The synergy between The Monkees TV show and their albums/singles was an unstoppable commercial tsunami leveling anything in its way, and sometimes that even included the mighty Beatles. Yet for The Monkees themselves — Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork — the road to world domination, a hot TV series, two multi-million selling albums (The Monkees and More of The Monkees) and a bushel of hit singles, left them deeply unsatisfied as musical artists, pre-fab manufactured entities working for “the man.” Wrestling back control of their recording career, with producer Chip Douglas onboard, The Monkees recorded their third album, Headquarters, this time without the help of The Wrecking Crew or music-biz exec Don Kirshner force feeding them outside material. On Headquarters, the band are truly born as a musical outfit, playing most of the instruments and penning a majority of the material. The album was a spectacular artistic and commercial triumph, and 56 years later, it is still regarded by many Monkees fans as the group’s best album. Out now is a new The Monkees Headquarters Super Deluxe Edition 4-CD box set featuring a new remix of the 1967 album, plus a dizzying array of previously unreleased material, demos, alternate takes and instrumentals. Meanwhile, in April, Dolenz heads out on a U.S. tour, “The Monkees Celebrated by Micky Dolenz” where he will be performing much of the Headquarters album. Join us for a conversation with Micky Dolenz for the back story behind Headquarters.
GOLDMINE: What led The Monkees to take creative control on your third record, Headquarters?
MICKY DOLENZ: Well, right from the get-go, Mike Nesmith was very frustrated as singer-songwriter. He’d been promised when they were casting him that he would have the chance to record his own material. He approached it in that manner and would have said, “Well, if I want to I’m going to do this. I want to be able to record my songs and sing” and they would have said, “Oh yeah, absolutely,” and I think the producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, were probably honest with that. Mike told me these stories over the years that he was very frustrated.
He brought in the song called “Different Drum,” which was recorded later by Linda Ronstadt [and the The Stone Poneys] and became a smash hit. He sang it for them. He’d written that even before The Monkees; that was one of his earliest songwriting things. And he said, “I want to do this one,” and this is after show got going. And so there would have been other people involved like Don Kirshner and the publisher ... the producers of the TV show, Bob and Bert, they were television producers. But then Screen Gems had this publishing arm and they made a deal with RCA Victor, so there would have been other musical bigwigs involved. And Mike said that he. So that’s the short story. It was Nez driving the train and getting us all on board. Mainly it would have been me and Peter. David, I’m not sure if he had that much vested interest in it. But without that and without Nesmith fighting for it, we wouldn’t have the album.
