Nesmith, member of Monkees, dies at 78
LOS ANGELES — Michael Nesmith, the singer-songwriter, author, actor-director and entrepreneur who is best remembered as the wool-hatted, guitar-strumming member of the made-for-television rock band The Monkees, has died at 78.
Nesmith, who had undergone quadruple bypass surgery in 2018, died of natural causes at his Carmel Valley home near California’s Central Coast, his family said in a statement.
Nesmith was a struggling singer-songwriter in September 1966 when “The Monkees” television debut turned him and fellow band members Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones into overnight rock stars.
After the group broke up in 1970, Nesmith moved on to a long and creative career, not only as a musician but as a writer, producer and director of films, book author, media arts company chief and creator of a music video format that led to the creation of MTV.
Nesmith was running “hoot nights” at the popular West Hollywood nightclub The Troubadour when he saw a trade publication ad seeking “four insane boys” to play rock musicians in a band modeled after the Beatles.
The show featured the comical misadventures of a quartet that tooled around Los Angeles in a tricked-out Pontiac GTO called the MonkeeMobile and, when they weren’t chasing girls, pursued music stardom.
Each episode rolled out two or three new Monkees songs, six of which became Top 10 Billboard hits during the show’s two-year run. Three, including “I’m a Believer,” Daydream Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville,” reached No. 1.
Jones, with his British accent and boyish good looks, was the group’s cute lead singer. Dolenz became the wacky drummer, although he had to learn to play as the show went along. Tork, a folkrock musician, portrayed a comically clueless bass player. Nesmith, with his twangy Texas accent and the wool hat he’d worn to his audition, became the serious but naive lead guitarist.
Nesmith and Tork, the group’s two most accomplished musicians, railed against the program’s refusal to let them play their own instruments at recording sessions. When Nesmith revealed that fact to reporters, music critics quickly turned on “The Monkees,” dismissing the show as a fraud and the band as the “Prefab Four,” a mocking reference to the Beatles’ nickname, Fab Four.
Nesmith, meanwhile, had written several songs he hoped to debut on the show, but almost all were dismissed by music producer Don Kirshner, as sounding too country.
Among them was “Different Drum,” which Linda Ronstadt recorded in 1967 with the Stone Poneys for her first hit single, validating to Nesmith his opinion that Kirshner, hailed by the pop music industry as “The Man With The Golden Ear,” didn’t know what he was talking about.
Things came to a head when all four Monkees demanded they take control of the music.
Warned they would be sued for breach of contract, Nesmith rose from his seat and smashed his fist through a wall, telling Kirshner it could have been his face.
For years Nesmith refused to confirm or deny the incident, even as the other three gleefully recounted it to reporters. In his 2017 memoir, “Infinite Tuesday,” he did acknowledge it, saying he’d lost his temper when he felt his integrity was being questioned.
After the show concluded in 1968, the band embarked on a lengthy concert tour where members sang many of their own songs and played their own instruments. Jimi Hendrix was sometimes their opening act.
Over the years Nesmith recorded more than a dozen albums and toured with the First National Band, the country-rock-folk group he assembled.
He wrote scores of songs, including “Some of Shelly’s Blues,” “Papa Gene’s Blues,” You Just May Be the One” and “The Girl That I knew Somewhere” that he performed with the Monkees. Others, performed with the First National Band, included “Joanne,” “Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun to Care)” and “Different Drum.”
For the Monkees’ 30th anniversary, he induced the others to reunite to record a new album, “Justus,” for which all four composed the songs and played the instruments. He also rejoined the others for a brief tour and wrote and directed their 1997 TV reunion film, “Hey, Hey, It’s the Monkees.”
Nesmith also wrote and produced several films, winning a Grammy for his 1981 comedy-music video “Elephant Parts.” Nesmith published two well received novels, 1998’s “The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora” and 2009’s “The America Gene.”
After Jones died in 2012, Nesmith rejoined the Monkees more frequently, with their concerts earning glowing reviews from critics. Nesmith attributed that to most of the group’s original critics having died or retired.
Following Tork’s death in 2019, Nesmith and Dolenz took on the name The Monkees Mike & Micky. Nesmith and Dolenz performed their final show last month as they wrapped up “The Monkees Farewell Tour” at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
Robert Michael Nesmith was born Dec. 30, 1942, in Houston, Texas, the only child of Warren and Bette Nesmith.
His parents divorced when he was 4, and his mother often worked two jobs, as a secretary and painter, to support her son and herself. It was that latter job that inspired her to whip up a typewriter correction fluid called Liquid Paper in her kitchen blender. By the mid-1970s it had made her a fortune, which she eventually left to her son and to nonprofit foundations she endowed to promote women in business and the arts.
Her son, who was married and divorced three times, is survived by four children, Christian, Jason, Jessica and Jonathan.