REMEMBERING MICHAEL NESMITH

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Actually most of the encounter I had with the late Mike Nesmith was told in my February 2019 blog on noting the passing of Mike’s Monkee bandmate Peter Tork. So what I will do today is elaborate where I can on the already told story.

Rick and Ruby and our keyboardist Raoul were hired in spring of 1980, along with LA comics Charles Fleischer and Barry Diamond (there may have been others), to comment in between the music videos being shown on “Pop Clips,” Nesmith’s show for the fledgling Nickelodeon network. This would be the forerunner of what MTV was originally founded to be. MTV has long since scrapped the music video format, though I’m only guessing that, since I haven’t watched anything on the channel in easily 25 years.

Nesmith had started his own production company based in Monterey, where he had relocated post-Monkees. When Mike was only 13, his mother Bette invented the typewriter correction fluid later to be known as Liquid Paper. She sold her patent to Gillette in 1979 for $48 Million and died later that year. Since Mike was her only child, he inherited the bulk of that money, well more than he had ever made as a Monkee. So that was a nice nest egg from which to launch his projects. “Pop Clips” would be a springboard to his full length video entitled “Elephant Parts,” which won the first Grammy award given in a music video category.

His company was still in its infancy when we stumbled onto what could have been a pivotal gig. He was a pleasure to meet, and his sense of humour was still intact. I remember asking him about a lovely recording I’d heard once on Public Radio of him singing the 1930 song “Beyond The Blue Horizon.” His first response was “Well, I think I know a little bit about it since I was there when it was being recorded.” A good start, and I wish I could say it went uphill from there, but we were unsure of what he and his crew were wanting us to do or be.

When it got down to the cameras actually shooting our footage, I asked if there was any chance of seeing the videos we’d be intro-ing and outro-ing beforehand. They didn’t have them handy, which immediately put us at a disadvantage, and the only song of the videos we’d be “playing” that I, the only one of our trio who actually listened to pop radio, was familiar with was Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” We tried one gag where Ruby was holding up a video disc, which back then was about the same size as an LP, and she commented on how she tried to play it on her turntable, but the needle slid over it. Then it was up to me to explain how the thing actually works, but I knew only a little more than she did, so that potential gag went nowhere. Same with an attempted running gag about things we find scary. The only feedback we got from the crew was “No that won’t work, try something else.” It went that way the whole afternoon, and I would be very surprised if our footage ever aired. I think when we were brought to Nesmith’s attention, it was under the pretence of “Well, they combine music and comedy, they’ll be perfect for what we’re doing.” Well yes, but as it turned out, no.

While the experience did nothing to make us household names, I do have to say Nesmith was very patient with us as we were trying to figure out our reason for being there. When we were just chatting between takes, there was surprisingly little talk about The Monkees. He had heard about an annual event we hosted in San Francisco called “The Last Prom,” where we and the audience were all transported back to being the people we wanted to be in high school. We enlisted the help of many musicians and comedians, some famous, to play various teenage characters. The more we explained the concept to Nesmith, the more interested he appeared to be in participating. The part of that discussion that I was only reminded of yesterday was Raoul jokingly suggesting a song he could sing if he showed up. It was a Monkees song called “Sweet Young Thing,” which he wrote but never liked. It seemed to signal an end to that entire discussion.

We never saw him again, but I always respected him as a major talent. He became a pioneer in the music video industry, investing his mother’s inheritance well. And of greater importance, he was easily the most musically inclined of what was essentially the first Boy Band, if the genre is defined by being put together by powers that be rather than being a bunch of local friends sharing the same dream. When it came time for a Monkees reunion in the mid-80s, he was committed enough to his other projects to say thanks but no thanks. After the deaths of bandmates Davy Jones in 2012 and Peter Tork in 2019, he agreed to give it one more go with Micky Dolenz this year. They did their final show on their brief concert tour less than a month ago.

Certainly The Monkees music has held up better than about 90% of the music of their 1966-68 heyday. Their music may not have been held in the same esteem as that of the “serious” musicians of their day, but only a handful of acts from that era get as much airplay today as The Monkees do. For that alone, Nesmith leaves a legacy, whether he played on the original recordings or not.

December 11th, 2021



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