Would the Monkees have released better albums had Chip Douglas stayed?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Dr. Robert, May 20, 2017.

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  1. Dr. Robert

    Dr. Robert Forum Reconstructor Thread Starter

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    As we all know, the two "band-oriented" albums by the Monkees, both produced by Douglas, were No. 1 hits, and are to this day considered classics. But, seemingly tired of this, they fired Chip, and started producing their own, individual sessions, killing the group atmosphere from the previous albums towards four solo artists who happen to release songs in the same album. So, what I ask you is: had Chip not been fired and they kept the band dynamics would: 1 - the albums be of better quality 2 - be better chart hits?
     
  2. Dr. Robert

    Dr. Robert Forum Reconstructor Thread Starter

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    Well, in my opinion, both would be true. I personally am not a big fan of the "post-series" Monkees LPs, and think that with the focus of them having to play almost all of it, there would be more of a "quality control" with the group songs, and Douglas' presence would help that. And regarding chart success, they obviosly suffered with the end of the TV series, with Birds, Bees and the Monkees being their last "big" album. I think if he had stayed, they would, yes, have declined, but not in such a fast manner. Chip had a thing for "discovering" hits, such as the Turtles' "Happy Together", and the Monkees' own "Daydream Believer". If he had stayed, could, for example "You Showed Me" by the Turtles have been a big Monkees tune?
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2017
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  3. Dr. Robert

    Dr. Robert Forum Reconstructor Thread Starter

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  4. super sally

    super sally Forum Resident

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    Mint Hill, NC USA
    I think Chip tried to keep recording with the monkees (I think a version of I'll Be Back Up On My Feet was tried with Mike on guitar) but the guys had no interest. For whatever reason, Peter felt a little left out of the Pices LP and thought it was more of a Chip Douglas album (at least he thought that at the time; hindsight may tweak that.)
    ANYWAY-- if the Monkees weren't going to play as a band than Mike and Peter had no use for Chip's services.
    What I wish had had happened-- is that Davy and/or Micky had kept Chip as THEIR producer. You only have to hear Chip's backing track for We Were Made for Each Other to imagine what he would have done with Dream World and Zor and Zam.
    Of course I think Chip played bass on DW Washburn and Zor and Zam so who knows...
     
  5. Rfreeman

    Rfreeman Senior Member

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    I don't know if they would have been better to but they would have likely been more interesting to me. After Chip left they worked with some crack musicians and still retained musical control. There are certainly less tracks all 4 contributed to, but realistically few of their best tracks had all 4 of them contibuting.
     
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  6. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    Don Kirschner was their biggest source for strong pop material (not that Nesmith was devoid of strong deep cuts). Losing Kirschner was a bigger blow to the strength of their albums than losing Chip. After sacking Donnie, the band still gained many more great songs for Micky, Davy, and Mike, but didn't have Neil Diamond kind of material that could compete with their first four albums. The band recorded two more Goffin/King songs ("A Man Without A Dream" and "Porpoise Song") for albums in the post Pisces era, but could have used more Neil Diamond numbers. The Boyce/Hart well dried up in 1967 as well.
     
  7. Scott in DC

    Scott in DC Forum Resident

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    Their success was based on their being a pop band. Head, both the album and movie strayed from this formula. I can see how they would want to break from the TV show pop band mold that they had been operating in. However, their fans liked albums like their first few albums and songs like Daydream Believer. Head was too esoteric for their teen, pop-music audience.

    Had the Monkees continued to make albums like The Birds... then they probably would have been more successful. With their TV show ending they were in a difficult situation. What they needed at that vulnerable time was to have catchy, hit songs to keep them going.

    Scott
     
  8. BadJack

    BadJack doorman who always high-fives children of divorce

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    That's always seemed weird to me. Peter's keyboards are very prominent throughout the album.

    Considering that Peter's first move after the Douglas era was to spend months recording "Lady's Baby", maybe Chip hadn't been very encouraging of his material.
     
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  9. readr

    readr Forum Resident

    Yes.
     
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  10. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

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    There were Boyce & Hart songs on every post 1967 album other than "HEAD". (Not counting the "reunion" albums in that, just talking the 1966-1970 output.)
     
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  11. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

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    He should have put Peter on banjo on "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round"
     
  12. readr

    readr Forum Resident

    Just to put some perspective on Boyce & Hart......they recorded for the Monkees over the course of a few months in late 1966, a handful of tracks in 1968, then revisited those tracks in early 1969, and lastly a few sessions in late 1969......and that's it. Four major chunks totaling about 3 months of work.
     
  13. Dr. Robert

    Dr. Robert Forum Reconstructor Thread Starter

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    I think that Through the Looking Glass, I'll Be Back Upon My Feet and Valleri would feature in a follow up to Pisces, seen that they had a thing for reusing MoTM stuff
     
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  14. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

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    I wonder if Nesmith would have wanted to tackle the guitar work on "Valleri".. I know he wasn't too fond of the song to begin with, so I wonder if he'd want to give it his all and play it, or if he would have said to Davy and Chip "You guys go ahead and do what you did with 'Hard to Believe' on PAC&J and leave me out of it"... (I know "Hard to Believe" really wasn't just cut that way, I'm only saying that because it was the only song on PAC&J with only one Monkee involved.)

    On a side note to that, nothing to do with the topic of this thread, but with the song "Valleri": On a different group I'm on, one time a poster on there said that she heard Mike had to play with his back to the audience so he could concentrate on playing when they played the song "Valleri" in concert in the '60s... How she ever came up with that I have no idea, considering they never played "Valleri" live in their '60s concerts... I'm thinking she got her stories crossed and was thinking of the story of original Beatles bassist playing with his back to the audience because he felt his bass playing was bad, but I can't say that with certainty...
     
  15. super sally

    super sally Forum Resident

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    I agree that the Don K. era writers were important but I think Chip was and could have been filling that void. Case in point- songs he brought outside of the Don K. writers include "Daydream Believer," "Cuddly Toy," and "Door into Summer."

    And with Don K. still in the picture we probably wouldn't have gotten "For Pete's Sake," "Randy Scouse Git," and Goin' Down."
     
  16. super sally

    super sally Forum Resident

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    I've pointed this out before it's interesting to me that almost everyone of the songs the Monkees recorded by Boyce/Hart was written before the end of 1966.
     
  17. super sally

    super sally Forum Resident

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    Mint Hill, NC USA
    Peter's comments came from an interview in 1969. He's probably changed his tune a little.
    Peter was more involved in the arrangements on songs for HQ-- and probably didn't get much say due to time restraints on PACJ. Plus, he had no writing credits.
    He demoed Can You Dig It for PACAJ, right? Imagine if that had been on that album!
     
  18. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    Losing the domineering commerce-over-art Kirshner may have hurt them commercially but it freed them creatively. Getting rid of the more artistically minded Douglas took them a step backward from becoming a real band although they still had a lot of good (though not as commercially successful) material on the later albums. Although the early hits and many of the early deep cuts are top notch pop/rock, in retrospect, as a general rule, their more band-oriented and experimental material has brought them more critical acclaim than Kirshner's play-it-safe approach.
     
  19. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

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    Yeah, it kind of sucks that they had little time to record PAC&J and basically had to record on the fly... The powers that be should have given them more time, probably equal to what they had to record "Headquarters": I think if they had done that, the guys probably would have been able to give a little more input... It might not have changed the outcome, but if the guys would have had more of their creative ideas taken into account, "maybe" they would have decided to stick together for another "group oriented" album... Again, who knows, maybe they really were tired of working together as a functioning unit and nothing could have stopped their division...

    And yes, it would have been cool if "Can You Dig It?" would have been recorded for PAC&J, but I'm glad it did get used on HEAD...
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2017
  20. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    Like the Beatles before them, the Monkees lost much of their teenybopper fan base when they decided to branch out and be more experimental. The former teenybopper Beatles fans deserted the Beatles and latched onto the Monkees. When the Monkees "went weird", those same fans moved on to the Archies and the Kazenets-Katz bubblegum stable. The difference was that the Beatles had that rare gift of being radically experimental and commercially accessible at the same time. Also, they still had millions of serious music fans who stuck with them. The Monkees only had a relative few such fans (not enough to sustain them commercially even though they were making some of their best music).
    As for needing catchy hit songs to keep them going, that was the approach taken by Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark 5, the Archies, and others who decided to remain commercial and lightweight and not stray too far into experimental territory. As a result, their chart success was also very short-lived. It's a delicate balance that not just anyone could achieve.
     
  21. I think The Monkees would have released better albums if they'd stayed together working as a real band instead of phoning in their solo contributions, regardless of producer.
    I do think Chip Douglas was an asset.
     
  22. Chip liked the idea of them being a 'band' and after Pisces the members aside from Tork were more interested in doing their own thing on their own for the most part.
     
  23. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    Like I said, "PO Box 9847", "Valleri", "Through the Looking Glass", "Looking For the Good Times", "Ladies Aid Society", and "I Never Thought It Peculiar" were all recordings from 1966 and 1967. The band stopped gaining new material from Boyce and Hart after a certain period of time.
     
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  24. S. P. Honeybunch

    S. P. Honeybunch Presidente de Kokomo, Endless Mikelovemoney

    The band was still marketing themselves largely as a pop/rock combo up through 1970, though. That's why all of that golden Nesmith material never saw the light of day until twenty years later. They didn't release that material because they usually didn't market themselves in a country oriented direction. If the band really wanted to stick to the pop/rock marketing style, Kirshner might have been able to get them higher quality material if he had stayed on in the musical supervisor role.
     
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  25. rswitzer

    rswitzer Forum Resident

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    I think their later albums would've been stronger simply by picking better recordings already available. I don't know who chose which tunes/recordings made the cut after the first four albums, but I find the song selection perplexing. This is perhaps what has helped keep the interest in the band. Once all the recordings were made available, many of us fans had a field day making our own "fantasy" albums. The Beatles, to name just one obvious case, were really good at selecting their best material. The Monkees, not so much.
     
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