Monkee’ing Around – Part One

“Hey hey we’re the Monkee’s, and people say we monkey around…” is a line from the wildly popular 60s Monkees TV show. The Monkees were Mike Nesmith, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork and the late British Broadway star Davy Jones. Here’s part one of “Monkee’ing Around” as we celebrate the 48th anniversary of the TV show this year.

The Hollywood Reporter ran an ad looking for young male musicians between the ages of 17 and 21 for roles as musicians on TV to cast the upcoming show. They applied and were chosen out of the many that answered the call.

The Monkees did not initially play their own music, but convinced the producers that they were talented musicians and could pull it off. Neil Diamond, Boyce and Hart, and Carole King wrote most of the music that appeared on the show.

In the 90s, Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork had minor roles on the TV show ‘Boy Meets World’.

The Monkees were fairly talented musicians in thier own right, but the producers of the show enlisted songwriters and studio musicians to record the early Monkee music, and the boys struggled with not performing their own songs. This would change as we’ll hear tomorrow in our second look at the Monkees.