Living the Good Times! over again
THE MONKEES: Adored collective brings its anniversary tour to PNE’s Summer Nights concert series
They may have been a “fake” band, but love for The Monkees has always been very real.
John Lennon adored them. He once compared them to the Marx Brothers and The Monkees and The Beatles were close friends.
Kurt Cobain had a Monkees sticker on the back of one of his early guitars. R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe once said he would not accept his band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until The Monkees were inducted.
While R.E.M. was nevertheless added in 2007, The Monkees remain shut out of the institution thanks in no small part to the efforts of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, who has vowed The Monkees would never be inducted.
The arguments have been many, but it usually boils down to this: They weren’t a real band and they didn’t play their own instruments, something once referred to in an episode of The Simpsons.
“The Monkees was not a band to start with, it was a television show about a band — an imaginary band that lived in this imaginary beach house in Malibu,” Micky Dolenz said via phone from his home in Los Angeles. “It does beg the question of how we were able to afford a Malibu beach house when we never got any work.”
“Formed” in 1966 by producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, The Monkees at one point sold more records than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, yet the music press laughed at them.
It didn’t matter that Dolenz, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith were all actors, singers and musicians.
Originally strictly a performing act made for television, Dolenz, Jones, Tork and Nesmith eventually fought to write and perform their own material and truly become The Monkees. By 1967, they were in the studio recording headquarters, which contained original material and their own instrumentation.
For their next album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (featuring single Daydream Believer), they returned to a TV-oriented approach and were backed by the musicians that have become known as The Wrecking Crew and recorded with The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas, Sonny & Cher, Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Diamond.
“After The Wrecking Crew documentary (on Netflix) came out, it did change a lot of people’s perception about the whole thing,” Dolenz said. “I think it helped people have a little more respect for The Monkees when all these other groups came out and said, ‘Yeah, we used The Wrecking Crew.’ Nobody cares that there weren’t any Beach Boys (playing) on Good Vibrations.”
The Monkees TV show was cancelled in 1968. The band disbanded in 1970 with short-lived reunions taking place throughout the following decades.
To celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, catalogue reissue label Rhino helped release an album of new Monkees material entitled Good Times!, the band’s first album since 1996’s Justus.
Reuniting Dolenz with Tork and Nesmith and produced by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, the album features compositions by Harry Nilsson, Andy Partridge, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller and Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The album also features a posthumous performance by Jones on Love To Love, penned by Neil Diamond.
Some of the older material consisted of demos and forgotten studio sessions that had been stashed away for years.
“We found all this stuff and the title track Good Times!, that my dear friend Harry Nilsson had done with Mike playing guitar and intended for me to record at one point, but we never got around to it. I realized I could do a duet with my old friend. That got me really excited.”
Dolenz admitted he knew of Weezer and Death Cab For Cutie, but wasn’t overly familiar with their material.
“I started listening to it and I thought, ‘This sounds like The Monkees!’” Dolenz said with a laugh.
Good Times! is a surprisingly solid pop-rock album, one that will bring The Monkees to the Pacific National Exhibition on Sept. 4.
The touring outfit consists of Dolenz (whose daughter lives in Kitsilano and attended Emily Carr University), Tork and a backing band. Nesmith is not coming to Vancouver, though he has played a few scattered dates since the album was released.
PNE Summer Nights Concerts featuring The Monkees, Foreigner, Steve Miller Band, Culture Club, Pat Benatar & Greg Giraldo and more
Sunday to Sept. 5, 8:30 p.m. | PNE Amphitheatre Tickets: Free with gate admission, more details at pne.ca