The Monkees - A Real Band?

I have heard this since I was a kid - "The Monkees!?!? They didn't even play their own instruments!!" Fact or fiction? From reading other posts online, I get the impression that The Monkees were a much better (cooler) group than I have been led to believe.

 

Not at first but they were at times - especially 67 live, Headquarters and JustUs

 

There's already a bazillion threads on this and they all end poorly. My take... Yes, they wound up being a real band. I think it's important to realize that they took complete control of the music within the first year of the project taking off.

 

Really a whirlwind if you think about it. Its a good thing they were put together with Chip Douglas, and had a good ear for material. We should really praise (or blame) Nesmith for sticking his neck out but Rafelson and Schneider had their backs still at that point.

 

Good point and really we should stop right here.

 

Seriously? Do some cheap, quick research.... it’ll only take you a minute

 

"complete" control..........'within the first year"

pushin it a bit aren't we?

 

Yes they formed in 1966 and recorded Headquarters in 67

 

Wasn't Chip Douglas their own choice? 'put together' implies someone else did it.

 

Maybe one could go either way on that

 

I’ve always been somewhat curious if some of the interest in the Monkees stems fr the circumstances of their creation and evolution. The wooden puppet becomes a real boy?

 

They were put together artificially but within 18 months were truly a "real band". Not only that, but an extremely popular and influential band. So all that trumps how they came together.

 

The Monkees = their own thing.

It's only when you try to compare it to the norm, does it seem to falter (in the eyes of naysayers). If you look at it as a singularly weird fable, it starts to come into focus just how stunning the whole thing really was (and remains).

 

If this forum has taught me anything, it’s that there are a ton of folks who love the monkees. One of these days (sooner rather than later), I’ll do a deep dive to see for myself, but until then, they’re still the guys with that tv show I loved as a kid.

 

For not being considered a real band, they have had an amazingly long run as a real band.

 

The Monkees are an ACT. Are/were The Temptations a band? Did they play their own instruments? (Yes, I know. They're a vocal group.)
It doesn't matter at all! They're very entertaining. I love them. I have all their albums. They had a BIG impact on pop music history.

ARE YOU LISTENING JANN WENNER???

 

Were The Beach Boys a real band of recordings? I think not...

 

Not an expert, but seems to me that in many ways they were just as real as many other bands. Yes, at times they had studio musicians performing on much of their albums, but so did groups like The Byrds and The Grass Roots.

The litmus test for me was that The Monkees seemed to be regarded as legitimate by other bands of the day like the Beatles. My impression anyway.

 

not in the least trying to be negative, but:

just askin?

what BIG impact did the monkees have on pop music history?

innovative?

groundbreaking?

copied by others?

invented a new type of music?

 

Reminds me of the part in the film Raising Arizona where the robber asks the old hayseed clerk if the balloons blow up into funny shapes, and the old hayseed clerk says, "not unless round is funny."

 

Hey hey we are The Monkees
To that we all agree
A manufactured image
With no philosophy

You say we're manufactured
To that we all agree
So make your choice
And we'll rejoice
In never being free

Hey hey we are The Monkees
We've said it all before
The money's in
We're made of tin
We're here to give you more!

(After all these years I've just rtealised that this is done to the tune of "The Merry Go Round Broke Down" a.k.a. the opening music on the "Looney Tunes" cartoons)

Does anybody know if that bit is available on CD and, if so, which one?

 

I personally don't care if they are in the rock hall of fame or not.
But if I had to make a case:
- Very influential as one of the acts in music video pre-MTV; earned an Emmy for best show
- First rock band to use a Moog on an lp (4th album, Micky Dolenz)
- Early examples of country-rock (Check out the first lp-- Papa Gene's Bues and Sweet Young Thing, produced and written by Mike Nesmith. Even on the second album, he was playing pedal steel guitar. Peter Tork was playing the banjo on the third.)
- Stepping stone for other acts of the time (Jimi Hendrix's first big tour, they put Tim Buckley and Frank Zappa on their tv show, Harry Nillson's first songs, Michael Martin Murphy, etc)
- Rock film HEAD still influential today (co-written by Jack Nicholson)
- Four number one albums in a year plus a dozen Top 40 songs
- Still charting records today, even just this year with a live album in the Top 200
- Just being on tv and selling massive amounts of records made them influential to many artists today-- just google around for testimonials from Ben Gibbard, Dwight Yoakum, Carl Newman, REM and many others
- They are truly an AMERICANA band- mixing pop, rock, country, blues, dancehall, pyschedelia and some soul.jazz and more)

But perhaps the biggest PUNK and ROCK thing the Monkees ever did, was to demand to play the instruments and pick the songs after two huge number one albums. Four young guys fought the corporate giants and WON. What's more rock and roll than that?

They are a peculiar entry in the world of rock music but somehow worked.

 

The Monkees were the Monkees....a unique case in a lot of ways, with a history altogether different from any other band. What made them unique is now appreciated by enough people that they maintain a relatively thriving career even with half of them being gone.

 

I will give this a go. For better or worse they were all "selected" for this project. So the project was groundbreaking it that way. It has of course been a major point of criticism that they were not a naturally formed band, but the process was "groundbreaking". You can probably also say then the process was the groundbreaker not them as a group but they are The Monkees so whatever credit or criticism is part of them as well.

As far as impact, they surely had an impact on the Billboard charts, so they may not have been influential, say like the Beatles, but pop music history is written from the Billboard charts. An acts success is literally measured by the charts and sales. A number one chart topper is Gold, in more ways than one, and this group had 3 of them. They had 5 if you count just the sales charts in Cashbox. I'm a Believer has a place as one of the most popular singles of all time and they lit up the charts for about 18 months.

And to me this may be the biggest one whether you agree or not. The Monkees - mainly Mike Nesmith - DID at least pioneer a new type of music. He did this during his stint with the Monkees. Nesmith produced his tracks on the first two LP's and those and his songs that followed were a new kind of country rock (or whatever you want to label it). Nesmith's tunes written during that era are some of the most copied songs of this genre - Propinquity, Shelly's Blues, Joanne and Different Drum are examples.

Also, they were a bunch of guys put together for a TV show and inside a year or so, they went out and performed as a group. That in and of itself is worth noting and many people have in recent years!

 

The Monkees were clearly a forerunner of the MTV music video format.

Nesmith is widely credited as being the forerunner of what would become MTV (a la the music video format) with Elephant Parts and later Television Parts.