HEY! HEY!

Sixty years after THE MONKEES crashed onto television screens and conquered the charts, MICKY DOLENZ, last survivor of the Prefab Four, explores the strange blurring of fantasy and reality between their television show and their music. “Before The Monkees,” he tells Peter Watts, “the only time you saw long-haired weirdos on TV was when they were being arrested.”

“Having the greatest time in the world”: (l–r) Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz in Los Angeles, 1967

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Named guys: The Monkees promote the TV show that launched them, 1966

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; NBC TELEVISION/GETTY IMAGES

MIKE Nesmith once asked John Lennon what he thought of The Monkees. Do you know what he said? “I think you’re the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers.” That was extremely accurate. You see, The Monkees weren’t a band. We were the cast of a musical comedy about an imaginary band. After we were cast, they showed us Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy movies, taking us back to the source of physical and verbal comedy. Interestingly, they never showed us The Three Stooges. You know why? From the start, it was agreed that you would never see a Monkee hit another Monkee. We were always in it together.

I hadn’t met any of the boys before we auditioned. Though I must have seen Mike when he was the hootmaster at the Monday-night Hootenanny at the Troubadour, because I was at the Troubadour all the time. I never bumped into Pete [Tork]. I guess I saw Davy [Jones] performing on the Ed Sullivan Show, but we were all watching it for The Beatles, who were on the same night.

In the audition process, they mixed and matched candidates to see how they sparked off each other. I vaguely remember Davy from the last eight, because we had both been child stars. He was in Oliver! and I had been the star of Circus Boy for three years since I was 10. After the audition, I went back to school. I was training to be an architect. I stayed on even after the pilot episode, because I knew that nine times out of ten, a pilot didn’t sell. My idea was to become an architect, but if that didn’t work, I had showbiz to fall back on.

Micky as Circus Boy, August 1956

“I THOUGHT RIGHT FROM THE GET-GO, THIS WAS DIFFERENT”

We all met properly for the first time at the wardrobe fitting for the pilot. I remember being on the lot at Columbia and somebody introduced us – “You guys are The Monkees.” We all brought our individual characters to the show. I have no idea how they made the casting decisions, except it was apparent they wanted four different personalities. There was a rumour that The Lovin’ Spoonful had auditioned, and I don’t know for sure, but I would have thought that while they were an incredible band, they were all quite similar. Bands tend to attract people with the same look, sense of humour and background, because whoever starts the group will surround themselves with like-minded people. But this was a TV show, a gang comedy like Cheers or Taxi, and you need different looks, style and attitudes. The difference in characters is what makes the show so great, as the producers of The Monkees knew.