The Monkees

The advertisement in Variety proclaimed "Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll musicians-singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17 - 21...". 

Hollywood TV producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider placed the ad late in 1965 as the first step towards a weekly series recreating the winning chemistry of The Beatles' Hard Days Night movie. 437 hopefuls attended the auditions and when a suitable four had been selected, they were taught how to act, how to improvise and, most importantly, how to mime to records. 

After an initial attempt to let the quartet create its own music, it was realized that though they each possessed a modicum of musical talent, they were a long way from being a group. Fortunately, Don Kirshner, the entrepreneur who had invented the Brill Building system of assembly-line pop hit  manufacture, had been put in overall control of the show's musical output.

In June 1966, Kirshner flew out from New York with a dozen demo recordings by reliable songwriters including Goffin and King, Neil Sedaka and Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. The song chosen as The Monkees' first single, Last Train To Clarksville, was said to have been written by Boyce and Hart during a 20 minute coffee break. In the studio during recording, Kirshner devised its distinctive "no-no-no-no" wails as a deliberate echo of The Beatles' famous "yeah, yeah, yeah".

Despite a $100,000 launch campaign preceding the August 16 release of the single, it didn't dent the US Top 10 until a week after the first  screening of The Monkees TV show on September 12. Eight weeks later it was at Number 1.

The chosen four, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones, became instant stars, and shops were flooded with Monkees merchandising from woolly hats (like the one Mike wore in the show) to Monkees dolls, bracelets, lunch boxes, shirts, watches, chewing gum and pencil cases. But it wasn't all plain sailing. Initial TV ratings were poor, largely because conservative middle America didn't immediately take to the idea that long-haired youths playing loud rock music deserved a regular weekly TV series. On top of which many TV critics panned the blatant plagiarism  at the show's heart. A Newsweek critic observed; "Television is a medium which thrives on thievery . . . Beatlemania has been exchanged for Monkeeshines".

Nevertheless the show was soon attracting 10 million viewers across America every Monday evening, and the teenage audience responded to the anarchic script which came from much of the show being improvised. "We don't learn scripts," said Nesmith. "Hell, we don't even read 'em".

By February 1967, The Monkees had become bona fide pop stars. But their two albums of perfectly crafted pop had featured no actual Monkee involvement beyond singing and song writing, and the press cried foul. No matter that the über-cool Byrds were absent from their Mr Tambourine Man session, or that the Pet Sounds era Beach Boys barely plugged into an amp: - jealousy from lesser beat groups put The Monkees on the defensive. Couple this with the controlling tendencies of their producer,  the golden-eared Don Kirshner, and a rebellion was fermenting - "Hey Hey we're the corporate puppets".

Mike Nesmith unburdened himself to the newspapers, saying;" The music had nothing to do with us. It was totally dishonest. Do you know how debilitating it is to have to duplicate other people's records? That's what we were doing".

By June 1968 The Monkees were fighting with the Screen Gems film company over ownership of the group name. By September it nearly didn't matter as confused audience reactions to advance screenings of the avant-garde Monkees feature film Head prompted Screen Gems to delay the opening and send the film back for re-editing. As the decade drew to a close, Peter Tork quit The Monkees. He was to be followed shortly by Mike Nesmith. Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz continued recording, but when the aptly-titled Changes album flopped in June 1970, they too called it a day.