I7-vi7 change in the bridge as a particularly ‘uncountry’ element, but the song plays with key ambiguity quite a bit, not being able to decide whether it’s in C or F (in a mirror of its protagonist’s own self-questioning), and going to a Db in the chorus (at the start of the line “I should be ridin’ on that train to San Anton’”) which belongs to neither key.
Nesmith provides one of his very best vocals here, going from the resigned “boy I sure missed mine” to the almost howled last chorus.
While this has precursors in some of Nesmith’s own earlier work, and on some tracks on the Beatles albums Beatles For Sale and Help!, this song was, at the time, probably the most successful ever example of country-rock, managing to combine the emotional sophistication and musicianship of the former genre with the energy of the latter without sacrificing either.
This song has become a recent highlight of the Monkees’ (Nesmith-less) reunion tours, where Tork takes the lead vocal. As has the next track…
Peter Percival Patterson’s Pet Pig Porky
Writer: Peter Tork
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
A tongue-twister credited to Tork as arranger, this twenty-seven second spoken word track is just a bit of fun, with Tork showing how much fun plosives can be when you don’t use a pop-shield.
Pleasant Valley Sunday
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (piano), Michael Nesmith (guitar and backing vocals), Davy Jones (backing vocals and percussion)
If ever proof were needed that the Monkees were capable of producing great pop records without the involvement of Don Kirshner, this is it. With an instrumental track by Tork, Nesmith, Douglas and Hoh (with additional acoustic guitar by Bill Chadwick and possibly Dolenz), this shows that the band could, when left to their own devices, create spectacular pop singles.
Every band member gets to shine here – Dolenz of course takes the lead vocal, and does his usual superb job, Nesmith plays the Day Tripper-esque guitar riff (composed by Chip Douglas) and adds harmonies (and the Dolenz/Nesmith harmony blend, while underutilised, is one of the band’s most thrilling elements), Tork adds the piano part under the middle eight (which otherwise would have seemed woefully poor, having as it does only a single chord), and Jones gives the vocal performance of his life, on the nasal, sarcastic ‘ta ta ta ta’ section.
Given that the song itself is relatively weak, being just an example of the mid-60s tendency to cruelly mock people for daring to want a comfortable life (see for example every song George Harrison ever wrote), the power of the track must be attributed entirely to the performance, production and arrangement. And every element here is spot-on (as can be heard on the ‘karaoke’ version made available on a Japanese best-of CD, where every detail of the backing track can be heard).
It’s not the song itself that made this a hit, but Douglas’ riff and the understanding of dynamics. This track builds from a relatively sedate beginning towards an almost orgasmic peak, with the riff and Nesmith and Dolenz’s wailing being lost in a wall of reverb that it turn gets fed back on itself. The ending wouldn’t be out of place on a Led Zeppelin record, but because it’s been contextualised as part of a piece of simple pop music, no-one blinked an eye.
Quite rightly, this is a favourite of the band members – Peter Tork recorded a truly odd remake of it with his band The New Monks in 1980, for example – because of all their classic singles, it’s the only one which allowed them all to shine as a group.
Daily Nightly
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (keyboards), Michael Nesmith (guitar)
Oddly, for an album so dominated vocally by Nesmith, his first songwriting contribution to the album is one of the handful of Dolenz lead vocals.
This song, in fact, shows the new songwriting style Nesmith would be trying out for the next few albums. While it’s harmonically simple (only three chords), the lyrics, which began life as an impressionistic poem about the Sunset Strip riots, give up on standard ideas of sense in order to play with language:
Startled eyes that sometimes see phantasmagoric splendour
Pirouette down palsied paths with pennies for the vendor
Salvation’s yours for just the time it takes to pay the dancer.
Meanwhile Dolenz turns in the performance of his life, not just on vocal, but on Moog. Dolenz had only bought the Moog (one of a handful in existence at the time) the previous weekend, and this was its first use on a pop record. Dolenz here just twiddles knobs and makes interesting sounds, but in so doing he manages to do pretty much everything worthwhile that there is to do with a Moog.
The whole thing has a dense, brooding feel, and is in a sonic world completely different from anything else on the album. Tork’s Hammond organ and Douglas’ bass are very much of their time – the basic backing track could be by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger And The Trinity or Jefferson Airplane – but adding Dolenz’s vocals and the Moog’s siren-like wails makes this something very special.
Don’t Call On Me
Writers: Michael Nesmith and John London
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (keyboards), Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones (intro chatter)
And from a pointer to Nesmith’s songwriting future, we look to his past, with this song he’d written four years earlier.
This lounge-flavoured song was originally written as an exercise in learning how to use major 7ths (which are what give it its lush feeling), and an acoustic demo exists of it from the early 60s in an almost McCartney-esque style, but it probably came back to its composer’s mind after hearing America Drinks And Goes Home by the Mothers Of Invention.
Frank Zappa, the Mothers’ leader, had become a big influence on the Monkees, especially Nesmith, and would appear in the second series of the TV show and make a cameo appearance in the band’s film Head, and America Drinks And Goes Home is both harmonically and lyrically similar to this song, though Zappa plays it entirely for laughs, while Nesmith takes the song perfectly straight (though like the Mothers’ record, the track opens and ends with fake-drunk audience chatter and lounge piano).
This is actually a lovely ballad, with Nesmith singing right at the top of his range, sounding utterly unlike his normal baritone, and would be a stand-out track were it not for the fact that nearly every track on this album is a stand-out track.
Star Collector
Writer: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals), Peter Tork (keyboards), Michael Nesmith (guitar)
Well, we’ve not had any Jones misogyny for a little while, so why not close the album with it? This rather nasty Goffin/King song about groupies (last line of the chorus “how can I love her when I just don’t respect her?”) is catchy, but after some of the wonderful music we’ve had it’s a shallow, heartless song to end on, although it’s easy to see why it was chosen as the closer, having as it does an extended Moog jam to fade on which would be difficult to follow. (The Moog here is played by session player Paul Beaver, far less inventively than Dolenz’s performance on Daily Nightly).
On any other Monkees album this would be a decent slightly-below-average track with an interesting ending. Here it’s easily the least interesting track.
Bonus Tracks
Special Announcement
Writer: unknown
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
This is a little spoken-word joke, with Tork imitating the voice of Robert Keith Morrison, who introduced the reference tones for Ampex alignment tapes (used by sound engineers to calibrate equipment), introducing tones at various levels, the last of which is inaudible – but we hear a dog barking instead. This was originally intended as the opening track of the album.
It’s been suggested that this was a joke about the ‘silent’ track at the end of Sgt Pepper, which could only be heard by dogs, but a few weeks prior to this recording, the album Safe As Milk by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band had been released. That album, which had been recorded in the same RCA studio as this album, and with Hank Cicalo (the Monkees’ regular engineer at this time) engineering, opened on side two with the track Kandy Korn, which starts with producer Richard Perry doing a near-identical Morrison imitation. For that reason, The Captain Beefheart Radar Station [FOOTNOTE http://www.beefheart.com/zigzag/books/barnescompanswers2.htm ] (from which I got some of the details here) calls this track ‘the first ever Beefheart cover version’.
Goin’ Down
Writers: Diane Hildebrand, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and David Jones
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Davy Jones (percussion), Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith (guitar)
This track developed from a jam on the Mose Allison classic Parchman Farm (which it resembles closely enough that it’s amazing Allison didn’t sue – it still has almost an identical melody). Nesmith liked the results, but didn’t see why the band should pay Allison royalties when they could just put a new vocal line on top, and so Diane Hildebrand (co-writer of Early Morning Blues And Greens and Your Auntie Grizelda) was asked to write a new lyric.
The result is stunning – Hildebrand’s lyrics turns this into a patter song or talking blues, with lyrics and internal rhymes tumbling out of Dolenz’s mouth in a flow that would shame most modern rappers. The lyrics themselves are hilarious – the thoughts of someone drunkenly attempting suicide by drowning in the Mississippi, regretting it, and eventually deciding to go with the flow, quite literally. Between Dolenz’s frenetic performance and the squealing saxophone, this is as exciting a record as it gets, and was released as the B-side of Daydream Believer.
Riu Chiu
Writer: traditional
Lead Vocalist: all four Monkees
And we finish with a stunning piece of vocal harmony, with the four Monkees singing a traditional Spanish Christmas carol.
I’ve got friends who believe that because Boyce and Hart provided the backing vocals on many of the early hits, that the Monkees themselves couldn’t sing in harmony. This track should prove them wrong – an a capella performance of a complicated arrangement that’s every bit as good as any of the harmony work pulled off by the Beach Boys, the Zombies or the Beatles.
In fact, there’s an even better version of this song on the Missing Links vol 2 CD – the version on here is taken from a TV performance, while the Missing Links vol 2 version is a full studio recording, properly EQd with reverb added. That version also features Chip Douglas, rather than Jones, taking the fourth harmony part. Both versions are absolutely lovely, though.
Monkee Music 1: The Monkees
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).
The Monkees’ first album was put together very quickly, in anticipation of the band’s TV debut. For the pilot of the TV show, several songs by Screen Gems writers Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart had been recorded by Boyce & Hart’s band The Candy Store Prophets, as the four band members hadn’t yet been cast. As a reward, after sessions with legendary producer Snuff Garret (who wanted Davy Jones to be sole lead vocalist) had broken down, Boyce and Hart were allowed to supervise the initial batch of sessions for the show and the first album (albeit with assistance from the more experienced Jack Keller on early sessions).
In fact, so much material was needed for the show that songs originally recorded during these sessions, but put aside or only used on the TV, would turn up (sometimes in rerecorded form) for the rest of the band’s career. Sometimes two sessions would be going on at once, with Michael Nesmith (who was allowed to write and produce two tracks on the album) running one session in one part of town while Boyce and Hart were running another elsewhere.
Surprisingly enough, the finished product is a rather good album of its type. While nowhere near as musically interesting as the results once the band took control of their own career, there’s still some great pop music mixed in with the filler.
Theme From The Monkees
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and Jack Keller
Or “Hey hey, we’re the Candy Store Prophets”, as with the exception of Dolenz’s vocals this track, like much of The Monkees, was performed by Boyce and Hart’s band (Gerry McGee on guitar, Larry Taylor on bass and Billy Lewis on drums), with augmentation from a couple of session musicians – percussionist Gene Estes (a talented jazz vibraphone player, here reduced to hitting a tambourine on the off-beat, though he may also provide the finger-snaps) and guitarists Wayne Erwin and Louie Shelton. This group of musicians (with Hart on occasional keyboards and Boyce on backing vocals) would provide almost all the backing for the album.
While harmonically simple (staying for the most part in the key of Am in the verses apart from one V-of-V chord, and staying entirely in C for the choruses, and not using any chord more complex than a 7th), like most Boyce and Hart songs, the track is full of musical ideas. Starting with the famous ‘falling’ drum sound, the verse then combines Larry Taylor’s strutting bassline with fingersnapping and hi-hat to create an impressive air of swaggering cool, before going into the famous chorus.
The track is very blatantly “inspired” by the Dave Clark Five’s Catch Us If You Can, down to starting with a single throbbing bass note and “Here [we/they] come…” but is far more meticulously constructed, and a much more memorable record.
The one weak spot of the track is the way it shifts gears out of the chorus into the second verse, which doesn’t quite come off, but then the track really kicks off in the second chorus, with the key change up a tone for “We’re just trying to be friendly…”
The guitar solo – surprisingly late in the track, after the third chorus – is a pastiche of George Harrison’s Chet Atkins imitations, and the whole thing then builds to a powerful climax with a repeat of the second chorus with its key change.
Lyrically, the song is a perfect introduction to TV show for which it was the theme, though I’m not too keen on the line “we’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say”, which seems slightly patronising – especially since at the time the band members were prevented from saying anything even slightly controversial.
Saturday’s Child
Writer: David Gates
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and Jack Keller
Astonishingly for something written by the man who would go on to form Bread, one of the softest of all AOR bands, Saturday’s Child is close to heavy metal, especially in the mono mix (which is a much more powerful track than the comparatively weak stereo version). The lumbering bottom-string guitar riff and throbbing bass part could almost be Deep Purple or early Black Sabbath, though Dolenz’s soft, faintly sinister vocal is as far from that style as you can get – Dolenz at his best being one of the most controlled vocalists in the business, and heavy metal vocals being all about (perceived) loss of control.
Interestingly, this track was originally recorded with Peter Tork on lead vocals, and while he’s officially not on the finished track, one of the double-tracked backing vocal parts singing the chorus countermelody does sound an awful lot like him.
I Wanna Be Free
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
And from Saturday’s Child we go to Sunday Morning… this track in its finished version bears quite an astonishing resemblance to the later Velvet Underground song, both harmonically and in the general shape of its melody and its feel.
Which makes it all the more surprising that while the finished version is a gentle ballad based around some lovely, sparse acoustic guitars, harpsichord and a string quartet, earlier that day the same song had been recorded in a totally different arrangement owing far more to Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone, with Dolenz and Jones singing the verses in unison and Dolenz, rather than Jones, taking the middle eight. (This faster version is available on various compilations and as a bonus track on the Deluxe Edition of The Monkees, as well as being featured in the TV show).
Truth be told, the fast, Hammond-led version that was originally attempted suited the lyrics far better than the version finally released on the album, because the lyrics are anything but romantic. The protagonist of the song is quite possibly one of the most unpleasant in any song, insisting on utter devotion from his girlfriend (“say you’ll always be my friend, babe/We can make it to the end, babe”), but on utter freedom from all commitments himself (“doing all those things without any strings to tie me down”). His girlfriend is not even allowed to say that she loves him – just that she likes him – but is to give him total freedom.
That said, this unpleasant – frankly almost psychopathic – lyric is backed by one of the most beautiful arrangements on any Monkees record, nicely understated rather than over-lush, and Jones’ wistful vocal almost sells the song.
Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Steve Venet
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
A quick knock-off track that probably took about as long to write as it does to listen to, this seems to have been written with the rough aim of trying to write something that sounded like the Beatles’ more country-flavoured songs like Another Girl, though the harmonica part and “hey hey hey hey” vocal line sound more reminiscent of the Rolling Stones.
The vaguely train-like rhythm (and “I’m gonna catch me the fastest train” lyric) suggest that this was essentially a failed attempt at writing Last Train To Clarksville, which would be recorded two days later. However, on its own merits this is a perfectly pleasant country-blues number.
Papa Gene’s Blues
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals), Peter Tork (guitar)
Producer: Michael Nesmith
If this sounds very different from the rest of the album up to this point, it’s because rather than being a Boyce/Hart production with an augmented Candy Store Prophets, this is a Nesmith production with members of the Wrecking Crew [FOOTNOTE: A term for the group of session musicians who played on most LA-based hit records in the 1960s, including drummers Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon, guitarist Glen Campbell and others. Note that Carol Kaye, a bass player who was often part of the Wrecking Crew, has claimed to have played on many Monkees hits. However, Ms Kaye's claims are, at best, unreliable, and she is only known to have played on two songs, both album tracks on More Of The Monkees.], who would play on most of Nesmith’s productions from this time. It’s also the closest thing to a group performance on the album, with Tork one of the several acoustic guitar players (as well as possibly providing some backing vocals on a rejected mix) and Dolenz harmonising with Nesmith throughout.
From this early, Nesmith was pushing for the band to have creative involvement in their own records, and so this track more than any others on this album points the way forward to the music the band would be making from their third album onwards.
A Latin-infused country song, with tons of percussion, this is musically not much more sophisticated than Boyce and Hart’s tracks, though much fuller sounding (and with some wonderful guitar work, presumably by James Burton). But lyrically, while still being a basic love song, there’s an awareness of language that is mostly absent from the Boyce/Hart material.
Nesmith’s lyrics are often slightly archaic in their word choices, and the tumbling Dylanesque phrases here (“So take my hand, I’ll start my journey, free from all the helpless worry, that besets a man when he’s alone”) are a joy. And the combination of Nesmith and Dolenz’s vocals, while all too rare, is by far the best vocal blend the band had.
Easily the highlight of the album.
Take A Giant Step
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
The first of Goffin and King’s several attempts at cod-psychedelia for the Monkees, this works about as well as you’d expect two Brill Building songwriters attempting to be down with the kids by inviting you to “take a giant step outside your mind” to work.
That said, there are points of interest – there’s some nice pseudo-Indian oboe playing (by Bob Cooper), and the melody is as strong as all King’s work, especially the “It’s time you learned to live again at last” over descending chords, which is reminiscent of much of her best work.
But the whole thing sounds like it was written and recorded by people who’d heard about psychedelia and not understood it, but thought “well, if this is what the kids are listening to…”
Last Train To Clarksville
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Recorded toward the end of the sessions for this album, this became the Monkees’ first single and first number one. Based roughly around the structure of the Beatles’ Paperback Writer, which like this stays on G7 for the whole verse before switching briefly to C7 in the chorus, this was inspired by hearing only the tag of that song and thinking that McCartney was singing “take the last train”.
The almost-moronic guitar riff (based around an open G chord) was inspired by Day Tripper, but when combined with the train rhythm and the obsession on a single chord sounds almost like Smokestack Lightning, if Smokestack Lightning had been recorded by LA pop musicians rather than Chicago blues ones.
Of all the Boyce/Hart tracks on this album, this one is far and away the best-thought-out, both lyrically (actually having a story to it, with a very mildly anti-war sentiment) and musically – it’s simplistic, but in all the right ways, the product of people who’ve been listening to every record on the radio and stripped all of them down to their most basic essentials, then rebuilt them into a pop masterpiece.
I may occasionally seem a little harsh on Boyce and Hart in this book, and it’s true that some of their work was sub-par, but that’s because they were producing such a lot of music in such a small amount of time. When they were on form, as they were here, they were as good as anyone.
This Just Doesn’t Seem To Be My Day
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and Jack Keller
Three decent musical ideas (a rewrite of I’ve Just Seen A Face, a pesudo-Indian instrumental break, and a ‘cello-led baroque middle eight) jammed together with no real thought as to how they’d work together. Combined with a poor, sloppily double-tracked vocal from Jones, the end result is less than the sum of its parts.
Let’s Dance On
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and Jack Keller
A simple dance track based on the Twist and Shout riff, but also taking elements from two other songs that used the same chord sequence, Hang On Sloopy and Little Latin Lupe Lou, this is generic garage band filler of the sort that was being churned out by the ton in 1965 and 66.
I’ll Be True To You
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Russ Titelman
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and Jack Keller
A cover of a vapid ballad that had been a British hit for the Hollies the year earlier under the name Yes I Will, presumably chosen because Jones, like the Hollies, was from Manchester, this is a terrible song performed terribly. Jones sings the song consistently flat, and in a weird stage-school accent with strangely mangled vowels.
The lowest point is when Jones recites the lyrics of one verse, rather than singing them, letting you – yes you, teenage American girl in your bedroom – know that he will be true to you and only you.
Horrible.
Sweet Young Thing
Writers: Michael Nesmith, Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz (backing vocals), Peter Tork (guitar and backing vocals)
Producer: Michael Nesmith
A bizarre and rather brilliantly eccentric production, the distorted-guitar-and-country-fiddle combination here is eerily premonitory of the similar sound the Velvet Underground would get with John Cale’s viola a few years later. Almost exhausting to listen to, with the bass and drums pummeling the listener into submission, and Nesmith sounding audibly out of breath by the end of the track, this is another highlight from Nesmith.
This was apparently written at Don Kirshner’s insistence, Kirshner arguing that if Nesmith was going to insist on writing he should try to collaborate with more commercial songwriters. Nesmith apparently disliked the experience of collaborating with Goffin and King intensely, and the result is almost wilfully uncommercial.
Gonna Buy Me A Dog
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
A terrible song made into a terrible “comedy” track, as an attempt to create a Ringo-style song for the album. Absolutely no redeeming features at all.
Strangely, Nesmith also produced a backing track for this song with his normal Wrecking Crew musicians (available as a bonus track on The Monkees) which has a slightly more bluesy feel.It still wouldn’t set the musical world alight, though.
Bonus Tracks
I Don’t Think You Know Me
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith/Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: none
Producer: Michael Nesmith
A song that the band tried recording on several occasions, this rather preachy Goffin/King song (“If you think my goals could be so trivial and small/I don’t think you know me at all”) has been released in three versions. The deluxe edition of The Monkees contains versions with Nesmith and Dolenz taking lead, singing over the same backing track, while More Of The Monkees has a version with Tork on lead as a bonus.
While it was never released at the time, this has become a staple of Monkees reunion tours, with Tork singing lead. It has some nice moments (the Nowhere Man-esque ‘la la la’ break) but has neither the power of Nesmith’s songs nor the catchiness of the better Boyce/Hart tracks.
So Goes Love
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (guitar)
Producer: Michael Nesmith
A vaguely Latin-infused track with a lovely, jazzy arrangement, this has been released in two versions (on Missing Links and on The Monkees deluxe edition) which sound like the same performance but run at different speeds/keys. The faster version (on Missing Links) is definitely preferable.
Jones does a very creditable job on the verses, where he’s comfortably within his range, but on the middle eight he’s audibly straining at points.
(I Prithee) Do Not Ask For Love
Writer: Michael Murphey
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (guitar)
Producer: Michael Nesmith
Another song that was attempted by the band multiple times, this was recorded with Davy on lead over a harpsichord-based backing track (the version on The Monkees Deluxe edition), with Micky on lead over the same backing track (available as a bonus track on More Of The Monkees), with Peter over slow, heavily-reverbed electric guitar (on The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees deluxe edition) and finally with Peter over a sitar-based track (on the 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV special).
My own favourite version is the reverbed version with Tork on vocals, but every version of this pseudo-Elizabethean ballad by Nesmith’s friend Michael Martin Murphy is simply stunning.
Kellogg’s Jingle
Writers: Unknown (Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart ?)
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
Producers: Unknown (Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart ?)
A tiny snippet, presumably a Boyce and Hart production, used to introduce the TV show. Apparently Kellogg’s cereals are “K-E-double-L-O-double-good Kellogg’s best for you!”
So now you know.
All The King’s Horses
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones (backing vocals)
Producer: Michael Nesmith
An early Nesmith song, originally recorded with his imaginatively-named trio Mike, John & Bill, this shows little sign of his later songwriting talent, but is still catchy enough that it’s surprising it was not placed on the album, especially since it’s apparently the only track on the entire CD to feature all four Monkees (though Jones is inaudible).
Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun To Care)
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
Producer: Michael Nesmith
And here we have Nesmith’s first ever songwriting masterpiece. A gentle, beautiful country song, with the chorus line “I’ve known you for a long time but I’ve just begun to care”, Nesmith would record this three times. The version here is a demo, with John London (Nesmith’s former bandmate in Mike, John & Bill and his stand-in for the TV show) on bass and Nesmith on guitar.
Nesmith would re-record this with a full band in 1969 (that version is on Missing Links vol 3) and then again with the First National Band on his third solo album, Nevada Fighter. All these versions are wonderful, but this early version is possibly the best. The line “I’ve seen you make a look of love from just an icy stare” is still possibly the best line in any Monkees song.
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