#47 The Monkees- The Monkees

Hey hey! Who needs to play on their albums anyway?

(RCA Victor)

Released: 10^th October 1966

Producer: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Jack Keller, Michael Nesmith

Topped the chart:

29^th January 1967 (for 7 weeks)

7 weeks total

For a shiny, happy pop band put together for a TV show, the history of The Monkees isn’t half complicated. In-fighting, rebellion, scandal and the love of the era’s luminaries all feature, but generally history remembers them with a single word: “manufactured.”

While most acts to achieve worldwide success up to 1967 had been manufactured to some degree (from Frank Sinatra to the “would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?” campaign), it had never been done so nakedly before. People were familiar with the Colonel Tom Parker and Brian Epstein impresarios of the age, but there was no pretending that The Monkees were anything more than a gimmick for a TV show, initially at least.

For one thing, none of the Monkees “band” actually played anything on their first two albums, with only three of them providing vocals over the top of session musicians. Following the 90s and the success of the Spice Girls, Steps and Westlife, this might not raise so much as an eyebrow muscle these days, but when the American public found out that the statements on the back of their debut self-titled album that each “played” guitar or drums was a lie, it was a genuine threat to their career.

In many ways, The Monkees represents the beginning of the general public being aware of “authenticity” and that being important, no longer just a matter for the blues scholars of the early 20^th century to furrow their brows over. Not only that, but while the Monkees were a band in voice only at this point, the music that they are singing over is an important document of the decade to that point.

At the time, The Monkees were most often seen as a Beatles rip-off, since their surreal and Technicolour television adventures weren’t a million miles aware from the feature film Help! While the Fab Four are certainly an influence here and there (Gonna Buy Me a Dog’s stabbing riff owes much to the Beatles’ own She’s a Woman), many of the other songs are a history of the British Invasion of the mid-60s, with each song feeling like a surprisingly effective if lightweight take on different bands without ever falling into parody.

The Byrds are perhaps the most obvious reference on the folkier numbers (Take a Giant Step and Last Train to Clarksville), borrowing their jangle and harmonies to great effect. Meanwhile, the jaunty, vaguely Estuary-accented This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day has a Kinks-y vibe,  I Wanna Be Free could be a lost Peter & Gordon single, while the buzzing Let’s Dance On reaches a little further back, sounding like La Bamba on amphetamines. As well as The Beatles, throwaway closer Gonna Buy Me a Dog features random asides and interjections in the style of Herman’s Hermit’s I’m Henry VIII I Am, a band whose teeny-bopper audience The Monkees were most angled towards at the beginning.

As could be expected, the songs are mostly fluff, but at least someone at RCA had the good sense to get good people to create the fluff. Professional songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were The Monkees main team, writing seven of the 12 songs found here (including, yes, that theme tune and the rather lovely I Wanna Be Free), while the legendary Brill building duo of Carole King and Gerry Goffin also contribute, including the proto-psychedelic-Donovon Take A Giant Step, the LP’s highlight, and even co-write blues explosion Sweet Young Thing with the band’s own Michael Nesmith.

There are also soft nods to what was to come in the remaining years of the decade in those more psychedelic moments, so brief that it’s doubtful that anyone really knew what they were suggesting. As well as the buzzsaw guitar of Sweet Young Thing and the meditation-referencing Giant Step, you can feel it in the heavy R&B basslines that bring a degree of ominousness to the otherwise upbeat Saturday’s Child and the classic Last Train to Clarksville (we’re still in the era when a song referencing a train has to sound like a train, but it works), and even if the few seconds of the Theme when the music drops out after the second chorus—you could imagine Pink Floyd stepping in there and taking things in a very different direction…

In the end though, apart from Clarksville and Giant Leap, nothing here feels particularly memorable, despite the breezy catchiness of it all, but it does master the brief of creating product for the kids to buy without feeling ripped off. Unlike those 90s groups mentioned earlier, The Monkees were not happy to be exploiting in the longer term, and already in 1967, the storm clouds were gathering…

Score: 7/10

Tracklisting:

SIDE A

1.      (Theme From) The Monkees

2.      Saturday’s Child

3.      I Wanna Be Free

4.      Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day

5.      Papa Gene’s Blues

6.      Take a Giant Step

SIDE B

7.      Last Train to Clarksville

8.      This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day

9.      Let’s Dance On

10.  I’ll Be True to You

11.  Sweet Young Thing

12.  Gonna Buy Me a Dog