While the show was taking off, the Monkees were put in the studio to record albums, although the tunes were chosen from professional songwriters whose job it was to crank out smashes. “It was followed by millions of screaming teenagers.” In fact, the show’s financial success helped bankroll Easy Rider, launching Rafelson’s and Schneider’s film career. “ The Monkees was the single most commercial venture that they ever did together,” Rafelson’s ex-wife Toby said in 2019. The show won Emmys and made the members of the Monkees household names. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and so the Monkees filled the gap for cute, goofy musicians palling around and getting into trouble. This was a period when the Beatles had stopped touring to focus on making more sophisticated albums, most notably Sgt. The Monkees was on for two seasons, running from 1966 to 1968. Just like that, they were dubbed the Monkees. They put out ads for “4 insane boys” for “acting roles in new TV series.” Some soon-to-be big names, like Stephen Stills and Harry Nilsson, auditioned, but the producers settled on Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork. But first, they had an idea to do a show that featured the wacky misadventures of a rock band. They were the brainchild of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, Hollywood producers who would go on to back some of the most important American films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show. Bands like the Knickerbockers aped the Fab Four’s sound, but no group was as conscious in its pillaging as the Monkees. When the Beatles arrived on the scene in the early 1960s, powered by a string of exuberant hit singles and those movies Lester directed, A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, it was natural that others in the record business would try to find their own Beatles. All these decades later, we’re still fighting about that as we listen to “I’m a Believer.” It’s a miracle, but it’s so perfectly constructed you may loathe it. By comparison, the Monkees were designed in a lab. … They’re not too handsome, not too pretentious and every week they do silly things for 30 minutes, not counting commercials.” The Monkees were meant to capitalize on the success of the Beatles, who were real musicians with real talent. They were chosen … not for musical ability but for exuberance and irreverence, qualities salient in the chaps who were in those very successful Richard Lester movies. Writing about them in their heyday in 1967, longtime music critic Robert Christgau noted dismissively, “The Monkees are four young men who star in an adolescent TV comedy of the same name and make records that rise to the top of the charts like jellyfish. Many music fans couldn’t stand “I’m a Believer” because the Monkees didn’t write it - it’s the same reason they didn’t like the Monkees in general. That band’s best-known song is probably “I’m a Believer.” It’s a perfect representation of mid-1960s pop-rock, partly because it was designed to be as such. Michael Nesmith, one of the founding members of the Monkees, died on Friday. Where did that melody come from? How did they devise that hook? As far as I’m concerned, it’s witchcraft. Other people’s talents are always a mystery to me - I don’t know how anyone can paint or dance, so I’m always blown away when someone can do that - but the greatest bit of magic is being able to write a song. Songs are miracles, but they’re also a science.
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