“He was not an actor, he was a singer-songwriter, and they told him he was going to write and record his own music. And basically, he was not allowed to do that": Micky Dolenz explains Mike Nesmith's "frustration" at being in The Monkees

The last surviving Monkee, Micky Dolenz, turned 80 earlier this month, and with an upcoming solo US tour coming up, has been talking about his life in the group, commonly regarded as the first ‘manufactured’ band.

But not a boyband, it seems. “It was not a boyband,” he insisted in an interview with Alexis Petridis of the Guardian. “It was the cast of a television show, like when the cast of Glee made albums.”

The drummer always seemed the Monkee most at ease with their peculiar situation, a ‘band’ of four actors who were pretending to be a band. Less so his colleague Mike Nesmith, who from quite early on chafed against his puppet masters.

“I knew what he was going through,” remembers Dolenz. “He was frustrated because he was misled. He was not an actor, he was a singer-songwriter, and they told him he was going to write and record his own music. And basically, he was not allowed to do that.

“In the very early days of the show, he went to the producers with his guitar and played them a song he’d written that he wanted the Monkees to record. According to him, they said, ‘Thank you, but no thank you - it’s not a Monkees song.’ He said, ‘Wait a minute, I am one of the fucking Monkees. What are you talking about?’ But they blew him off.”

That song was Different Drum, which Nesmith gave to the Stone Poneys (which featured a young Linda Ronstadt) and who promptly took it into the US Top 20.

Different Drum - YouTube

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Eventually, The Monkees were granted their wish, and from their 1967 Headquarters album onwards, played on their own records and recorded their own songs. And Dolenz himself supplied one of their biggest UK hits, the brilliantly-inventive Randy Scouse Git (or ‘Alternate Title’), which reached Number 2 in the UK in July that year.

And Dolenz was also an early synth adopter. Indeed, he bought the third one that was sold commercially (the first two were owned by Wendy Carlos and, rather more incongruously, country singer Buck Owens). You can hear the Moog Modular III on some tracks on the band’s late 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd, in particular, Star Collector and Mike Nesmith’s Daily Nightly.

The Monkees - Daily Nightly - YouTube

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You can even make a claim for the Monkees’ use of the Moog as being an influence on the Beatles. In an interview with the LA Times in 2009, Dolenz revealed that “I threw a party for John Lennon one night, and he sat there at the Moog for four hours making flying saucer sounds.” Two years later came Abbey Road and tracks like I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Because, both of which use the Moog.

Not that Dolenz is ever the sort to boast about such things. Indeed, as he mentions in the interview, it was his ability to maintain a distance from his onscreen persona that helped him maintain his sanity.

“I think because of my upbringing in the business, I always attempted to separate the person from the persona," he says. "I wasn’t always successful, but that’s incredibly important if you want to survive. To some degree, I’ve always known that Micky the wacky drummer on television was who the girls were in love with - not me, Micky Dolenz.”