Monkees business

David Renzi

Friday, June 14, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

They sat three abreast on a couch interview after interview, fielding question after question with candor and humor. It was no "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" situation with these Monkees.

The event was a promotional engagement for their Las Vegas Hilton concert on June 21, and Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork were in town early to pump the show and captivate the media.

"The interesting thing that I find is so great, is news people, print people, producers, directors, they all grew up with the Monkees, so therefore there's an affection and an attraction there, which is so good for us," Jones says.

"And we're willing to suck it dry," says Tork. "We're totally whores for our craft."

"It's easy to do this show," Dolenz adds, "because it's like somebody throwing you a birthday party every night. You can't hardly do anything wrong; they want to hear the songs, you sing them on key and with some enthusiasm. And it's not like we're out there having to sell anything, or push anything (although a studio album with new material is due out in the fall). God bless them, but I don't know how in the world you could be in a group these days with the competition and really having to get out there and sell it. We give it away."

Conspicuously absent from the proceedings was Michael Nesmith (the tall, thin Monkee who wore knit caps).

"Mike doesn't like touring," Dolenz says of Nesmith, who is producing the new album ("Micky, Mikey, Petey & Davy"), "and he said to get over it, OK? He loves being in the studio; we had an incredible time doing this album. He hates touring -- not the shows, but the 22 hours of commuting to do a two-hour job."

Not the others, who by the time they play Las Vegas will be on the third date of a 50-city, 30th anniversary U.S. tour with a five-piece band.

"We don't do much new material in this show," Jones says. "We do mostly Monkee material."

And you know what that means: "Daydream Believer," "Last Train to Clarksville," "I'm a Believer" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday," to name several of the 11 top 40 hits by a band that really wasn't.

"If you understand the premise," Dolenz says, "the whole premise was that the Monkees were not a group originally; it was a TV show (1966-68) about a group, and we were entertainers playing parts of this fictitious group. It did not exist. If you understand that basic premise, then everything else makes a lot more sense.

"It didn't matter to (producers Berton Schneider and Robert Rafelson) one way or another. Initially, they were quite happy to have the tracks done (by studio musicians)."

And to have the songs written by such luminaries as Carole King, Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson and Boyce & Hart.

What they didn't count on, Dolenz says, was the fact that they hired people who could play, sing, write and, more importantly, wanted to -- especially Tork and Nesmith.

"I was an actor, I had been in rock 'n' roll bands, I sang, but I approached it much more from a point of view as an actor playing a part," Dolenz says. "They said, 'You're the drummer,' and I said, 'Right, OK.' If they had said, 'You've been cast as a downhill racer,' I would have gone out and learned how to downhill ski."

Tork has a slightly different take on the scenario.

"When I went in to audition for this thing, I got from Bert that he was very interested in the fact that I played (guitar) and that he had high hopes that we would eventually come to play," he says. "I know he would have been perfectly satisfied if we never did, but I think that he had hopes that we would come to play."

They eventually did on "Headquarters," their third album, and they toured on their own, but the Monkees' increasing desire to obtain more creative control torpedoed the show and, ultimately, the group itself.

"We fought very hard and managed to get some (control)," Tork says.

"We all played," Dolenz says. "They didn't allow us to play anything, for the most part, and that was a great battle that went on."

"And that was part of the beginning of the end, the fact that Peter wanted to play more, Mike wanted to play more, that we all wanted to get more involved than they would allow us to," Jones says.

The foursome's last appearance together was in the 1968 musical comedy "Head," written by Rafelson and Jack Nicholson.

"That was really when the TV show was finished," Jones says. "We weren't filming anymore, and it was all over."

Tork quit after "Head," and the remaining Monkees toured in different combinations for a year or two before going their own ways. Jones, Tork and Dolenz, however, reunited for tours in 1986 (they also recorded an album that year), 1987 and 1989.

"To my way of thinking, it's a lot like a cast getting back together to do a revival of a Broadway show," Dolenz says. "It's much closer to that than anything else I can think of whenever we get back together."

The Monkees, he believes, were an oddity.

"It was a very unique situation. To this day, nothing has ever come along like it. The closest thing is maybe Spinal Tap. What the Monkees are to the Beatles, Star Trek is to NASA. It's a real interesting, strange story of how what started out as a television show became a group. I've often equated it -- and I will once more -- to Leonard Nimoy really becoming a Vulcan."

Adds Jones: "There weren't that many groups around at that time that could do what we did, and there aren't now."

"Thank God," Tork says.

At the time the TV show was being cast, Jones was doing a play on Broadway, Dolenz was in school studying to be an architect -- "I was gonna fall back on show business" -- and Tork was a folk singer in Greenwich Village.

"Among my friends was Stephen Stills, who, when we both came out West, met Bob Rafelson, and he was told about this, and it was Stephen who told me to try out for this thing because Stephen was deemed talented enough, but his hair and teeth were wrong, and did he know anybody who looked like him whose hair and teeth were right? And he said," says Tork, feigning dejection, "'Well, there's my friend Peter, I guess ...'"

Dolenz: "Too bad for Stephen."

Tork: "Boy, did he lose out."

Dolenz: "Guess you showed him."

Tork: "Suffer, sucker!"