Wednesday, February 29, 2012 is yet another day where fans of popular music have lost another figure that was a part of our musical past. Today, I’m talking about my memories of the Monkees and singer Davy Jones and the album Headquarters.
I found out late this morning about the passing of Davy Jones. I wrestled with the idea of writing out my thoughts on the Monkees and Davy. For some, the Monkees were a joke. They were known as the “pre-fab(fabricated) four”. They were developed by the NBC- TV network for a TV show about a pop/rock band and the “crazy hijinks” that ensues. After the success of the Beatles’ movies Hard Days Night and Help! the network wanted a Beatles type band to base the show around. They only sang on the first few recordings for the show. They didn’t play the instruments and were then criticized for this fact. So, do I write about a band that is still talked about with fond memories and a great catalog of hit songs? Well, I have some awesome memories about this band and I find myself listening to some of their stuff on occasion too. So, here we go….
The band was made up of four actors or musicians which included Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Mickey Dolenz and David(Davy) Jones. Mickey, Mike and Peter were from the U.S. and Davey was British. He was short in stature and had been a jockey apprentice. He had also starred as the “Artful Dodger” in the musical Oliver. In fact, Davy appeared on the Ed Sullivan show with the Oliver cast on the same night as the Beatles on February 9, 1964. The news reports after his death say that the experience of being on the same night as the Beatles inspired him for what would be his next big career move.
I have vague memories of watching the Monkees TV show on Saturday mornings in the early 70’s. The original series ran from 1966 to 1968. My sisters had been fans during the original run so we would inevitably watch the rerun episodes on those Saturday mornings. Since, I had the same name as this guy-Davy, I found a kind of kinship to other “Davids” We had copies of a few Monkees albums floating around the house growing up. I seem to remember the self-titled first album, More of the Monkees and Headquarters. If you could gauge “fandom” by looking at how teenage girls “personalized” the album covers, my sisters were big fans of Davy Jones. On the back cover, my sister had drawn circles around just Davy in all the group pictures. At some point, these records drifted from my sisters record collections into a cupboard where they would put the stuff they wanted to put on Mom’s garage sales. Eventually, those records found their way into my ever-growing record collection.
Fast forward through the 70’s and into the 80’s. I was a freshman in college in the fall of 1985. In February 1986, MTV decided to run a 24 hour marathon of the Monkees TV show episodes. In my own arrested development of my freshman year of college, I was elated about this trip into a more innocent time for me. My college friend Shaun(who could be very vocal and cynical about music) raved about some of the great Monkees songs. He loved Mickey’s vocals in Last Train to Clarksville. Thinking back, this may have been one of the first of my peers to acknowledge some kind of affinity for this band. We talked about the controversary about whether the band played their instruments and all that stuff. But, when it came time for the marathon to air, I was there on the Mantor Hall 3rd floor lounge watching as much as I could. I’m sure the other guys on my floor got tired of it. But, I ate it up. I found it funny and entertaining and just a good laugh.
I even remember seeing local Kearney band –Sidekick play at a Fall Semester “Back to School” dance at the student union parking lot play some Monkees songs in their set. As I danced with a female friend, I was singing along to all the words of the Monkees’ songs. She asked me how I knew all the words to the songs. I told her about growing up with the songs and my common name with Davy Jones. She kind of shrugged it off. Looking back, mayber she really wasn’t that much of a friend…hehe!
As I stated earlier, I had felt a connection to Davy through our common name. I’m not sure when I found out. But, two of my three sisters at some point told me that I was named after Davy Jones. Since I was born in the summer of 1967, I can see how that would have been possible. My oldest sister-Pam denies this. She claims (that since she was the oldest) Mom and Dad had asked her what she would name her baby brother. She still claims she liked the name “David Scott” and so that is my name. But, my sister Connie says I was named after Davy. My take on this is that since I was born at a time when the Monkees were the mania of the day and Pam suggested the name David, I’m sure Connie was more than happy to agree that I shared the name with her teen idol. I can’t speak factually. I was there but have no memory of it!
Those who’ve known me and my musical obsessions have witnessed when I start to get full blown into something. With the newfound resurgence of fame for the Monkees came new recordings. Arista records put together a “Best of” album out for the Monkees in that summer of 86 called Then & Now…the Best of the Monkees. The band filmed a video of a new song called That was then…this is Now featuring footage of them on the new reunion tour. The odd thing that I don’t think I ever noticed is that the video is only Mickey and Peter. Davy is nowhere to be seen in the video. I bought this album and found it to be a good little souvenir for that summer. I do remember that pulling out those old albums of my sisters and reading up on the back story on the Headquarters album.
One summer evening in 1986, I pulled the Headquarters album out and started to listen to it. There is a story behind this album. When the Beatles came on the music scene, fans looked on this band as a group of four guys who wrote, sang AND PLAYED everything(instruments included) on their records. So, when the Monkees were introduced through a TV show, the critics called them “the Pre-fab Four”. The TV show and the songs were put together by music mogul Don Kirschner and the TV producers. They used established hit songwriters like Neil Diamond and Carole King. So, this album was the Monkees album done by the band. The band sang, produced and played on the album.
I dropped the needle on the album and tried to honestly listen to it and dissect it. Of course, it didn’t have the hit singles I was familiar with like I’m a Believer or Last Train to Clarksville or Daydream Believer. I was looking for those memorable hit songs. I was like a 13 year old teenybopper looking for only the songs from the radio or MTV or whatever. Looking back, I found You May Just Be the One, For Pete’s Sake(which became the song that ran during the end credits during the second TV season), Shades of Gray and Randy Scouse Git. Some may consider these songs to be filler songs on a greatest hits album. In fact, I ended up finding these songs as “filler” songs for the “best of” album. I am the kind of music fan that gets tired of the overplayed hits. I like to know there are other songs on the album and I honestly believe that this album had good songs put together by 4 guys who wanted to show the world, the fans and the critics just what they could do.
In the summer of 87, Davy Jones wrote a book called They Made a Monkee out of Me and with that book he made another trip back to Central Nebraska promoting it. He came to Kearney for a book signing appearance at the Hilltop Mall. I was back in Hastings for summer break between school years. I didn’t make it over for the book signing. I still wish I had made the drive over for that one. I still believed he was who I was named after. My sister Pam set me straight on the “name thing” a few years later.
I still have fond memories of this music. I still have conversations with my music geek friends about the recordings, the songs and the band’s place in Rock n’ Roll History. Were they just a teenybopper obsession for 13 year old girls that turned into a huge phenomenon? Were they one-hit wonders to be forgotten as a footnote in pop culture? I would say NO they’re not. They had multiple hit songs. They were one of the forerunners of what became music videos. I’m sure there were some younger siblings of Beatles fans who were too young to see them on Ed Sullivan. But, the impact of the Monkees and their popularity may have inspired to play and write music. I AM that younger sibling. They were definitely an early influence in my tastes in pop music.
So, when Davy Jones passed away on Wednesday, I felt a sadness of many who were teenagers in the 60’s or witnessed their comeback in the 80’s. Writer and commentator Bob Lefsetz wrote in his “Lefsetz Letter” this week about the importance of Davy Jones and the Monkees to the Baby Boomer generation and the generation after that. http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2012/03/01/davy-jones/
They were a “manufactured” band. But, the music lives on. They were huge and ubiquitous in an age where there were 3 major networks on TV. The album Headquarters was released in May of 1967. I was born in July. This album was on top of the Billboard album charts until the Beatles knocked them to number two with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in June of that year. As many of my memories blogs are about albums from the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, writer Mark Morris writes about Headquarters
“Headquarters sold well, seeming to have proved the band right. But at this point, the ‘did they/didn’t they’ argument mattered a whole lot less than the fact that as automatons and autonomous beings alike, the Monkees were a great band with great tunes”
So, to the Monkees….and especially my British “brother” Davy Jones, Thank you for the fond memories and the fun tunes and music.
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