Like many
others, I was saddened to hear about Peter Tork’s passing last week. Other than the basics (“I’m a Believer,” “(I’m
Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”), I didn’t have much exposure to the Monkees at their
prime until I was in college, so I didn’t have the more typical experience of
people who grew up with them as kids (either back in the ‘60s or later in
reruns.) As such, it’s maybe weird that
I enjoyed them as much as I did, but I found their thoroughly silly, weird show
to be very charming and their music to be catchy and cool. They helped me decompress from homework
stress plenty of times, and I still enjoy watching the odd episode now and
again.
The
premise is simple: a rock band, made up
of four “long-haired weirdos” living in a cluttered beach house, go on all
manner of misadventures. Episodes range
from more usual fare – one (or more) of the guys trying to woo a particular
girl, the band schemes to get a record deal – to off-the-wall – the guys are
kidnapped by pirates, the CIA recruits the band to catch Russian spies – to downright
bizarre – whatever on earth is going on in their final episode. At the center of it all are the endearing
Davy (the romantic,) Micky (the goof,) Mike (the voice of reason,) and Peter
(the “dummy.”)
This post
is going to be a little all-over-the-place, and I want to talk more
particularly about Peter later, but I’ll just get started and see where I wind
up. First off, I kind of love that their
TV show is so weird and wild. There are
definite kids’-show antics, like goofy schemes involving the guys wearing
disguises and faux-spooky romps with monsters.
There are also fun fantasy cutaways, surprisingly-sly bits of
fourth-wall-breaking humor every now and then, unexpected serious/touching
moments, and individual scenes where one or more of the guys are for-sure high
as a kite. I enjoy little touches like a
pair of one-shot characters being named George and Lenny, I enjoy how the more
clean-cut mod look goes out the window between seasons with Micky’s curly fro
and Peter’s love beads, and I can honestly say that every episode makes me
smile. Also, deep questions – where does
a rock band get that much dynamite?
And
obviously, there’s the music too. Swept
up in nostalgia after Peter’s death, I discovered that much of their music is
available on Amazon Prime (three of their studio albums and a greatest-hits
compilation,) and listening to it since the weekend has reminded me how good
their stuff is. “Prefab” or not, you can’t
deny how listenable so many of these songs are.
There are the usual suspects, like “Mary, Mary,” “Daydream Believer,”
and “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” but I also want to shout out a few of my personal
favorites: “Sometime in the Morning,” “You
Just May Be the One,” and “She Hangs Out.”
In the years since I became a low-key fan, I’ve read a little about how
Mike Nesmith in particular had a part in the creation of the modern music
video, and the music sequences on the show were an early predecessor of
that. Whether filmed performances,
montage “Monkee romps,” or a combination thereof, these musical interludes were
a great way to further the synergy between TV show and actual band.
Really,
just how the group came about is interesting to me, the fact that it was intentionally designed and built by
a studio. I’m sure that was really tough
for the four band members/actors to navigate, as the show brought with it
enormous fame but the lingering attitude that they were manufactured, not “real”
in the way that most bands were. In
years since, we’ve become more used to prefabricated music sensations, like the
boy bands of the ‘90s/’00s and contests like American Idol or The Voice. But the stigma around that type of success is
still with us – boys bands continue to get tons of scorn, and we’ve seen how
many American Idol winners aren’t
fully taken seriously unless they’re able to distance themselves from their American Idol image.
For the
Monkees, though, the way they were manufactured actually made room for them to be
a really interesting group because they were all so different. Under ordinary circumstances, what would be
the chances of Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith ending up in the same band? Their styles and their sounds were all
different, but because they’d been picked out by some studio suits who brought
them all together, the result was one band whose sensibilities could be really
eclectic. Something I really like about
the albums available on Amazon Prime is that most of them are remastered and
include a lot of bonus tracks, and so I’ve come across a handful of songs with
different versions sung by multiple Monkees.
It’s cool how the same song has a completely different feel when sung
by, say, Mike versus Micky. It’s not
just the vocals that change – the whole feel is different. And yet, it’s all the Monkees. I like that.
As I
said, I can’t finish this post without talking about Peter Tork. When it comes down to it, Mike is probably my
favorite, but Peter is a very close second.
On the show, I like how Peter’s “dimness” is often interchangeable with
his sweet innocence. There’s the classic
“The Devil and Peter Tork,” in which the other three band together to save
Peter after he accidentally winds up selling his soul to the devil in exchange
for playing the harp. I like how indulgently
the other Monkees sigh, “No, Peter,”
when he does something clueless, and I love this one quick bit in a random
episode where each of the guys is shown imagining a beautiful woman on their
arm, but in Peter’s case, he’s just hugging an enormous stuffed tiger – bless him. Although he never sings nearly as much as the
other guys, I still like seeing the ways his talent as an instrumentalist and
songwriter comes through. Like Davy
Jones before him, even though so many years have past, I think many of us still
have this preserved image of Peter as a young musician in the ‘60s. As such, it’s hard to think that he’s gone,
and we’ll all miss him.
I also
want to mention what was probably my actual first exposure to the Monkees: their guest appearances on Boy Meets World, most memorably, the
season 3 episode with the Matthews parents’ 20th anniversary. While Peter and Micky had both popped up
before on separate episodes (as Topanga’s dad and Alan’s buddy, respectively,)
this episode brought both of them back, along with Davy as a former
friend/hanger-on from an old backpacking trip through Europe. Naturally, it culminates in them saving the
anniversary party with an impromptu performance of Alan and Amy’s song, “My
Girl.” I remember how much I enjoyed the
episode as a kid without knowing the significance of the actors in it, and it
was a lot of fun to go back and see it again after being introduced to the
Monkees proper. Good times.
Warnings
Some don’t-try-this-at-home
stuff, occasional veiled drug references, and an unfortunate amount of racial
insensitivity (including way too many white people playing Asians and Latinx
people in one-off episodes.)
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