1965 (1/2)

During his stay in New York, David Jones had met an employee of Columbia Pictures-Screen Gems named Ward Sylvester who would play a large role in the future development of the Monkees. Sylvester sensed star potential in Jones and offered to bring him out to Hollywood to pursue a career in both acting and music. Davy agreed to a long-term contract and by Christmas 1964, he was in Columbia's New York studios recording for Colpix Records (Columbia-Screen Gems' recording company).

The resulting single ("Dream Girl"/"Take Me to Paradise"; Colpix CP 787) was catchy enough but mired in a largely dated teen-pop sound reminiscent of Bobby Rydell or Paul Peterson. However this was no accident. Ward Sylvester saw in David a teen heartthrob in the making, and it is interesting that Jones with few exceptions never truly deviated from the path Sylvester initially set for him. Plainly speaking, the die had already been cast.

Also on the path to a recording career was Michael Nesmith. Now under the wing of manager Jackie Sherman of Omnibus Productions (the Frankie Laine associate mentioned in the previous entry), Mike and his trio were given studio time to cut a demo reel. Nesmith and London were then ushered off on a loosely-booked tour of Texas schools, leaving a now-pregnant Phyllis in their wake. They returned to Hollywood with no money to show for their efforts, their tails effectively between their legs. Mike and Phyllis's son Christian was born on January 31, 1965.

Mike and John would continue to bounce between clubs in Los Angeles and Las Vegas while Sherman arranged for proper recording sessions with Omnibus staff producer Chance Halladay (Nesmith: "About the only thing I remember was him coming into the studio when we were making the record and yelling at me to relax! It had the effect you might imagine.")

Recorded with drummer Bill Sleeper under the moniker of Mike, John & Bill, the sessions resulted in a fine debut single ("How Can You Kiss Me"/ "Just a Little Love"; Omnibus 239) and two unreleased outtakes ("All the King's Horses" and "Searchin' (Diane's Song)". Taken as a whole, these songs are early L.A. folk rock at its best-- very much in line with the sound that contemporary groups like the Byrds and the Beau Brummels were only just formulating.

As part of his three-way deal with Columbia-Screen Gems-Colpix, David Jones was being groomed for stardom, and Ward Sylvester had promised to develop a TV show around him. Additionally, Jones was already under contract for another Dickens musical Pickwick, though this time he would not leave for Broadway. Instead an elaborate Billboard magazine ad campaign was constructed around him ("who is David Jones?"), and he set about recording his second Colpix single at United Recorders in Hollywood.

By June of 1965 America was in the midst of "Hermania", as cute Peter Noone and his band Herman's Hermits were all the rage with the teenybopper set. Playing off their shared Mancunian accent, Colpix A&R director Hank Levine set about refashioning Jones into a Peter Noone doppelganger. While this must have seemed a can't-miss proposition at the time, the resulting music could best be described as twee-bordering-on-infantile.

Of the three songs salvaged from the session, only the b-side "This Bouquet" possessed any merit due to a beautifully melodic bell line underpinning its chorus. "What Are We Going to Do?", selected as the bread-and-butter side of the 45 (Colpix CP 784), was an obnoxious bit of "aww shucks" gibberish, while the future LP side "Baby It's Me" was if anything even worse. Sadly Levine would not quite be done helming David Jones' music career, even after the single stalled at a lowly #93 on Billboard despite a huge promotional push by all involved.

Concurrently, dissatisfaction with Jackie Sherman and Omnibus ("Awful. The lady there stole money from me, tiny amounts, which speaks volumes.") indirectly led Mike Nesmith to a real industry insider, Loma Records boss Bob Krasnow. Krasnow would later to go on to Kama Sutra Records, where he would found their Buddah subsidiary and strike it rich in the bubblegum pop department. For now he was still a savvy dealmaker. And deal he did, netting Nesmith an opportunity to record for Colpix. The deal hinged on two apparent stipulations: Krasnow and his partner Sam Ashe would produce the records, and Mike had to change his surname from Nesmith to Blessing ("You gotta have a different name because Nesmith stinks!")

The initial result of Nesmith's Colpix deal was a cover of Tom Paxton's "The Willing Transcript" (Colpix CP 787), a song Krasnow had been auditioning singers to record when he first discovered Mike. Retitled "The New Recruit" by Krasnow and Ashe (who together opportunistically claimed the song's authorship as well), the single was arranged by jazz great Shorty Rogers and backed up with an unrelated fuzz/blues instrumental called "A Journey with Michael Blessing" that the singer himself ironically had nothing to do with. It was during the session for the a-side that Rogers reports, "(Nesmith) hung up the phone and said, 'I just got the news. I'm going to be with the Monkees.'"

(Okay, we still haven't deviated from the historical path yet, but bear with us! We have to get the early history established here first.)

NOTE: Again, Andrew Sandoval's Monkees book was an invaluable resource for writing this entry. Additional information was also sourced from Randy L. Massingill's Total Control: The Mike Nesmith Story. 

The Early Days (1963-'64)

Our saga begins in 1963 with an up-and-coming folk singer from San Antonio named Michael Nesmith. While attending San Antonio College, Mike (as he was known then) and his new bride Phyllis Barbour had formed a folk combo in order to gig around the city. They evidently played small-time events like shopping center openings and private parties hoping that one day a shot at the big time might come their way. Phyllis had no big ambition to be a star, but for Mike it was a different story.

During this period Mike also liked to perform solo whenever he got the chance, and his skills had progressed to the point where he was ultimately able to get into a real recording studio to record two of his own songs: "Wanderin'" and "Well Well" (Highness HN-13).

The audience for Mike's music had picked up steadily, and in the summer of 1964 he performed to a reported 3,000 people at a televised Hootenanny in San Antonio. He was then invited out to Massachusetts to perform in Cape Cod, and upon his return to San Antonio he resumed playing club gigs. One of these sets was privately taped.

Mike and his pal John London also performed as a duo, and together they won the San Antonio College "Headliner of the Year" award. Then John moved out to Hollywood, and it wasn't long before Mike convinced his new bride that the odds of success for a struggling musician were better out west. Mike and Phyllis soon left Texas to get an apartment of their own in Los Angeles.

In a bit of early good fortune, Mike's building manager's daughter happened to be a business associate of the singer Frankie Laine, and soon Mike would have his first high profile contact in California. In the meantime, he continued to perform as a trio with John London and various local drummers.

Meanwhile across the pond in London, an aspiring Mancunian jockey by the name of David Jones had recently been bitten by the showbiz bug and had just received his big break, winning the role of the Artful Dodger in the original West End stage production of Oliver!  The show was a major hit, and David soon achieved positive reviews in the press. Before long he found himself on Broadway for an extended run and followed that by reprising his role throughout the United States as part of the show's touring company.

Oliver! was a smash in the U.S., and David soon found himself featured amongst the cast in Life Magazine. Eventually he was even invited to guest on the Ed Sullivan show on the same day as the Beatles' first appearance. Also around this time he entered a New York City recording studio to cut a quick demo reel to assist with future career moves.

Elsewhere, deep in the Los Angeles suburb of San Fernando Valley a young actor named George Michael "Micky" Dolenz (stage name: Micky Braddock) was attending junior college while plotting his next career move. Micky had previously starred in the title role of the hit TV show Circus Boy from 1956-'58 but had only appeared on television sporadically since then. To kill time he was performing music with a local outfit known as the Spartans.

Upon transferring from Valley Junior College to Los Angeles Trade Tech, Micky hooked up with a new five-piece band known as the Missing Links. This was a more professional outfit which reportedly allowed for Micky to play in locales as far off as Denver, where the band performed for a few weeks with teen heartthrob Eddie Hodges. Although he would later be criticized for "being an actor and not a musician", in truth Micky was part of the rock 'n' roll scene from his late teens on.

Across the coast, a young musician named Peter Thorkelson had shortened his surname to "Tork" and was playing his way across basket houses in Greenwich Village by himself or alongside partner Bruce Farwell. Having previously flunked out of college in Minnesota, Peter was committed to making it as a musician. To that end he began networking with several fellow musicians including one very important contact by the name of Stephen Stills. 

By mid-1964 Peter would be married, but the marriage would last just a brief three months. During this period Peter was also out on the road as a sideman for a folk troupe known as the Phoenix Singers. In October of the same year he would become the fourth of the up and coming performers discussed in this entry to appear on television-- in this instance a Canadian folk music series titled Let's Sing Out in which he appeared alongside the Phoenix Singers. His run with the band would be short-lived however, as he was summarily ousted following an LBJ fundraising performance in Denver (perhaps just missing out on a chance to rub shoulders with a young Micky Braddock in the process.)

That these four young performers, with careers seemingly headed in totally different directions, would soon meet under extraordinary circumstances must be chalked up as some form of cosmically derived kismet. Yet meet they would, as you will see in our next couple of installments.


(So far everything you've read is factual. Hang on though, and you'll see our story is about to take some weird twists and turns.)


NOTE: Most background information contained here and intermittently throughout future posts is courtesy of Andrew Sandoval's fantastic The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation. Check it out, won't you?

Introduction

The Monkees are a band that has polarized music listeners for years. Their detractors are fond of pointing out that with few exceptions the group did not play their own instruments and did not write much of their own material. Fans, meanwhile, point to the overall quality of the group's recorded output while questioning what difference it makes who played what so long as the music was top notch.

This site is for the fans-- those who are less concerned about who did or didn't play on what record than just sitting back and enjoying the music. While poring over AFM sheets for session info is part of the Monkees experience for myself and many others (indeed, there's a lot of insight that can be gained by doing so) that is not the jist of what we'll be doing here.

So what is this "alternate history" exactly? Allow us to explain. With a few notable exceptions (primarily the Headquarters, Pisces Aquarius Capricorn & Jones Ltd. and Justus albums) the Monkees-- Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith -- generally contributed little in regard to each other's songs. Instrumental tracks and backing vocals were largely performed by skilled session musicians alongside whichever Monkee was handling lead vocals for that particular track, though as noted there were certain exceptions to the rule.

As such, most of the Monkees' albums released throughout their tenure as a group were actually collections of songs by four separate solo performers simply compiled together. This is not necessarily a bad thing! While Headquarters proved the Monkees could function quite well as a "real band", it remains doubtful that their limited instrumental dexterity (they were in essence a highly-funded garage combo) could have handled the sophisticated arrangements of their best later material. Certainly a number like "As We Go Along"-- to name but one example-- would not have come off nearly as well were it not for top session pros deftly handling the music.

But since the four individual members of the group continued on their own paths in music after the project initially fizzled in 1970, it's tempting to think, "what if the Monkees had never actually split up?"

Utilizing the best of their solo releases, it's easy to construct a fantasy career path for the group. Since the individual band members largely didn't play on each other's recordings in the first place, combining solo performances to create a group gestalt isn't as far-fetched as it would be for, say, the Beatles or most other groups. In fact, it leads to a very interesting case of, "what if?"

This blog purports to tell the saga of what happened in that parallel universe where the Monkees never really broke up. Since this story is loosely based on real events, some parts will sound familiar while others may seem wildly off the wall. Through it all, you will be exposed to music you may or may not already be familiar with in a format that has been completely reimagined.

We now present for your enjoyment... The Monkees: An Alternate History.