Micky Dolenz on How The Monkees Went from TV Band to Real-Life Band

Enter the monkeys. Hey, that's a groovy button. What does it say? Love is the ultimate trip? Oh, that's a nice time. That's a grivy button. What does it say? Save the Texas Prairie Chicken? It was saved the Chicken, not stop the War. NBC wasn't about to risk a boycott of Bonanza after all, but the misadventures of four shaggy musicians in Malibu managed to be subversive anyway. The grown ups were stiffs, the sets were psychedelic, and the

long haired bandmates just wanted to be loved. Artistically, the show used new wave film techniques and brought the audience in on the jokes. Two years before Laughing and Monty Python. Hey wait wait, how do I get up the doors locked? Peter, you can't expect the writers to know everything improvised. Besides, the music is undeniably great. Soon the fictional band morphed

into a real band. They wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, and at the same time The Monkeys the TV show topped the Nielsen rating, the band topped the Billboard charts. The Monkeys got the formula just right, but the concept wasn't unique. Throughout the sixties, movie and TV bosses were desperately trying to bottle Beatlemania. Mickey Dolan's, with musical talent and floppy hair in abundance, was perhaps faded to end up in a band on TV. The

question was only which one. There were at least three of the shows that pilot season that I was up for as an actor singer uh similar well in the sense that they were about music and about the young generation. There was a lot going on at that time. It wasn't just the Beatles, it was folk music, it was um all kinds of you know, youth oriented music. One pilot was a Peter, Paul and Mary type of group

called the Happeners, it did not sell. Another was this beach Boy of surfer group, and another one was a big family, mighty wind kind of handle those thirty people on stage singing I got a Hammer Christmas, New Christmas. So it was in the air. It was in the air to try to capture this youth movement um and obviously exploit it for this medium of TV. That's important for people to well, in our case, for the first time,

to really combine the power of television, radio and record companies. Now, it had been done before to some degree with Ricky Nelson. Once in a while some TV act would come out with a little single, but this was the first time that it was a concerted assault on the American consumer. The Monkeys was not The Beatles or an attempt to be the American Beatles. The Monkeys was a television show about an imaginary group that wanted to be the Beatles.

That's what it was about. It was the struggle for success, and that's I think one of the reasons it resonated with with so many kids of our generation are hungry. Yes, so many shows since you know, you see him, they come on the year. They're all beautiful, cute and lovely, and they're successful already. You know. The closest thing I've seen come around over the decades is Glee, which was

a TV show about an imaginary glee club. But I gather they go and perform because they could, so rather than the old school Hollywood trick having somebody else sing your vocals in West Side Story or Sweet and Low Down Sean Penn, I mean, it was a beautiful movie, but of course he didn't play any of that. They had in mind that we were going to eventually go out on the road and perform, because the audition process

was nothing like I'd ever been through before. You had to be able to sing, you had to be able to play an instrument, you had to improvise, you had to do comedy scene work on the screen tests. So they must have had in mind and you know that this thing selves. Then one day these guys are gonna

go out on the road and perform. So after we got cast and started filming early days, early early days, I think, maybe before I had recorded anything, and they brought me to this apartment building and said, we want you to meet the writers who will be writing for you, and I go in and this little cubby holes like it reminds me of like a medical building where it's dentist here in a chiropractice. And it's like, hello, Carol, Oh, hi, Mickey, this is Carol King. She'll be writing songs for you.

Oh my god, oh hi. And she's sitting at an upright piano in a little cubby hole like the size of this little less less than the size of this little studio. And she has a woolen sack reeled the real tape recorder. And I remember that because I had the Zach same Carol, this, Mickey, and then Mickey this Carol, Hi, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. Hello, Hi, Oh David David Gates, This Mickey Dolan's he's gonna be singing and you're gonna be writing for him. David Gates

from Brady Gates. Yes, my god, oh my god. Oh he wrote a big hit for us. And I don't know if you saw beautiful, but uh, Carol King at one point says, we gotta write some songs for this TV show in Hollywood, and Jerry Goffin goes off, sorry, okay, knock it Gates. And then I heard about all these writers. But you know, even in that day, the writers were

not acknowledged like they are now. Whenever I do a show, I immediately acknowledge the writers that wrote this stuff, because without them, I'd be going, Yeah, when did Boyson Hart come into the picture? Very early? So boys and heart, we're trying out to be a cast as a couple of the monkeys. I have no idea why, Bob Eifelson, Burt Schneider, but you know how it goes. I mean,

you've got development from NBC or wherever. I'm sure they were all watching the screen tests and and making those choices, and I have no idea why they chose any of us, including me, but thank god I did. Um. But what was your musical d n A. I mean, I know you performed since you were a child, correct, and so what was your music? D NA? Rolling into that scenario, thank you because it is important to me. UM. I started out playing classical guitar Segovia kind of stuff as

a ten year old or something like that. My dad got me into it and played me a Segovia record and I was like, there's no way one person is doing he said, and I got into it. I got really hooked. I got really passionate. My dad was actor, swash buckling kind of Errol Flynn character in the forties and fifties from Italy, so so old school, and he got me into playing a classical guitar. And I took lessons and studied and trained. But you know, I'm ten

years old. Then I went to high school and I started going to parties and they would invite me to parties. I was this little geeky mascot, you know, but the girls would invite me to parties because I could play something on the guitar. Then they would say, do you know any Kingston trio? I'll be right back, hang down new hit do um? So I got okay at folk music Peter Paul and Mary my sister, and I would

say at parties and stuff, and you knew you could sing? Yeah, and my mom because my mom was a singer and great singer, and my dad was a great singer. But he was like a you know, operatic. He would do strangers in the evening evening you make she a strangiou but he would sing it walking through the living room in his underwear. So it's like, oh, that is so cruel. With a glass of red wine and as anyway, So

I've brought up singing, acting and the whole thing. But I think nature also has something to do with it. You know, there's the physicality of it. You're born with the physique to be a tennis player or golfer, and well that's it's a muscle. And so I think I

was born with the muscles to do that. So yeah, I could sing my After the folk music era, I started rock and roll and you know, started playing guitar and rock rock guitar and started going out with like, you know, cover bands, making the one night ers, you know, just doing you know, walking the Dog and Money and and the Beatles. And I talked to Ring about it when I interviewed him one day, he said, well, we've

all cover bands, and it's true. I used to do a tune in my band called Johnny Be Good because I was a huge Chuck Berry fan. That was my audition piece for the Monkeys. How did they find you? Oh, since I had already had a television show as a child NBC, I was yes, one does not go to the cattle call. And the producers in Bob and Bird and my agent I had an agent. You know. I was doing guest shots on Mr Novak Peyton Place, usually playing the bad guy, that little thug, the kind of

you know, creepy kid. Yeah, the creepy kid. Well, you could tell there was like the creepy kid thing. There's a little anarchy underneath everything you're doing. A little there's a little madness underneath everything you're doing under the under the whole monkey thing was a little bit of anarchy. Bob and Burt weren't much older, the creators, producers, they

were not much older than we were. When I went to my first audition down on Gower there at the Screenems, I walked in and uh, there were these two guys sitting there in jeans and T shirts. I thought they were there for the audition, And that was Bob and Burt. I mean, they were part of that young buck new wave generation which created the Hollywood independent film industry with Easy Rider. So Bob and Burt were not much older than I was. And there's a wonderful chapter in Timothy

Leary's book Politics of Ecstasy. Um, I don't know what you think about Timothy Leary, but he has like a half a chapter on the monkeys describing how essentially we brought long hair into the living room and made it okay to wear bell bottoms and have long hair because the only time you saw long haired kids in sixties six or seven on television they were getting arrested. So the monkeys came along and said, which is want if you have had a lone of have a fun. We're

just trying to be friendly. And it was a tough sell. Bob and Bird, I understand, had a real tough sell at the New York up Front restaurant. NBC was nervous, but it represented all the kids out there that were of the same mind. The majority didn't want to throw bombs at people or you know, to them. It was just we wanted to just have fun and we loved the look. You know. The very similar thing happened with

Harry Winkler in Happy Days. He may it okay to wear a leather jacket finally and write a motorcycle and he wasn't Marlon Brandon, I'm a Kiss of danger, A kiss of danger. Will Smith did a similar thing with Dress Prince. He said it's okay to be a young black gyro and sing wrap music. Well, the monkeys did the same thing. So and then did you mention Easy Writer? You know, we had Russ Tamblin in here to record

a show with us. And what's interesting, as I asked him, how his career rolls after he does a West Side Story and then within a matter of a few years, a handful of years, Oh, that's crumbling. As you said, everything starts to change, Easy Rider. The anti heroic period of film making Nicholson's career as born, well, Nickolson had his first I don't know, I don't want to say break. He was a B movie actor. Uh. And I don't know if you heard of the monkey movie called Head. Yes,

of course, written by Nicholson and us. We did get credit eventually after the Monkeys showing off the year. Um Bob introduced this to this guy called Jack Nicholson who was doing the movie but wanted to write. And we just fell in love with him, I did. I can't speak for everybody else, but he's was and his one most wonderful, charismatic, funny, intelligent guy that I had ever met. And uh, we welcomed him with open arms and he hung out with us for like god months, it seems like.

And then we all got together up in Ohio at the inn in Spot and we I got film with this, I got actual film of us sitting around you choreographing what this movie was going to be about. Because uh, obviously as a movie, we didn't have to stick to the NBC standards and practices thing, which was pretty brutal. But The Monkeys wasn't about that anyway, it was not our place to do that. At the time. We left that to laugh in into other shows. I had no

objections to that. It was wide demographic, young kids thirteen years old. So we went up and wrote this quacky script and uh, they took that created this movie Head, which I love. I mean, I don't get it still. And I wrote part of it and I wrote parts, but it's Quentin told me it's like his top five. Um. So that was our little kind of breakout, you know,

and fans hated it. But now now it's become this little cult thing because at the time, you know, they would not let us even touch upon anything political social that was NBC you know, standards and practices. I'm not sure it was only just after they let Ozzie and Harriet sleep in the same bed or something like that, But I've been described for people to hear it from

your own mouth, this journey everyone's impression. Who knows about that period of you know, your careers and television, that your lips sinking another band was playing and you're simulating correct, it's it's it's not accurate. First of all, we sang all of it, every note. We didn't live sync. No, you only live sync when you're doing a music video. No. But the recording process was was different, and I know that Peter, for instance, wanted to go in and play.

Mike wanted to. But when we first were cast, they had already recorded a lot of tracks. Um, they hired the Wrecking Crew, which I'm sure you've studio band. They were these studio cas played all the tracks for the Beach Boys, for Association for the Birds. I frankly didn't care. I mean I approached it like I was doing a musical. I was an entertainer, singer, actor. The Monkeys was like a Mark's Brothers musical, And it was John Lennon that first made that comparison. The Monk This was a little

half hour marks both as musical. But what I'm looking for is, eventually you do play yeah, what's around the time when you're sitting there and you guys are playing and you say, wow, we're there. When does that happen? That happened in Honolulu in nineteen six or seven. But the prelude to that is that we start rehearsing because they say we want to go on the road. Won't take the sack on the road, And that is why they hired actor musicians. Mike plays incredible twelve string. Peter

plays seven instruments. God rest his soul. I mean he went to the Conservatory of Music, and like in New York, David didn't play an instrument as such. We could sing obviously and played percussion. I was a guitar player, and when they said you're going to be the drummer, I said, cool, where do I start? Like I said in Circus Boy, when they said, so you're gonna ride an elephant? Okay, where do I start? Like they must have said the Lloyd Bridges when he started, You're gonna right? Where do

I start? Never take a bandage? The riot as the fun someone do understand them and you just may be the one. Actor and musician Mickey Dolan's This album marks the beginning of the band's self sufficiency. You're listening to Michael Nesmith in singing his own composition. You just may be the one. All the instruments are the monkeys themselves too. At the same time as the Monkeys were softening the edges of the counterculture, Andy Warhol was doing the opposite.

He made Four Stars, a plotless, unedited twenty five portrait of his friends and collaborators doing drugs and having sex. That movie was also the debut of Warhol's favorite beefcake star, Joe Delessandro. But when the juvenile delinqu went turned pin up model showed up at the factory in n he

had no idea who his host was. I had a couple of friends in New York that introduced me to other people, and and then one day one of these friends said, Hey, I know this person that's uh making these gamble suit can you know makes the candle sup? And I was thinking we would going to eat some soup, which I was all for, and you just made me the one for a link to my interview with Joe Delessandro, text Joe, that's Joe to seven zero one zero volley.

I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. My guest is Mickey Doland's drummer and vocalist for the Monkeys, still to walk out things to say, let's do things. Okay, the pandemic has meant no, but you can still hear his and Michael Nestmith's latest from the comfort of your own confinement. Their album, called The Monkeys Live the Mike and Mickey Show, was taped last year and is available on iTunes and Spotify. Their sound and the love from

the audience is as strong as ever. But starting from just play a band member on TV, it took Dolan's time and hard work to build up his skills. I had about a year and I studied very very hard, and I practiced very very hard. It was rock and roll, just four or four time. For the most part, we rehearsed diligently. David Winters, speaking of the West Side Story, was the director of our first stage show, and all of a sudden one day they said your first gig

is uh Hawaii. I think they did that because if it bombed, no one would know of the United States, no Internet by nuclear waste. Yes, yes, that was us Nukulo. Good name for a group. It turns out we did pretty good. There's a live in sixty seven c D which was not recorded to be a record. It was some I think the sound guy was just like holding a microphone up in the air to capture it. But it's not bad. There's only three of us playing, you know.

It's Mike, Peter and I Davey just doing percussion and of course the vocals. But it was a trio. It was a power trio. And Peter would play the right hand, he would play keyboard melody, and on the left hand he played keyboard bass. Mike Nesmuth always put it like when we went on the road, it was like Pinocchio became a real little boy, and there's a lot of truth in that. And how do you feel back then? Were you happy? How do they feel? Were they happy?

Couldn't tell I. I don't want to speak for him. Mike Nesmuth, I know, and it's well recorded. He wanted to play and sing a lot more. He'd been brought into the situation, had no idea what a series was all about, they said. He said, I want to sing and play and wrote my songs and he did not have a chance to do that. Initially, Eventually he did, and that's when we had the palace coup prompted by him.

What year did that happen. I was sixty seven. I want to say around the time of Hawaii, just after we had a palace coup, mainly because Mike said, we can do this, Pinocchio can become a little boy. He was frustrated, and I don't blame him. How do you feel? I didn't care one way or the other. I was having a great time and I loved singing. It ended up that I was. I think I ended up doing the most of the lead vocals, kind of by the fault um. Mike had avery and does still has a

very wonderful country western kind of man. Must have someone, have someone have a beautiful We do that in our show. He and I know Peter, like I said, could play like you know, seven instruments. David great singer, but definitely the crooner Broadway kind of Tony knew leave. I read somewhere yet, I read somewhere where they had decided the powers that be that your voice was more of the voice.

I was the only one that could go exactly like I said, you know, you are really good at this, So you have the coup, you get rid of kurshon Er, You're doing your own thing. Does everybody sense that it's better and everybody's happy eventually? Well, I can only speak

again for myself. UM uh yeah. During that period I had I guess you'd call it an awakening or something, because up until that point we had I'd been ensconced on the set from seven o'clock on the morning makeup until eleven o'clock at night, where I would be brought into in our c studios to record two or three lead vocals a night because they wanted so much material to the show during the day record at night. I

had to. They needed so much material because they wanted two new songs for every episode, and so Boys in Heart and Carol King and all these people are pumping out massive amounts of material, and Carol come over to my house. I'd go over to Diane Hildebrand or or Boys and Hard and and uh to routine the stuff and then go in the studio and just blow it out at ten eleven o'clock at night. And that went

on for months because they needed so much material. Um, this is material that is still in the can that we have not released. We released an album two years ago called good Times. One of the songs Me and Magdalena, written by Ben Gilbert from Death Capital CUTI is number seventy six on the Billboard Hot one hundred for the entire decade on this album called good Times. Very proud of that. So anyway, I'm in the studio, you know, or on the set basically. But I'm only one years old,

so I'm just taking it for what it is. I mean, I was had been brought up to be a actor, entertainer, and you show up at seven for your makeup more drobe call and you do your job and you go home, the old Judy Garland thing. Yeah. Now, but let me ask you that meeting. You're twenty years old and you're grinding this out. What was your life like? Did you have a life? Oh, absolutely had a wonderful life. I actually had a wonderful life. But again I was used

to it. You know. I had a lot this series when I was ten, so I well knew what I was getting into. It was almost like home for me, because when you're ten, twelve, thirteen years old and you're you know, those are very formative years. And I was on a set with my mom and a bunch of smelly electricians. And so I went back to high school and that was abnormal for me. I was like a fish out of water until I got The Monkeys, which

is only a few years later. When I went to the audition interview for The Monkeys at screen Gems, the same guy was on the gate that had been there when I was ten years old, was a circus boy. It was only ten years later this was home to me. I breathed a sigh of relief being on a set. You were comfortable there, Oh yeah, big time, because before that I was on my father's set when he was doing movies for Howard Hughes. I didn't have to adapt.

I just fell into it. And when and when the show ends, is there a thought for you to say, I'm kind of done with music now and I want to go back to acting or no, were you now in your soul a musician? No. I was up for the Fons and it was between me and Henry Winkler. I don't know if he's ever told you this story. It was a mid season replacement just after The Monkeys, and I was up brot and went back for callbacks.

And it was between me and Henry. He walked into the office of Gary Marshall's office said, oh ship, Mickey Dolan's is here. I'm never gonna get this, and thank god he did, because he wasn't much better funds than I would have been. No. I went for some interviews, and I did a couple of little guest shots on on some shows. My agent would send me out for little things, but I would go into the office and they'd say, we don't need any drummers. What are you

doing here? It was hard to get from into the Shadow of the Monkeys. Yeah, talked to Leonard Nimoy about that. UM, this classic problem in our Yeah, but I didn't worry about it that much because the same thing had happened to me after Circus Boy. I'd go to an interview and they'd say, we don't need and you're not blond anymore. Let's I was used to that, right. But all so, UM, I had already started directing, and I directed the last episode of the Monkeys, wrote and directed. I had already

decided I kind of wanted to get into production. I've already been an actor since I was ten, and I started a little film production company. But shortly thereafter I moved to England, had married a girl that is English, and we went to Um England to do a play at the Mermaid Theater, doing the Point by Harry Nilsen, who was my dear friend at the time, and he'd written this uh animated thing and then it became a play in London in the West End, and he said

would you come and play in it? It was a limited panomime season and I went there with my wife. I brought my reels what I had at the time. I gave it to an English agent and all of a sudden, bang, I get this gig at the BBC directing a drama, a drama play, and I did it, and all of a sudden, I'd gone to England for three months, stayed for fifteen years. I directed big shows, long running shows for the BBC, for l w T,

for Granada, for Tim's. I loved it and I was doing something outside of the purview of what I was known for. Over there. Within a about a year, auditions, well the not auditions, the interviews. When I did an interview, it would say BBC producer writer Michael Dolan's you became someone else again I did, from Circus Boy to Mickey Dolan's to Michael Dolan's and back again. What brought you back?

I'll give you the truth. I'll divorce. Um. I had retired, Actually I tried to retire at thirty five or forty or something, big English rock and roll mansion, full time staff to six, hunting in the winter and polo in the summer, and oh yeah, and it was so boring. I was bored to death because I wasn't working. Um, I wasn't accomplishing, you know. I'd wander around the grounds, seven or eight acres of formal gardens, and help would tip their hats morning Governor morning, and I was like

trying to hang out with him. Hey was that morning, Governor. I got very bored because I wasn't working. Came back to the States, still a little directing Boy Meets World. I did Pacific Blue, but I kind of, you know, I guess I kind of got tired of that too. I don't know me here it's not the same in England I had, and I still think it applies enormous amount of control over there. The show owner is the producer director, not the producer writer. I hired writers. Here

the producer writer is the more. Yeah, that's the show. Over there, I'd go in and pitch an idea, and unlike over here, where it has to go through you know, God knows how many network development executives um they would just say, we'd rather like that idea, here's the money, go ahead and do it seriously, and I wouldn't hear anything for weeks, like is anybody out there? Am I doing? Okay?

An enormous amount of responsibility but also freedom, and that's why we get these amazing shows out of Britain to this day, because they don't funk around with you. Now when you and Nestmith go out on the road, now you go periodic, periodically, you guys are out there, and when you're out there, like, how does it begin the show? Mike? First of all, I sang most of the leads, and Mike wrote some incredible tunes for the Monkeys and Africa. It's probably a lot more musical. We have incredible band

ten piece Van. It's different, but the hits are there because the people want to hear the hits and I've always acknowledged that and I do them as they remember them. It's very important to do that so they can sing along. Peter Tork got love him, you know, passed away last year, and Davy Jones passed away a few years ago. Yeah, the Monkeys thing will go on, you know, with or without me, because a the music was you know, so

special and the show. You know, the thing about the TV show, the smartest thing they did, those producers is that it was not topical and it wasn't satirical like I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners or it was about these four guys that that we're living in this situation Malibu, in mala and wanted to be successful, and we never were on the show. That's I think one of the reasons why it stands up. My last question for you would be music today. You know, contemporary music. Are you

a fan of much contemporary music? It's not in your life as much. It's not in my life at all. Uh, not that I have anything against it, but I kind of I guess I kind of dialed out, uh with Sinatra and classical guitar. In the morning, my wife and I listened to Segovia and in the afternoon we listened to Billie Holiday. I mean, you know, it's uh, you know, because I do it for a living. You know, it's I don't keep up. I must admit. I'm sure there's lots of wonderful stuff out there, but no, you have

how many kids? Oh? I have four? Four kids that I know of it? What do they do? They? Anybody? They're all having grandkids. Two of them are in the entertainment industry. One is photographer and mom stay at home mom, and the other is uh, the chief officer for thirteen African nations for the Clinton Foundation, trying to eradicate malaria, working from where she lives in d C. But goes to Africa frequently. How many girls? How many boys? All girls?

And now two grandchildren and a third at Christmas? Beautiful? Not bad for a long haired widow America. I'm going to pack up all the pain. I'm gonna keep then in my heart. I'm gonna catch me in the fastest train. They're gonna make me a nice dot. That's okay. Toma's gonna be in other day. Hey, and I don't care what you say. Toma's gonna be. Toma's gonna be. Toma's gonna be in a day. Mickey Dolan's youth culture icon grandfather.

That third grandchild was born right on schedule over the holidays, a healthy baby boy currently sheltering in place with his mom in Washington, d C. Mom's going to be an day. Hey, Tomorrow is gonna be another day. I'm Alec Baldwin. And this is here's the thing. Well, I ain't gonna think about you because they ain't known you Stone boys. I'm gonna make it fine without you. I just like I said before, I'm on my way. Tomor's gonna be another day. Hey, hey, hey,

and I don't care what you say. Tomorrow's gonna be. Tomorrow's gonna be. Tomorrow's gonna be another day. A he he, I'm my day kah to gonna be ex