Nope, Never Met Him

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

But I did meet two of Peter Tork’s Monkees band mates, the two who are still with us. In spite of being a pre-fabricated band (the first version of a Boy Band), a band which was put together more on their acting abilities than their musical ones, their music, whether or not it was actually played by them, has pretty well stood the test of time. It says something that whenever I do my DJ gig, I always must keep “I’m A Believer” and “Daydream Believer” handy, and they’ll probably get a spin tonight, plus maybe a couple of the others I’ve added to my potential playlist. Sadly for Peter Tork, while a gifted musician and arguably the funniest character on “The Monkees” TV show, none of their hits and only a few forgotten novelty songs ever featured him as lead vocal.

So under what circumstances did I meet Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith? Dolenz story is the least complicated. He frequented LA’s Comedy Store a lot in the mid to late 80’s because he was a big fan of Sam Kinison’s. I know of two times he was in the audience when I was onstage. The first was a disaster where I’d gotten into a dispute with the comic preceding me. The comic was coked up, so his judgement was less than sound. I was setting up my guitar in preparation to go up, unaware that the channel I was plugging my guitar into was already on, making a big crackle as I plugged in. He opened up the curtain, and made some disparaging remark as if to accuse me of messing with his act, then in bringing me up, gave me this fantastic intro: “Coming up now is a fuckin’ asshole with a guitar, you guys can all leave now, cause his act sucks!” The audience shared his “love” for me, and I died on my ass. Fortunately, the next time Dolenz was in the crowd there, I had a much better time, could hear his laughter, and he complimented me later, happily not mentioning the previous debacle. The comic, meanwhile, apologised to me next time we saw each other.

Mike Nesmith I actually worked with in 1980. He had a great after-Monkees story in that his mother, in the late 1960’s, invented the substance Liquid White-Out, which, for the time from when people were still using typewriters until when personal computers became the norm, was a godsend. His mother made many millions off the invention, and since Mike was as far as I know the only heir to the fortune, he inherited a bundle. With this money dwarfing anything he had made as a Monkee or through his solo and songwriting careers (he wrote “Different Drum,” the first hit for Linda Ronstadt), he created his own TV production studio, where he made highly-acclaimed pioneering videos of his own songs that were successful, even though radio ignored the tunes. He was now creating a new TV show called “Pop Clips,” where rock videos would be shown, with in-studio hosts doing back-announcing and intros in between. Sound familiar? Yes, it would be another year and a half before Bob Pittman and Les Garland would launch MTV, but Nesmith did it first. Rick & Ruby was hired for three segments, which to this day I’ve never seen. I don’t even know if they actually aired anywhere.

I scarcely remember the bits we tried in the studio, but I know we struggled with one set of segments. One of Nesmith’s assistants tried to steer us in a different direction, and it did help, as we began to feel more comfortable with it, and so did the producers. I remember we tried a bit where I’m trying to explain to my partner on air what a rock video was, for at that time only a handful had really gotten much exposure. Truth was I knew little more than she did. It also didn’t help that there was no place we could watch the clips before taping our segments, which I know would have helped a lot. I remember the videos were played on a disc about the same size as an LP, but with a larger hole in the centre, perhaps a precursor to the CD or DVD? Could have been. I do know “Pop Clips” never took off as a regular show, for there were still limited cable outlets at the time. Nesmith succeeded a couple years later with a series of videos put together in an anthology called “Elephant Parts,” that actually aired on prime time network TV. He was successful enough on his own with that venture that when The Monkees decided to re-unite and tour again in 1986, it was only as a trio.

It’s sad to see so many of the people I admired as a kid passing on, but it’s inevitable, isn’t it? Peter Tork was 77, the same age currently as Bob Dylan, and the same age Paul McCartney will be this June. It would have been unfathomable in my youth to imagine Rock stars living much past the age of 50, let alone the 83 that Jerry Lee Lewis is now. I never met Peter Tork or Davy Jones, but I sure admired their band’s ability to transcend and ignore the criticisms sent their way. “I’m A Believer” was the 5th biggest selling record of 1967, but I would bet my life more people would list it among their favourites than the four that ranked higher (“To Sir With Love,” “The Letter,” “Ode To Billie Joe,” and “Windy”), not to mention so many forgotten supposed artsy rock artefacts from the Summer of Love. I’ll play that and many more of their classics tonight.

February 22nd, 2019



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