The Monkees wanted to be real boys.

Or, at least, some of them did. Peter Tork had joined the band in the belief that he would actually be joining a band — a group of people who would play music together. He’d found that he was relegated to the occasional comedy vocal for the most part, although Michael Nesmith did, when he was producing tracks for the band, allow Tork to be one of several rhythm guitar players on the records. Peter Tork wanted to be a real musician.

Nesmith was less bothered about playing instruments on the records than Tork was, although he would have preferred to be playing on the records than not. What Nesmith wanted was control — other than the couple of songs per album he was allowed to write and produce (but not allowed to play on), he had no artistic input into the records that were going out with his name and face on them. He felt like a fraud, and thought the band’s second album More of the Monkees, which had been released without the band’s knowledge, was the worst album ever made, and he wasn’t shy about telling anyone, even journalists, his views. Michael Nesmith wanted to be a real artist.

Micky Dolenz, meanwhile, was less bothered. He was an actor first and foremost, even though he was the lead vocalist on the band’s most memorable songs. But he wanted to support his colleagues, and he was also fascinated by the idea that something created as a fictional band in a sitcom could become a real, working band — to use an analogy Dolenz has used many times since, he thought it was as if Leonard Nimoy had actually gone into space. Micky Dolenz wanted to be a real Vulcan.

The problem was that the people in control of the Monkees’ music had other ideas. Don Kirshner, the music publisher whose job was to commission songwriters and producers to make the Monkees’ records, had very strong ideas about what could and couldn’t be a hit, and Peter Tork (a banjo-playing folkie with pitching problems) and Michael Nesmith (a country singer who wrote wilfully abstruse psychedelic hillbilly music) were not, to his mind, people who should be allowed anywhere near a recording studio. Their job, in Kirshner’s view, was to mime the instrumental parts while Micky or Davy sang, and the song should be one by Neil Sedaka or Carole Bayer Sager or someone equally reliable.

The tensions between the band and Kirshner increased to the point where, in a meeting between the band, Kirshner, and record-label head Herb Moelis, who sided with Kirshner, Nesmith punched his hand through a wall and said to Moelis “that could have been your face, motherfucker”.

Surprisingly, this negotiating tactic worked, and the band were allowed to go into the studio and record for themselves. Nesmith’s friend Chip Douglas, who had quit the Turtles almost immediately after arranging Happy Together for them, became their producer, and with Tork on harpsichord, Nesmith on guitar, Dolenz on drums, Davy Jones on tambourine, and Nesmith’s friend John London on bass, they recorded two songs — All Of Your Toys, by another friend of Nesmith, Bill Martin, which was earmarked as a potential single, and Nesmith’s The Girl I Knew Somewhere, a wonderful swamp-baroque-pop track somewhere halfway between the Sir Douglas Quintet and The Left Banke.

The agreement with Don Kirshner was that the band would be allowed to play on at least one side of every single they released. Kirshner, however, had other plans, and so while the other three Monkees holidayed at the beginning of February 1967, Davy Jones flew to New York, where he recorded lead vocals on several tracks produced by Jeff Barry.

Kirshner had promised Barry and songwriter Neil Diamond that if I’m A Believer, their previous contribution to the Monkees, went to number one, they would have the follow-up single. It did, and so Jones, who unlike the others was perfectly happy with Kirshner and just saw himself as an actor, went into the studio and recorded vocals for six songs, of which the obvious hit was Diamond’s Latin-flavoured A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, a song whose conciliatory message (“I’m a little bit wrong/you’re a little bit right”) many of the people involved in the Monkees project at that point could have done well to listen to.

The song was clearly going to be a massive hit — not only was it written by Neil Diamond (then just on the verge of his later massive stardom, but already the writer of the Monkees’ previous hit) but it was the first single to feature Davy Jones, who had quickly become the band’s heartthrob, on vocals.

In fact, it was going to feature Jones on both sides, as Kirshner had no intention of letting the music that the band had recorded on their own ever see the light of day. Kirshner chose Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich’s song She Hangs Out as the B-side, and had picture covers featuring both titles printed up.

Without the band’s knowledge, the single was released to DJs (and at least a few copies apparently made it to shops in Canada) with the label saying ‘”My Favorite Monkee” Davy Jones Sings’. The Monkees’ third massive hit would have even less of their involvement than the second, where the band were at least allowed to do all the vocal parts.

This not unreasonably incensed the band members, and so the single was withdrawn, and reissued with The Girl I Knew Somewhere on the B-side. Kirshner and his employees may have made the Monkees stars, but his puppets no longer needed anyone pulling their strings. Don Kirshner’s involvement with the Monkees project was at an end.

A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You

Composer: Neil Diamond

Line-up: Davy Jones (vocals), Neil Diamond (backing vocals), Al Gorgoni, Don Thomas, & Hugh McCracken (guitars), Lou Mauro (bass), Artie Butler & Stan Free (keyboards), Herb Lovelle (drums), Tom Cerone (tambourine), unknown handclaps and additional backing vocals

Original release: A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You/She Hangs Out, The Monkees, Colgems 66-1003

Currently available on: Music Box Rhino CD, plus innumerable compilations.