Michael A. Ventrella - Long Title: Looking for the Good Times; Examining the Monkees Songs, One by One

Another Monkees book? I hear you cry. What possible insight could this book possibly have for a pop group thats been around for over 50 years and has been maligned (and also M.I.A. off and on) for much of that time? They are apparently permanently barred from The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for not writing or performing their own material, yet Elvis Presley gets a free pass. Despite that fact that later on, all of The Monkees did write and perform their own material at times, the myth remains that they didnt write their own songs or play their own instruments and so what? Until The Beatles made it standard operating procedure for a band to virtually always write and perform their own material, most singers didnt. If that was a requirement, we would not regard Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby or Barbra Streisand with much fondness.

The Monkees are still considered by some to not be a real group because they did not come together by their own volition. However, since they have come together to undertake major rock concert tours every few years since 1967, they have actually been a real rock band far, far longer than being a fake one. Micky Dolenz summed it up best in an interview for CBS This Morning in May 2016, Ive often said that it was like Leonard Nimoy really becoming a vulcan.

Most Monkees books and histories seem to cover the years 1965-1971 and tend to focus on their 1966-1968 TV series with little regard that they reunited for tours, albums, TV specials and other reasons from 1975-1977, 1986-1989, 1993-1998, 2001-2002, and most recently from 2010-2016. This book will focus more on their music as that is the one lasting legacy The Monkees have to offer. There is magic in the recording. Surprising and amazing since the group didnt have complete control over everything, but its the getting by with a little help from their friends (to paraphrase a phrase) that makes The Monkees music so magical.

This has always been kind of a mystery to me. If the four were never totally enamored with each other beyond the two seasons of the TV series, then why (again, with the exception of Nesmith) didnt they try harder to prove themselves as viable solo acts over the years until the off times later on between reunion tours?

My take on it is that they realize that even two Monkees is a greater force than Monkees on their own, plus The Monkees name holds a certain sort of cache. Since this book is really not about their solo endeavors, I will take this opportunity to discuss their solo works and my surprise that none of them achieved any real lasting solo success, even as television actors.

I first became aware of The Monkees when they were in Saturday morning reruns around 1970 or 1971 when I was 3 and 4 years old. Even then, I didnt care for the wacky antics of the Pre-Fab Four and apart from the opening title theme, rarely watched the show beyond the opening titles. I had no idea that these shows were reruns and figured that they were one in a long-line of Saturday morning TV shows featuring musical groups and songs including The Archies, H.R. Pufnstuf, The Banana Splits, The Globetrotters, The Hardy Boys, The Cattanooga Cats, The Groovie Goolies, Josie and the Pussycats and even The Partridge Family in primetime.

So, I ignored The Monkees and dismissed them as SatAM pablum. I discovered later that The Monkees originally aired in primetime, but since it lasted only two seasons, I felt that it was a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon.

I became a Beatles fan in 1977 (thanks to an Eric Idle appearance on Saturday Night Live! ) and started paying attention to groups that were contemporary to them, many of them were still around like The Kinks, The Hollies and The Bee Gees; and some were and are still around now like The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys. The Monkees to me were still that TV band, so I didnt equate them with these other rock stalwarts.