When Beatlemania was sweeping the world in the 1960s, some American TV producers decided to create their own version of the Beatles. Thus, the Monkees were born. Soon, the first band created for TV proved themselves to be quite talented in their own right, and they had more success than the show's creators could have ever guessed. However, as with so many other bands who found overnight success, the Monkees have been through a lot of tragedy as well. From the decisions that lost them some fans to the sad deaths of two band members, let's take a look at the tragic real-life story of the Monkees.
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00:00The Monkees didn't do too badly for themselves, given that they were created as a TV sitcom
00:04response to The Beatles.
00:05But The Monkees haven't always been blessed with good fortune, despite their celebrity.
00:10Here's the tragic real-life story of The Monkees.
00:12The success of The Beatles' movies A Hard Day's Night and Help inspired a group of TV
00:17producers to do something similar with an American sitcom.
00:20That's how The Monkees were born.
00:22The members didn't come together the way bands traditionally do.
00:25They auditioned and were selected, not especially for their musical talent, but for TV-friendly
00:30qualities like charisma, good looks, and acting skills.
00:33Yet band members Michael Naismith and Peter Tork were accomplished musicians, and Mickey
00:37Dolenz and Davy Jones also had decent musical chops.
00:41The show was conceived like any sitcom.
00:43The actors would play characters, and the music was to be strictly pre-recorded, with
00:47the band only providing vocals.
00:49After the band released its first single and played a few shows, it became clear that they
00:53were more than just actors.
00:55Even so, The Monkees were never able to shake their less-than-iconic origin story.
00:59They became fairly universally known as The Prefab Four, a play on The Beatles' nickname
01:04The Fab Four.
01:05In January 1967, Peter Tork and Michael Naismith were upset when they listened to their second
01:10album, More of the Monkees, and discovered that it was nothing but recycled music from
01:14the show.
01:15According to AllMusic, the group finally decided to take a stand, demanding creative control.
01:20The Monkees were enough of a sensation that the producers couldn't just fire them and
01:24replace them with more agreeable performers.
01:26So they capitulated, fired the show's music coordinator, and The Monkees finally became
01:31the real band that critics had for so long accused them of not being.
01:35Creative freedom also meant freedom to disagree, and the band's autonomy also ended up showcasing
01:40creative differences.
01:42Their third and fourth albums were commercial and artistic successes, but the fifth, The
01:46Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees, was starting to feel a little disjointed.
01:50Also around that time, the television series was canceled.
01:53The band wasn't happy with the sitcom format and thought it should be more of a variety
01:57show.
01:58The network, in turn, decided to just ax the whole thing.
02:01Success in music depends a lot on the preferences of your audience.
02:05Success in movies depends on other factors, such as screenwriting, plot, and making enough
02:09sense to avoid turning off your fanbase.
02:11The Monkees' 1968 feature film, Head, failed on pretty much all of those points.
02:16According to Night Flight, Jack Nicholson wrote the screenplay, but even that didn't
02:20do much to recommend it, because Nicholson was a B-movie actor no one had ever heard
02:24of at the time.
02:25The band brainstormed the film while high at a party.
02:28Then Nicholson strung the ideas together into a screenplay while on LSD.
02:32The finished movie was a weird, plotless, disjointed commentary on everything from consumerism
02:38to media deception to police brutality to the exploitation of tragedy.
02:42It was also a self-deprecating jab at The Monkees themselves.
02:46It was poorly advertised, audiences that did see it were confused, and it was a flop.
02:50Of course, Head is now a cult favorite and is mostly well-liked by modern critics, but
02:55it was both the beginning and end of The Monkees' film career.
02:58Peter Tork
02:59Peter Tork seemed especially deflated by the failure of Head.
03:02In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, he said,
03:04"[The simile of a rock in the water is too mild for how badly that movie did.]
03:08Tork soon left the band.
03:10The three remaining members stuck it out for another couple albums, but failed to generate
03:14any new hits."
03:15According to AllMusic, toward the end of 1969, Naismith called it quits, too.
03:20He'd already released a solo album and wanted to go it alone.
03:23Jones and Dolenz recorded a final album, but the two-man version of The Monkees was not
03:27what the band had once been.
03:29The band officially broke up after that 1970 album.
03:32The Monkees ended not with a bang, but a fizzle.
03:35"...Peter quit first, Mike quit second.
03:39Davey and I just kept going until nobody offered us any more money."
03:44After The Monkees broke up, Peter Tork formed a band called Release, which ironically dissolved
03:48before it was able to release a single record.
03:51He also attempted to start a production company, but No Trouble reported that enterprise also
03:55went nowhere.
03:56Tork struggled throughout the 1970s.
03:58His money ran out, he was forced to rent his home to a friend to avoid foreclosure, and
04:02he ended up moving with his pregnant girlfriend into the basement of David Crosby of Crosby
04:07Stills Nash & Young.
04:08He was also arrested for possession of hashish and had to spend three months in an Oklahoma
04:13penitentiary.
04:14Tork eventually moved away from the music industry altogether.
04:17He took a job teaching high school classes and coaching baseball.
04:20Ultimately, he had difficulty with the structure of the school system and was fired.
04:25Fortunately, Tork was able to turn things around when he quit drinking in the early
04:2880s.
04:29He stopped taking drugs not long after that and was finally able to revitalize his music
04:34career.
04:35But it was a long, hard road to get there.
04:38Most Americans go out of their way to make sure they never, ever have to deal with the
04:41IRS apart from sending them a tax return on April 15th.
04:45But Michael Naismith ended up spending a lot more time with the agency than he wanted.
04:49In his 2017 memoir, he wrote that the disillusion of the Monkees was followed almost immediately
04:54by the dissent of the taxman.
04:56He wrote,
04:57"...the IRS showed up with a huge bill for unpaid taxes and started seizing property.
05:01After his whirlwind rise to fame, he was pretty much left with nothing to show for it."
05:06After the IRS took all his stuff, Naismith's marriage collapsed and he dealt with the emotional
05:10blow in the most toxic way possible.
05:12He had an affair with the wife of a friend.
05:15In his memoir, he lamented that he was basically at a career and personal rock bottom.
05:19"...I had no opportunities as an actor, a player, a singer, a songwriter, or a producer."
05:24It wasn't all bad for Naismith, though.
05:26Not only was he heir to the liquid paper fortune, he literally was the creator of MTV.
05:31Mickey Dolenz also spent a lot of years doing not very much of anything.
05:36For a while, his resume's main selling point was not his success as an actor, which predated
05:40the Monkees by nearly a decade, or his vocal talents.
05:44It was that he was one of the Monkees.
05:46That notoriety earned him some small television roles and a few voice acting credits on cartoons
05:50like Scooby-Doo and Captain Caveman.
05:52At one time, he was neck and neck with Henry Winkler for the role of Fonzie on Happy Days,
05:56but that opportunity also passed him by.
05:59He told Guitar World,
06:00"...I remember when Henry first walked into the interview.
06:03He saw me and said, Aw, crap, Mickey Dolenz is here, I'll never get it.
06:06But I'm so glad he did, because he was a much better Fonz than I would have been."
06:10Dolenz didn't flounder for long.
06:12By 1976, he was headed to the UK to star in a musical, and plans to stay for three months
06:17eventually morphed into a 12-year career as a director and producer.
06:21With the power of MTV and with help from others in their orbit, Dolenz, Jones, and Tork got
06:26together for a 20th Anniversary Monkees reunion tour in 1986 that exploded into an unexpectedly
06:32huge hit.
06:33By the 1990s, the former Monkees were all off doing their own things, but the 30th Anniversary
06:38was approaching.
06:39According to AllMusic, the band got together to talk about the impending anniversary, discovered
06:43they still had some musical chemistry, and recorded a new album.
06:47The 1996 album Justice became the first Monkees record written and produced entirely by Naismith,
06:53Tork, Jones, and Dolenz.
06:55When the band decided to start touring again, all of their creative differences and personal
06:59animosities started to resurface.
07:01Naismith dropped out of the tour early on, and the remaining band members weren't quiet
07:05about how that made them feel.
07:07The remaining three toured again in 2001, but this time it was Tork who abandoned ship,
07:12although Jones and Dolenz said they fired him.
07:14Tork later complained that Jones and Dolenz drank so much on the tour that they became
07:18mean and abusive.
07:19But it wasn't just Tork clashing with Jones and Dolenz.
07:22Evidently, Jones and Dolenz weren't getting along swimmingly, either.
07:25In a 2009 interview, Jones said he
07:27couldn't imagine sharing a stage with Mickey Dolenz ever again.
07:31Ouch.
07:32Things weren't going awesomely for Michael Naismith, either.
07:35In 2010, Naismith's wife left him, and in the middle of all of that emotional turmoil,
07:40he started to go blind.
07:42Naismith wrote in his 2017 memoir Infinite Tuesday, an autobiographical riff,
07:46"...I lost my sight to cataracts and at the same time lost my flexibility to an undiagnosed
07:51condition that crippled me, making it difficult and painful to walk.
07:55I was essentially helpless, a captive in my home."
07:57Fortunately, Naismith's blindness was reversible.
08:01Cataract surgery restored his sight, but his strange, crippling illness was more difficult
08:05to overcome because no one knew what it was.
08:07The illness left him largely unable to use his left hand, and his right foot was useless
08:11enough that he had to drag it when he walked.
08:13The specialists he visited mostly just scratched their heads and offered him pain medication.
08:17The good news is that the illness, whatever it was, eventually went away on its own.
08:21Naismith, a Christian scientist, believes prayer and medication cured him.
08:26The Monkees got together once again in 2011 and went on tour, only without Michael Naismith,
08:31who by then had inherited his liquid paper fortune.
08:33The 45th anniversary tour actually went shockingly well for rockers, clearly past their prime,
08:38though after a summer of traveling around North America, the band members, who were
08:42all well into their 60s, chose not to add more dates to the tour.
08:46Then in February of the following year, Davy Jones died of a heart attack.
08:50Jones' death shocked everyone who knew him.
08:51A business associate told CNN he was a vegetarian and there was not an ounce of fat on the guy.
08:57He lived on the beach in Florida and ran miles every morning.
09:00He couldn't have been in better shape.
09:02That finally was the end of the Monkees as a foursome, but Michael Naismith joined the
09:06remaining two Monkees for a short set of reunion performances, each of which featured a tribute
09:10to their fallen bandmate.
09:12In February 2019, the Monkees took their most recent blow.
09:16Peter Tork finally succumbed to the rare form of head and neck cancer he'd been battling
09:20for a decade.
09:21Tork was first diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma in 2009.
09:25Two years later, he told Rolling Stone that the surgery he'd undergone to remove the cancer
09:29had been a success.
09:30He wrote,
09:31"[My check-ups have been clear ever since.
09:32I'm excruciatingly lucky.
09:34I count my blessings every day."
09:36Cancer doctors will always hesitate to say cancer is cured, and for good reason.
09:40It can come back even years after it's disappeared, and when it does, it's often resistant to
09:45the treatments that took it down the first time.
09:48After Tork's death, the two remaining Monkees posted heartfelt messages in their bandmate's
09:52honor.
09:53Naismith was especially profound.
09:54He wrote,
09:55It's going to be a rough day.
09:56I share with all Monkees fans this change, this loss.
10:00Even so, P.T. will be a part of me forever, and the Monkees will be part of us."