Fake band made millions of believers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/09/2016 (3671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hey, hey, they’re the Monkees, and it was 50 years ago this week they first came walkin’ down the street and into our living rooms in an iconic TV show that turned a faux band into real rock ‘n’ roll stars.

On Sept. 12, 1966, the NBC musical sitcom premièred and the world was introduced to an imaginary Beatles-style boy band — Micky, Davy, Michael and Peter — that lived in a beach house in Malibu and had madcap weekly adventures that paved the way for modern music videos.

The show was an instant hit, capturing two Emmy Awards in 1967, including the award for outstanding comedy series, beating out such classics as The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, Get Smart and Hogan’s Heroes.

It ran for only two seasons and was cancelled after 58 episodes, but has continued to live in syndication and, like Star Trek, also launched in 1966, has become woven tightly into the fabric of popular culture.

While the show was groundbreaking in its own right, the enduring legacy of the made-for-TV band is the music, including pop classics such as I’m a Believer, Daydream Believer, Last Train to Clarksville and Pleasant Valley Sunday.

Initially ridiculed as a “fake” band, the Monkees, whose surviving members are on tour, eventually won creative control of their music and the right to play their own instruments. In honour of their 50th anniversary, let’s monkey around with the Top Five Things You Didn’t Know about the Prefab Four:

5) Wanted: Four Insane Boys — No matter what the lyrics of their mega-hit theme song say, the four members of the Monkees weren’t just walkin‘ down the street getting the funniest looks from everyone they meet when they were cast in the new series. The creators of the TV show, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, knew exactly what they were looking for when they placed a casting ad in the Sept. 8, 1965, issues of the trade publications Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter that reflected the burgeoning youth culture of the mid-1960s. The ad shrieked: “MADNESS!! AUDITIONS. Folk & Roll musicians-singer 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.” According to various online sources, Ben Frank’s was a popular 24-hour coffee shop/hipster hangout on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The show creators have said the “must come down” line was a sly drug-culture reference to being high. Reportedly, 437 people responded to the casting call, but Texas musician Nesmith was the only one cast via the ad. It’s said he showed up to the audition toting his laundry and impressed the producers with his laid-back style, symbolized by the signature wool hat he wore to keep his hair out of his eyes. Among those who auditioned unsuccessfully was singer Stephen Stills, who recommended his pal Peter Tork. Actor Micky Dolenz was referred by his agent, while British singer/actor Davy Jones, who had already starred on the musical stage in Britain, had been tagged in advance as a potential cast member. While Stills, composer/singer Paul Williams and singer Harry Nilsson all tried out, there is reportedly no truth to the rumour Charles Manson had an audition. Apparently being in prison kept him out of the Monkees. Whew!

4) Beam Chekov up, Scotty! — Speaking of Star Trek, there is a bizarre link between The Monkees and the iconic sci-fi series. After the first season of going where no man has gone before, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry decided he needed to add a young, mop-top character to the Enterprise’s crew to attract more teenage eyeballs. Inspired by Davy Jones, who was breaking hearts as the Monkee dreamboat with the English accent, Roddenberry opted to woo youthful fans by hiring long-haired Walter Koenig, who played Pavel Chekov, the Russian navigator of the Enterprise in the second and third seasons. In the 1968 book, The Making of Star Trek, Roddenberry shared a memo he wrote in 1966 to casting director Joe D’Agosta, wherein he said: “Keeping our teenage audience in mind, also keeping aware of current trends, let’s watch for a young, irreverent, English-accent Beatle type to try on the show, possibly with an eye to him reccurring. Like the smallish fellow (Davy Jones) who looks to be a hit on The Monkees. Personally, I find this type spirited and refreshing, and I think our episodes could use that kind of lift.” Star Trek wasn’t the only show influenced by the band. According to Yahoo.com, the Jonas Brothers say a rainy vacation spent watching The Monkees for three days inspired their Disney Channel series Jonas, wherein they play (surprise) brothers in a famous band.

3) We Want Our MTV — You may find this hard to believe, but we might not have our MTV today if it weren’t for the quiet Monkee, Nesmith, whom most fans remember largely for his trademark wool cap with the pompom on top. A passionate folk musician and member of the U.S. air force before joining the Monkees, Nesmith is something of a creative genius. After the Monkees, he continued to enjoy some success as a solo artist, penning the 1968 hit Different Drum for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. Most importantly, he was a key player in the early days of music videos, something that was presaged by the freewheeling style of the TV show on which he shot to fame. He may not have created the now-iconic music-video network MTV, but he certainly inspired a channel that has been rotting the minds of youth in the United States since 1981, also the year Nesmith won a Grammy for video of the year for his song Elephant Parts. In the 1970s, Yahoo! notes, the Texas musician began making video clips to accompany his songs. One clip, 1977’s Rio, turned the song into a hit in Australia, which led Nesmith to create a half-hour weekly Nickelodeon TV series, PopClips, wherein music videos such as the Rolling Stones’ Waiting on a Friend were introduced by comedians such as Howie Mandel and Charles Fleischer. As the story goes, future MTV execs were blown away and asked Nesmith to head up a channel that would play music clips around the clock. “I said, ‘No, because what you’re talking about is setting a channel full of commercials for records… and that just doesn’t light my fire,’” he told Vanity Fair magazine. “(Future MTV boss) John (Lack) said, ‘We are going to take this and run with it. You sure you don’t want a seat on this bus?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m sure. Just pay me for what I’ve done and I’ll go away.’” It’s not like he needed the money, considering the inheritance he got from his mom, Bette, who invented the famed correction fluid known as Liquid Paper. Talk about white out of the blue.

2) They Outsold Who? — Brace yourselves, because in 1967, driven by the power of their hit show, the Monkees sold more records than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, combined! Why? “Probably because neither British band had a hit TV show on its hands,” notes the website MentalFloss.com. “Pretty impressive considering, at least in the beginning… the Monkees were a manufactured group whose only contributions to the records were their voices.” It’s no secret the Monkees — who have sold more than 75 million records worldwide — were a ripoff of the Beatles. The show’s creators believed Beatlemania could be translated into a U.S. craze with a sitcom about a pop band in which each episode included a song and a romp, just like the Fab Four’s A Hard Day’s Night. It’s why critics labelled the TV band “the Prefab Four.” Far from being miffed, the Liverpool lads loved their American imitators, hosting a party for them when they visited England, which happened to occur when the Beatles were recording their legendary Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. “It’s obvious what’s happening, there’s talent there,” George Harrison famously said. “They’re doing a TV show, it’s a difficult chore and I wouldn’t be in their shoes for the world.” John Lennon was also a major fan. “They’ve got their own scene, and I won’t send them down for it,” he commented. “You try a weekly television show and see if you can manage one half as good!” All they needed was love.

1) Winnipeg Was No. 1 — Yes, the Monkees eventually played their own instruments and, with little time to rehearse, started touring. Their first Canadian concert was at the Winnipeg Arena on April 1, 1967. The trip was chronicled by David Price, a band stand-in and confidant, for an October 1967 article in 16 Magazine entitled My Life with The Monkees: That Wild Canadian Weekend. Gushed Price: “Everything was very exciting because the Monkees were on their way to Winnipeg for the first concert they were to give in Canada. The flight there was pretty calm and nothing much happened until we touched down. It was freezing cold in Winnipeg (17 degrees) and there were tons of kids standing on one of the large airport decks waiting… in all that cold and snow. They had been standing for hours just to catch a glimpse of the Monkees.” The band waved at the kids, then hopped a limo to the Fort Garry Hotel, where they stayed on the sixth floor and raised eyebrows because “the people in Winnipeg are very conservative and not used to people with long hair in weird-looking sweatshirts walking around the lobby of one of their best hotels.” Tickets for the afternoon show went on sale at 8 a.m. and sold out three hours later, with the standing-room crowd of 12,500 “stamping, screaming, frantic people, and to see them from the stage was just unbelievable.” Tensions were reportedly high because of death threats against the band, so any packages tossed on stage were to be tossed off “because one of them might contain a bomb.” No bombs were flung, fortunately, but the show was explosive. As their theme song blared from the loudspeakers, the band suddenly charged out of bogus amps and ran to their instruments, then launched into their hit Last Train to Clarksville. It turns out Winnipeg loved the Monkees, especially super-cute Jones. “They really dug him,” Price recalled. “The Canadian audiences were fantastic.”

Say what you will about them, the Monkees made some unforgettable music, and left the world a little better than they found it. They didn’t have time to monkey around, because they were too busy singing to put anybody down.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca