#phyllis barbour

[monkees-and-moodboards]

EURGH PHYLLIS YOU DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER

[quarrymengirl]

[beckins]

She wants that cookie so bad for some reason

[monwillica]

And I don’t know if I’ve ever loved any other half as much as I do in this light she’s under

Redraw of this piece from 2020

[dontkillthebit]

“and I don’t know if I ever loved any other half as much as I do in this light she’s under”

Not the project I was planning on but then I listened to “Me & Magdalena” 30 times in a row yesterday. I mean I’d heard it before but yesterday it hit. 

Ben Gibbard did such a good job on this one it has all the lovely melancholy of a Death Cab song but with the soft poppiness of the most introspective Monkees numbers, a little like “As We Go Along.”

I imagine I can hear the layered nostalgia of this being produced without Davy, and by old men looking at their younger selves. Mike’s vocals are in tune but there’s strain in his voice and it makes it that much more poignant. Plus the way you can just barely hear the remnants of his accent, still there but subtle after decades of living in California. 

and then Micky’s vocals have always been soft, but they’re still strong and surprisingly the same after 50 years. The harmonies support the main line in every sense. They’re hopeful to mike’s sad and am I reading too much into this? almost certainly but I’m going to go listen again.

[idasessions]

Mike Nesmith: Hi, I’m Robert Michael Nesmith, and I want the world to know I love women. I completely adore and totally respect women. I’m probably the biggest male feminist on planet earth. My own mother is one of the most important feminists in the history of the universe, and she said she was proud of me supporting Women’s Lib. Songs like ‘Never Tell a Woman Yes’ and ‘Get Out of My Life, Woman’? Absolutely 100% fictional narratives and not a reflection on my own morals. Nope, not a single iota of chauvinism in this body. 😎

Jan Freeman: Mike Nesmith and I have a connection I can’t even really describe. The day we met, we had this long, beautiful walk on the beach and then the next thing I know, I broke up with my boyfriend just so I could spend more time with Mike. He completely changed my whole life, he’s just that magical and amazing. 🥰🥰

Valerie Kairys: Mike Nesmith is the perfect man. So handsome, so smart, so talented, so charming. Swoon. He has the best blend of masculine and sensitive, and can make you feel confident and beautiful at the same time. OMG, I’m gonna cry, he’s so wonderful 😭😭

Winona Ryder: Mike Nesmith is AWESOME. When I was 15, he took me to a Monkees concert and some other Hollywood events, and called me a lovely, fetching, young girl. 😊

Barbara Hamaker: Michael Nesmith might be the most cerebral, anal-retentive person I’ve ever met. Great talker though.

Keith Allison: When Mike Nesmith and I were schoolmates at San Antonio College, there would always be 4 or 5 great looking, folkie type girls sitting at Mike’s feet while he strummed an acoustic guitar on a bench. He kept hogging all the chicks.

Nurit Wilde: For about 8 months, Mike Nesmith let me secretly live in his La Cienega penthouse as long as I never invited any of my male friends over. It was kind of a bummer not being able to hang out with Jackson Browne as much, but the sex with Mike was hot and the rent was free, so I guess it was worth it.

Kathryn Bild: Michael Nesmith is a boomer ass cliché who left me for a teenager. He and his mom convinced me to stop going to the doctor and the dentist too.

Victoria Kennedy: Mike Nesmith called me the love of his life, but he also treated me like a child a lot of the time, and probably shouldn’t have gotten involved with me when I was 19 and he was a 44-year-old married man.

Carole King: Mike Nesmith was once so rude to me when I was trying to help him finish writing a song that I ended up running out of the room crying. He also called my music crap.

Marilyn Schlossberg: Mike Nesmith chained me to a file cabinet for his own amusement the day I met the Monkees.

Rochelle Reed: Mike Nesmith slut-shamed me and refused to cooperate for my interviews.

Ann Moses: Mike Nesmith belittled me, propositioned me and sabotaged me when I was literally just doing my job. He insisted he only harassed me to get me to write a ‘real’ article, but then he still ignored me when I reunited with the Monkees in 2013, soooo 🤷‍♀️

Phyllis Barbour: Michael Nesmith humiliated me, set back my creative potential and pretty much stalled my life for a whole decade. But he also gave me three wonderful children, so at least there’s that…

Pt 2

[idasessions]

I thought I made a post like this 5/6 years ago when I went through my big Monkees obsession, but I guess it was just in my head

Anyways, Liz Cackowski looks exactly like Phyllis Nesmith and I need everyone to see the resemblance

[idasessions]

Famous Muses & Groupies in Rock Music Pt. 38

MUSE: Phyllis Nesmith (born Phyllis Anne Barbour)

Back by popular minor demand, I am reviving this series! So sit back and enjoy some more chaotic classic rock gossip. Phyllis was born on July 30th, 1946 in Long Island City, NY and spent most of her upbringing on US military bases in Europe where her dad was an educator. In her private life, Phyllis practiced Christian Science, as did her first husband Michael Nesmith—whom she met while they were both attending San Antonio College of Texas in March 1963, when Phyllis was 16 and Mike was 20. A year later they married on June 27th, 1964 when Phyllis discovered she was pregnant. Their first son Christian was born on January 31st, 1965 about a year after the couple moved to Los Angeles, CA to expand Mike’s aspirations of a music career. Only 10 months later Mike was cast on the show-turned-real band “The Monkees” (1966-68) where he was both an actor and musician on the affiliated records. When the show/band first got famous, Mike was known as the ‘married Monkee’ because he was originally the only bandmate with a wife and child. Like most pop/rock couples in the 1960s, Mike and Phyllis were regularly photographed and profiled in teeny bopper magazines as a cute celeb couple. She also sang back-up on the track ‘Auntie’s Municipal Court’ from the 1968 LP ‘The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees;’ attended both the taping of the (godawful) TV special 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee (1969) and the movie premiere of Head (1968); and traveled with the band for the parts of their 1967 US/UK tour.

Because of the Monkees’ TV shoots, tours and recording sessions, Phyllis spent a lot of time at her and Mike’s Hollywood Hills home raising Christian on her own as a housewife. If you’re starting to get déjà vu and feel like this sounds familiar, it’s because this is basically the Texan version of the John & Cynthia Lennon story. College sweethearts, unplanned pregnancy, shotgun wedding, both Cynthia and Phyllis became blondes as rock wives, family life at the helm of Beatlemania/Monkeemania, etc. And as we all know, John and Mike were friends for 15 minutes in 1967 while the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ and the Monkees’ ‘Headquarters’ were being composed. Mike and Phyllis even spent a week staying at the Lennons’ estate when they visited London for the first time. In Cynthia’s 2005 memoir John, she complains about how Phyllis would give passive-aggressive suggestions on her cooking (lol). Mike was famously at the epic recording/filming of the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ track ‘A Day in the Life,’ with Phyllis tagging along on the side with fellow rock SOs Cynthia, Pattie Boyd and Marianne Faithfull.

Just like John, Mike was the smart-ass of his band with a dry sense of humor and also shamelessly cheating on his wife. But he took it an extra step by knocking up another woman while married. In 1967, Mike and Czech-Israeli groupie photographer/band friend Nurit Wilde had a sporadic affair for the next couple of years. But about the time they met, Phyllis became pregnant with their second son. So on February 4th, 1968, Mike & Phyllis’ son Jonathan was born, and only seven months later, Mike & Nurit’s son Jason was born on August 7th, 1968. Oh, and this was all the same year Phyllis experienced a near-fatal car crash….what the FUCK. Mike’s lucky his public image wasn’t completely tarnished like what happened to Billy Crudup in 2004. Then again, I don’t think most people outside of the band’s circle even knew about Jason’s existence until the 1980s. But…still….jrhrgnfdgf. Mike ended up choosing Phyllis in the end (and ultimately becoming a deadbeat dad to Jason until he was 5 years old). They even had a third child, daughter Jessica, on September 10th, 1970. Things officially came to an end in 1972 when Mike and Phyllis separated and finally divorced in March 1975. The final straw was, you guessed it! More cheating. This time with Mike’s future second wife Kathryn Bild (what a gd mess). Miraculously, Mike now has great relationships with all of his kids (including Jason), making him the luckiest SOB alive. In his 2017 memoir Infinite Tuesday, he blames himself for all of the messed up drama he caused. His song ‘Nine Times Blue’ is supposedly for Phyllis.

But now back to the lady of topic. After experiencing one of the worst marriages of all time, Phyllis went into politics in the late 1970s, and became a professional aide to senators like John Tunney and Alan Cranston. By 1990, she switched over to business and ran her own communications company with Winner & Associates. Showing she’s super awesome and too good for Mike, lbr. [Still love you, boo.] Ironically, Mike’s mom was also a very successful businesswoman. Phyllis also married again in the late ‘80s to a man named Bill Gibson until her premature death in 2010 at age 63 of ALS. (Five years before Cynthia would die of her own serious health issues too.) She’s survived by Christian, Jonathan and Jessica. What’s weird/interesting is that none of Mike & Phyllis’ kids have children of their own (kind of like how both of John’s kids are childless too.) I wasn’t planning on making so many Lennon-Nesmith comparisons with this entry, but the parallels are like…strikingly similar.

Fun fact: Christian used to ‘play’ Jimmy Page in the famous Led Zeppelin tribute band Led Zepagain. The son of my fave Monkee cosplaying as my fave LZ member, wowowowie.