So, if nothing else, long before MTV, American Idol and every ‘reality’ show blurring on- and off-camera life through the prism of mass entertainment, The Monkees were pioneers. Actually, it wasn’t a band initially because they were only actors playing a band, but then life began imitating art and they became a touring and recording group beyond the one they were hired to be, and they kept their name, The Monkees. Tork was a Greenwich Village folkie, Nesmith a wry Texan singer-songwriter, Dolenz an LA-based former child actor, most famous for playing Corky in the late-’50s TV series Circus Boy, and Jones was an English-born Broadway singer with roots in vaudeville. Put simply, if almost any people outside of Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork had made up The Monkees, we would now have only a slim greatest-hits album to evaluate from a show that might have lasted a year. Those they picked from the 437 applicants to the Variety ad calling for “four insane boys” sealed the fate of the band, the show, the music and all those who worked with them. ![]() Their off-beat approach meant that the four actors/musicians they chose to play the band members in the series were not going to be the square-jawed, Brylcreemed types who usually played anyone under 30 in the TV shows and movies of the time. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, who hatched and pitched the idea of a television show based on the wacky antics of The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, were west-coast hipsters with the pulse of the ‘60s within them. ![]() The bones of the group, its talent and temperament, goes back to the two men who put it together. Yet the excellent reissues of their first four albums with bonus discs, released by Rhino Records in the past couple of years, show a band with real depth - one that not only crystallised the very best qualities of west-coast pop but also pulled off one of the greatest inside coups in showbiz history. The myth which shadows them is that they couldn’t play, they weren’t really a band and their music was sugary top-ten fodder. Song for song they are the best pop group of the period, and their story is one of the most intriguing. Simon & Garfunkel? Jefferson Airplane? The Lovin’ Spoonful? But I plump for The Monkees. Creedence? The Band - although they’re mostly Canadian. ![]() My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Sometimes I play a game in my head: name the five best American rock bands of the ‘60s.
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