Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork. A year ago they were unknown in Britain. But their BBC-1 show and three top discs changed all that. Now they have a bodyguard each. Two permanent hairdressers between them; and a staff of thirty-four. They are all dollar millionaires, and they only talk to the Press when they want to. Overleaf, Jack Lewis brings you up to date with The Monkees

‘We are booked for another year in America. We think we can keep going for another year after that’
Prophecy by Monkee Mike Nesmith. June 1967

If all the millions of words that have been written about The Monkees were strung together, there would be enough to encircle the Regents Park Zoo with a tight, verbal cocoon. Some people might like to see the pop group put inside there first.

It would be a harsh judgment. This is the age of the young and the young have seemingly grown very fond of this quite extraordinary amalgam that sprang to life a year ago in a quite extraordinary way.

The Monkees have been accused of aping the Beatles but the manner of their birth suggests they were created in the image of a Frankenstein monster.

Group manufacture

Inspired by the success the Beatles achieved in the Dick Lester film A Hard Day’s Night, two American television producers, Bob Rafelson and his cousin, Bert Schneider, decided to manufacture a group and cash in on the product. The raw material would be supplied by America’s own zany youth.

Into the show business newspaper Variety went the following advertisement:

MADNESS. Wanted, a quartet of hip, insane, folk-orientated rock ’n’ rollers, 17 to 21, with the courage to work.

More than 400 hip, insane, folk-orientated rock ’n’ rollers answered the call. Rafelson and Schneider put them through a series of daft tests. Stupid questions were fired at them and the replies noted.

Sometimes the interviewers remained silent for long periods; or juggled with golf balls; or, as when they had Dolenz before them, balanced a pile of bottles, glasses, and cups and watched his reaction.

It was a swift one. Micky took a paper cup, placed it at the top of the pile and said, grinning: ‘Checkmate!’

Potty behaviour and quick wits were not the only criteria. Health was another factor — poor health. Fit young men would be liable for call-up to serve in Vietnam.

Micky Dolenz earned points with his sharp, amusing reactions but his place in the group was clinched when they discovered that his back and eyesight were weak.

Tork reported that the U.S. Army authorities had classified him as 1Y because he had failed the mental tests. Nesmith had already done his military service. Jones, from Manchester, couldn’t be called up.

The four were duly chosen but now they had to be welded into a group—a musical group— although only two could read music professionally and none could sing well. It hardly mattered. They were bundled into a locked studio room with a door-sign which read: MONKEES — KEEP OUT.

A single entity emerges

A talented twenty-nine-year-old director, Jim Frawly, was put in charge of them. His job was to put the four-man robot together and tighten its nuts. He took three months to do it.

They had entered as four, rather bewildered youths. They emerged as a single entity, thinking alike, acting alike, utterly responsive to the show-business scientists who had created them in the likeness of The Beatles.

In this respect, the timing of their presentation to the pop public was lucky. The Beatles were already moving away from the crazy, practical-joke era.

Filling a gap

Yet the fans’ appetite for mad fun (it wasn’t new — The Marx Brothers and Olsen and Johnson had done it thirty years before, but it was new to the 1960s) had been whetted. Who could fill the gap? The answer was, of course, The Monkees.

Musically — and they themselves agree — they are far behind the Beatles. In fact, despite a few hits like ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ ‘I’m a Believer’ and their theme tune, all written, incidentally, by others, they can hardly claim more than a moderate success as a pop group.

Television, however, was another matter. If aurally they just secured a pass mark, visually they roared to distinction. The crazy capers they cut in their TV series earned them a stupendous popularity.

Frawly — the first backroom boffin of pop — had done his work faithfully. The electronics of its TV show had brought the robot to life with a vengeance. There were those who prophesied that the monster would soon blow itself up.

But, artificially sparked off though it was, the mad machine didn’t short-circuit simply because it didn’t short-change the public.

Signs of metal fatigue?

Yet, are there signs now of metal-fatigue? Will Nesmith’s forecast of a short, merry life prove correct? It is difficult to say. There are no apparent indications that the trend for berserk humour is on the wane.

There are plans for a Monkees full-length feature film. Movies could keep them in business for years.

But something quite fascinating is happening to the erstwhile-ersatz pop group. The Monkees are developing their own individual personalities! They are struggling to free themselves and to show themselves as real, flesh-and-blood people.

Lulu’s view

Lulu, who appeared with The Monkees on their tour here last summer, knows them well. ‘My conception of them was that, as a group, they might last only a few years,’ she told me. ‘But then, they said that about Elvis Presley and even the Beatles.

‘Then I grew to understand them. I found that each had a personality trying to burst through the artificial barriers. Each, in his way, had the potential of a star.

‘Micky is a top-class comedian. Davy may one day be the heart-throbbing romantic hero. Peter will always evoke sympathy while Mike is sure to emerge as the cool, untouchable type. And the Beatles really like them. They don’t care that they’re being imitated.

‘When George Harrison was told that the robot group wanted to meet them, he said: “Great—we dig them!” As George explained to me later, “You can’t knock success.”’

A recent article in Spotlight Weekly asked: ‘Is the Monkee craze finished?’ It pointed out that there had been a marked falling off in the attendance of the group’s show at the Forest Hills stadium, New York. It was only half-filled.

Maybe they had better make that film. Or perhaps a new hit record will give this most human of groups the fillip it needs. But over here, I can almost hear a million young fans shouting hoarsely: ‘We still love you, Monkees! ‘

P S from Hollywood

An up-to-the-minute report from our correspondent in America…

The Monkee success story goes on and on. World-wide fame has its attendant hazards. The home addresses of the four boys here in Hollywood is one of the city’s most closely guarded secrets. On their tours over here, the security arrangements are practically Presidential.

A hundred policemen at least are always on duty—a dozen of them in the Monkee hotel, where the whole floor the boys always book is searched and sealed off two hours before the group are due in.

They still get 70,000 letters a week from American fans alone.

The television series is now showing in thirty-nine countries — the most recent convert being Japan. The boys sent over a trailer with them speaking in Japanese! They’d learnt it phonetically from a local university professor.

Davy Jones has just bought himself a farm near the famous Malibu Beach where he hopes to train race horses—a throwback to his days as a jockey. At the moment, he plans to spend Christmas in Britain, and there’s a chance that Peter Tork will join him for a holiday before the group start their first full-length feature film in February.

The earliest opportunity of seeing the whole group in England will be in June, when they will be touring.

On the record scene, the boys are planning to produce their own records at more informal recording sessions in a full-scale studio, rigged up in Mickey Dolenz’s home. And there’s also discussion about changing the format for the TV show. ‘Situation comedy is very confining,’ says Peter. ‘We’d rather do TV specials or a variety series.’

Article source: the Radio Times published 26 October 1967.

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I got him out of bed, though it was two o’clock. ‘I shall probably go back when you’ve gone,’ he said.

Inside the bed sitting room he has a huge piano which he can play with two fingers (he gave me a sample), an elaborate set of recording equipment (which gave forth the Wedding March), and a French telephone with a sexy purr for a ring.

He sat on the floor, took off his socks, and warmed his feet by the coal fire.

He’s small, very slim, twenty-four-years-old.

He left school at fifteen and started work scraping tins for a sausage-roll factory.

The scraping stopped when he got a job as a D.J. on one of the pirate ships. He joined Radio 1 at the start and since then his shows have had a faithful and diverse following. He is just as likely to play a duet by Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald as the latest chart-topper. Perhaps it’s this mixture of pop and sentiment that the fans like. Interspersed between the records are a set of weird zanies like Granny the hip 110-year-old, Crisp the butler with the half-crown voice, and a computer called Cecil. He’s got some new characters lined up for this new series.

The name Everett was pinched from actor Edward Everett Horton, who specialises in butler roles. His real name is Maurice Cole.

Along with his fascination for butlers (‘I now have a servant of my own called Adam, he’s very shy’), Kenny harbours a nostalgic yearning for the nineteen twenties and thirties. You can find evidence of it everywhere.

There’s the aspidistra he’s vainly trying to grow (it keeps getting eaten by Snuff the cat), the huge lighted candle on top of the piano, his obsession with old films, especially the work of Busby Berkeley who produced those fantastic dance routines involving scores of girls.

He’d like to see showbusiness get ‘big and grand’ again. ‘There’s only Zsa Zsa Gabor and Elsie Tanner who keep it going,’ he said.

He loathes the ‘sweet sticky depths to which today’s showbiz people have sunk’ and he fights any attempt to suck him in to ‘that quagmire of mediocrity.’

Between those who regard Everett as a ‘nut’ and those who hail him as a ‘genius’ — all agree that he is not mediocre.

He’s already got a great future behind him, but for the actual future Kenny is very unsure.

‘I might pack everything up and go off to Mexico and just happen. Or I might learn to play this piano.’

You can hear Kenny Everett’s show every Saturday morning on Radio 1

Article source: Radio Times for 30 January 1969 and kennyeverett.org

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Is it really a year since Tony Blackburn delivered his first disc at 7.0 in the morning? A year since Robin Scott announced his first team of DJs to launch the Wonderful new service? A year since the first jingle broke in on the air, since that swinging chick appeared at the top of the Radio Times pages; since those buttons were handed out which said ‘I’m a Radio One-upman’?

It;’s no longer like that at the beginning of the second year. Those very bright and highly professional young men who invaded the studios last September have become part of the BBC scene – and the Scene is part of the BBC. Their voices are familiar to millions who tune into 247 metres – whether it’s for the Daily Disc Delivery with Tony, for the Daily Whatsit with David, for the New Sounds with Peel, for R. & B. with Mike, Foreverett with Kenny, for… but why go on? You know who we mean, and here are pictures of some of those who are in the programmes this week.

The year ahead in Radio 1 and 2

It is probably fair to say that after their first year in action Radio 1 and Radio 2 haw established their patterns, their identities. and their listeners. As the second year dawns will there be major changes as a result of experience in the first one? The brief answer from Robin Scott, Controller of the two programmes, is ‘no’. His longer and more precise one is a qualified ‘yes’.

The intention at the start was to give listeners a wider choice of programmes than they had on the old Light Programme, and to give them this choice for as much of the time as possible. This intention has been kept very clearly in mind. At first the ‘choice time’ was just under fifty-three hours a week, and this has grown gradually until from September 30 it will be more like sixty-two hours.

This policy is to be most fully carried out at the major listening periods: breakfast, lunchtime, and early evening. To some extent this has happened already. Breakfast Special, with its team of John Dunn, Paul Hollingdale, and Ray Moore, will continue to provide the best in middle-of-the-road and light music on Radio 2 as a contrast to the Tony Blackburn Show on Radio 1, and at ‘going home time’ Roundabout on Radio 2 will still be placed against the David Symonds Show and the latest pop records on the other side.

There are, however, important changes at lunchtime. From Monday to Friday, beginning on October 21, the new Radio 1 Club will be in session from noon till 2.0. This is described in more detail on this page. On Radio 2 at the same time, starting on September 30, there will be a two-hour programme of sweet music. Sam Costa will be the first lunchtime host for this programme.

At the weekend the amount of alternative programmes will be considerable. The pattern on Radio 1 remains consistent through Saturday, with Chris Denning taking over the 2.0 to 4.0 p.m. spot for a spell, while Radio 2 is separate until 7.30, except for the return of Jack Jackson’s Record Roundabout from 1.0 till 2.0 and Country Meets Folk at 5.30. On Radio 2 Max Jaffa returns with a new-style Saturday morning show, and Frank Chacksfield delivers some of his characteristic sounds of sweet music in the afternoon. On both Saturday and Sunday nights Pete Murray will he host in the two-hour show to midnight on both programmes.

The picture is similar on Sunday. Eric Robinson continues with his Melodies for You in the morning, and, until the beginning of November, John Hanson will have his show in the afternoon. From November 10 there will be a new sweet music ‘Spectacular’ with such names as Semprini and Kenneth Alwyn figuring prominently. It will be an audience show recorded at the Camden Theatre.

‘Specialist’ music will continue to get its fair share on both programmes. Jazz Club on Wednesday (Radio 1) and Jazz at Night (both) will be matched on Sunday nights by Jazz on One (Radio 1) and Humphrey Lyttelton at five past midnight (both). That means more Jazz on VHF than before. ‘Progressive’ pop, Country and Western, and folk music continue much as they are, and Mike Raven’s Sunday night Rhythm and Blues increases from an hour to ninety minutes. Both programmes share some of the best in Latin-American music on Saturday evenings.

Among the non-musical programmes planned for the coming twelve months are Follow This Space, a sequel to Listen to This Space, which will begin on Sunday evenings in mid-October and I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again early next year — both on Radio 1 and 2. The Sunday afternoon comedy spot in Radio 2 will be filled by the Navy Lark, followed in the New Year by the Ken Dodd Show, and in the spring by the other Ken in Round the Horne. The irrepressible Clitheroe Kid is back in October.

In Five to Ten from September 30 Bernard Miles will be reading his own adaptation of stories from the New Testament in his Hertfordshire dialect: a must for his many fans.

Sport, finally, takes its place in the line-up. The Mexico Olympics and the Test Series in South Africa are the highlights of the coming months and there will be up-to-the-minute coverage of both. Commentaries on the big boxing matches will be broadcast — ‘live’ from the ringside — as well as all the important mid-week football.

Year Two looks like a pretty full one — start listening NOW.

Radio 1 Club

Lunchtime Pop in the second year of Radio I takes on a new and rather exciting form. On October 21 Radio 1 Club opens its doors — well known to many pop fans already — in lower Regent Street, just off Piccadilly Circus. Of course, if you listen to Radio 1, you’re already a member of about the largest pop club in the world. But this is a way of putting your membership on record, and getting some special advantages as wall — which is part of what a club’s all about.

The object of the Club is to enable its members to come along at lunchtime, from Monday to Friday, meet the DJs, top guest stars, here some of the leading groups ‘live’, ask for request records, or collect autographs, or dance — or just sit around and have a snack.

To become a member all you have to do is send a stamped addressed envelope to Radio 1 Club Membership, BBC, P.O. Box 1AA, London. W.1. and your card will be sent to you. Fill it in as soon as you gat it. If you’re one of the first 10,000 to apply you will also gat a free lapel button — shown above. Your membership card will get you priority entrance to the Club, subject to the capacity of the premises.

Radio 1 Club news will be reported in Radio Times every week — where you can also see full details of all the other Radio 1 programmes. And here’s another advantage of joining this Club of the air. A lucky membership card number will be picked every day at the lunchtime session by one of the day’s guest stars. The prize will be record tokens for the top five pops. In addition to this one lucky card number will be drawn each week and published in Radio Times. The winner will receive tokens for the five top pop LPs.

Playing host each day will be one of the Radio DJs, they will all be taking part at some time, but to start the ball rolling for the first four weeks your hosts will be (in daily turn) Keith Skues, Johnny Moran, Dave Lee Travis, Stuart Henry, and Pete Drummond.

Plans are in hand to open Radio 1 Club branches throughout the country — but don’t wait for the Club to come to you, join right away, you might even be a lucky prizewinner. But prize or no prize, this is a club for pop fans — and if that means you, start writing.

Radio 2 is one too

For Radio 2 however it is not quite the same sort of birthday; the Light Programme was an old favourite when it changed its name. These twins are not identical, and they are getting less and less so – particularly at lunchtime, when Sam Costa has his new two-hour show, in the morning, with Breakfast Special, and in the early evening with Roundabout – if you like your music a bit sweeter.

What with one wavelength and another there’s a Wonderful year ahead.

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His black hair, perfect teeth, large dark eyes, and all-purpose smile would fit almost anybody’s identi-kit of a DJ.

His jokey voice is the first thing millions hear every morning; the jokes themselves may amuse you or drive you mad.

Tony arrived bang on cue for the interview looking extremely young even for his twenty-three years. He glanced at our cover picture and said: ‘We look like Elsie and Doris Waters don’t we?’

As yet Tony Blackburn hasn’t acquired the show-business smoothness that is often the hallmark of DJs. He still says what he thinks, and this has already cost him a few friends among pop people, who don’t expect that sort of thing.

He always reminds me of a lovable baby bird who has suddenly tumbled out of a warm nest into the harsh world outside. He is completely without guile or side.

A cynic might say that he was naïve; but uncomplicated would be a fairer word.

Jimmy Young arrived a few minutes later; he’d been detained at a BBC recording. Jimmy is forty-three, and ruefully admits that he has had his ups and downs in his show-business career.

You can’t imagine ‘Gentle Jimmy’ (as he’s known) being intentionally rude to anybody. He could, one feels, chat quite happily with anyone. And this is exactly what he does on the phone with scores of housewives every week during the show.

An opening gambit, find the chatty spot, and away he goes.

Jimmy has had two number ones in the hit parade — and any DJ who has enjoyed that sort of success might think he had a safe job for life.

But Jimmy went through a very lean time in the early 1960s when he had to dip heavily into his carefully-saved capital in order to live.

The coming of Radio 1 last year meant that Jimmy found his audience again. ‘There’s nothing worse than a man my age trying to act hip—and I don’t have to do that on my show,’ he says.

He is shorter than I expected, his handshake is firm, and a smile is always at the ready.

Thanks a million

‘I am very insecure. I’ve been criticised by everybody for practically everything. But I’m still here.’ He adds this last sentence triumphantly, his brown eyes dancing.

The millions of housewives who tune in to his show every weekday and bombard him with complimentary letters can’t all be wrong, says Jimmy. He has a very deep respect for success.

And success is not the only thing Tony Blackburn and Jimmy Young have in common. They are both singers, both have daily 4 live shows, and both listen closely to the other’s programmes.

‘I hear Tony’s show as I drive to work. We appeal to different audiences, but I think it’s great. Really. Look at the audience rating.’

Said Tony: ‘We’ve both got irritant value. Some people say my jokes are terrible, and people are always sending you and your show up, Jimmy. But people have got to listen to complain.’

‘You’re right, said Jimmy. ‘One of my fiercest critics in this building never misses a show. I had a nudist on the phone in the show the other day. And this fellow knew right away. He doesn’t leave his set.

When Tony is broadcasting he visualises one person — ‘Usually a dolly girl. Sometimes a mum who I’m being a bit cheeky to.’

For Jimmy it’s no-one in particular, just the audience at large.

Do they think marriage would be a disadvantage to their careers?

‘Yes,’ said Tony Blackburn. ‘It would be bad for me to be tied down at this point in my career. I couldn’t afford the time.’

Said Jimmy, who has been married: ‘Like Tony I’m working most of the time, but unlike him I don’t think my fans would worry. In fact they’d rather expect it I think.’

Tony has no fears about the future, he is bursting with confidence and enjoying every minute. ‘YI’m the world’s worst worrier after the show, but at the time I love it.’

As I looked across at the two DJs—one the eager newcomer, the other tried and trusted, I couldn’t help thinking of the millions of people who longed for their sort of fame.

What is different and special about Jimmy and Tony? What has brought them to the top of the pack?

Perhaps it’s that they are not different or special at all, but normal and ordinary. The sort of person every listener can identify with.

Tony tends to support this view. ‘I’m an ordinary chap and I think I appeal to ordinary people because I’m not a raver. I’m just like them.’

About critics Tony Blackburn says: ‘It annoys me when they attack my sense of humour. That’s pointless and silly because what is funny to one man doesn’t appeal to another. Besides I earn more than the critics…’

He paused and laughed: ‘That’s good isn’t it?’

Both claimed that they don’t have time to spend the little money the taxman leaves them.

‘I never see any of my earnings,’ said Tony. ‘They are looked after by my accountant.’

No complaints

‘But don’t say we’re complaining,’ put in Jimmy. ‘I’m certainly not.’

Strangely enough, the two get steamed up about parties.

People at parties are forever telling Tony that they don’t like the show. ‘Even if they love it really, they expect me to react, to defend it. But I just point out that they have a volume knob They can switch it off.’

Party time for Jimmy Young is spoilt when people keep asking him to sing. ‘If you invite a plumber to a party you don’t expect him to mend the bath do you?’

For the future Jimmy and Tony would like the good times to continue to roll.

Only more so.

Article source: The Radio Times edition of 8 February 1968

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