Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Daydream Believers: The Kaleidoscopic Journey of The Monkees [Episode 199]

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Daydream Believers: The Kaleidoscopic Journey of The Monkees [Episode 199] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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We're totally booked in rock and roll, I mean gotta leave you. You're
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reading. Little Hans says, it's time to rock and roll. Read roll
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up, we are totally booked. Welcome back to bookd on Rock, the
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podcast for those about to read and rock. Find the podcast online at booked
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on rock dot com. Every episode in audio and video over on the website,
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along with links to your favorite listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs,
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got links to all of the social media sites, and if you want to
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find out the latest rockbook releases, you can find it at booked on rock
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dot com. Author and Monkey's historian Eric Lefkowitz is a first time guest.
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He was the author of the best selling book The Monkey's Tale back in nineteen
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eighty five. He's here now to talk about the updated version of his twenty
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thirteen book Monkey Business, The revolutionary made for TV band Monkey's Hit Everything,
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a popular TV show, hit records, and adoring fans everything but control over
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their careers. Eric chronicles the kaleidoscope journey of Mickey Dolan's, Davey Jones,
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Michael Nasmith, and Peter Tork, following each of the four Monkeys together and
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apart from nineteen sixty five right up to the present day. You can hear
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a playlist of the Monkeys by heading over to the show notes page. Hey,
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Eric, welcome to the Book Down Rock Podcast. This is Eric.
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How are you Eric? Thank you, Eric. Let's get into the book
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the Monkeys. Actually, this is not the first book you've written on the
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Monkeys. Correct, there's one back nineteen eighty five, which was a best
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seller. Tell us about that one in your history with the band. Okay,
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Well, I started that book in nineteen eighty four and pretty much was
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inspired at the time by the punk movement because the Sex Pistols had done a
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cover of I'm Not Your stepping Stone, and I went to a store and
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saw the Monkey's Greatest Hits, and I saw a stepping stone on that,
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and then I put two and two together and thought, these guys are still
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strangely kind of relevant, now, why is that? So that tickled my
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imagination and I ended up writing a series of articles about the monkeys. At
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that point, found a publisher and interviewed those four guys. And at the
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time the phenomenon was in a way like completely moribund. Nobody was talking about
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the monkeys, so it kind of caught a little fire when MTV put The
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Monkeys back on the air, and suddenly there was a whole new generation of
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fans coming along. And I was lucky enough or you know, fortunate enough
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to have a book out at that time. So that's the general sketch of
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it. But yeah, well we know the power of MTV is as far
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as what it did for bands. Talk about what that did for your book.
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Was it a really really huge increase in sales after that? Well it
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yes, but it took a little finaggling on my part because I was with
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a very indie publisher at the time who didn't have that wide a distribution.
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So what I did is I went into actually a punk rock studio where they
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were making black flag videos, et cetera. I was on the West Coast,
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and I made a commercial like remember those old one eight hundred ads,
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you know you dial up and order something like the Ronco Chopper or whatever.
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I made a kind of satirical ad about the Monkey's Tale that was the name
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of the book. Hey we're the Monkeys, and you know, made out
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like a sort of phony salesman voice, and then every time I said the
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Monkeys since I couldn't use the copyright image. I would pop the four monkey
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puppets up on the commercial with like screaming in the background. So it was
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really a garage rock commercial. But MTV started running it three or four times,
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five times a day, and that really helped. That was a direct
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way for people who were interested to get the book, and it took off
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from there. And did you have difficulty keeping up with stock, like did
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you have to keep well, it was, yeah, it was a hot
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thing. It kind of made the top ten for a second there for a
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hot second, which was exciting because I was a young guy, so you
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know, I didn't even dream that this could could happen, that I'd find
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a wide audience for it. And yeah, funny things started to happen once
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there's a commodity that is hot for a few months, you know, books
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started falling off the truck, you know, in quotes and strange things started
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happening like that. But it also created a lot of strange pressure because I
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had co opted the monkey's logo on the top on the cover of the book
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Monkey Stale Well. And then I understood I was going to be sued because
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I used this logo without permission, so there was all sorts of madness going
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on. It was an exciting time. I was a young guy. MTV
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was showing, you know, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston videos, so it
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was like one of these classic eras. And then there was the Monkeys,
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and they really promoted the heck out of it. They If you remember back
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in those days, MTV was just a behemoth of promotion. It was Yeah,
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that was nineteen eighty Five's The Monkey's Tale, And now we're going to
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talk about Monkey Business, the revolutionary Made for TV band originally published in twenty
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thirteen, but you've got a new edition which we're going to talk about,
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talk about when it's released, where people can get it, and kind of
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preview a little bit of what's in that new edition. So let's go back
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to the beginning, the formation of the band. And there's a story in
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your book about the about to be famous Monkeys all being at the Beatles concert
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at Dodger Stadium August twenty eighth, nineteen sixty six. Last Join in the
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Clarksville was already a huge hit on the radio, but the TV show hadn't
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aired yet. Who can see the idea at first, and how does this
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all come together? This goes back to even before the Beatles formed, which
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I had no idea. Well that yeah, that was with Bob Rafelson,
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the truly the creative genius behind it said. He said that he had an
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idea about a traveling itinerant folk band, which I guess he had been part
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of prior to The Beatles becoming a TV show, and he thought that like
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the high jinks of four people traveling around being a band was of interest to
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him, and that's the story he liked to tell. Bob Ravelson told a
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lot of tall tales, so his co creator, Bert Schneider, was more
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direct and said, we really had the idea after seeing A Hard Day's Night,
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which kind of makes sense, you know, because obviously The Monkeys was
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a derivative of that kind of movie. What happened was that Bert Schneider,
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his father worked for Columbia Pictures. I was actually the president of Columbia Pictures,
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and Bob Rabelson had this idea. Together, they put together a pilot.
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They auditioned four hundred and thirty seven applicants through an ad in variety.
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Everybody who was anybody showed up in La and that included people like Harry Nilsen
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and let me see Paul Williams, a whole list of people, Danny Boris
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Pickett, Boris Pickett, which I found funny because the monster mash guy was
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looking for another hit. And then Stephen Stills, who was an incipient rock
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star at the time and he apparently didn't quite have the look. He threw
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the past to Peter Tork and Peter Tork became a monkey, which was an
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interesting development because Peter Tork was really a street character and they needed a street
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character, someone truly authentic who was not from the pop world, and I
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think he filled that role well. Davy Jones was already signed to Columbia Pictures,
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so they were looking for a vehicle for him. He had been Tony
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nominated star of Oliver on Broadway and an interesting satellite that he was there first
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time the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan as a cast member of Oliver, so
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he was right on the scene. And then Mickey, who had been a
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kid star on a show called Circus Boy, had a very winning personality and
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been on TV before, so I had a great voice, so he got
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the job. And the other real shot in the dark was Michael Nasmyth who
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did see this ad in Variety and showed up wearing a wool cap and had
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its laundry slung over his shoulder like he just walked in from the street.
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And that's basically how the four guys came to be the Monkeys. Yeah,
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and I thought it was cool. The Beatles were fans of the Monkeys.
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The Monkeys were out selling the Beatles at one point, but they didn't mind.
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They were fans of the band. Yeah. I think because of when
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the Monkeys came along, they fulfilled sort of a gap I call it the
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mania gap that existed when the Beatles started becoming more sophisticated and started writing songs
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you know that we heard on Revolver or Rubber Soul. They were leaving behind
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that teeny bopper audience, and no other team kind of a band had a
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mistique quite like the Monkeys created. So with that creative team of Bob Ragelson
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and Bert Schneider and an incredible crew of song writers like Carol King, Neil
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Diamond, Harry Nilsen. Later on, you know, Nil Sadak got real,
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real talented people. You know, they had the edge over any other
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like let's say natural band that would have come along, because this was a
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manufactured pop phenomenon, and you know, they they were advertised all over the
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country. They had a show on every Monday at seven thirty where they could
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promote their videos, you know, so you had a lot of different corporate
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concerns coming together to promote this this band. So the Beatles didn't mind that.
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I think they found the show entertaining and they weren't threatened by it,
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and they actually expressed their affection for it and then held a party for the
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monkeys. And there's all sorts of connections between those those two entities you would
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not figure because a lot of people who didn't know that, you know,
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actually looked down on the Monkeys because they thought they were so derivative of the
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Beatles. But the Beatles themselves top dogs, loved them. And a few
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of the names considered the creeps the inevitables, right, those are the two
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other possible names. Yes, they could have been the Creeps. I don't
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think that quite has the same sizzle as the monkeys, ye, But and
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the inevitables is you know, interesting because then there was the plastic exploding inevitable
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the velvet underground. That's that was their you know, catchphrase. So you
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know there was something inevitable about this idea, but never has it been done
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before or after in quite the same way. And we can get into that,
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but I think there some sort of magic happened where it crossed over from
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fantasy to reality that really tickled the imaginations of people that I guess they could
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see themselves in the Monkeys somehow. You couldn't really see yourself being in the
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Beatles, but you could kind of see yourself being in the Monkeys. Yeah,
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a little more approachable, kind of like I think you said, the
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bumbling like the bumbling idiots making you always trying to do something, and they
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almost like a three Stooges type of type of thing, which is I think
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why we love the Stooges so much. Right, they never made it,
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you know, no matter what, they would come close. But I think
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that was a real clever Conceit of the show is not to make them into
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rock stars, make them into want to be rock stars. So we can
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relate to that all of us who you pick up a guitar and try to
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write songs. So that was part of the appeal, And also they used
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the real names of the actors on the show, so I think the public
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couldn't separate the identities of the characters that they were seeing on this TV show
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from the real people who wanted to actually form a real band. So at
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some point there was this crossover between fantasy and reality, and I think they've
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always stayed in a kind of strange, you know, in between world,
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between those two polar opposites. There were a couple other names in the chapter
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regarding the auditions. I think, did you mention We mentioned Bobby Pickett,
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but did you mention it was another one, Danny Hutton? Did you mention
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a later of three Dog Night? Yes he did, Yes, he auditioned.
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And let me see, well, I started an urban legend, which
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I shouldn't be proud of, but in a way, it's like, you
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know, at least I started one by saying that Charles Manson had tried out
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for the monkey because you're the one, well many different that went get this
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is great? I mean, okay, now that I didn't entirely start that.
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There's a fairly legendary DJ Rodney Bingen Hui, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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yeah. He also auditioned, right. He also, well, I
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know of that name as a big Van Halen fan. He was part of
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the emergence of Van Halen because he played You Really Got Me on the radio
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before it was released. Oh I did not know that. Yeah, that
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was a cool story behind that. Yeah, that makes sense because Rodney is
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kind of like the Forrest Gump of rock and roll, like he's literally everywhere.
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It's a little scary, yeah, but he Yeah, he was a
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double on the set of The Monkeys as well for Davy Jones. So when
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I was interviewing Rodney back in I guess this is forty years ago, My
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goodness. He told me the rumor that Charles Manson had tried out for the
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Monkeys. So I thought that was absurd and in fact, in the original
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Monkey's Tale, I uh, I said a reportedly Charles Manson took a stab
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at the job, which is a sick joke. But yes, there you
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go. I was, you know, I was. I was cheeky myself
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back back then. I was a young guy and I was sort of playing
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it loose. But then when MTV interviewed me for a documentary, they brought
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that up and they popped his face on the TV set with the well cap
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of Mike Nesmith. And I think once people saw that, that urban legend
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just went all around. And I still hear it these days and I have
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to smile on myself. It's pretty easily debunkable, that's word, because if
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you look at you look at he was in jail at the time when the
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auditions were taking place. He got out of jail in San Francisco in like
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sixty seven, sixty eight, I can't remember, but auditions were in sixty
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six for the Monkeys, which what year was that. Yeah, the ad
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went up in sixty so that would have been early sixty six they would have
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had the auditions. I do believe it could have been late sixty five.
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And I think it was a little more believable at the time because Manson I
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had an interest in having a music career. So also we didn't have the
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internet back then, so there was no way for people to run down facts
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like that so easily to put it into that context. And you know,
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I think that was I had a lot to do with the success of my
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book, is that there weren't that many places to go. Hardly anything existed.
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You know, maybe some liner notes to some records, but if someone
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wanted to know something about the monkeys at best you could go to the library
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and look at some encyclopedias or look up the article. So just to put
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it in the context, Yeah, this pre internet era. You know,
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stuff like my book, you know kind of got handed around from person to
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person, so it's the go to. I was proud of that. Yeah,
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you know, at the time, I don't know if I appreciated it
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enough. Like how hard it is to, you know, get a book
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out there. I know, you interview a lot of authors, and you
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know, you could spend so many years on these things, and then on
17:21
the day of the release, something else happens in the world, and you
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know you're overshadowed and it takes time to you know, for the public sometimes
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to connect to something. And this would have been that had MTV not put
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the Monkeys back on the air. Yeah. I always have great admiration for
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authors. I'm a short distance writer. I've said this before. I write
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articles. Writing a book is it's a long distance run, and you have
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to have a lot of patience, right, you have to you have to
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kind of pay yourself maybe go I mean you have times, do you feel
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like you need to take a break from it and go back to it,
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or do you or the reverses you get so immersed in in the book that
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you have to step away for a bit, because I can imagine it's an
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all consuming project. Yeah. I have a friend from back then, Gary
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A. Strobell. He's an authority on the monkeys and great guy if he's
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listening. Gary is one of the ultimate collectors of monkey's information. And back
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then when I was releasing my book, he was trying to finish up his
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book, and I believe he's still working on it forty years later. So
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there's a great book coming out eventually by Gary Stobel, if it's not out
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already. And you know he well, you know, he had a day
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job. You know, I had to do other things. But there were
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other people who were writing books at the same time as me, and I
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felt fortunate to be the first. Going back to the Stephen Still story,
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if he had maybe gone to the dentist, he might have gotten this gig.
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He had like one tooth that was like yeah, recess too. Yeah.
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Also was his response to that, though he seemed to handle that pretty
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well, right right, Well, I guess within a year he had a
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number one song for what it's worth, so he must have had a couple
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of, you know, a backup plans. But the the other thing about
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Steven Stills is that he would have had to take a publishing deal with screen
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JEMs, so all copyrights of the Monkey songs had to be a screen Gem
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song. They really locked that down, so if you came from another publisher,
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you could literally not make a record with the Monkeys. So Steven still
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soon want to give up his publishing, which makes a lot of sense.
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Interesting. Yeah, a lot of that stuff happens. Just reading a book
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on Prince, I don't think it was in the book, but it just
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makes me think of I was listening to Prince music and the songs from Batman,
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and I believed Timothy boy I'm also John bick and the director of the
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Batman Burden. Yeah, Timothy Burton wanted a different artist, but that artist
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wasn't part of Warner Brothers. Prince was, so they get prints. A
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lot of that stuff happens. That's very interesting. Yeah, I think this
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really affected the Monkeys. I guess we'll probably get to the point where they
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want to become a real band. But the first song that they wanted to
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release as a real band, that's the four guys playing on a record versus
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having these great studio musicians, was a song called all of Your Toys,
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which was not a screen Gems song, so it couldn't be released. So
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this did actually affect them. Eventually that policy lightened up with a great song
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by Paul Williams called Someday Man, but that was much later in their career.
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Otherwise it had to be under screen Gems. It had to be,
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you know, everything was like RCA, NBC and screen Gems. You know.
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It was like kind of a preview in some ways of our current culture
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where a bunch of big entities come together to promote something like Marvel, you
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know, and the studios. The book down Rock Podcasts will be back after
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this. Let's continue with the musical side of the Monkeys now. So three
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songs written I believe before the band was formed, one of them being the
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theme from The Monkeys, right, that was before they formed. They already
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had that song, Yes, that was written for the pilot and I think
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it's the key song in the whole discography. Yeah, yeah, tell me,
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but yeah, who wrote the song. How did the guys in the
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band respond, because it seems as if they were given a false promise that
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eventually they could write and perform like it. Don't worry, guys, but
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for now, let's just let's just do it this way. But that was
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that was not a good sign of things to come right because everything was about
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power and control because there was so much money involved in this thing that everybody
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wanted to wet their be And so Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart was a They
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were a songwriting duo that had already had some hits with Jay and the Americans
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and others, and they were writing for All Don, which was Don Kirshner's
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publishing company, which was the hottest publishing company of its time, the brill
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building people. And they were called in at the last second to come up
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with some songs for this pilot. So it was all very you know,
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slap dash and quick. And one thing that they were commissioned to do was
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come up with this theme song. And I think it's quite a brilliant song.
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You kind of have the whole controversy of the Monkeys wrapped up in this
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song because A is super professional, you know, it's like once heard,
22:48
never forgotten song. So I mean, I think even kids today if they
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hear that song one time, you know, here we call them walk down
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the street. It's very ominous in a way, the way they but then
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they defanged the whole ominous part of it by saying, we're just too busy
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singing to put anybody down. So that was like a code to parents that
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this isn't going to be too controversial. So they were kind of playing it
23:17
both sides of defense, and I think that's why The Monkeys kind of was
23:22
a revolutionary concept for its time. It was allowing rock and roll into the
23:27
living rooms of America where it had never been. There was no parental control
23:33
figure for these guys. They didn't even have a manager. But at the
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same time, they were you know, they were good guys. They weren't
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doing drugs and you know, sleeping around. You know, it was very
23:45
chaste and so in a way, I think The Monkeys was a delivery system
23:52
for a certain countercultural idea to get into the mainstream. And I think the
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theme song captures that because it's a little ominous, but it's also very ingratiating.
24:07
You know, who are the musicians that are playing on the track is
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the Yeah, the Wrecking Crew is on this. The Wrecking Crew were on
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the first two records. Uh, and you know Last Train of Clarksville is
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also I think an amazing song because basically, you know, it came out
24:29
before the show and was a hit before the show. So I think we
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can surmise that the Monkeys would have had hits even without the TV show because
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they had Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart writing you know, just a classic pop
24:44
song. And you know, we've got the you know, Bleane Campbell on
24:48
these tracks, We've got Hal Blaine, We've got Larry Nextell, we've got
24:52
super talented people, and the surprisingly supple voice of Mickey Dolan's Like, who
25:00
could have predicted, but this guy who's still out there singing today really had
25:04
some pop chops. Yeah, and well that's important to know too. All
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of them are singing on these tracks. Yes, that they were relegated to
25:17
vocals only. I don't know if the controversy could be understood by young people
25:25
today, like why would it be controversial they only sang on their tracks.
25:29
That doesn't sound like a big deal these days, But back then, there
25:33
was a certain purism about music. I guess he came out of the folk
25:41
movement where you got your you know, very sincere singer on the microphone singing
25:48
a sincere song, and you know, they created it. What you heard
25:53
is what you got. And for some reason people really took offense to the
25:59
Monks, even though the Beach Boys were making their records the same way,
26:03
and Sonny and Cher and the Birds and all sorts of West Coast bands.
26:07
We're doing that. Beach Boys the biggest example, Yeah, the biggest example.
26:11
Yes, Brian Wilson and the people that he would have in front of
26:15
him to create the sound that he envisioned. Yeah, that's strange, right,
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And so for some reason the Monkeys became the Whipping Boys, and the
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reaction was severe, and they were really chest guys, and they felt really
26:33
bad about it, and they were there was this sort of incipient rock press,
26:37
like Rolling Stone magazine, which needed something to hate, so they hated
26:42
the Monkeys. So when I tell people this story now, I think they
26:48
scratched their heads because what was the controversy about. They had a TV show.
26:52
They were actors in the TV show playing a band, the fictional band,
26:56
and they were singing on these songs. But they don't get the fact
27:00
that not being a real band, you know, was controversial. But at
27:06
the time, it was really controversial. That's why it was so important that
27:11
people like the Beatles liked them, so, you know, their own peers
27:18
got understood what was happening, but a lot of purists hammered them, and
27:25
they took a lot of crap. Yeah, there's just young guys, kids,
27:30
really right, like twenty twenty one years old. I mean, dealing
27:33
with that must have been difficult for them. And I think someone like a
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Davy Jones, who was a Broadway actor, would have been perfectly content to
27:47
sing songs on the microphone and act like a guy in a band. But
27:52
Michael Nesmith and Peter Tour were horrified that they were having to pretend to play
27:59
the instruments on the TV show. So that was the rub right there,
28:04
that they had to pretend that they were playing these instruments and they were being
28:10
ridiculed for that, and they just couldn't put up with it. So eventually
28:15
that's the you know, the big moment in the story is when they were
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well against basically the most successful you know, publishing firm in the world at
28:30
the time, So I don't know if this would happen today. I think
28:34
people would like to have all the you know, our most of the world's
28:38
great songwriters writting songs for them. In fact, I think that's how a
28:42
lot of records are made now by committee. But back then, these guys
28:47
sacrificed millions of dollars and probably a longer career so they could go in and
28:52
make their own music. I guess while we're on it, we mus as
28:55
well tell that story. If that's Michael nets right, that was he was
29:00
in the office. Yeah, So Don Kirshner gets sort of painted as the
29:06
bad guy in all of this because he was just thrilled, like every record
29:11
that he was putting out, like I'm a Believer sold ten million copies.
29:15
You know, the albums were number one, the singles were number one,
29:21
and in fact, Michael Nasma famously said about I'm a Believer, he goes,
29:26
I'm a songwriter, and I can tell you that's not a hit,
29:29
like I know because I know you know good songs. So obviously he didn't
29:33
have a clue about writing a number one pop song, but he really wanted
29:38
to get his own songs on these albums, which he had done to a
29:42
certain extent, but he wanted to be a real rock band. Is like
29:47
the old Pinocchio story. Really so, Don Kirshner was trying to sort of
29:52
keep them in line and had a photo opportunity where he gave them these big
29:59
giant checks for like a quarter of a million dollars and there was a stage
30:03
meeting and then backstage, Nesmuth demanded that he have control over his music or
30:11
he quit, and one of the lawyers sort of waving a contract in his
30:15
face, and I guess Nesmuth lost control, punched a hole in the wall
30:21
and said that could have been your face. And that's kind of the hinge
30:26
in the story where everything goes sideways. Was that the guy Herd Molus,
30:32
Oh yeah, Herb Molas, Herb Mollis. He's the attorney who's waving and
30:37
shaking the thing in front of him, right, And you know, I
30:41
could see both sides of it, to be honest with you. They had
30:44
a money minting enterprise and why rocked the boat? From their point of view,
30:51
this guy was a punk really right, you know, like what you
30:55
know, what's your problem? We just gave you a quarter of a million
30:56
dollars. But Nesmyth was really a very interesting figure. I think he's the
31:04
one I found most interesting of all of them. They're all interesting guys,
31:10
but Nesmyth was kind of a guy out of left field, like a real
31:15
intellectual futurist, and he could kind of see a couple of chess moves ahead,
31:22
and I think we're still talking about them because of his ambitions. I
31:27
think if they had just stayed a pop band, sure they would have their
31:30
place, and you know, sunshine pop history, they had already been successful.
31:37
But because they decided to make their own music and make a movie head,
31:42
I think they started veering into actual like art, you know, and
31:48
offering things that you could not have anticipated when they first got together. Yeah,
31:55
the debut episode of the TV show, I want to go back to
31:56
that as well. September twelve, nineteen sixty six. That's seven thirty PM.
32:02
Talk about the TV show. Some of the things that they were doing,
32:05
both visually and with the overall storylines that hadn't been done before. You
32:08
called a trailblazing show, like knocking down the fourth wall, no adult supervision,
32:13
no mention of school or dishes, the band members basically lovable, bumbling
32:17
Joe's is how you put it right, Yeah, I think that's what made
32:22
it so amiable. One of the techniques that they invented for the show,
32:30
the director was to take these interviews like you would have on a reality TV
32:36
show now, where you take someone aside and interview them about what it just
32:42
happened that broke the fourth wall, and asked the monkeys about their real lives,
32:47
like on the side of the set, you know, just sitting in
32:51
the chairs, relaxing afterwards. This was the key to audience identification with them,
32:55
like, Okay, wait a minute, they are real people. There's
33:00
They're not just playing these roles. And then the show itself was just frantic.
33:07
I remember because admittedly I was on this planet then, so I was
33:12
right in their audience. I was six years old when they debuted, and
33:16
I remember seeing it and I just couldn't believe how much action there was.
33:22
It was really fast cuts, you know, like freeze frames, absurd humor,
33:30
slapstick, and it kind of flew by fast. And I think all
33:34
the visual techniques that we see in videos now were there at that time,
33:39
but they were so far ahead of their time. That it was be dazzling.
33:44
It was kind of be dazzling, like you couldn't you couldn't really catch
33:47
it. It was going by so fast, and that had Yeah, I
33:52
think that had a big effect on the industry too. I don't think anything
33:58
had ever been made quite that way before. And if anything, it was
34:01
borrowing techniques from European art films and stuff, so you know, it was
34:07
way over the heads of kids like me. Did the ratings do well right
34:12
away or was it a slow build? It was always a slow build.
34:16
They they kind of actually created lower ratings by acting out at a at a
34:28
corporate event where some sessions were so appalled by the monkey's personal behavior, just
34:36
goofing around that some markets didn't air of the show, so that always affected
34:42
the ratings. However, you know, it did well enough to stay on
34:47
for two years, you know, which doesn't sound like a lot, but
34:51
the way those episodes are packed with so much there's two videos per episode,
34:58
you know, I guess that was about the natural length that we could have
35:01
expected the show to stay on the air. But it was never like a
35:06
top ten show. Okay, how many episodes in all total? It was?
35:10
I think it was fifty two overall. So most shows have to,
35:15
I believe, have like one hundred episodes to go into syndication, but they
35:22
managed to do that with fifty two episodes, So you know, I think
35:25
you couldn't go much farther with the concept than they had gone. How many
35:31
different ways can you tell the story? And some of them got pretty druggy
35:36
and weird in the second season, so the show really took a turn and
35:44
got sort of more abstract after a while, and I'm not sure they could
35:46
have taken it any farther than that. That's why they made the movie,
35:50
right, Yeah, the Monsters didn't. I don't think the Munsters had one
35:52
hundred episodes, to think, because that was a short Yeah, two seasons
35:58
for the Monsters, seventy episode olds same thing, though, became a huge
36:02
show in syndication, right. I guess if you pack enough into those two
36:07
years and the formula is pleasing, It's like a great pop song. You
36:13
can hear a great pop song five hundred times you still love it. And
36:19
I think that this is similar to that where they didn't have to make one
36:22
hundred and fifty of them for it to be iconic. Yeah, Now,
36:29
the lack of interviews was what was a specific, a specific plan because they
36:35
didn't they didn't want the guys to talk about the music, who played the
36:38
instruments, but that kind of backfired on them. Absolutely, Yeah, that
36:42
backfired one hundred percent because these guys, you know, they were typically young
36:47
men from the mid sixties, and there was all this ferment, you know,
36:53
with the Vietnam War and civil rights, and they weren't allowed to comment
37:00
on it until finally they allowed some reporters' access, and as soon as the
37:07
guys could talk out about the war, they were just right on it.
37:13
And so at the time that would have been massively controversial to have these mainstream
37:21
TV stars speaking out against the Vietnam War. That just wasn't being done.
37:24
So they tried to hold that off as long as possible. Ironically, one
37:29
of the producers, Bert Schneider, who finally gave them permission to become a
37:32
real band, ended up producing an Oscar winning documentary about the Vietnam War,
37:37
only, you know, five or six years later. So it wasn't like
37:42
politically they were misaligned with these guys. They weren't coming from that angle,
37:46
but they were just trying to protect this product as long as they could.
37:51
Well. And then there was that one interview with Michael Nesmith January of sixty
37:54
seven with a Saturday evening post. That is a big deal to talk about
37:59
what he says in there and how that would impact the band. Yes,
38:04
this interview I think created a riff that never quite healed in the band.
38:08
So Nesmuth, who was given to a sort of let's just say, he
38:16
used a lot of big words, you know, that was his way of
38:22
communicating. He liked to sort of download the contents of whatever was on his
38:29
mind in sort of a grandiose way. So this interviewer got a hold of
38:32
him. He was so frustrated about the recording process that he said, tell
38:38
the world, we're synthetic, you know, but damn it, that TV
38:43
show is a real reflection of who we are. And that was the shot
38:49
heard around the world. Like as soon as people read that, one of
38:52
the Monkeys said that they were a fake band. Well that was it for
38:57
twenty years, you know, like they had no shot credibility. So the
39:01
other members of the band weren't so thrilled that Nesmith was so critical. It
39:07
was one thing to say, you know, like this is how the records
39:13
are put together. But it was another thing to say I hate these records,
39:17
and Nesmuth crossed that line. I think he could have been a bit
39:22
more subtle about it, because in his dotage he was out on the road
39:25
up to the end of his life still playing those songs, so you know,
39:30
obviously he came around to them. But he had a chip on his
39:35
shoulder, was he He was the one that didn't really hang out with the
39:37
other three guys. There was one partensear yeah, yeah, that's all party,
39:43
and they'd invite him over and he sometimes he wouldn't even show up at
39:45
all. Yeah. I think that he's a psychologically quite a complex guy.
39:52
Personally, I found him really fascinating, and I was lucky enough to know
39:58
him as an acquaintance, and I found I think he was, you know,
40:01
a confused young man looking back on it all, because he was really
40:06
actually a very gracious person. But at the time he was a hothead,
40:12
and I think that he was deeply affected by the idea that he was getting
40:15
rich on something that was quote unquote uncool, and back then being uncool was
40:23
really, for some reason a bigger deal. Now you could almost be uncool
40:29
and you know, make that your brand. But back then, you know,
40:36
people really cared about this movement, this rock and roll movement, and
40:39
the Monkeys seemed to be, you know, the most plastic version of fake
40:45
version of authentic culture. The weird thing is, after now fifty sixty years,
40:53
the Monkeys have now become an icon of that era, and I think
40:59
there, you know, one of the bands that's representative of that era.
41:05
But at the time, they couldn't have known that what's going to happen.
41:09
The book Done Rock Podcasts will be back after this. Eric Leftchwitz is the
41:15
author of monkey Business, The Revolutionary Made for TV Band, originally published in
41:20
twenty thirteen, and he's here to tell us about the updated Virgin, which
41:23
we will get to. We did talk about that showdown with Kershner. There
41:28
was a meltdown in Cleveland prior to that that would lead to the four members
41:31
getting into the studio to prove what they could do on their own. Something
41:37
happened there. Yes, they after the first record came out, they were
41:43
appalled that they weren't given any credit really for the music, even though Mike
41:50
has had a couple of really great songs on the first record. Papa Jeans
41:55
Blouze being a great example, just you know, really great pop song.
42:01
They wanted to have some control over the second record. Well, it turns
42:06
out that Kirshner sorry, had no interest in giving them any control, so
42:10
he put together the second record, More of the Monkeys, which is one
42:15
of the best selling pop records of all time. Now, but the Monkeys
42:19
wanted to have, you know, some say over what went on that record.
42:23
They didn't even know it had to come out, and they were in
42:28
Cleveland playing a show. The backside, right, they saw all the credits,
42:31
right, and so someone brought them a copy and they're playing, and
42:35
they're all sitting there just scheming, and then they noticed that they're they're not
42:37
even credited. They're barely credited on their records of Don Kursher's going through and
42:43
thanking all the songwriters and all the players. Oh and by the way,
42:46
the Monkeys also now we should say thanks to them, So that blew their
42:52
minds. And then of course it went out and sold, you know,
42:54
millions and millions of copies. So that must have been frustrating situation where you're
43:01
also like, the cover was an ad they had done for J. C.
43:06
Penny, whether they're trying to dress up in like polyester shirts looking you
43:12
know, like they wouldn't have dressed that way in real life, but there
43:15
it is on the cover of the record, and they were just appalled.
43:20
Yeah looking at the cover here. Yeah, but now I know the Jimmy
43:23
Hendrick story makes more sense now knowing that information why Mickey was the one who
43:30
wanted Hendrix to open for the Monkeys, because it's a story that's often told
43:32
and seen as a nod pairing, like what the hell were they thinking?
43:36
But really, I think Mickey was thinking, Hey, this is going to
43:38
legitimize the band here, this guy's the real deal. Let's have him tour
43:43
with us. That's going to help us as well as it's going to help
43:45
him. Didn't work out that way, But how did it all come together?
43:50
And can you talk about how those shows went? Because Jimmy wasn't exactly
43:52
a fan of the Monkeys nor their fans. Last second, No, I
43:58
don't think he was a fan. I think he liked the p pull in
44:00
it. But you're making a really good point, Eric, is that really
44:04
everything after that fight with Kirshner can be seen through the lens of the Monkeys
44:09
trying to gain credibility and they're never going to get it. We know that
44:15
now. I mean they're not going to get it in the original incarnation,
44:19
but they don't know that. So they're really desperately trying to be seen as
44:24
credible artists. And like, no one had a shot. The Monkeys had
44:30
no shot at being seen as, you know, contenders to the ground of
44:36
authenticity. So when Mickey was at the Monterey Pop Festival, he saw Hendrix
44:43
and there's footage of Mickey at that in the film, the Penna Baker film
44:50
Monterey Pop, and he looks blazed, you know, and I think everybody
44:54
was, you know, but he you kind of see him looking like he's
44:59
tripping out. So I think he saw Hendricks and had a big idea like,
45:02
this is the guy who's got to open for us on the next tour.
45:07
And as absurd as that sounds to the Hendricks management, that was not
45:13
a bad deal because they were going to get all sorts of publicity from that,
45:17
and people forget that Jimmy Hendricks was a virtual unknown. That film didn't
45:22
come out for a while, so you know, that made a huge difference
45:28
in his career because there was all these articles written in the press about this
45:32
mismatch between the Monkeys and Hendricks, and reportedly Hendricks flipped the bird to the
45:38
fans because they were all yelling for Davy. You know, I think it's
45:44
one of the great mismatches ever. But it's sure is a lot of fun
45:49
to think about that. It's a could you imagine like being a young kid
45:55
and going to see the Monkeys and then this guy comes out starts saying purple
46:00
haze, like, yeah, I had to blow a lot of mines.
46:04
Yes, yeah, it's a that's worthy of a documentary. I think there
46:09
is one if you look it up on YouTube. There's like a mini documentary
46:15
that came out about six months ago called something along the Line, So from
46:21
the Monkeys to the Hollywood Bowl, and it covers that part of Hendrix's history
46:28
in pretty close detail, and there's there's great photos and Hendricks having a great
46:31
time backstage, and you know, it's a legendary thing. I mean,
46:37
I would say it's one of the great legends of rock and roll that the
46:40
Monkeys, you know, closed the show for Jimmy Hendrix. There was a
46:45
story you tell the book where Mickey is hanging out with Jimmy and was it
46:50
one of the Beatles Steve Still, Stephen Stills, and Mickey was walking out
46:54
of the room like, hey, where you go, man? Come on
46:58
keep jamming. Yeah, they're having a jam Sesshion. He didn't think he
47:00
was welcome. I don't know what was that about. I think he just
47:05
thought no one was listening to him. So he was kind of like,
47:07
you know, slapping some drums and playing along and he stopped and everyone looked
47:12
and said, what's what's what's up? Come on man, I don't know
47:15
you. I didn't think you were listening, you know. But he also
47:19
was supposed to audition for Frank Sappa's band after the Monkeys, so he didn't
47:23
have a lot of faith in his drumming. I think that's fair to say
47:27
that, you know, compared to studio CROs like Jim Gordon and you know,
47:32
Jim Keltner and Hal Blaine, you know, Mickey Dolans was a rank
47:37
amateur, so you know, I guess he just didn't have any confidence about
47:40
it. Yeah. Well, he had to learn how to play the drums
47:44
from scratch when he got hired for the show, didn't he he did?
47:47
Yeah, it shows. You know, like on the early recordings, you
47:52
can tell that you know, he's he's having some trouble with tempos and you
47:57
know, he's an amateur drummer all the way. He should have been the
48:00
lead guy. In my opinion, I think that a lot of people came
48:04
to that conclusion. I mean, Davy was the heart throb, but you
48:07
know, Mickey was sort of hidden behind the drums. You know, it's
48:13
the same thing that happened to the Carpenters, like Karen Carpenter was you know,
48:16
actually an excellent drummer, and they made her come out because you need
48:21
a front person. Well, Micky it went and reversed. You know,
48:23
he was the lead singer of the band and he ended up on the drums.
48:29
And you know, it's not that persuasive. When you watch the videos,
48:30
you could see that he's, you know, he's trying to sing and
48:34
mime the drums at the same time. And you know he did in the
48:38
end, he did a few tracks that were actually fairly impressive. But I
48:43
think this would be a struggle for anybody to suddenly be on stage in front
48:46
of, you know, seventeen thousand people having to drum and thing at the
48:53
same time he soldiered through it. Nicky is a proud Micky is pros pro
49:00
and you know, I do really admire him for that. The book Down
49:06
Rock Podcasts will be back after this. The band proved themselves with sixty seven's
49:12
Headquarters, so that's the third album. They have complete control over what's on
49:15
that album. Coach to number one in the US, double platinum, number
49:19
two in the UK. So they had to have been so happy about that.
49:22
And the fame and the fortune continues. And I want to read what
49:24
you lead chapter thirty three with right quote. The private lives of the Four
49:29
Monkeys, when there was time for privacy, were filled with all sorts of
49:31
intrigue, details of which rarely reached the public. Had some of the more
49:36
salacious information been disclosed, the group's good standing and public image would have been
49:40
in trouble. What are some of the stories you could share that are in
49:44
the book about the four members? Because Peter Torque had at a place at
49:46
Laurel Canyon that was quite the party pad, that's true. Yeah, Torque
49:53
had what I described as a collegula like scene where basically everything and anything went,
50:01
and Peter was famous for walking around naked and swimming naked, and I
50:07
guess he encouraged everyone to get naked. I think Davey said, you know,
50:12
he was turned off by that and used to run out. You know,
50:15
it was sort of scary, but you know, for what it was,
50:19
it was kind of a freak scene. And I think everything you can
50:22
imagine, like orgies and you know, all sorts of drugs being done,
50:28
Everything you can imagine was probably being done. I think that it's not an
50:31
exaggeration of a lot of like itinerate musicians at the time, but stop,
50:37
buy and stay there. Like Jackson Brown and others would live on Peter's dome,
50:42
Peter was kind of giving it away, kind of that he had this
50:45
guilty concience that he used becoming, you know, so rich on this concept.
50:50
You know, all these things need to be placed in some sort of
50:54
relevance because I think it would be hard to understand now why someone would feel
50:58
so bad for you being a number one pop star. But Peter in particular
51:05
really invested his heart and soul into that record Headquarters, which I think stands
51:09
up as a do it yourself record. I think it's a fascinating record,
51:15
and that and the following one Pisces Aquarius, I think are like, you
51:20
know, some of the best pop records from that era. Headquarters to me
51:24
is like the key record, because you know there they are playing thereund the
51:30
instruments. You know, six months before that they had just been cast in
51:34
a TV show playing a band, and now they're actually a band and successfully
51:42
making cohesive pop music. And I've always found that record to be fascinating.
51:47
If you know, any of your listeners haven't heard it, I would say,
51:52
within that context, listen to Headquarters and see what you think. You're
51:57
right. And I'm just looking here. If I do the math career,
52:00
it's fifty seven years ago this month. It was released May twenty second,
52:02
nineteen sixty seven. Oh my god, I feel old. You do the
52:08
math and then you think I was born? Oh boy, wow yeah yeah,
52:13
May twenty second, nineteen sixty seven. So how does that initial run
52:16
end? How does that all play out? Peter quit first? Peter quit
52:21
after the movie Head because head bombed. Now this is again like just become
52:28
a cult classic, like a lot of stuff that they did post Kirshner when
52:32
they kind of became freaks. Now that's the they started off as Bubblegum and
52:37
Innocent Fellas on the TV show, and by the end they were kind of,
52:43
you know, much edgier. The movie had in particular is edgy,
52:46
and Peter was so depressed by the failure of the movie that I think he
52:54
regretted this, but he quit the band. I think, you know,
52:58
you probably should have Stucker out for a little bit longer, because the music
53:01
was getting really interesting at that point, especially his his songs and head are
53:07
excellent songs played by members of the Buffalo Springfield you know. So it's pretty
53:12
cool movie. Yes he did. He co wrote it and produced it,
53:16
and yeah, I think yeah, bobar Reson directed it later, you know,
53:22
directed five easy Pieces. The money from the Monkeys, you know,
53:25
made Easy Rider. I mean it's funny, like uh, you know,
53:31
at the time, I think nobody wanted to see this movie because they made
53:36
a like, you know, a really dark satire about themselves that was the
53:40
polar opposite of the TV show. And there was really no way the audience
53:45
for the Monkeys was going to go see this movie. And there was no
53:49
way that the hip audience that was going to go see Easy Rider and all
53:52
these you know, counterculture films that were about to come out We're gonna see
53:58
Head. So it just made no money. But I think it was way
54:04
ahead of its time. I think it was one of the earliest of the
54:07
counterculture movies that hold up today much better. It holds up much better than
54:13
most of the films from its time. But it's a lot of people don't
54:16
get it because it's nonlinear, but I think it's well worth a watch.
54:22
Zappa is in it. He plays the critic. Yes, Zappa is really
54:28
funny in it. He's after a scene where Davey sings this song and dance
54:34
number by Harry Nilsen called Daddy's Song. He's wandering out of the studio and
54:40
Zappa says, your music's pretty white, and then Davy says, wow,
54:45
so am I? And then Zappa says something along the line, so you
54:50
know, the children of America are counting on you know. It's just pretty
54:54
funny scene. There's a lot of strange characters in that in that film.
55:00
Sonny List in the Boxer, Yeah, he was not a well liked person.
55:07
And uh, you know Terry Gar. Terry Gar is test true,
55:13
Testy true. She's very cute in the movie. And A and A scene
55:17
that was later stolen by mel Brooks and Blazing Saddles where you break through the
55:22
scenery. At the end of Blazing Saddles, there's the exact same kind of
55:27
comic gag where you know, someone bursts through the scenery and you could see
55:31
the studio in the background. Total basil of Oh, Mickey, yours are
55:38
fine, you blow my mind? Fame Yeah, song dancer, Yeah,
55:45
she's great. Dennis Hopper makes an appearance in his Easy Rider uniform, so
55:54
you know, and that foot of the Mouseketeer. And then there's this crazy
56:01
character actor it's one of my favorite parts of it, named Timothy Carey who
56:07
was in Kubrick Films. He is just a scream in this movie. He
56:13
acts as their manager. He has a cape, and he has some wild
56:17
scenes and he's a cult actor who was on the cover of Sergeant Pepper believe
56:23
it or not, but for some reason, like he was on the original
56:28
shoot but they didn't use his photo. But what was his character's name?
56:34
Was Timothy Carey's character's name? Do you remember? Okay, what was his
56:37
name? I'm cheating, I'm looking at it. So what was his name?
56:44
Mister Lord High and low Lord High and Low. He's got some real
56:52
funny scenes because he's just desperate to keep them in his fold and make money
57:00
off of them. And I love Timothy Carey. I think he's one of
57:05
the highlights of that film. What a Trip, What a Trip. Prior
57:07
to the Big Monkeys resurgence in the mid eighties that you had talked about,
57:12
which is thanks to your book and MTV running the TV show, there were
57:15
reunions and revivals during the seventies. There was the Saturday Morning syndication. Can
57:20
you talk about those who was part of them. The seventies was also a
57:22
rough time for Peter Torrick. Yeah, poor Peter, Like he got busted
57:28
for just a little having a little bit of Hashi show on them, and
57:31
he went to prison for three months in Texas and he really washed out.
57:37
He had problems with alcohol. I think they all had problems getting jobs after
57:42
The Monkeys. They were type cast. And the strange thing is the records
57:46
kept selling, you know, like the kids that grew up with The Monkeys
57:51
never lost their love for them. But the show was off the air,
57:57
even though yes it did show up in syndication, and then there was a
58:00
potential reunion with the songwriters of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Harp with Davy and Mickey.
58:07
They toured that didn't have any traction. So the seventies were a sort
58:12
of a wash out period for them. And you know, that's the era
58:16
of corporate rock started coming along, and you know, they were from another
58:22
era. But then when new wave music came along in the late seventies early
58:28
eighties, all of a sudden, that idea of popcraft and you know,
58:34
like creating characters sort of you know, making sense to people. And then
58:43
the Monkeys didn't seem so controversial. So a lot of bands from that time,
58:47
like Blondie and the Ramones and Elvis Costello and later Rim especially, they
58:55
were major fans. They had grown up with this music and they loved them
59:00
and they were the kings of cool for their time. So all of a
59:02
sudden the landscape changed. And then MTV came along and in one fell swoop
59:07
they showed twenty two straight hours of Monkeys episodes out of the blue, like
59:13
no one saw that coming. And for people who had never even heard of
59:16
the Monkeys, they thought, they, you know, we're a new band.
59:21
There's tell me about Michael Nesmith playing a role in the evolution of music,
59:25
video and MTV. This I had no idea about. Yes, that's
59:29
you know. What you're picking up on, Eric, is that all roads
59:34
sort of lead to this band, you know, and you talk about Jimmy
59:37
Hendrix, you talk about the Beatles, talk about MTV. There's so many
59:40
easy rider, you know, counterculture movies. It's kind of crazy. That's
59:45
the thing that's hard to sum up. It's easy to sum up that this
59:47
was a prefabricated band that was on television. It had some hits, and
59:52
that's it. But when you start talking about these other aspects of it,
59:57
Like Michael Nesmyth made a video the seventies for a song called Rio and it
1:00:04
got a really great reaction and he kind of a light bulb went on in
1:00:07
his head and he thought, well, what about programming all show around videos?
1:00:12
This hadn't been done, and he created the idea of VJs and he
1:00:16
sold the concept to Warner Brothers, who ended up taking in creating MTV.
1:00:22
So he was the father of MTV. And he was also one of the
1:00:28
first country rock artists as well, so you know, he really was a
1:00:32
visionary in some ways, but he never really got credit for any of that
1:00:37
stuff, because you know, as he predicted, the first line in his
1:00:42
obituary was monkey, you know, monkey Michael Nesmith. So it's indicated by
1:00:47
what I just said. I never even knew that. I had no idea
1:00:51
until I read the book. Yeah. Well, he does have a good
1:00:54
biography, autobiography out or he wrote it for obviously for your past, called
1:01:00
Infinite Tuesday, which is, you know, really reflects his personality, a
1:01:07
real curious fellow. But definitely he had a vision and of course his mother
1:01:13
invented white out, so he also had a few bucks in his pocket.
1:01:15
Yes, holy cow wow. Yeah. Yeah. So one fun thing about
1:01:22
the Monkeys is just how many different, you know, different ideas ends up,
1:01:30
you know, connecting to this band, from reality TV to psychedelia to
1:01:37
you know, sunshine pop to all sorts of stuff. It's it's kind of
1:01:43
a constant source of fascination. I guess that's why there probably is big today
1:01:47
in some ways, at least with fans of pop music as they've ever been.
1:01:52
The second wave of Munkeymania ran out of gas by like eighty seven or
1:01:57
so, but the legacy of the Monkeys did it seemed complete As you write
1:02:01
the lead off Chapter sixty two, and then the tours because the tours would
1:02:06
go on and on and on. So the legacy of the band I think
1:02:08
starts to develop as we get into the nineties. How do they continue through
1:02:13
that decade though, went into the two thousands. Who's part of it?
1:02:15
Who isn't? Who would we sadly lost because there was quite a few I
1:02:20
think they get They went in and out of reunions, tours, projects,
1:02:23
right, Yes, there was different configurations of the group. There was you
1:02:30
know, Peter and Davy did a tour, Mickey and Davy did a tour,
1:02:35
the three of them did a tour. And the truth is they didn't
1:02:37
always get along, these guys, so unfortunately there was a lot of you
1:02:43
know, backstabbing behind the scenes. But what did happen start happening is that
1:02:49
the song started showing up in the movies and generation after generation would discover the
1:02:53
monkeys. For example, Shrek used I'm a Believer even though it wasn't the
1:02:59
original version, and UH Smash the Smash Mount did it right, And more
1:03:04
recently, shows like mad Men and Wanda Vision and UH Breaking Bad and UH
1:03:14
Better Call Saul. All these shows use Monkeys songs, so people go back
1:03:20
and they you know, younger people who don't know the Monkeys go back and
1:03:22
discover them. So there's something about that music that has become like one of
1:03:29
the great song catalogs in pop history. And I think it, you know,
1:03:32
it does hold up because it's got all sorts of everything from you know,
1:03:37
garage rock to psychedelia. It's a fascinating I think it's it's those songs
1:03:45
which have made the Monkeys so enduring. And the last surviving member is Mickey,
1:03:50
right, Yes, Sadly Mickey is the only one left. Davey went
1:03:55
first. That was a real shock or yes, definitely right, Poor Davy,
1:04:00
like was only in his mid sixties and had a heart attack. Peter
1:04:04
was sick for a while and died of cancer in twenty nineteen, and Netsmith
1:04:12
passed in twenty twenty one. So we're down to one Monkey, which is
1:04:17
there's more Beatles left the Monkeys, but we're happy that there's you know,
1:04:23
at least one monkey is still around and he's still out there doing it.
1:04:28
And you know, my feeling is that for such a package pop concept,
1:04:34
that this thing has legs. And I think that even though there are critics
1:04:41
at the time, would you know, never have believed it. I think
1:04:45
that the idea behind the Monkeys is a happy one. It's a good memory
1:04:53
for people, and I do believe in the future people will still be interested
1:04:58
in it and find your way to it if they're interested in pop music of
1:05:02
the nineteen sixties. Yeah, there's I have a friend who's who's into all
1:05:08
of the quote unquote legitimate artists in rock history, and the Monkeys is on
1:05:14
his list. You know. He always gives me CDs bootlegs of here's a
1:05:16
Clapton bootleg, and here's this. Oh, here's a great album by the
1:05:19
Birds, here's the and one day he said, here's the Monkeys, you
1:05:23
know, and I love that that they are part of his legitimate band list.
1:05:29
And they really are. And they prove themselves with those albums. You're
1:05:32
starting with the third album. They proved that they could do it. This
1:05:36
wasn't like a Milli Vanilli thing. These guys could do it right. Yeah,
1:05:42
they did do it, I think that, and they did it well,
1:05:45
and they did well, and you know, they have the top studios
1:05:49
and the top musicians, so that that made a big difference. So you
1:05:56
sent me the extra chapters part of the updated version of the book. I
1:06:00
want to finish with that picks up in twenty twelve, and I want to
1:06:03
focus specifically on the epilogue, which is so beautifully written, and it's very
1:06:06
interesting the observation that you make so you write quote the implications of overexposing your
1:06:12
persona to the insatiable demands of a celebrity obsessed culture are more familiar today.
1:06:16
Dolans, Jones, Nesmith, and Torque confronted these unforeseen dangers without a roadmap,
1:06:23
given the surrealistic twists in turns of their individual careers. It's quite amazing
1:06:27
that all four of the Monkeys survived with their sanity intact. Can you talk
1:06:30
about how you say that the Monkeys were ahead of their time in terms of
1:06:33
being prefabricated band video pioneers and reality TV stars. Well, I think the
1:06:41
Monkeys in a way, their experience in the phenomenon at the time really sort
1:06:47
of predates what people now experience in social media, where all of a sudden
1:06:54
you go from nobody or someone no one's ever heard of to you know,
1:07:00
you go viral. So the Monkeys were kind of an original viral concept.
1:07:03
Where one week no one had ever heard of the monkeys. For next week
1:07:06
they were like a top TV show. And so I think that was,
1:07:13
uh, you know, presage our own era where you sort of sacrifice your
1:07:17
privacy to go big and uh, I think the monkeys were an early example
1:07:25
of that where uh maybe inadvertently they wouldn't have known at the time that all
1:07:30
the things that they were doing were going to become urban legends, like we've
1:07:35
been discussing in this conversation. So I think they left a permanent trail like
1:07:42
we leave today with social media posts. And in a way, you could
1:07:46
see them as avatars, you know, of the future where you want to
1:07:51
have your art you uh, you know, be commercial, you want to
1:07:56
get out there and have your songs be hits. What are you going to
1:07:59
do just you know, what are you going to sacrifice along the way to
1:08:03
get to achieve those goals? And I think the monkeys they really went through
1:08:09
sort of a kaleidoscopic journey that people experience these days too. You know,
1:08:15
you could just have be out there in public and do something, you know,
1:08:19
accidentally trip over something, someone might make a video of you, put
1:08:24
it on TikTok and now everybody knows who you are, so you know,
1:08:29
those pitfalls of fame were experienced by the Monkeys almost sixty years ago, I
1:08:35
guess now. Yeah, Monkey Business the Revolutionary Made for TV band is the
1:08:41
title of the book. Tell us about the updated version? When and where
1:08:43
can we get a copy of the new edition? Well, the book just
1:08:45
came out, and I'm also really proud of this audiobook that was made of
1:08:50
it. It's actually available to stream on Spotify or also you can get it
1:08:56
on audible. It addresses the last twenty years of their career. They did
1:09:03
make a great record in twenty sixteen with Adam Schlessinger of Fountains of Wayne.
1:09:10
I think it's worth a listen. I think good Times is, you know,
1:09:13
one of their top records, and it just addresses what happened to these
1:09:16
guys. I follow their life from you know, beginning to end, and
1:09:20
thank goodness, Mickey still around. But a lot of people don't know the
1:09:25
stories, the behind the scenes stories of what was going on in those last
1:09:30
twenty years. And I try to cover it sports and all, not all
1:09:32
of it's pretty, to be honest with you, you know, it's tough
1:09:36
to be an agent pop Star and the last tour with Michael Nasmith in particular,
1:09:44
which I write about in great detail, which I witnessed, was very
1:09:49
difficult to see. And he was in the last, you know, weeks
1:09:54
of his life. He insisted on doing this tour. He was in terrible
1:09:57
shape, and it was that was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking to watch,
1:10:02
but in a way I don't know, like do we want to go out
1:10:06
on stage? A lot of people say they want to go out on stage,
1:10:12
so you know, like they want to die on stage. Well,
1:10:15
he practically did that. Yeah, So people can get it wherever you get
1:10:18
books. Amazon, Yeah, I think Amazon's, unfortunately is the place that
1:10:26
most books are sold these days, so it's up there. You can get
1:10:30
the Kindle version, and also if you want to just listen to that audiobook
1:10:35
and you have a streaming service, you can access it that way. I
1:10:43
do think it's a fairly legendary story and that anyone who hasn't you know,
1:10:46
who's a fan of music, pop music and rock and roll, who hasn't
1:10:51
delved into the monkey story, we'll discover that it's it's fairly fascinating. I'm
1:10:57
going to check it out. I have Spotify, so I'll check out the
1:11:00
the audio version that that's cool. I didn't know that. Well, thank
1:11:04
you, Eric, because I listened to your show and I really relate to
1:11:09
all the authors out there who might be listening, who uh you know,
1:11:13
follow their dream and uh, you know, the Monkeys. It's like I'm
1:11:17
like al Pacino and Godfather three that keep sucking me back in, Like I
1:11:23
can't believe I'm still talking about them after forty years. I hopefully, uh,
1:11:27
you know, answer all your questions today, but I got to say,
1:11:30
like there's something's truly fascinating about these guys that you know, I'm still
1:11:35
I'm still gonna write, you know, another version of it one day,
1:11:39
and uh, keep it, keep it going. Well, Actually, you
1:11:43
know what before I forget, is there a movie planned? I mean now
1:11:46
that these days there's movies for all of these legendary artists and bands, is
1:11:50
there something in the works. There's some rumors about a big documentary, which
1:11:57
I hope to see. But the inside word on that is they've always stopped
1:12:03
any project from going to Broadway, like let's say, like a jukebox musical
1:12:09
that type of thing, or like a bid pic, you know, like
1:12:12
the Bob Marley one eaton John. Yeah. I was actually approached by some
1:12:16
producers, and then what happened was that because the song catalog is so strong,
1:12:25
it's like, you know, it seems like a no brainer, but
1:12:30
insiders who own this put the kabash on it. So so far there's a
1:12:34
kabash on it. So might not happen in the near term, but maybe
1:12:38
in the in the long term, it wasn't natural, right, Yeah,
1:12:42
but there are those those legal hurdles to get over. Well, Eric,
1:12:45
thank you so much for doing this. This is I agree. The monkey
1:12:48
story is fascinating and at the end of the day, the music. It's
1:12:53
about the music. Go out and listen to those songs. It's everywhere nowadays
1:12:56
of streaming services, so give them a listen. I personally have to listen
1:12:59
to twenty sixteen album. I have never listened to it, so I'm looking
1:13:01
forward to It's all the four originals right on that album. Right. They
1:13:05
brought back some other musicals and there's a song called Me and Magdalena, which
1:13:11
has become one of their biggest streaming hits, which was a song written by
1:13:15
Ben Gibbert of Death Cab for Cutie and that's a real classic, like a
1:13:19
late classic. It's a very adult song. And if you haven't heard that
1:13:25
one, I think it'll I find a very movie that one. I did
1:13:29
listen to, and I didn't know that was on that album, but I
1:13:31
just was hitting random while I was reading your book and that was one that
1:13:34
came up, and it is an excellent song. So I'm looking forward to
1:13:36
listening to the rest. Eric, thanks so much, Thank you, Eric.
1:13:47
That's it. It's in the books.