The return of the Daydream Believers
Hey hey, The Monkees are back.
The original manufactured pop band have a new album so packed with juicy bubble gum flavour, it might have popped ready made straight out of 1967.
You can’t argue with the quality of the zany quartet’s original hits, classics like Stepping Stone, I’m a Believer, Last Train to Clarksville, Pleasant Valley Sunday and Daydream Believer. Now, half a century since their debut and 20 years since they last released new music, comes the astonishingly snappy Good Times. It’s an album that positively zips along with catchy, jangly perfect pop songs written by some of the finest writers in contemporary rock, including Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller, alongside sparkling contributions from such Monkees alumni as Carole King and Neil Diamond.
“It’s just right in the pocket,” says vocalist and drummer Micky Dolenz. “It’s like time travel. It might have been the next Monkees record 50 friggin’ years ago.”
It’s certainly not bad for a group who are all in their 70s, with one member (Mike Nesmith) semiretired and one (Davy Jones) deceased.
“What you have to understand is, there never was any group,” says Dolenz. “It’s a misnomer to even call it a group. The Monkees was the cast of a television show. If you approach it with those goggles on, everything just makes so much more sense.”
At 71, the former pop idol is bald and plump, his once distinctive curly mop replaced by a shining pate. He grunts as he lowers himself into a chair backstage at a concert hall in Clearwater, Fla., chewing throat lozenges to preserve the voice that graced so many ’60s hits.
“To this day, I approach this as an entertainer recreating the role of Micky the wacky Monkee,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m probably getting a bit old for all the goofing around, but as long as I can sing, I don’t think anyone minds.”
“Nostalgia is a real and true part of the human experience, and I earn a very decent living from it,” said Peter Tork. Once the goofy, blond mop-topped bassist, at 74 he has the impish presence of a mischievous old hippy, prone to giggling, talking in cosmic profundities while stroking his grey goatee beard.
The Monkees were a phenomenon. Launched as a sitcom, they went on to be hailed as America’s answer to the Beatles, becoming the biggest-selling group in the world in 1967 (the year of Sergeant Pepper).
“Fame changed everything and everyone,” says Dolenz. “That was when Pinocchio became a real little boy.”
“The joy that The Monkees brought to so many people was attacked by the critical arbiters of the times, and that was confusing to me,” said Mike Nesmith.
Always the most cerebral of The Monkees, at 73 will not join his bandmates on tour but contributed songs and vocals to their new album.
“There never was any officiating mythmaker with some Satanic plan to enslave the youth of the world with pop music. Being created by writers, authors, actors, producers and craftsman is a very normal way for things to happen in the arts. I can’t tell you why that notion gets odious or frightening in rock ’n’ roll. But it’s tough being the focus of that.”
Since their 20th anniversary in 1986, band members have reconvened in various combinations for tours. The idea of one last hurrah began with the discovery of a treasure trove of old demos and backing tracks recorded for (and sometimes by) the band in the ’60s that were left when the show was cancelled.
They decided to polish them up with producer Adam Schlesinger, with The Monkees themselves only adding vocals and overdubs. Effectively, they are returning to their original manufactured ’60s formula. Even the late Davy Jones (who died of a heart attack in 2012) was included with a rediscovered vocal on Neil Diamond’s Love To Love.
“We lived together, loved together, fought together. We lost a brother in Davy, so hearing him sing again was emotional,” said Dolenz.
When word went out that there was to be a Monkees album, some of the finest writers in contemporary rock submitted songs.
“Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller wrote a song together, which is just kind of bizarre,” said manager Andrew Sandoval.
That song, Birth of an Accidental Hipster, is a mad, modular, psychedelic epic.