Debuting at number seventy-seven on September 12, 1966 (the same day the group's sitcom of the same name premiered on NBC), "Last Train to Clarksville" gradually rose up the RPM chart, eventually settling in a number two just over a month later. Observant followers of this blog will note that Eric Burdon and the Animals' "See See Rider" hit the top spot the same week. After spending another week on top, it was then deposed by ? and the Mysterians' "96 Tears". Meanwhile, The Monkees sat patiently in the runner-up spot before finally hitting the top in November. Following its belated seven day spell at summit, it would go on to spend yet another week back at number two before continuing its downward slide.
TV shows used to operate on a word-of-mouth basis. (I remember as a seventeen-year-old tuning into the season premiere of Seinfeld while ignoring everything else that was on that night. The next day, a handful of people at school were raving about this new show on just before it that they claimed was just as good. The following Thursday I tuned into it to see what all the fuss was about. The word of mouth on Friends spread so quickly that it was the biggest show on TV within a month of its debut) The Monkees may have operated with both their music and their accompanying show under a similar circumstances. (The buzz was such that "Last Train to Clarksville" managed to chart in the UK despite the fact that the show wouldn't air until the early part of 1967)
Though it may seem now like they were slow to do an American equivalent to The Beatles, it turns out that their timing couldn't have been better. Not only were the Fabs finished with touring by the autumn of '66 but they had already been moving away from the rush of Beatlemania and, in any case, they were set to embark on six months of relative inactivity, their longest spell away from the spotlight since becoming recording artists. Had The Monkees been rushed a year or so earlier, there may not have been the same appetite for them while the masters were still hot. Whatsmore, the wan side of the British Invasion was beginning to fade (sadly, with a couple of notable exceptions) so they were there to fill that void as well.
"Last Train to Clarksville" was the first of six Canadian number ones by The Monkees (double their total on the Hot 100). These half-dozen songs represent all the contradictions of the prefab four: some are very good, others are okay and at least one is just dreadful; the first batch come from when they were under the thumb of their management, record label and TV executives while the latter half are from when they began to wrest control; while they were all very obviously big hits only the first three or four come from peak 'Monkee-mania', by the time of their final RPM chart topper they were just about done. So much activity for what amounts to just a year-and-a-half at the top.
Appropriately for such a flash-in-the-pan, The Monkees hit the ground running with "Last Train to Clarksville". While borrowing heavily from The Beatles (others seem to hear a lot of "Paperback Writer" in it but I get "Run for Your Life" vibes, aside from, of course, all the problematic shit), the songwriting/production team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart smartly tapped into the American garage rock scene to give it a slightly tougher edge. Many of the stronger Monkees' numbers from their early period — "She", "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" — sound like Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork actually might have been playing on them and these lean more in the direction of the suburban bungalows and their car lots, which, as we'll be seeing in a future entry, they would one day even make fun of. (It was only with their lighter, more moronic material that the studio assembly line began to reveal itself, also something we'll be getting to in yet another review in this space)
Though it has the energy of the garage rockers of the era, there's much more professionalism to it than on fellow number ones by Tommy James and the Shondells or ? and the Mysterians. Dolenz's enunciation ("...you can be here by 4:30") puts his background in acting to good use. Meanwhile, the brief chorus of guitars at around the 1:40 mark sounds like the sort of thing that The Beatles or Byrds would have painstakingly worked out in a swanky studio (the fact that it happens to have been played by people who weren't actually in The Monkees is neither here nor there). In effect, it was garage rock which managed to escape the garage.
Much has been made over how "Clarksville" is actually about Vietnam. Indeed, I recall first reading about the connection in a Q Magazine review of The Monkees' studio albums and I thought it was brilliant but now I've got to say that perhaps too much has been made over what is just one line: "And I don't if I'm ever coming home". Sure, it could be about 'Nam but in a song about meeting a girl one last time, it sure seems more about, well, seeing her one last time. Never coming home? Yeah, many young people leaving their go-nowhere hometowns for the big city have said that kind of thing before. Either that or he's really just trying to cajole is best girl into one more night together.
There's so much to unpack surrounding The Monkees that appreciating their music can lose out but I will attempt to rectify this in future pieces about them. I feel like a measured approach is due: while their critics despise them far more for what they stood for rather than their body of work, their fans and post-poptimism retrospectives tend to treat them too favourably. To the extent that anyone needs a Monkees album in their collection, I'm comfortable saying that a well-compiled greatest hits is enough for the vast majority of us. The Monkees don't deserve my love nor do they deserve my derision; what they deserve and what they're going to get is some of my attention.
Score: 7
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Can Con?
While The Monkees were busy pretending to be The Beatles, there were others who attempted to fabricate their own backstories. The Five Canadians sound like your typical hard drinking, hard partying garage rock group from Etobicoke, Ontario except for the fact that they hailed from San Antonio, Texas. (Still, at least there were five of them because a four-piece Five Canadians would've been even more of a mindfuck) Garage rockers overdoing it on the organ has been really getting to me of late but I'm into it here on "Writing on the Wall". Nothing that will blow you away but their excitement is palpable and their playing is tight. Good stuff. As for their name, it may have worked as a way of getting attention in the Lone Star State's clubs but there's no way Canadians were falling for it. We have a sixth sense when it comes to Americans sticking Canadian flags on their backpacks, you know.
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