THE MONKEES: "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"
Colgems, 1967; A-SIDE: "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"
Seize the day.
For most of us, this can mean something as simple as gathering the courage to chat with an eye-catching new girl or guy. It can mean seeing an opportunity and taking it. It can mean embracing one's life and experience, raising the volume to magnetic north.
For Michael Nesmith, it meant putting his fist through a wall, and telling a record biz toadie, That could have been your head, mother...
...you know.
Nesmith was frustrated. It was 1967, and he was a member of the made-for-TV pop group called The Monkees. He was only two years removed from barely being able to make ends meet, hauling his laundry with him to his audition for the television series that would make him famous. He'd been a folk singer, a songwriter, and--in his own words, during his 1965 screen test for The Monkees--"a failure." His sudden subsequent flash of fame and cash could have been compared to hitting the lottery.
Nesmith was dissatisfied with it from the start.
So he demanded more. Immediately, before the ink was dry on his contract, before the general public had even seen or heard--or heard of--The Monkees. Michael and his co-workers Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork were forbidden by upper management from playing the guitars, drums, bass, keyboards, and little red maracas on the recordings credited to the Monkees brand name. Nesmith insisted those vinyl Monkees products include songs he'd written. He insisted on producing the sessions for the songs he'd written. In one case, he even insisted that Peter Tork be allowed to play acoustic guitar--A Monkee! Playing his own instrument!--on the session for a song Nesmith wrote and produced. You could call this hubris. You could call it a tuneful carpe diem. You'd be right either way.
Dolenz and Jones were primarily actors, though both also had musical backgrounds before clocking in for their first shifts as Monkees. Tork and Nesmith were primarily musicians, and bristled at the restrictions placed on their opportunity to play. When The Monkees' popularity necessitated live concert appearances, one supposes these four TV actors could have hit the stage as vocals-only frontmen backed by a support band, or even mimed a-pickin' and a-thumpin' in the spotlight as actual musicians plied their trade out of view, the real players hidden behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz. To this day, many still believe and propagate this myth of miming Monkees. That's not what happened. Nesmith, Tork, Dolenz, and Jones seized the day, worked and sweated, overtime, off the clock, and became a garage band, like the struggling combo they played on the tube. The live Monkees were the real Monkees.
And still, Nesmith wanted more. Tork agreed. Dolenz and Jones backed their colleagues in this seemingly Quixotic bid for legitimacy. They petitioned the bosses for the right to play on their own records. The bosses granted their request.
Well, the CEOs granted their request, anyway. Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the founders of Monkees Inc., thought it could be good for company morale if the boys did have a more direct role in creating their product. But the floor manager, Music Supervisor Don Kirshner? He did not agree. And he did not like this change in the project's structure. He did not like it one bit. He tried to buy back The Monkees' loyalty, presenting them with substantial paychecks for their share of the phenomenal sales of the first two Monkees albums. That's a lot of zeroes, boys. Isn't that a lot of zeroes? We got a dandy thing going here. You don't wanna mess that up, do you boys?
With that, Kirshner bundled the royalty checks with the unveiling of his Chosen One, the pop ditty he'd selected as the next Monkees single. Legend has it that the song was "Sugar, Sugar," later to be a hit for The Archies, a cartoon group Kirshner would find much easier to control than The Monkees ever were. The story is not true--"Sugar, Sugar" had not yet been written when this 1967 meeting took place--but it's a good story. The Monkees refused, flatly, perhaps arrogantly. Nesmith said something to the effect that if The Monkees couldn't begin making their own music, he didn't want to be a Monkee anymore. Breach of contract!, Kirshner's people wailed. BAM! That could have been your head, Nesmith replied. Meeting adjourned.
As Kirshner fumed, The Monkees seized the day. Nesmith on guitar. Tork on keyboards and harpsichord. Dolenz on drums. Jones on percussion, with Nesmith's pal John London a deputy Monkee on bass. Micky would sing lead. Nesmith had already brought in an outside producer, The Turtles' bassist Douglas Farthing Hatlelid, aka Chip Douglas. The group recorded two songs: "All Of Your Toys," written by Bill Martin (another Nesmith associate), and Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere." Kirshner blocked the release of "All Of Your Toys" on the grounds that Monkees song curator Screen Gems didn't own the publishing (which Martin refused to relinquish). Fine. Kirshner was directed to use "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" as the B-side of The Monkees' next single.
Have you ever worked for someone who was an impediment to your success, a talented individual whose unchecked ego got in his own way and in yours? Don Kirshner was accomplished, and very good at his job, but he was absolutely that guy in this situation. In the business of pop music, no one could ever tell Don Kirshner what to do. And he certainly wasn't going to have his business jeopardized or dictated by four...employees whose hitmaking machine Kirshner had built from the ground up. Screw that. Kirshner coaxed Davy Jones into the studio to make some Monkees records the tried-and-true way, the proven way. A Neil Diamond song called "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You." A Jeff Barry-Ellie Greenwich song called "She Hangs Out." Just sing, Davy. The music's already handled. Kirshner released the two songs as a single in Canada, and was fired for his insubordination.
The Canadian 45 was withdrawn. Its B-side was scrapped (and later re-done by The Monkees as an LP track, without Kirshner). The A-side would stay in place, and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" became The Monkees third straight hit single. But its brand-new B-side, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere," was the first Monkees product actually made by The Monkees. The day had been duly seized.
Kirshner was convinced that the Monkees project would collapse into itself if The Monkees were ever allowed a hand--any hand--in making Monkee music. He was wrong. Granted, the remainder of their chart reign was brief, but there were indeed a few more hits for The Monkees after he was dismissed, and a lot of terrific music. They made an album, 1967's Headquarters, as a nearly self-contained group; Nesmith's "You Just May Be The One," my favorite song on Headquarters, was recorded by just the four Monkees, with no outside players. The Monkees could be more than assembly-line cogs in a factory of music; they could be a band. Their ability to transcend an artificial genesis is a key component of The Monkees' continued allure more than five decades after the fact.
That transcendence began in earnest with a song written by Michael Nesmith, a song performed by The Monkees, a song that demonstrated the possibilities of lowly workers seizing the day, and becoming more than they were. When you punch a clock, sometimes it pays to punch a little harder. Sieze this, mother....
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