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

I would like to have seen them film a live set in a "rainbow room" type situation-- spend some time and get the audio just right for a clean broadcast studio recording.
That would have been interesting!

 

...should listen to Billy Joel and Gentle Giant.

 

Chip deserves credit for unifying (especially on Pisces) the disparate Monkees genres (country, rock 'n roll, pop ballads) into one Monkees sound. Part of that skill was the employment and use of ringers like Eddie Hoh. Perhaps The Monkees also had too many different interests like The Beatles in 1968-69 for Chip Douglas to harness, but it would have probably been more interesting to see him at the helm than for the band to unravel in the way that they did.

 

Pool: How were the Pork shoulders? We dont get to do that in Brooklyn.....

 

i do that too!

 

I was going to say, and the story is the song itself is so good DJs were playing bootlegs taped off the TV show of the early version before it was even remade and released.

 

They my turned out great...nice and tender meat, shredded and made into BBQ pork sandwiches...nice smokey flavor

 

I had to put him on ignore when he started trolling every McCartney thread no matter how random the subject.

 

Good for you!! BBQ pork sammie and an ice cold beer...Heaven!!

 

There's one in every crowd. Sometimes two or three around here!

 

Such a strange debate in this thread. Who wrote what, who played on what, why they're still loved. I love Hank Williams singing the stuff that he wrote, but that doesn't distract from my enjoyment of Bing Crosby and Elvis giving great interpretations singing the stuff that they didn't write. As Elvis said, there's plenty of room for everybody in the entertainment business. Entertainment: a word that seems to have escaped the trolls. You might say, "but The Monkees can't sing like Elvis", in which case you've missed the point: The Monkees gave us great versions of their type of pop: their forte.

As Bob Dylan said, "There’s a lot of great singers who write weak songs and a lot of great songwriters who don’t sing. Trouble for them is they don’t have the outlets we used to have – nowhere to place these songs, no movies, no radio shows, TV variety shows, recording sessions, programs that were always calling for songs......If you can write your own songs, that’s ideal, but nobody will fault you if you don’t. Barbara Streisand and Tom Jones don’t." So many songs historically have been passed down through generations that those who didn't write them have given great interpretations of. Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong is a fantastic album, but he didn't write any of those songs, and although I think that he's a great singer and performer, a lot of people disagree. It's okay. The Monkees can't write like one of the greatest songwriters Dylan, but I would cringe at Dylan singing most of The Monkees' catalog. Why? Because it's not his style or forte.

I love Neil Diamond and he's a great singer and songwriter, but his version of "I'm a Believer" can't touch The Monkees' version. I've heard Boyce & Hart sing the songs that they wrote for The Monkees, but The Monkees out-sing them any day and The Monkees versions smoke Boyce/Hart's even when Boyce/Hart produced the Monkees. They aren't just any 4 guys that could have done it. Bing Crosby is one of the great singers/stylists, but I would cringe if he tried to sing "Last Train to Clarksville." The Monkees were the perfect outlet for their brand of pop. Are The Monkees great singers? Not at all. Are they great musicians? Not at all. Are they great songwriters? I love a lot of the songs that they wrote, so to each their own. However, the group effort of the producers, musicians and those who portrayed the Monkees turned out a fine product, sometimes even a GREAT product. Harry Nilsson's "Daddy's Song" blows away The Monkees version, but that elevates him more than it knocks down The Monkees. The Monkees gave him an outlet, as they did for a lot of songwriters, which the songwriters appreciated.

Enjoying self-contained bands like The Beatles doesn't distract from my enjoyment of television, film & broadway musical acts that common sense tells me was put together by a team of sometimes dozens of professionals. I guess some people are still a bit butt-hurt that they didn't make it big with their own mediocre garage band that couldn't sell a record that no one liked no matter how hard or long they learned to play, yet actors/musicians in a TV Show were getting all of the girls and money selling more and better music, not understanding that these professionals behind the scenes sometimes had more talent in their little finger than these unsuccessful bands had combined, who also earned their well-deserved livelihood via acts like The Monkees, also while ignoring contemporaneous interviews with the actors who played The Monkees who told the world even before the TV Show aired that they were just an act and not a real band, who also intentionally and truthfully exposed themselves when the producers got a little zealous with their promotion of their show when they saw that the music was selling way more than the number of people watching the show. Normally, I would say "speak for yourself," but the detractors who spend their time dismissing the fans as "nostalgic" or can only like the music as part of a TV show or as of being of only one generation, etc are cluelessly speaking of what they don't understand regarding the multiple generations of fans who feel that the music is absolutely current and vibrant with no nostalgia attached, so I have no problem making up excuses for why the detractors don't like what they proclaim.

The Monkees had a certain brand of pop that you either like or you don't. Millions liked it, thousands still like it and there's nothing wrong with that. There's plenty of room for everybody in the entertainment business. No reason to be upset that no one likes your own favorite bands, no matter how hard they tried to make good music. Ironically, a lot of detractors are the same type of people who gripe about giving in to the masses.....you know, actually giving them what they want and enjoy. Good music speaks for itself and lasts...I don't know....50 years with a still vibrant fan base like The Monkees.

If you don't like the music or understand why someone else likes the music, that is fine, but chances are that I feel the same way about half of your own favorite genuine musical bands.

As to the original question, I like Chip Douglas' contributions, but find the post-Chip Douglas material to be just as interesting/enjoyable in its own way, but not as mainstream. So if you define good as "mainstream" then the answer is yes.

 

Well said, George C. The thing that most of the trolls forget is that we can make similar cases about their favorite artists / bands / singers based on our own likes and dislikes. And then they get butt-hurt when we remind them of that.

 

Unless you work for Billboard or you're an eleven-year-old Davy Jones worshipper, "mainstream" shouldn't matter. The question remains: is it good or not?

 

For me, their two best are the Chip Douglas albums. And it remains a great "what if" --- what if they'd kept Chip around and he'd been able to maintain that unity of sound on BBM?
That said, I really like BBM -- it's my third favorite right after HQ and Pisces, even with that horrible version of "We Were Made For Each Other". Okay, so maybe it's tied with "Head" as my third favorite...

 

I've often wondered what "Birds" or even "Instant Replay" would sound like with Chip at the helm. There's no denying that Chip knew how to produce and direct the band, so his dismissal is somewhat baffling. I know the guys wanted to do their own thing, but you would think they wouldn't want to burn bridges. Did the guys realize the things they accomplished and the strides they had taken under Chip's direction? If nothing else, you would think they would have kept him as a "consultant" or as arranger. Perhaps there is more to the story than we realize. I read a number of years ago that Chip wanted to be part of the making of "Justus", but was kept away by the group (most likely Nez and Peter). From what I understand, because of that incident, he wants nothing further to do with the guys. Of course, this hasn't been verified, but it makes an interesting story to ponder. Just my two cents...

 

They'd be entirely different albums, save for the Nesmith tracks which would be about the same. Material would probably come from different sources.

 

I recall Chip saying that Peter was the first to kind of back away from him.

 

I happened to be doing a lot of driving over the weekend and I had the Rhino box set of the Monkees albums with me. In my travels I listened to both Birds/Bees and Head in their entirety, something I have not done in a long time. I had to keep reminding myself that the Head soundtrack is a soundtrack album for a movie, and not a mainstream or conventional movie, so it follows that neither is the soundtrack album. It has great songs on it, but as an album it really isn't "accessible" (I hope I'm using the word right) in the sense that I wouldn't play it at a party for the uninitiated. It would make absolutely no sense whatsoever to someone who isn't a Monkees fan and/or has never seen the movie. I first heard the album a couple of years before I saw the movie, so there is that. I find a lot of the sound juxtapositions to be clever, but they kind of lose their way sometimes. I'm thinking "less is more" may have been a good rule, but then I wasn't the one tasked with assembling the album. For instance, if I was doing this today, I would have skipped the "Well, are you kidding, giggle, hey now, wait a minute" business and just gone right into the meat of "Ditty Diego." I don't get the repeating of the "Circle Sky" intro in the middle of a bunch of film dialogue on Side 2. And I got thinking about the final track, the oddly titled "Swami -- Plus Strings (Ken Thorne), Etc." That almost seems like something Nez and/or Jack Nicholson might have scribbled down on a log sheet as a temporary title, but ended up being used as the official title for that track. For some reason it seems redundant to me for them to cross-fade back into "Porpoise Song" again at the end of the album, even though (1) it's one of my favorite Monkees songs and (2) IIRC I think they also reprise it in the movie.

Birds/Bees is a frustrating album to me, and it shares an issue with Instant Replay and Present in that while the songs are good for the most part, they don't really hang together as an album. "Dream World" is the opening track and while it's an okay song, it just doesn't sound to me like a song to kick off an album. I made it all the way through "Writing Wrongs" for the first time in years and I don't know, for some reason, maybe I was in the right mood or something, but "did you see that guy fall out the window" just struck me as a funny line to be in a Monkees song. That song was never one of my favorites but I think I have a better appreciation for it than I used to. "Magnolia Simms" -- for listening purposes I prefer the stereo remix on the BBM deluxe set, but the whole "scratchy 78" thing really works and it does sound like it really could be an old 78. The "skipping" business is very clever. Classic Nez concept. Listening to "The Poster" I got thinking about Davy's story of meeting this old lady named Edith Sidebottom, hanging out with her, having her sing him some songs she'd written, and then getting a letter from her attorney over one line in the song. "Auntie's" and "9847" have always been among my favorite Monkees songs.

Chip Douglas's version of "We Were Made For Each Other" would have blown the version on the album out of the water, had it been completed.

Just rambling. Most of all, on a lot of these later albums it's frustrating to me that (IMHO) the songs left off the albums (and later released on various compilations) are in some cases better than the songs they used at the time.

 

I think that's also mentioned in the booklet/liner notes of "The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees" super deluxe set too...

 

I didn't know that the session information for Paul Revere & the Raiders, Tommy James & The Shondells, or the Turtles were available. Where can find it?

 

Not to start a political debate, but I recall reading in a very poorly written book about Judaism back in 2010 or so where the author was very critical of gays and gay rights etc. and he claimed if you condone same-sex marriage "you are saying [children] have no value." It's been what 7 years, and I still don't know what point the author was trying to convey. It appears that rjp is making a strikingly similiar point: "If you praise a Monkees song, you are saying the Beatles music has no value(?)"

 

I love those idiotic arguments. And, I especially love poking holes in them, 2+2=orange.

I love also how rjp says it's likely they would never have received a recording contract, without comment that 3 of the 4 members had recording contracts prior to being cast in The Monkees. Oops.

I half agree with him, though. The Monkees raised these 4 guys profiles, and certainly is the only reason they've had any kind of celebrity status past 1970. But, and I've said this many many times before, and will many many times in the future... Out of all the "Made For TV" or "Made For Movies" bands, there's a *reason* we still talk about these guys 50 years later. And that has as much to do with the music they made as it does the music Kirshner made for them. (And, to be fair, it has as much to do with the TV show, and their personalities, as the music)

The most remarkable thing about these 4 guys is that once they wrested control away from the hit-making factory the music they made as a "real" band was, in more cases than anybody ever believed it could be, actually, arguably, better than what got churned out of the hit-factory. Headquarters is about 2/3 great songs (and the ones that aren't were ones not written by members) and I would pit PAC&JLtd against almost *any* mid-60's album. It really is *that* good. The songs on Head are great, too... there just aren't enough of them. It really wasn't until Birds & Bees that the decline in quality really begins. And even then, Nesmith kicks it up a notch rather than decline. It was the others that went too far in indulging their whims that really started the downhill slide.

IMO, of course.

 

did i say "if you praise a monkees song, you are saying the beatles music has no value"

i ask you, did i type those words?

 

Yes. Right there, just above where you ask if you typed them. You even put quotes around it!

Damn Alzheimer's!

 

Dude, you're WAAAAY OFF, as soon as you mention Beach Boys. Two words...BRIAN WILSON.
Dennis was way more of an accomplished drummer than Micky, and Carl was a very good guitarist. They play on a lot more of the hit songs than you think. Not every single Beach Boy hit was done with the Wrecking Crew.