The Monkees are one of the most unique bands in the history of pop music. They were originally just going to be part of a TV show about an imaginary band but the show "The Monkees" became a hit from 1966 to 1968. The actor-musician stars, which consisted of Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones, were part of a unique program that followed the band's attempt to be a rock and roll success. "The Monkees" even won two Emmy Awards in 1967. After the show ended the band got together for reunion albums and tours, but what else is there to know about this beloved television band?
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00:00Hey, hey, it's the Monkees!
00:02For a very brief period back in the late 1960s, wild pop rockers like the Monkees ruled pop
00:08culture.
00:09Despite being made for TV to start out, the Monkees eventually developed into a respected
00:13and quite popular band.
00:15Here's the untold truth of the Monkees.
00:18Some bands start in a garage.
00:19The Monkees started at Raybert Productions.
00:22Run by TV producers Bob Raffelson and Bert Schneider, the company had a deal with Screen
00:27Gems to develop a sitcom about a rock band, inspired by the Madcap Beatles movies Hard
00:32Days Night and Help.
00:34That idea became The Monkees, a show about a group of funny guys who also played music.
00:39NBC was interested, and so Raffelson and Schneider hired Cult Gems Records executive Don Pershner
00:46to oversee the musical aspects of the show.
00:49To find the actual Monkees, Raffelson and Schneider placed an ad in Variety and The
00:53Hollywood Reporter.
00:56Madness, auditions, folk and roll musicians, singers for acting roles in new TV series,
01:03running parts for four insane boys age 17 to 21, want spirited Ben Franks types, have
01:09courage to work, must come down for interview.
01:12Ben Franks was a hip hangout on Hollywood's Sunset Strip, and it set the tone for exactly
01:17the sort of show the producers wanted.
01:20They were channeling the spirit of not just the Beatles, but of massive 60s juggernauts
01:24like the Lovin' Spoonful, who, incidentally, Raffelson and Schneider had approached about
01:29doing the TV show.
01:31They said no, recruiting ads were published, and The Monkees were hired.
01:35The producers eventually auditioned 437 Los Angeles-area actors and musicians, and finally
01:42found the ones they were looking for.
01:44Among the notable names who tried out were folk singer Stephen Stills, Danny Hutton just
01:49before he joined the enormously successful Three Dog Nights, and Paul Williams, who'd
01:54go on to appear in movies like Smokey and the Bandits and write award-winning songs
01:58like the Muppet movies The Rainbow Connection.
02:01And contrary to a famous urban legend, there's one notorious individual who did not almost
02:06make it into The Monkees.
02:08Convicted mass murderer Charles Manson was in prison on a probation violation when auditions
02:13took place in 1965.
02:16Monkey Mickey Dolenz takes credit for starting the rumor, once telling Gilbert Gottfried,
02:20I just made a joke.
02:22Everybody auditioned for The Monkees, Stephen Stills, Paul Williams, and Charlie Manson,
02:26and everybody took it as gospel.
02:29Monkey Masters Bob Raffelson and Bert Schneider found three band members through that extensive
02:33audition process, but everyone knows The Monkees were a four-piece band.
02:38What happened?
02:39The fourth slot was supposed to go to seasoned folk musician Stephen Stills, before he became
02:44the Stills in the iconic trio Crosby, Stills & Nash.
02:48Stills turned down the chance to be a monkey, but he was kind enough to recommend his potential
02:52replacement, Peter Thorkelson, a guy he'd played with in New York who he thought shared
02:57the look the producers were after.
02:59Thorkelson, who adopted the stage name Peter Tork, landed the part of Peter Tork while
03:04also singing and playing bass in the band.
03:07Shortly before his passing in 2019, he explained to Rolling Stone,
03:11"...I was hired to be an actor of a TV show.
03:13The producers did have hopes that something musical would come out of us when they cast
03:17the four of us, but if we couldn't have done the music, they would have been all right
03:21with us just making the TV show."
03:23The Monkees debuted in 1966, joining an old-fashioned television universe that looked pretty much
03:29the same as it had a decade before.
03:32Among the hits of the day were westerns like Bonanza and Daniel Boone, cornball variety
03:36shows like The Red Skelton Show and The Lord of the Twelves Show, and sitcoms targeting
03:41an older, rural crowd, including The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.
03:46And then along came The Monkees, and it was wildly creative and low-key revolutionary.
03:51As opposed to the stodgier competition, The Monkees popped with vivid color and starred
03:56four young men with long hair who wore hippie-type clothes and slacked about in their crash pad
04:01playing rock and roll music, still a frightening and strange concept to the greatest generation.
04:07It represented the growing influence of the counterculture.
04:10Moreover, the show chugged along at a frenetic pace, using quick cuts, asides, actors breaking
04:16character, camera tricks, and standalone proto-music videos at the end of each episode to make
04:22a series that fully embraced and expressed its rock and roll sensibility.
04:26The Monkees may have gotten some grief over the years for not being in charge of their
04:30own music, but it wasn't their fault.
04:33That's how the producers wanted it, and it caused serious, behind-the-scenes tension
04:37over the years.
04:38Not only that, but showrunners also prevented them from having a say in the television series
04:43they starred in.
04:44When each individual monkey wasn't needed on set, they were told to report to a black-walled
04:49room.
04:50There, they could do whatever they want as long as they headed back to the soundstage
04:54when their assigned call light started blinking.
04:57The Monkees put those experiences into art.
05:00In 1968, they were largely left to their own devices to make an experimental movie called
05:05Head.
05:06It was full of surrealism, symbolism, and general wackiness, and it was written with
05:11the help of the most unlikely screenwriter.
05:14Here's Johnny!
05:16Yes, that Jack Nicholson.
05:18The movie resulting from the partnership includes so many bizarre sequences that fans weren't
05:23really sure what was going on, and some took it as a shockingly pro-Vietnam stance.
05:29But according to what Dolenz told Mojo, it wasn't about that at all.
05:33It was a metaphor for the Monkees.
05:35We used to talk about being in a black box all the time, when we were on tour especially,
05:40but even being on the TV set, we couldn't leave a room or hotel.
05:45The Monkees may have been designed as a corporate endeavor, but producers left writers with
05:50anti-war, hippie-leaning sentiments in charge of the Monkey House.
05:55Writers of both The Monkees and the band's songs expressed an anti-Vietnam War sentiment
05:59quite a few times, which is remarkable considering the aggressive censorship of network television
06:05in the late 1960s.
06:07CBS fired the hosts of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for too much anti-war content,
06:12yet the Monkees got away with it.
06:13How?
06:14Some smoke and mirrors.
06:16According to a show writer who spoke to academic Dr. Roseanne Welch,
06:19"...the network executives didn't understand what we were saying, so we got away with a
06:24lot."
06:25Take the episode Monkey Mother, which features the band playing with dominoes.
06:29Davey asks Peter what he calls the game, and his response, Southeast Asia, is a cleverly
06:34wry send-up of the domino theory, the Cold War principle that if communism were to take
06:38hold in one country in the region, the rest would fall like dominoes.
06:42And then there's Last Train to Clarksville, the Monkees' hit frequently replayed on the
06:46series.
06:47It's subtly about a young man drafted into the army and he doesn't want to go.
06:51In fact, he wonders if he's ever coming home.
06:54Monkey songwriter Bobby Hart eventually said of the song, and others,
06:58"...we couldn't be too direct.
07:00We couldn't really make a protest song out of it.
07:03We kind of snuck it in."
07:05The Monkees made a lot of catchy, fun songs that millions of people enjoyed.
07:09Their style?
07:10Straightforward, jangly pop rock with the flavor of British bands like The Beatles and
07:14Herman's Herbits.
07:15Exhibited on Valerie, A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, Daydream Believer, and the theme
07:20song from The Monkees, which has to be the biggest banger of a sitcom opener ever.
07:24For all their charm, the Monkees aren't regarded as a particularly innovative band.
07:28"...Boy, it's not fair.
07:30We're as bad as any other group in town."
07:32"...Right, but all those other groups got invitations, they don't audition."
07:35"...Yeah, except us."
07:37Or were they?
07:39In 1967, when the band's handlers finally allowed the members to write their own stuff,
07:43the Monkees released Headquarters, which includes a cut called Zilch.
07:47A studio experiment, it involves each Monkee saying nonsensical phrases that were repeated
07:52and layered.
07:53Peter Tork's line, "'Mr. Dabalina, Mr. Bob Dabalina," was actually picked out of the
07:58real world when he heard it being repeated at an airport.
08:01Non-singing vocals to a rhythmic effect, Zilch is basically a prehistoric rap song.
08:08Even the hip-hop luminary Dell the Funky Homo Sapien thought so, sampling Tork's line for
08:12his 1991 hit, "'Mr. Dabalina.'"
08:16By early 1969, the Monkees began to unravel.
08:20Peter Tork left the band, spending $400,000 to buy out the last four years of his contract.
08:26Michael Nesmith departed in April 1970, and later that year, Jones and Dolenz recorded
08:31the Monkees' final tracks.
08:33For a while, at least.
08:35Each Monkee then pursued their own path.
08:37Some were more successful than others.
08:39Nesmith became the only Monkee with a solo hit after his country rock group First National
08:44Band scored a No. 21 hit with the single Joanne.
08:47He was also an early adopter of music videos, making them for his own projects and creating
08:52the compilation show Pop Clips, which aired on Nickelodeon in 1980.
08:57Parent company Warner Cable thought a 24-hour cable channel that aired just videos might
09:01be a good idea and created MTV, which they asked Nesmith to help develop.
09:07Teen idol-looking Davy Jones took the predictable teen idol route.
09:11Rainie Jane hit the lower reachers of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, but most famously
09:17he was immortalized on an episode of The Brady Bunch in which he sings girl and meets
09:21Marsha Brady, president of the Davy Jones fan club.
09:25He died in 2012 after suffering a massive heart attack.
09:29As for Mickey Dolenz?
09:30The child star of TV's Circus Boy got back into acting and has done a ton of voiceover
09:35work for cartoons like Batman the Animated Series, The Tick, and The Scooby-Doo Show.
09:40He was a close second choice to play Fonzie on Happy Days, but was ultimately deemed too
09:45tall for the role.
09:47In 1985, concert promoter David Fischhoff approached Peter Tork about reuniting the
09:52Monkees for a 20th anniversary tour.
09:55Together, Fischhoff and Tork worked over the rest of the band to join up.
09:59It took a few attempts to convince Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz, while Michael Nesmith was
10:04even harder to convince.
10:06He was busy producing movies and TV shows with his company, Pacific Arts Corporation,
10:11and agreed to join when he thought the tour would consist of 10 to 20 dates.
10:15He later went public with his regrets, backing out when those 20 dates became 200.
10:21What exploded the tour from a modest, nostalgic affair into one of the most massive musical
10:26undertakings of the mid-'80s?
10:28MTV.
10:29In early 1986, the network aired every episode of The Monkees in the form of a weekend marathon.
10:36MTV executive Tom Freston told Rolling Stone,
10:38"...we've never received such a volume of mail.
10:41We were dumbfounded by the whole thing."
10:43Suddenly, the 20-year-old show was the biggest thing among kids who weren't alive when it
10:48first aired.
10:50Almost every date on the Monkees reunion tour sold out, and the newly recorded single that
10:55was then This Is Now hit the top 20.
10:58In 1986, the Monkees and MTV enjoyed a mutually agreeable relationship.
11:03The reruns brought huge ratings to the channel, and the exposure from MTV made The Monkees'
11:08reunion tour the can't-miss event of the year.
11:11Scarcely a year later, things fell apart.
11:15After the success of That Was Then, This Is Now, The Monkees reconvened without Michael
11:19Nesmith.
11:20The product was the new album, Cool It!, with the single Heart & Soul.
11:24But fans had a hard time finding the video, as MTV refused to air it.
11:29According to Monkey Business fanzine, the Monkees were slated to appear on an MTV Super
11:34Bowl special in January 1987, but there was a miscommunication.
11:39The band had no intention of playing the show because they had been booked for another engagement.
11:44The executive in charge of the show had only been with the network for a couple of months
11:47and didn't understand the unique and fond symbiosis between band and network, so he
11:52unceremoniously retaliated by banning Heart & Soul.
11:57It's no coincidence that with the utter lack of promotion from The Monkees' previous champion,
12:01Heart & Soul faltered at number 87 on the singles chart, and sadly, Cool It! stalled
12:06at number 72 on the album chart.