The Monkees aired from September 1966 until August 1968 on NBC.
This youth-oriented sitcom was inspired by The Beatles' film A Hard Days Night (1964). It was unconventional, utilizing surrealistic film techniques like fast and slow motion, comic film inserts, distorted focus, and one-liners all delivered at a very fast pace.
The Monkees ( David Jones, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith), played a rock group that got into all sorts of unusual situations as they rescued fair damsels, ran into dastardly villains and generally played pranks on the unsuspecting world.
The Monkees had a highly successful record career along with their hit TV show. The four members were carefully chosen from among 500 applicants in auditions held during the fall of 1965. Afterwards, they rehearsed until they could pass as competent musicians. (Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones were both actors and Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith had had previous musical experience).
They were not allowed to play their instruments on their early records, supplying only the vocals. This came back to haunt them a few times when they went out on tour and could not re-create their recorded sound. It also led to arguing among the band members because Peter and Mike had real musical ambitions and they felt they were being held back.
Nevertheless, their records, heavily promoted and carefully coordinated with the TV show, sold in the millions. Some of their hits included: "Last Train to Clarksville", "I'm A Believer" and "Words".
Finally, their was a showdown with the producers of the show. This followed a rather heated press conference in which Mike Nesmith complained that "we're being passed off as something we aren't." The band was later allowed to "do their own thing" musically. But, despite its commercial success, the group broke up shortly after the series left the airways in 1968.
The Monkees was later seen on CBS in reruns on Saturday mornings, from September 1969 - September 1973.
An Article From Time Magazine
Monkee Do
Friday, Nov. 11, 1966 Article
The logic is hard to beat. The Liverpool sound sells records; so does rock 'n' roll, so does straight pop, so does country music. Why not bring together four kids, one for each style, name them the Monkees, promote them harder than hair oil, and hire a Brink's truck to haul the money away?
And so, in the summer of 1965, two fledgling producers named Robert Rafelson and Bert Schneider put an ad in Daily Variety for "4 insane boys, aged 17-21." Out of 437 would-be lunatics who showed up to audition, Rafelson and Schneider picked David Jones, 20, a 5-ft. 3-in. former jockey from Manchester, England; Mickey Dolenz, 21, a former child actor from Hollywood; Peter Tork, 24, a college professor's son from Connecticut; and Mike Nesmith, 23, an Army brat from Texas. Only two of them could read music at all professionally, and only two had ever acted before. None of them could play the drums, so Mickey was tapped; Davy Jones couldn't play anything, so he was handed two maracas and a tambourine and told to get with it. None of them sounded as if they could sing, and they still don't.
Half-Hour Steal. With an insouciance that curdles the imagination, the producers shoved them in front of the cameras, and in five days filmed a genial half-hour steal of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, only they called it The Monkees. "We wanted to keep them natural, as unrehearsed as possible, and give them plenty of room for ad-libbing," says Rafelson. "It all went great: NBC bought the series 24 hours after it saw the pilot and sold it to two sponsors 72 hours later."
The Monkees had not yet got around to singing anything, however, so Donnie Kirshner, the 32-year-old pop-rock entrepreneur (TIME, April 22), flew out to Hollywood from New York to spend two months with them. From these sessions emerged a single recording, Last Train to Clarksville, and an album called The Monkees; this week the album is first in sales in the nation, and Clarksville the second among singles.
Into Business. The TV series, breathless with jump cuts, stop action, asides, speedups, titles, slow motion, and every other photographic gimmick that the Beatles people ever thought of, is doing well enough to be assured of a good run. Bright, unaffected and zany, it romps around haunted houses and toy factories with no intention of making things all add up. The boys more or less sing two or three songs per show, while the camera follows them in surrealistic pandemonium aboard everything from unicycles to epicycles. The show ranks 53rd in the Nielsens, but it has 32% of the audience in its time spot and is getting stronger by the week. All the same, the surest sign that the Monkee gland will function comes not from TV or records but from the promotion department. The inevitable flood of Monkee merchandise, from guitars to comic books and Monkee pants (of which J. C. Penney alone has ordered $670,000 worth), will gross $20 million this year.
Another Article From Time Magazine
Evolution
Friday, Feb. 17, 1967 Article
ROCK 'N' ROLL
In the climb-on-quick world of pop music, imitation is the sincerest form of ambition. Less than a year ago, a team of wily promoters ran the Beatles through a Xerox machine and came up with the Monkees (Time, Nov. 11). Musically, the Monkees were and are a dull mutation of the origin of the species. No matter. Mass TV exposure and dubbed-in accompaniment lifted their first recording—Last Train to Clarksville, an innocuous ditty dashed off by a team of songwriters during a 20-minute coffee break—to the top of the charts. Their second album, More of the Monkees, has now moved from 122nd to first place in its second week on the pop tree, establishing them as the bestselling group in pop music. The unkindest record cut of all may be their new single, I'm a Believer. It is currently No. 1 in England—where the Beatles started the whole business.
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