It is now 2026. A new year always sends my mind into reset mode as I realize how the things that happened 10 or 20 or even 40 years ago seem more recent to me than ever. Like this one – 2026 marks the 50th year since the multimedia phenomenon that was The Monkees. And, after some reading about and listening to the group in recent weeks, I have concluded that Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz deserve more respect than they have gotten over the years.

It was almost a decade ago that I wrote a bit about my history with the Monkees. Their 2nd album, “More Of The Monkees”, was the very first one that I bought with my own money as I was completing my 2nd grade of school in the spring of 1967. I went on to buy their next two albums, which I still have somewhere in my basement. I watched them on television every chance I got, and to this day remain disappointed that my school lunchbox was decorated with a generic cowboy instead of my four favorite musicians.

When I wrote about the Monkees in 2016, I had absorbed that societal prejudice against “the Prefab Four”, which considered them to have few talents and even less reason to exist, except to line the pockets of television producers. But I have changed my mind about them after listening to an audio version of “Monkee Business”, a 2024 book by Eric Lefkowitz.

The basic tale is fairly well known. In 1965, two up and coming guys in television got the idea for a weekly show about a rock and roll band. They were inspired by the success of the Beatles and their movie “A Hard Day’s Night”, and went about casting four guys who would play musicians in the show. And not just any musicians, but those willing to engage in spirited “Madness”.

Davy Jones (age 19) was the first in. He was already under contract with Screen Gems television, having made a small splash in a Broadway production of “Oliver”. Besides his acting and singing experience, Jones’ ace in the hole was that he was British, something that was musically huge in 1965. And it didn’t hurt that he had the look of a heartthrob.

The other young actor cast was Micky Dolenz (20). Dolenz was the child of acting parents and had been a child actor in a short-lived TV program of the 1950’s called “Circus Boy”, so he had an idea of how television production worked. He had also been the lead singer in a small-time cover band in his SoCal community who showed the beginnings of a winning personality.

The two cast from outside of the Hollywood-Broadway axis were actual musicians. There was Mike Nesmith (22), who broke through the mass of hopefuls by wearing a wool ski hat in the summertime. Nesmith was originally from Texas, raised by a single mother who rose above her secretarial career when she invented the product that became known as Liquid Paper. Interestingly, Nesmith is the only one of the four who actually came in response to the ad.

Peter Tork, the final choice (and the oldest, at age 23), was a friend of Stephen Stills. Stills had auditioned but was turned down because of his thinning hair and subpar teeth. Tork could play several instruments and went to high school in Connecticut before he moved to New York and played folk music in Greenwich Village coffee houses.

Tork eventually described the four-member group as “an arranged marriage”, and it is difficult to imagine four more disparate individuals brought together to form a group, with their only similarities being their age, their long-ish hair and their willingness to endure the grind of a weekly television show in exchange for making the big time in entertainment.

The television show was to be a comedy built around a struggling rock band, and was to include two song performances per 30 minute episode. From the start, the show was different from everything else on television. It incorporated slapstick comedy, frenetic action sequences, and a plot that usually involved either Davy being pursued by girls or the band trying to get hired for a gig.

As the show’s debut was nearing, all of the music had been recorded by the duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. It was only near the last minute that the actual Monkees’ voices were dubbed over the instrumental tracks. The Boyce & Hart tune “Last Train To Clarksville” was zooming up the charts to a No. 1 hit status, and a debut album was in stores a month or two later.

This album and the second, “More of the Monkees”, were meant to feed the television show, and had almost no input from the actual Monkees, other than their voices. The New York music empresario Don Kirschner took control of the Monkees musical product early on, and supplemented Boyce & Hart with his contacts from New York’s Brill Building. Neil Diamond, Carole King and even Neil Sedaka wrote much of the band’s early output, though Nesmith contributed a handful of songs.

In addition to a grueling 5 day weekly shooting schedule for the show and evening sessions for recording vocal tracks, the young Monkees worked hard behind the scenes trying to become a real band. Dolenz reluctantly agreed to take the drums, noting later that he became one of a very small number of performers who sang lead from behind a drum kit. Jones never progressed beyond a tambourine or maracas. The band’s first live performance was in December of 1966 – and in Hawaii, presumably because it was as far away from the mainland press as it was possible to get. To the surprise of most, the band became known for putting on live shows that were quite good.

The band’s musical apex was probably the 1967 album, “Headquarters”. That album was the Monkees at their peak as a cohesive group, one where they had finally wrestled control over what they were going to play and how they were going to play it. Other than producer Chip Douglas (the bassist for the band The Turtles), it was the four Monkees who played and sang on every track. Though this album generated no radio hits, I am several listens in and will argue that it holds up quite well as a highly listenable slice of pop music from the tail end of “the mid 60’s”. The full album in its glorious original mono mix is available for listening here.

From late summer of 1966 through all of 1967, The Monkees were the hottest phenomena in both music and television. The show, described later as being far better than it had to be in its era, earned an Emmy at the end of its first season for Outstanding Comedy show. Even The Beatles were fans of The Monkees. And the music was everything that the institutional hitmaking colossus of the west coast could provide – catchy tunes, great session players and (to the surprise of many) Dolenz’ voice, which may be one of the best of his era and genre.

And then things went sour. It was inevitable that four young boys with widely divergent backgrounds and musical tastes could not permanently gel into a cohesive group. They were never best friends with each other, and after the “Headquarters” album, things turned into a collection of solo projects. Chip Douglas made it work on the group’s forth consecutive No. 1 album, “Pieces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd”, but the glue that held them together could not withstand the forces that were tearing them apart.

The television show was not renewed for a 3rd season. There was a movie project – eventually titled “Head” – that was an avant garde project that the fan base (and almost everyone else) rejected. Their fifth album, “The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees” was their first that failed to make the No. 1 rank (though it did peak at No. 5). A thoroughly disillusioned (and increasingly drug-dependent) Peter Tork was the first to quit in early 1969, and Mike Nesmith followed the next year, which sort of finished the whole Monkees-as-a-group thing.

But a funny thing happened. In the early 1980’s, reruns of The Monkees TV show started appearing on MTV and later on Nickelodeon, introducing the group to a new generation of fans. Dolenz, Tork and Jones then came together for a 20th Anniversary tour which resulted in a well received series of live shows that played to increasingly large audiences, as well as a new album collaboration by Dolenz and Tork. Jones, curiously, disapproved of the new album and refused to take part. And Nesmith, who had always been the most reluctant to do group projects, refused to take part at all.

The ensuing three decades saw periodic re-appearances of The Monkees as a touring show, in various combinations of Dolenz, Jones, Tork and eventually (and on fewer occasions) Nesmith. What all of them eventually learned was that The Monkees was an inescapable part of their lives, and that there was a deep well of goodwill from multiple generations of fans who had come to appreciate their offbeat show and what turned out to be an equally deep catalog of engaging music that was much more than just the radio hits. The band was good at multiple styles, which provided a lot of variety. The members’ differing musical “homes” – country (Nesmith), folk (Tork), Broadway (Jones) and straight-up rock & roll (Dolenz) – gave the group a musical range not often seen in their time.

I count it as a great tragedy that the original members did not perform together more often in their later years. That possibility ended when Jones died of a heart attack at the age of 66 in February of 2012. But even then, Dolenz and Tork (and occasionally Nesmith) continued their live shows and even did another album that was moderately successful. But then Tork died of cancer in February, 2019, leaving Dolenz and Nesmith to make what they billed as the Monkees’ Farewell Tour. After Nesmith’s death from heart failure in December of 2021, Micky Dolenz remains the last Monkee standing.

In retrospect, it is amazing that The Monkees accomplished what they did, given the group’s parentage of cynicism and commerce. But the four young guys who hit the pinnacle of success in their 20’s made enough deposits to the bank of fan goodwill that they were able to live off the proceeds for the rest of their lives. Someone (I forget who) once described The Monkees as a real life version of Pinnoccio. Only where Pinnoccio was a puppet who became a real boy, The Monkees were puppets that became a real band.

I now make a full apology to Micky Dolenz and his now-deceased bandmates. Ten years ago I made some snide comments about a plastic band that had little in the way of talent, thinking that the best part of their records was the session musicians who I considered the makers of the music. After listening to both Lefkowitz’s book and to several hours of The Monkees’ music, I no longer believe that. Instead, I see four young guys who were thrown together under very difficult circumstances, and who eventually became the band they had been cast to portray. And in doing so, they brought us a lot more good music than they normally get credit for. So I am no longer ashamed to admit it, and will just come out and say it: I am a Monkees fan! And you should be too!