The Monkees: Caught In A False Image

By Lise Lyng Falkenberg

Remember the Monkees? Of course you do! In the sixties Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork starred in the famous TV series about a pop group and eventually turned into a pop group themselves, thereby becoming the first boy band in the world. The Monkees made a massive impact on the entertainment industry and in 2011 they celebrated their 45th anniversary.

This book started out as an interview with Peter Tork and developed into a complete biography on the Monkees. The main focus is placed on the Monkees' visual works, especially the TV show, the feature film "HEAD" and the TV special "33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee", which are all submitted to thorough analyses. Furthermore the book includes an annotated discography, accounts of the many concert tours as well as an annotated listing of each episode of the show and a biography for further reading.

"The Monkees - caught in a false image" was first published in 2001 as a paper book, but is now available as an ebook in this fully updated version, telling the Monkees' story from the beginning in August 1965 to the tragic death of Davy Jones in February 2012.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lise Lyng Falkenberg
• Release date: Sep 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476422336

Lise Lyng Falkenberg

Lise Lyng Falkenberg is a Danish author of mostly fiction and biographies. Since her debut in 1983 a dozen of her novels and biographies have been published in both Danish and English along with hundreds of short stories, poems, essays, articles and reviews.Lise Lyng Falkenberg is a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and holds a second Ph.D. degree in Cultural Studies as well as a B.A. in Semiotics. She has worked for Odense University Library and University of Southern Denmark as a researcher and parallel to her academic career, she took on jobs as a model, graphic artist, musician, carny, journalist, scriptwriter, photographer and director of documentaries and rock videos. In 2005 she decided to put her Danish writing career behind her in order to concentrate on the UK, both as a traditionally published author and an independent ebook author.Lise Lyng Falkenberg is an expert on Sir J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and the official biographer of Don Powell, drummer of British rock band Slade.

Book preview

The Monkees

- caught in a false image

by

Lise Lyng Falkenberg

*****

Copyright 2012 Lise Lyng Falkenberg

Smashwords edition

Smashwords edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Foreword

In 2001, The Monkees - caught in a false image was first published. Back then as a paper book and through a small Danish publisher named Underskoven. The book could only be purchased through the publishers and a British online bookshop named musicbooksrus.co.uk.

Since then the ebook revolution has happened and as the paper book had sold out its first edition anyway, I thought it about time to make an updated version for the ebook market. This decision I made last year - ten years after the book was first released - and little did I know at the time, that one of the updates was going to be about the sudden and unexpected death of Davy Jones. Like the rest of the world, I was shocked and devastated when learning about his passing away and although it was not at first intended as such, I'd like to look upon this updated ebook version as my tribute to a great entertainer who enriched the lives of so many people, both as a Monkee and as a solo artist. I am very happy that he got to read - and liked! - the original paperversion of this biography.

Rest in peace, Davy. You are sorely missed.

Lise Lyng Falkenberg, September, 2012.

The beginning

In August 1965 you could read the following advertisement in the Daily Variety:

MADNESS!!

AUDITIONS

Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers

for acting roles in new TV series.

Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21.

Want spirited Ben Frank's-types.

Have courage to work.

Must come down for interview.

Hidden within the ad were several in-jokes, as Ben Frank's was a late night restaurant on Sunset Strip where beatniks hung out and dropped drugs. Must come down was a reference to being high. Behind the ad was Raybert Productions, formed by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider.

Bob Rafelson, born on February 21st 1933, had among other things been a reader and story editor for the TV theatre-series Play Of The Week and in 1962 he created the Hootenanny series for ABC Television and was hired by Universal Pictures as associate producer for The Wackiest Ship In The Army, Channing and The Greatest Show On Earth. In the late 1950s Bob Rafelson had met with Bert Schneider in New York and by 1964 they got together again in Los Angeles. Bob Rafelson had just been fired from Universal Pictures, and Bert Schneider - who was the son of Abraham Schneider, president of Columbia Pictures - was the financial vice-president of Screen Gems Television. Together Bob Rafelson and Bert Scneider had formed Raybert Productions, an independent enterprise for experimental movie projects. They decided to begin on a small scale by making a TV-series, which Bob Rafelson had written as a pilot for Universal Pictures in the early sixties. It was a situation comedy series about a young rock band and it was based on Rafelson's own experiences as a drummer in Mexico. Rafelson and Schneider took their concept to Jackie Cooper, who was the senior executive of Screen Gems. Screen Gems was the television arm of Columbia Pictures and Cooper gave $225,000 for the production of Rafelson's and Schneider's pilot episode of the series.

The fact that Raybert Productions wanted to make a series for young people about young people was unique for its time as TV was made for either children or adults because the term teenager wasn't acknowledged then. That the series was to be about a rock group was just as unique as the Hollywood TV-world regarded rockmusicians as being a minority. But Rafelson and Schneider wanted to make a TV-series about them, a different series and luckily they were surrounded by kindred spirits, so director Paul Mazursky, scriptwriter Larry Tucker, director Jim Frawley and cameraman Mike Elliot offered their support to the new project from Raybert Productions.

Although the executives at Screen Gems wanted to use an established band for the series and suggested the Dave Clark Five, Bert Schneider had the idea to let amateurs play the parts in the TV-series in order to get an unspoiled naturalness in the acting. Raybert Productions therefore placed the ad in Daily Variety and soon 437 young men submitted applications, among them songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, musicians Stephen Stills, Danny Hutton and Bill Chadwick, former childstar Micky Dolenz, singers/songwriters Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson and Michael Nesmith, writer Rodney Bingenheim, stage musical star David Jones and according to myth even Charles Manson, but this is pure myth as Manson was in jail at that time.

Originally Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart had been among the favourites for the series, but their publisher Don Kirshner opposed this as they were still under contract with Screen Gems Music. Instead Lester Sill, Screen Gem's vicepresident on the East Coast, arranged for the pair to be given initial musical production rights for the series. This was a dissapointment to Stephen Stills, who'd wished to write songs for the show instead of acting in it. However, Stephen Stills had caught the attention of Raybert Productions because of his musical ability and his looks, so when asked if he knew somebody who looked like him, he immediately thought of his buddy (and look-alike) musician Peter Tork, who Still would eventually convince to go down for an interview.

The auditions for the new TV-series began in September 1965 at both Lester Sill's Colpix Records office in Los Angeles and Raybert's office on Sound Stage 7 at Screen Gems Columbia studios. After the preliminary interviews, thirty young men remained, and they were now subjected to a series of bizarre mind games and interviews in order to sort out the best qualified. At one audition Micky Dolenz found Schneider and Rafelson balancing a pile of bottles, cups and glasses on a desk. Dolenz grabbed a cup, put it on top of the stack and claimed checkmate. At his audition Peter Tork found Schneider and Rafelson juggling balls. Tork observed this in silence with Harpo Marx-like expressions. When David Jones was confronted with a series of impossible questions such as where would you go for a hamburger on Mars?, he turned the table on his interviewers by tossing questions at them. Michael Nesmith was more forthright. He showed up wearing a green wool hat, which he used to keep his hair out of his eyes when riding a motor bike, and demanded to know what it was all about. He also drew a diagonal line through the section of his application inquiring about his previous experience and wrote the word Life - a reference to the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Nesmith wasn't considered to have much chance at getting a part in the series, partly because he was married and had a child, partly because he had sore tonsils which sometimes reduced his voice to a whisper.

When the bizarre interviews were over, the young men had to go through personality tests. The tests consisted of filmed conversations with an intimidating off-camera inquisitor. After this ordeal, Raybert Productions was left with eight finalists. Their screen tests were now viewed by a random gathering of mixed kids aged six to eighteen at Audience Studies Inc., a Screen Gems market research subsidiary. Four of the finalists were then dismissed, among them Danny Hutton, who later became the leader of Three Dog Night, and Bill Chadwick, who stayed in the project as stand-in, roadie, sound mixer and songwriter.

The four remainders in October 1965 were David (now called Davy) Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael (now called Mike) Nesmith. Ironically only one of them had joined the project because of Raybert's ad. Davy Jones had been under contract with Screen Gems since 1963, so it was presumed the he'd apply for the job, even though he didn't really want to. Also Peter Tork had been reluctant to apply. When Stephen Stills phoned him regarding the ad in Daily Variety, Tork simply hung up on him. It wasn't until Stills phoned him again and told him to get his butt down there that Tork finally agreed to go for the interview. Micky Dolenz, who'd played the leading part in the TV-series Circus Boy, heard about the ad through his agent, but didn't believe that anything would come of it, and Mike Nesmith, who was the one who'd seen the ad, didn't believe anything would come of it, either. Actually he wasn't too keen on applying, but friends talked him into it as he had a family to support.

These four more or less reluctant now had to play a rock band, but what was the band to be called? Rafelson and Schneider had many ideas. Originally the band was to be called The Inevitables. This was changed to The Turtles, changed again to The Creeps and finally Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker came up with The Monkees, misspelt in the same way as the Byrds and the Beatles. The Monkees will of course always be inextricably linked with the Beatles as most people see the Monkees as a cheap imitation of the Beatles. Even though the idea for the Monkees came into existence before the Beatles-era and even though it was based on Rafelson's own experiences as a musician, the episodes of the TV-series were indebted to Richard Lester's Beatles-movies. Furthermore the casting of the four Monkees was hardly a coincidence. Davy Jones was cute like the young Paul McCartney, Micky Dolenz had the happy-go-lucky nature of Ringo Starr, Mike Nesmith was inconstant and arrongant like John Lennon and Peter Tork turned out to be inward and spiritual like George Harrison. Because of what seemed to be an imitation of the Beatles, it didn't take long before the Monkees got their nickname. Where the Beatles were The Fab Four, the Monkees became The Prefab Four. But the Monkees themselves always spoke about the Beatles with great admiration, an admiration that later turned out to be mutual. After all, both the Beatles and the Monkees knew that they couldn't compare, because the Beatles was a rock band and the Monkees was a TV-series. As Micky Dolenz said in 1987 in the radio-series Ticket to Ride, the Monkees were the Marx Brothers of Music and to compare them with the Beatles was chalk and cheese.

Raybert Productions had used very arduous casting techniques when selecting the Monkees, but one thing hadn't been taken into account: would they get along? Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones had met once before in a studio-canteen as they had both worked for the same TV-station and Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork knew each other vaguely from a club in Los Angeles, but none of them were close and there seemed to be no basis for real familiarity or friendship among them. They came from very different backgrounds and had absolutely no common taste in anything.

A gloomy atmosphere surrounded the four when they were sent to Delmar to film the pilot episode and it was only by chance that this mood changed. On the way to Delmar, Davy Jones happened to watch Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork eat a salad and this made him call them pigs. Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork became very crestfallen, so to get out of the awkward situation Davy Jones grabbed a big fistful of his own chopped salad, exclaimed, Now this is how one eats a salad and smashed it in his face. That cracked up the others and the ice was broken.

When the pilot had been made, it was sent to Audience Studies Inc. to be screened before a sample audience. Raybert was expecting a rating of 700, which was actually not too good, but it scored barely 600, which was a disaster. Rafelson and Schneider now learned that the pilot was too complex for young America, so they took 48 hours to re-edit it on a film editing deck in one of their living rooms. It was then sent back to Audience Studies Inc., where it scored 1.000, which was a huge succes. The very same day Screen Gems placed the show with NBC and within seventy-two hours the sponsors were secured. The show was due to begin in September 1966.

When all this was over and done with, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were given small salary advances. Davy Jones was already under a retainer contract, so he was payed a larger amount of money. After this they all had to sign a 24 page long contract which meant a flat $450 a week and furthermore it subjected to so many clauses that it later ruined much in the lives of the Monkees.

The four Monkees didn't come together again until March 1966, where they were assembled on Sound Stage 3 of Columbia Studios at 1334 Beachwood Drive, Hollywood. Here they were placed inside a windowless cubicle with a sign on the door declaring Monkees - keep out, and here they had to go through intensive training under the supervision of Jim Frawley. 29 year old Frawley had until then only directed two experimental movies, but he was a competent improvisor and had been a member of the acting company The Premise in New York together with Buck Henry and George Segal.

About this period with the Monkees Jim Frawley in Glenn A. Baker's book Monkeemania remembers, that they kept on improvising until the four had found their own kind of humor and a way they could work together. Frawley remembers it as a fantastic time, but also a scary one because the four were very different. They yelled at each other and at Frawley - who yelled back - but this kind of exchange was what kept the improvisations alive. Davy Jones remembers, that in the six weeks long training they worked in different character roles and practised different accents etc. so when they were confronted by an unusual situation in the show, they had the reactions to it built in automatically. They also had to sit around for hours watching the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, thereby learning comedy timing, and the influence from the Marx Brothers is quite clear in the series, as many of the episodes are virtually ripped off from Marx Brothers- movies.

The training in improvisiations went well, but then came a new problem. The series was to be about a band, but who was to play which instrument? Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were both accomplished players, so they were signed to respectively lead guitar and bass. Micky Dolenz, however, who originally had been a guitarist, too, reluctantly had to play the part of the drummer, a part he was not too keen on, but he took up the challenge. After all he used to be Circus Boy, as he said. Davy Jones had no real experience in playing an instrument so he was equipped with maracas and tambourines.

Contrary to general belief, the Monkees were initally given the opportunity to generate the musical content of the show themselves, but Mike Nesmith thought that they were a rather silly band then because of their ridiculously disparate tastes in music. Micky Dolenz liked rythm & blues, Peter Tork folkmusic, Davy Jones English vaudeville and Mike Nesmith himself country music. In an interview to Saturday Evening Post in 1967 Schneider said, that there were lots of times where he thought that what the four were doing sounded lousy, but there were enough times where he heard them and got gooseflesh. Anyway, the Monkees were now in a race against time, a race that they lost, because now that the show had been placed, everything had to happen so quickly that the four didn't have the time to find common musical grounds. With just eight weeks to go, Rafelson and Schneider called Don Kirshner and asked for help. Don Kirshner's Aldon Music Company in the famous Brill Building on Broadway had fostered people like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Neil Diamond and Bobby Darin, and Don Kirshner served as musical supervisor for Screen Gems Television. He was known as The Man with the Golden Ear and he let Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart produce the music of the Monkees, but at the same time he reserved the right for himself to put the finishing touch to the productions, which meant that he'd alter the songs completely!

The Monkees were out of the picture as to playing and (partly) producing their own music, but they were allowed to sing. Boyce and Hart listened to their voices and Boyce realized that Micky Dolenz could really sing and that Davy Jones was good at singing ballads. Mike Nesmith's somewhat drawling, Texan voice he didn't like, though, and Peter Tork had no voice at all. Because of this, it was mostly Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones who sang and thereby played a prominent part in the musical activities of the Monkees, and this didn't agree with the two competent musicians Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork.

In June 1966 NBC affiliates gathered at Chasen's Restaurant on Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, to preview the fall line-up and to decide which new network programs would run during the following season. The Monkees were to present themselves here and it turned out to be a disaster. These middleaged conservative affiliate station executivies were not used to longhaired rock musicians who didn't stick to polite conversation, but instead threw themselves into a series of crazy action such as playing volleyball with a stuffed peacock, stopping traffic on Hollywood Blvd. and turning off all the light in the restaurant. The executives were appalled and at least five key stations refused to pick up the show. As a result, ratings were bad and Nielsen's figures placed The Monkees at number 70 in the overall TV market, but later it climbed to number 20 and had about 10 million weekly viewers. In many regions of the US the show was soon to be taken off the air, though, as many stations thought it threatening to the values of middle America, but the kids loved the Monkees anyway, especially the girls. As the Monkees gradually became famous, a lot of schoolgirls began flocking around the Columbia Studios. These girls turned out to be an efficient workforce overlorded by Marilyn Schlossberg, head of Monkee publicity, and assistant Charlene Novak. Frew Smallwood, ex-girlfriend of Micky Dolenz, became head of Monkees fan mail and had a brigade of female Monkee fans helping her. And help was needed. The Monkees' fan mail came in at a rate of 65.000 letters a week.

The TV-show

Technique and content

When Rafelson and Schneider invented The Monkees, they wanted to shake the inflexible, intolerant TV-world and technically the series did shake the Hollywood TV-industry. Already the pilot proved The Monkees to be exceptional. The pilot consisted of slapstick sequences with a lot of arty tricks. Film was under or over exposed, turned upside down and sequences reversed. Action switched from slow motion to high speed and the script for the pilot was written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker and had been checked for correct jargon by Bert Schneider's eight-year-old son Jeffrey. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart had written the music for the pilot ( (Theme From) the Monkees, I Wanna Be Free and Let's Dance On) which they recorded with their own musician friends and with Micky Dolenz on vocals.

The pilot took eight days to make, but later production-time was down to only three days per episode. This was due to two things. Firstly the production team used many set-ups, that is when action is stopped and light set while the cameras are rolling. In an inverview, which Peter Tork granted for this book, he said that in conventional TV-shows there would be about 15 set-ups in an entire show, but The Monkees