The quote in the headline appears at 17:00. "Mike" is the late Mike Nesmith.
This is a really interesting documentary presentation of The Monkees story. They were so troubled by the line between real and fake. It may be a little hard for people of today even to grasp how truth was at stake. They were real actors, doing a real comedy show, and they really sang. Why the angst?!
ADDED: At 18:05: "And I walked in with a song I really believed in, called 'Sugar, Sugar.'"
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Didn't Paul McCartney once say that he and John aspired to be the Goffin-Kings of England?
I actually know nothing about the actual Monkees. The business story is of some interest to me. I believe Bert Schneider was involved. Sort of Hollywood royalty, or at least son of studio head. He went into production himself. Easy Rider made a fortune at very little cost, and Schneider parlayed his money and apparent magic touch into various projects, including the Monkees. I would think at least at the beginning their most famous songs were written by other people (I'm a Believer by Neil Diamond), and the instruments on the records were played by the Wrecking Crew, led by Glen Campbell on guitar and Leon Russell on keyboards. Backup vocals? I don't know.
Real vs. fake. I've been assuming the Monkees were something like the Spice Girls, but maybe that's unfair. Recently a lot of big pop stars lip synch in concert--that's how they can do all the dancing and apparently not be out of breath. Of course part of what was new in the 60s and 70s was the singer-songwriter. Instead of hiring the best possible singer for any given song, put Carole King in front of a band. Jackson Browne. Randy Newman a funny case. It was OK for a singer to be only a singer if they had a personality; Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, maybe in a funny way Karen Carpenter. Rod Stewart. Gilda Radner did something about Mick Jagger: "You're the leader of the greatest rock band in the world, and you don't play any instrument!"
I think it's terrible that the guy said "denigrate." It contains a syllable that in other contexts is a racial slur, and it is subject to misreading.
Oops. Grace Slick wrote songs. But also: In 1968, Slick performed "Crown of Creation" on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in blackface and ended the performance with a Black Panther fist.
Janis Joplin wrote "Mercedes Benz."
Why the angst?
Because authentic. You weren't authentic in 1967 unless you wrote, played on, and sang on your records. Studio pros were right out, even if the Beach Boys had been using the Wrecking Crew for years, it had become passé. Lennon and McCartney were total game changers in that respect.
It was also an issue for Nesmith and Peter Tork because they had some musical skill and weren't initially allowed to use it.
"It may be a little hard for people of today even to grasp how truth was at stake."
Truth at stake! That was the last time. So quaint now that everything's fake all the way down, simulacra of simulacra, the world falling apart since not even pop culture can hold it together. The Monkees were the beginning of the end.
The Monkees were working in the shadow of the Beatles. The Beatles had a lot to say and the Monkees, not so much, but they did have a stupid TV show. They seemed a "boy band" put together by some TV studio for teeny bopper girls. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The word you used was "truth", but the issue was authenticity.
As they kinda alluded to at the end of the Behind the Music, "The Monkees" were, in some ways, a real life Gillgan's Island.
I guess all the Monkees must have been reasonably successful or of independent means before they auditioned, or else they would have spent more time each day on their knees in thanks for their great good fortune and less on their rumps making voodoo dolls of Don Kirschner.
You keep brining up The Monkeys, I'mma keep bringing up The Banana Splits.
Just can't separate them in my childhood memories.
They were both just fun.
YES! number ONE song of 1969
There's a line in that documentary about it being like it was 1964 again. Maybe that was the real secret behind their initial success. It was a late 1960's audience wanting to go back to an early 1960's world. To a generation mired in war and civil rights conflicts, the zany antics of these pretend Beatles would provide instant nostalgia.
BTW, if you are out selling the Beatles and the Stones combined, you actually ARE a real band.
Perhaps put together groups was more rare in those days but it is commonplace now. Simon Cowell has grouped, during his competitions, talented people together to form vocal groups that have had great success. It is sad that they had such anxiety about the Monkees. Their TV show was fun, their music was well done and their talents have remained relevant to pop culture. Few groups during that era were free to do absolutely anything they wanted to do with their music.
The fine line separating fact and truth spoken to power. Novel.
It should be remembered that this was a time "real" musicians like John Lennon were edging towards heroin.
Just when the money machine really started rolling.
As fate would have it this just popped up on my YouTube feed yesterday. Kirshner comes off looking like a bit of a turd, but I suppose from his perspective he was just doing his job, as it had been done in Hollywood for years (and still is). Had also forgotten how much Peter hated the songs the hit factory was churning out for them.
You mean this "Sugar, Sugar"?
https://youtu.be/OrZluYnMJUY
I don't wanna denigrate his talent either, that's why I won't comment on the albums by his First National Band.
That is an interesting documentary. When I first saw "Sugar, Sugar," I was thinking that the Monkees did go on to record it but then my mind went to the cartoon image of The Archies, swaying back and forth in the repeating dance pattern as they sang the song. Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and Reggie.
I never saw Head. Sgt. Peppers and LSD really shook up pop music and the cuture.
Do we still use the word denigrate?
LOL, they rejected "Sugar, Sugar" which was a great "Bubblegum rock song".
Anyway, its amazing how arrogant and self-entitiled these music producers and execs were. They didn't write the songs or sing the music but somehow they were in charge and got most of the $$. OTOH, the more I know about the "The Monkees" the less I like them. They come off as egotists who let success go their heads, not to mention their dumbass libtard boomer attitudes but compared to the Producers, I'll take them any day of the week.
Next up, the rock-u-mentary you've all been waiting for, Fleas and All: the Banana Splits Story.
“Sugar, Sugar” was quite a hit, by an even more artificial band (the Archies).
Sorry, folks, sorry... we're putting a hold on the release date of Fleas and All: the Banana Spits Story due to unforeseen copyright issues connected with the forthcoming tell-all Under the Helmet: the Harmony and the Cacophony by Snorky with Kitty Kelley.
Born Sebastian Snorthwaite, the only son of Jumbo and Thumbelina Snorthwaite of the Regents Park Zoo, in 1942, Snorky had a famous and occasionally violent rivalry with drummer Benjamin Npongo (aka Bingo) which lead to the breakup of the Splits and a notorious court case involving Snorthwaite, Npongo, and lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Fleegle's illegitimate daughter, Rainbow Flegelberg.
Formerly a member of the Nairobi Trio managed by Ernest Kovacs, Npongo was the first member of the Splits recruited by Hanna-Barbera Productions. According to filings, Npongo alleges that nearly all of the group's repertoire, including their Top Forty signature tune "The Tra La La Song", conventionally attributed to the Flegelberg/Snorthwaite collaboration, were in fact entirely composed by Benjamin Npongo.
Says Bingo, "I was the only musician in the bunch. The rest were just pretending. I remember the first time Fleegle was handed a guitar. He shoved the head into his mouth and tried to blow into it like a saxophone. Snorky was hired by Bill and Joe strictly for his appeal to teenybopper mags like Tiger Beat. My character was portrayed as the clumsy, cretinous monkey who was the fall guy for the other's pranks. I never got any justice or recognition. The whole Banana Splits phenomenon was anti-primate racism."
Bingo and Snorky are in fact the last survivors of the famous "Furry Four". Rex "Feegle" Flegelberg was euthanized by the New York Metropolitan Animal Shelter after his third wife, Japanese performance artist Yuckio Shrikimura, reported him for rabies vaccine delinquency. Stephan Smythe-Droppelgate (1945-1985), known to fans as Drooper, the enigmatic "Silent Lion" lead guitarist, left the Splits in 1971 to join the Shaolin Temple as an acolyte of Master Po.
I met Mickey Dolenz at one of Mr Nixon's inaugural balls in 1973; that more or less exhausts my present interest in any of the Monkees.
The whole Banana Splits phenomenon was anti-primate racism.
Incredible.
I loved the Banana Splits - and there were some great non-B.S. segments on their show, like "Danger Island"
The mistake the producers made was to hire two musicians out of the four, instead of four guys with a background in theater and TV. Jones clearly was fine with things as they were, and he came from the theater. Dolenz might have been content to just do his job, but the other two wanted to be actual musicians involved in the creative end of things. Pop musicians were becoming royalty then, and you played and wrote your own stuff.
It's now widely known that a lot of recordings done prior to the late 60s had the band listed on the cover, but used studio musicians. The Beach Boys' recordings used the Wrecking Crew, although the band did some of the playing, and all kinds of other records used session players. The great guitarist Jesse Ed Davis was a session guy and used studio players in his own recordings because when the red light went on,they could deliver.
It's interesting to hear Tork say that it would take the Monkees 50 tries to get something in the studio on that first recording they did on their own, whereas the hired guns on the first two albums nailed things in 5 or fewer takes. In time, the Monkees might have developed the needed skills, but they had a TV show to do. I think they soon caught on to the fact that they couldn't record without help, and by the fourth album brought other musicians back in. Maybe the decision to get out from under Kirshner was fateful, but I don't think the TV show could have done more than two seasons on TV. It was too loose and goofy, and pop fans were already moving on.
the first Banana Splits episode
https://vimeo.com/112716924
* Shocked Face *
You mean ... you mean ... the Archies weren't real?! They weren't a real group like the Monkees?!
Childhood memory: Post printed Archies' records on the back of Sugar Pops or Sugar Smacks or Sugar Crisps boxes. You could cut out the record and play it on your record player.
Today, Archie comics have been made into some dark and creepy mystery-drama on the CW. Haven't seen it and don't want to.
Wow, another Monkees docu I watched.
And liked.
Even tho, after the prior one, there was 40% or so repeat.
Head was even more stupid for the Monkees than heroin or acid for John; tho I never saw it.
I recall hearing about an actor from Emergency Room being told, on an airplane after a person needs medical help - "You're a doctor".
"No I'm not, I'm an actor."
Elvis and Sinatra were mostly singers, not writing their own songs. The Monkees, Micky & Davy, DID sing the songs. They did turn into a real band.
The real band was NOT AS GOOD as the TV pre-fab band.
That TV band, thanks to Kirshner's ear & song choosing & pro musicians playing, AND the 66-67 pre-St. Pepper's pop to rock era, that TV band was fantastic.
The authentic Monkees were just "quite good".
There's a huge desire in lots of people for fun, and fun music, and fun memories. Even when there's a global crisis.
I think Sugar Sugar would have been the Monkee's biggest hit had they taken it - and I would have NOT LIKED them, since then, for such a bubblegum saccharine hit overplayed into extreme distaste.
They were like the Marx brothers (and so were the Banana Splits), but also singers.
Lloyd W. Robertson said... I actually know nothing about the actual Monkees.
You know more than most! All that, plus a comic charisma equal to the Fabs (i.e. Beatles)
Cobain, Beatles, Stones, Monkees, Little Richard etc.ad nauseum
All pabulum for the intellectually lazy and deficient.
It's always been that way with "popular music."
Blab blab blab now, but like photographs, after three generations nobody will even know who the current Musical Jesus is or was.
On the other hand, centuries-old Ninth Symphonies will still fill concert halls. True art will stand the test of time.
Although, honestly, Mike Nesmith's version of "Different Drum" seems a lot more artistically honest than the highly polished and musically more sophisticated version by Linda Ronstadt. I like Mike's version better, the lyrics actually make sense, and there were some that the Ronstadt version completely left out. It's the only song on the two complete "National Band" albums I streamed that I listened to more than once; maybe it's the Texas yodeling in so many of the songs, I guess that's a thing some people enjoy.
You keep brining up The Monkeys, I'mma keep bringing up The Banana Splits.
If I recall correctly, the Banana Splits were broadcast on Saturday morning. The Monkees were scheduled for Saturday night.
You can see the thinking..... "Hey! Maybe we can do music on a dedicated channel......we'll call it MTV!!"
Sugar Sugar was the first record I ever owned, I was 5 or so and cut it out of the back of a cereal box (Alphabits I think) I don't think it lasted very long but I remember how cool it was to have my own 'record'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardboard_record
Quaestor, I salute you! Had I a Banana Buggy I'd offer you a free ride in it, over hill and highway.
The creation of the Monkees seemed an unwelcome return to the Brill-Building model of pop music production--"the singer as product"--in which autocratic record company owners controlled a slightly sleazy production process: they bought songs from writers and assigned them to unknowns in their stables (or, if the unknowns wrote songs themselves, extracted phony co-writing credits for publishing royalties). They hired studio musicians to back the unknown, and often oversaw recording, so that artistic decisions in the production process were made almost exclusively on the basis of commercial considerations, including personal favors and exchanges of money.
As the Beatles wrote, arranged, and performed their own music, they were a relatively independent production unit, subject to guidance on their music and image only from Brian Epstein, who worked for them. In their early days, that was part of their appeal: they were the beacon of hope to garage-band members everywhere. To a significant extent, they discredited the Brill-Building model, replacing it with "musicians as artists." Their music was accordingly seen as largely unmediated by "the suits," and less bound by crass commercial concerns.
P.S.: The Brill-Building model eventually reestablished itself as a parallel to post-Beatles pop production, producing Monkees-spawn such as the Cowsills, Archies, and other exponents of Bubblegum music.
LOL @Quaestor
God, I loved the Banana Splits when I was a kid. I still have my official "Banana Splits Fan Club" certificate somewhere in a box.
The Monkees? Ick. Crappy Girl stuff. My older sister had posters of them on her bedroom wall, later to be joined by Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond and David Cassidy. That meant "Not to be taken seriously" to my eight year old self. But the Banana Splits? Solid, baby. A friend of mine got a toy set of the 6-wheel dune buggies they drove around in. So cool!
I had no idea, at the time, that they were a deliberate rip-off of the Monkees.
Fun fact: Barry White got his first real break in his music career as a songwriter and arranger for the show. Npongo might'a sung 'em, but Barry wrote 'em. ;)
"I never saw Head."
HEAD is really fun...and meta!
I heard and liked Sugar Sugar when it was released, but I was 11. It wore out its welcome quickly. Dopey song, and kind of anonymous in its hit version. When I heard Kirshner say it was a song he believed in, I wondered if his usual good ear was wrong in this case. Actually, I think the musicians and singer who posed at the Archies were just right for the song, and producer Jeff Barry, the song's co-writer, had everything correctly aligned to make it a hit. Still thought it was a crummy song, but then I heard Wilson Pickett's version. Maybe with the right production, it could have worked for the Monkees. Pickett tears it up, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrZluYnMJUY
A LITTLE LATE, but one last word on this documentary.
This is a astonishing story about how to piggyback on the fame of a phenomenal marketing strategy of one talented rock and roll group (The Beatles) and create a new, but similar type band (The Monkees) that usurps the original to cash in.
Assemble actors, recruit song writers, create a narrative under the guiding hand of a music promoting Barnum and PRESTO...SUCCESS!
Milk the cash cow dry until the hired help rebels and thinks they can run the farm better than Ol' MacDonald. Pitchforks run Ol' Mac off, the cow dies and the farm goes fallow.
Foreclosure follows on the field of dreams, and the actors have to settle on becoming wandering minstrels.
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! or How to make a monkey out of a Monkee.
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