Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart: "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight"

February 3, 1968 (1 week)

Few songwriters are as associated with a single act like the duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart are with The Monkees. They co-wrote at least nineteen songs for the prefab four (with three more co-written with others; a few more songs of theirs ended up unreleased) with their contributions scattered over nearly fifty years' worth of recordings. While only two managed to reach number one in Canada, they also wrote the group's iconic theme song and supplied such much-loved tracks as "I Wanna Be Free", "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone", "She" and "Words". With the obvious exceptions of Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, no one was as essential to the Monkees' story as Boyce and Hart.

Interfering svengali Don Kirshner unceremoniously let them go as part of an unsuccessful power play in the spring of 1967 but it wasn't long before The Monkees welcomed them back into the fold. Their compositions tended towards lead vocals by either Dolenz or Jones (Tork shared lead on "Words" with the former as the lone exception) and the two actors/singers were so fond of them that the supergroup of Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart was formed in 1975, with a self-titled album and lengthy tour of the United States and Asia the following year. Elsewhere, Boyce and Hart's writing credits are surprisingly scarce. For the purposes of this blog, their only real contribution of note is "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay and the Americans. Still, it sort of makes sense: they had struggled as young songwriters since the late fifties and it's understandable that they would've wanted to hold on to their cash cow once it belatedly arrived.

The pair also did some recording of their own. While Kirshner would make unfounded claims that they would use studio time allotted to The Monkees to work on their own material, he might have had a better case had he accused them of squirelling away their best stuff instead. Judging by how it holds up alongside, say, "P.O. Box 9847" from fifth album The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees, it seems as if they kept sure-fire mega-hit "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" in their back pocket. It would be interesting to hear a Monkees' demo of it but there's no evidence the group ever tried it out. (It almost certainly would have cropped up on either their Missing Links series of archive albums or the subsequent box sets and deluxe editions that have been released over the years had Boyce and Hart ever donated it to them) That said, it's hard to say what they would have done with it: while it is easy to imagine Dolenz giving a stirring vocal, otherwise there's the inescapable sense that they wouldn't have quite pulled it off.

To be fair, even matching what Boyce and Hart did with it would have been nigh on impossible. From its kick off, "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" is an adorable creation, one that never puts a foot wrong for its two minutes and forty-one seconds of running time. It's the sort of pop song that never lets up, never loses the listener's attention and never gets tiresome no matter how much this humble blogger plays it to death. (Notably, my wife hasn't once complained which is a far greater stamp of approval than all my words of praise could ever do for it!) I've been obsessed with it: I gave a couple classes this afternoon and had Joe Osborne's brief bass solo running through my head the entire time, I walked the dog an hour ago and found myself singing snippets of it as well as Marvin Stamm's superb trumpet solo. Even Boyce's calls of "come on now" and "all right, Bobby, let's go" make it that much better.

Perfectly capable singers and musicians, along with being accomplished songwriters, it's a wonder why Boyce and Hart weren't able to cut it as a long term pop combo in their own right. ("I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" proved to be their only major hit and it didn't even manage to do much outside of North America) Sadly, they didn't look like stars. Dolenz and Jones were both born to be on stage and even the more serious and musical Nesmith and Tork had an ease with audiences and cameras that their colleagues behind the scenes plainly didn't have. They look like members of a backing band who vaguely resent all this showbiz bullshit even while the singer they play with is happy to lap up all the attention. The energy and verve with which they performed their recordings failed to make them adequate performers.

I tend to think of people like Boyce and Hart as being perpetually in the background. Yet, like George Gershwin, Cole Porter and most of the Brill Building generation, they had aspirations to be recording artists in their own right. We've already seen Barry Mann and Neil Sedaka make the jump — as well as Roger Cook and Roger Greenway under the guise of 'David and Jonathan', though they made the head scratching decision to be the songwriting duo who had a hit with a cover version (and a bad one at that) — and there will be a few more in this space to come. But none made the leap as well as Boyce and Hart, even if their success proved fleeting. As if the stuff they were providing The Monkees wasn't brilliant enough, this song that they set aside for themselves was on whole other level indeed.

Score: 10

The Monkees: "Daydream Believer"

December 16, 1967 (1 week)

In preparing this review, I became aware that "Daydream Believer" had been altered and had become a compromised facsimile of what its songwriter, John Stewart, had intended. Mind you, only one word had been changed but it meant enough that Stewart was unhappy, arguing that the line it had been used in no longer made any sense. But then, as Tom Breihan has pointed out, he ceased complaining when the royalty cheques started coming in. (It's safe to say he's made a good living from just this one hit)

The line had originally been "you once thought of me as a white knight on a steed, now you know how funky I could be" but then it was changed to "...now you know how happy I could be". In a song supposedly about a young man coming to terms with the end of a relationship, I can understand why Stewart wasn't terribly thrilled. Still, funky? A song that with a serious groove or something that smells bad? I guess it was meant to be the latter: he was once a perfect boyfriend and now all his flaws have been exposed, presumably including farting in bed, toxic morning breath, B.O., poor hygiene and/or smelly feet (but not limited to them).

I must say, I never noticed the fact that the line doesn't make sense. I don't know about you but I don't look to The Monkees for lyrical thoughtfulness. "Daydream Believer" has enough going for it that the word salad lyrics never harmed it — that is until now. Having been exposed to the words having been changed has opened up a (stinky) can of worms. 

The narrative goes as follows: guy reluctantly gets up one morning and groggily gets himself ready for a day he doesn't want to face. The chorus comes in which establishes that there's some serious depression. Then, there's the bit about him letting her down because of his heretofore unforeseen stank which leads him to reflect about some shit that I don't care about. The chorus returns and then comes back following an instrumental break and that's about it. Oh, what can it mean...indeed.

As I say though, "Daydream Believer" is saved by just about anything other than the clumsy words and very incomplete story. The tune is very nice, all chilled out horns and Bachrach-esque melody. Peter Tork's childlike piano part makes for a sweet opener and pairs well with the boyish vocals of the boyish Davy Jones. The British transplant hadn't done much to aid the awful "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" but his heartfelt delivery here manages to just about overcome the faulty lyrics.

The Monkees were in charge of their musical destiny but their continued reliance on outside songwriters to keep the hits coming held them back and may have even played a part in their inevitable decline. While it must have seemed at the time like they were never going to go away, it turns out they were just about done. They just had one more RPM chart topper to left in them.

Score: 6

The Monkees: "Pleasant Valley Sunday"

August 19, 1967 (1 week)

It is the summer of 1967 and thousands of young people from all over North America have recently purchased copies of the latest single by The Monkees. Many would have put it on in their bedrooms on their treasured suitcase-style record players. Others may have had access to the family hi-fi, especially if their parents were still at work or otherwise disposed, so they'd put it on in the living room or down in the basement rumpus room. Some are alone, while others are joined by brothers or sisters or even friends from the neighbourhood.

The reaction is mostly positive. Some girls may be disappointed that 'cute one' Davy Jones isn't on lead vocals, others are delighted that Mickey Dolenz is in his rightful place behind the mic — and, anyway, the youthful-looking Brit is clearly there on backing vocals ("Ta ta-ta-ta, ta ta-ta-ta..."). It has a good tune, one that budding musicians hope to sink their teeth into, with some rapid fire drumming and chugging guitars with a nifty little riff that seems tailor made for The Monkees. Also, the song is about where they live! There is a local rock group down the street, that weird guy who never showers and is in my class is their bassist! I don't know if creepy old Mr. Enright across the street is a squire but he does come out to mow his lawn on weekends in his housecoat (while also lingering to check out the girls). Our neighbourhood does smell of charcoal!

Some kids must've known right away but I imagine there were also plenty who didn't realize that The Monkees were taking a giant dump all over the burbs with "Pleasant Valley Sunday". Speaking just for myself, it took me a while to figure it out. Yes, snidely chirping at Mrs Gray with her roses in bloom and Mr Green with his vast collection of TVs didn't clue me in. I scarcely listened to Dolenz in the bridge as he trashes the "creature comfort goals" and how he needs "a change of scenery". Yeah, I wasn't always the most attentive music fan but look who we're talking about here. Did anyone expect The Monkees to be sneering at middle America? (In any case, the Pet Shop Boys' "Suburbia" has always been my song of choice for taking a blowtorch to the idealized world that Kevin Arnold loved so much in The Wonder Years)

For those, like me, who weren't paying close enough attention, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" practically comes across as an American equivalent of The Beatles' "Penny Lane" and The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset", albeit with even more optimism. The aforementioned 'weekend squire' and the nut with nearly a dozen TV sets are caricatures but no more so than the "fireman with an hourglass" and the "pretty nurse" selling poppies. It sounds like a celebration of white flight! But in actuality, it is closer to The Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper" than anything else: a gripping and sneering indictment on how individuals choose to shackle themselves even while in the delusion that they are free. (Jesus, sorry to get all Adam Curtis there)

Though composed by the successful songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole KIng, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is perhaps the closest thing we would get to a self-written Monkee number one smash. Coming off a tremendous, if still troubling, first year of being stars of both pop and TV, Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were keen to take control and fight back. While you might assume that The Monkees of all people were in no place to be critical of the homogeneous burbs, I think that is precisely the point. The key line of "I need a change of scenery" is given extra weight by the way the quartet were treated as pawns by their management and record label — and, indeed, by the way they managed to wrest control from them. The Prefab Four had been able to extricate themselves from their own suburban nightmare and you should consider doing the same!

Finally, it is worth mentioning that this single is also a triumph for the Goffin-King team. They had spent much of the sixties as a married couple penning charming and wonderful songs for their babysitter and other pop types but, like a whole generation of groomed bubblegum stars, they had developed and matured. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" emerged from the couple's move out of New York to the sprawl of New Jersey and how Gerry Goffin hated the experience. Rather than churning out the same old Brill Building-type stuff, they were composing based on their own experiences and thoughts. Some of their finest material came from around this time including "Goin' Back" (a hit for Dusty Springfield but done equally well by The Byrds), "Wasn't Born to Follow" (again recorded by The Byrds; both songs appear on their remarkable 1968 album The Notorious Byrd Brothers), "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" (a hit for Aretha Franklin which King would later "cover" — is it a cover version if it's your own song? — for her hugely popular Tapestry album) and "Porpoise Song" (recorded by a suddenly unpopular Monkees for the soundtrack to their bizarre film Head). Their partnership was entering its last days but this only meant better things to come for King, who we'll be seeing in this space before long. 

Score: 8

The Monkees: "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You"

April 1, 1967 (3 weeks)

"Probably the worst album in the history of the world".

— Michael Nesmith

No, the one with the toque wasn't talking about Lou Reed's insane feedback-fest Metal Machine Music. Nor was assessing Having Fun with Elvis on Stage, the notorious Elvis Presley live album of between-song banter and a distinct lack of music. What about nineties' over-hyped disasters like The Stone Roses' Second Coming or Oasis' Be Here Now? Nope, not them either.

No, the album that Nesmith hated so much was More of the Monkees, the mundanely named followed up to their self-titled debut. Few would agree with him. First, it sold like mad. It replaced its huge-selling predecessor at the top of the American album charts and stayed there for eighteen very long weeks. Fans tend to prefer it too — even if they'd in turn opt for later releases like Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd. (I'm less crazy about it but, then again, I'm happy just listening to a decent Monkees' best of rather than any of their studio releases)

Yet, he had a point. As the title suggests, it was little more than a cash grab from their self-titled debut release as well as their hit TV sit com. There are a handful of gems — the garage rock "She" and "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone", the Nesmith original "Mary, Mary" — but it is scattered and directionless. Basically, it has everything that made The Monkees so charming as well as what made them mildly irritating. More of the Monkees nevertheless dominated the album charts for the first half of 1967 but the group wasn't putting up with being puppets any longer. Nesmith led the revolt with Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork backing him up. Amazingly, the higher ups capitulated — or so they thought.

"A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" is a final piece of moronic Monkee pop before the band had their first manager Don Kirshner ousted. In the aftermath of More of the Monkees, their record label had already agreed to allow them a considerable amount of creative control moving forward but Kirshner went against their directive and had this piece of shit released anyway. Making matters worse was the fact that the intended B side, the Nesmith-penned "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" which The Monkees actually played on, ended up being turfed from the Canadian release in favour of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich's "She Hangs Out". (To be fair, they couldn't have been too unhappy with Kirshner's power play since they ended up re-recording "She Hangs Out" for Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones and ended up having the last laugh in the process by doing far more with it than the studio pros could manage)

Having cheeky chappy Davy Jones on lead for the first time may have been a good way to handle such a passive-aggressive lyric. (For all of his strengths as a rather underrated vocalist, the material wouldn't have suited Mickey Dolenz whose disdain would've shown through) Still, he fails to fully convince that he's making a good faith effort at some middle ground in the face of a crumbling relationship. His case isn't aided by his feigned ignorance ("don't know, just what I said wrong...") nor his condescending "yes, you may have a point" tone ("I'm a little bit wrong and you're a little bit right..."). Jones was the cute one but that only underscores what a nasty song it is. (Also, what was up with them quoting themselves so soon? "We've got things to say" is an obvious nod to their their theme song and if it was clear they were woefully lacking in such depth then, this feeble attempt only confirms it)

Worse, though, is the tune which is hopeless. Just as Tom Ewing has acknowledged that "Mama Mia" is the ABBA song in which the haters at least have a bit of a case, "A Little Bit Me..." is The Monkees' number which best encapsulates the distaste with which they are still held (at least in come circles). If "I'm a Believer" had been a noticeable, if not crippling, step in the wrong direction following "Last Train to Clarksville", their third RPM number one has them falling off a creative cliff. Neil Diamond had written its predecessor and must have been so pleased with it that he didn't do anything different this time round.Those child-like organ parts may have worked the first time but now they grate. The Bo Diddley-esque acoustic guitar that guides it might well be its one real selling point but otherwise this is dismal.

Fortunately, that promised freedom wasn't to be denied The Monkees any longer. Yet, "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" was still yet another massive hit for them. It's counter-intuitive to take a band that was racking up hits and, as Beach Boy Mike Love famously put it, "fuck with the formula" so brazenly but The Monkees almost seemed designed for such bouts of self-sabotage. Don't get me wrong, they made the right decision in siding with Nasmith and his bandmates but it was risky and isn't to be expected of svengalis dealing with a group that they manufactured. Plus, there were still more twists and turns ahead: we're only at the halfway point of The Monkees' incredible, inconsistent and incomprehensible imperial period.

Score: 3

The Monkees: "I'm a Believer"

December 26, 1966 (2 weeks)

It didn't take long for The Monkees and their accompanying TV series of the same name to become a phenomenon. In Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Naismith, and Peter Tork, they had a perfect comedic blend of charm, dry wit, goofiness, and slapstick. It was funny in the sixties and has carried on being funny ever since. Oh, and their records were doing well too.

A secret weapon behind their success was the songwriting team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. The duo wrote composed the memorable "(Theme from) The Monkees" for their hit TV show as well as their first chart topper "Last Train to Clarksville". They also provided recycled numbers like "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" and "Words" that already been recorded by others. Throw in gems like "I Wanna Be Free" and "She" and you have some terrific garage rock with bits of psychedelic rock and even folk.

My only real complaint is that Boyce and Hart didn't write nearly enough for The Monkees. Just by presenting producer Don Kirshner with the theme and "Clarksville" alone should have had them kept on in a full-time role. They could have contributed the lion's share to their studio albums, with maybe Naismith and/or Tork contributing a smattering of their own. Then, for their second album, it could have been more of the same, with perhaps a slightly large share of the writing credits for The Monkees themselves. Rinse and repeat.

For whatever reason, this never happened. Others were brought in to make contributions. Some worked but many did not but, whatever the quality, something was lost. The struggling band that the quartet were trying to portray didn't seem to be well translated through the writing of others. Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer" is a solid piece from the golden age of the staff songwriter and it was bound to be a big hit for someone but I think that's sort of the point: just about anyone could have taken it to number one. The truly outstanding Monkees' hits are those that feel like they belonged to them.

The last time they came up, I remarked upon how "Clarksville" sounded as if The Monkees were playing on it, even if they had nothing to do with it beyond the vocals. In the case of follow-up "I'm a Believer", it doesn't feel like something they would have recorded. Maybe it's the cutesy organ which is too childlike for a garage band or perhaps it's the twangy guitar that is far too professional. (Even Dolenz sounds a little too rehearsed with his nearly whispered singing in the verses — only when he gets to the chorus does he sound confident and fully committed; a believer in fact) 

It's a minor quibble, I know, but it's noticeable enough that it marks a step in the wrong direction following their previous hit. "Last Train to Clarksville" sounds authentic but "I'm a Believer" seems contrived. Of course, they were similarly manufactured but in this respect pop is no different from magic shows and professional wrestling bouts: I'm fully aware that it's all a big con but the best stuff manages to fool me all the same. Still, it was big enough to spend a fortnight on top of the RPM chart, three weeks at number one over in Britain and a very impressive seven down in the States. It's almost as if they figured the good times would continue indefinitely.

Score: 6

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Hey! Where's...

Granted, it isn't a huge pop injustice that Donovan Leitch failed to have a number one in Canada. "Sunshine Superman" gave him at chart topper on the Billboard Hot 100 which he doubtless made a lot of money off of. "Mellow Yellow" only got to the runner up spot up in north of the border but it would be enough to ensure that it would eventually be used by the Dairy Farmers of Canada in a series of memorable TV spots. I can't hear it — or indeed think of it — without that jingle supplanting the Scottish singer-songwriter's original. It's one thing to create a pop hit but it's an altogether different matter to get a whole nation to know the lines "they call me mellow yellow (just butter it)" as if it was the national anthem. Or maybe it's just me having watched way too much TV as a kid. Apparently, Donovan had other songs but they weren't used for melted butter on popcorn, were they?

The Monkees: "Last Train to Clarksville"

November 7, 1966 (1 week)

Judging by the number of one-week wonders that had been topping Canada's RPM chart of late, you might be forgiven for assuming that they were all in and out of the hit parade in rapid succession. And, indeed, many of them were. But the debut number one smash from The Monkees was not one of them. With a little luck, the meager seven days "Last Train to Clarksville" spent on top could have easily been over a month — no mean feat when you consider what a rarity even a fortnight on top had become.

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

~~~~~

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.