“With infinite love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement
Remembering Michael Nesmith 1942-2021
Sad news for the music and entertainment world as a whole today. Michael Nesmith has died at 78.
He is notable as a member of The Monkees! The band never got the respect of their peers from the 60s era and to this day they are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, mainly because they are looked at as a fictional band that was formed for the TV show The Monkees (NBC 1966-68), but the thing is, The Monkees actually were a great band with loads of good songs. Haters can hate all they want, but they put out some good music and at one point their sales were more than The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. The TV show was actually co-created by Bob Rafelson, who also directed the movie Head with The Monkees. The theme song to that movie “Porpoise Song” was a great selection on the soundtrack to Vanilla Sky. But I digress. The TV show was goofy fun. I remember watching reruns as a little kid on channel 56. Through the success of the show, they began releasing albums and then touring. In one of the oddest lineups in concert history, the Jimi Hendrix Experience opened for The Monkees in 1967.
Nesmith, Dolenz, Jones and Tork back in the early Monkee days
Nesmith was unhappy about not being able to write their music, so eventually they he got more creative control and he wrote some of their noteworthy songs: “Girl I Knew Somewhere” and “Mary, Mary” (later covered by Run D.M.C.). One of the great songs he wrote was “Different Drum” for The Stone Poneys with Linda Ronstandt (there’s a great cover by Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet).
Post-Monkees and amidst his solo career, Nesmith founded the music video TV show PopClips, which TimeWarner developed into MTV. He isn’t just a music video pioneer with The Monkees, he actually is responsible for MTV!
John Cusack and Nesmith in Tapeheads
In the 1980s, he produced some awesome movies including Repo Man and Tapeheads, two of my favorite cult films of that era.
Nesmith sat out of the 80s Monkees reunion, but re-joined in the 90s. I’m now kicking myself for having missed their reunion shows in the last few years. After Davy Jones died in 2012 and Peter Tork died in 2019, its so sad that now Mickey Dolenz is the only Monkee left.
The link above is the obit from Rolling Stone including embedded video clips.
