In March, Michael Nesmith spent a couple weeks in New York City doing a series of interviews with the media to promote the New York opening of his latest production, “Tapeheads”. Besides promoting “Tapeheads”, Michael is having one of his most visible, high-profile years in a long, long time, with the recent release of a video and album and the impending release of another album and the “Overview” video magazine. Rock radio reporter (and MBF member) Ken Sharp had the opportunity to interview Michael and he shares that interview with us here:
KS: I know you’re asked this question all the time, so let’s get it out of the way right off. When are you going to get back together with … The First National Band?
MN: Well, yeah, that’s the most common question that I’m asked actually. Most people come up to me and say, “Say, whatever happened to the other guys?” and I know immediately that they’re talking about John London and Red Rhodes and John Ware. I mean, who else would they be talking about?
KS: What is Red Rhodes up to, by the way?
MN: Well, you know, I’ve lost contact with all those guys. John London moved back to Teas. He’s working, I think, in the real estate business or something and Red Rhodes I haven’t talked to. I assume that he still plays. I got a call from one of his family — his ex-sister-in-law — the other day and I called her back and she left the wrong number so I wasn’t able to get in touch with her. And John Ware, I think, moved to Nashville and is working in the radio business in Nashville.
KS: April 5 marks the release of “Nezmusic” …
MN: Oh, really? Is that when it’s coming out?
KS: I think it is. I was curious, some of this stuff came out in different forms, but why now? What was the idea behind compiling it? Were there a lot of requests or what?
MN: Yeah, well, it was just a combination of requests. I get a lot of fan mail from the Monkees fan clubs and stuff. And almost every single letter requests for me to put out the old music. What I did was I went back to the archives and over the years I’ve made a couple of dozen albums, I guess, and the first ten that I made are still under the auspices of RCA, but there were about 4 or 5 that I made subsequent to that beginning with a record called “The Prison”. So Harold Bronson over at Rhino Records called me up and he says, “let’s put out, let’s go back and re-license…” That’s kind of their business, you know, And I said, “Harold, I don’t think anybody’s gonna play any of my records.” And he says, “Well, we specialize in marketing records that don’t get played.” So I compiled two LP’s. One was an LP which was to be songs from the country sort of era, with the First, Second, Third National Bands, and the second which was to include things off “Radio Engine” and “Infinite Rider” but also half a dozen songs that I wrote for a movie called “Video Ranch”. And divided them up into “The Older Stuff” which was the country stuff and “The Newer Stuff”. So “The Newer Stuff” was the only thing we were able to get out because we had licensing problems on “The Older Stuff”. So we could only get one of them out. And when I put together “The Newer Stuff” I realized that I had music videos on seven or eight of them and I had also been getting a lot of requests to combine all those music videos on one videocassette, so I put it together and called it “Nezmusic”.
KS: Wasn’t “Video Ranch” called something different? “Neon” something?
MN: “Neon Ruby”.
KS: Why was that project not completed?
MN: Well, the biggest reason is that I was not able to interest a distributor in releasing it. That’s the biggest reason. Had I been able to do that it would have gone forward. The creative elements were there, but it’s a movie musical and, like “Tapeheads”, these things are tough. Number one, they’re very hard to do creatively and, number two, they’re hard to market. However, I think we’re about to enter into the time when we’re going to see more and more of those, so keep your fingers crossed. Maybe “Video Ranch” will come out. (laughs)
KS: It’s nice to see unreleased tracks like “Tanya” and “Formosa Diner” will see the light of day.
MN: Did you get a pre-copy of this?
KS: No, I didn’t.
MN: Did you see the liner notes, or what?
KS: No, I’m a pretty big fan, besides what I do for a living, so I did a lot of research.
MN: Sounds like you’ve been on Lexus Nexus or one of those online services.
KS: Will you release any videos for the Rhino early material? Something like “Joanne” that you never did a video for to promote it?
MN: Till you said it I hadn’t thought of it. Maybe it’s a good idea. I don’t know. Do you think it would be a good idea to go back and do old songs? Creatively, do you really? I don’t know, because I think of the video as a form and there is such a thing as an audio-only record. Can you imagine a video of “Joanne”, takes a picture of a beautiful woman in a filmy dress living in a house by a pond? It starts to get kind of dumb. (laughs) The emotion it evokes is different. When I wrote “Rio” I really had a picture in mind, although I didn’t realize at the time that it was gonna father an entire way of life, but I did sort of have in mind that this would make something nice to put on film. Then when Island asked me to make a promotional clip to send overseas and I did it, you know, it all married up nicely. But to go bac and do it … maybe I’ll write some stuff. Best I should do “Video Ranch”, I think.
KS: Do you still write songs? Do you still play the guitar.
MN: Yeah. Not a lot, but I still do it.
KS: Will we see new material from you? Not as an audio album, but as a combination?
MN: Yeah, I’d do that.
KS: There is a demand. I’d love to hear it and so would a lot of other people.
MN: You know, the biggest problem that I have, number one, is that nobody will play these records on the air. I won’t get any airplay. So without airplay making a market for this, it’s very hard and unless you have a Rhino Records behind it that is willing to commit to marketing the record without airplay, you’re in trouble. And also when you’re writing to this kind of form it’s very expensive and kind of a big uphill battle to do unless you really feel like you got some sort of a built-in market.
KS: Don’t you thin country radio stations would embrace your music?
MN: Well, I don’t know. We live in the days of Randy Travis and Dwight Yokum. I don’t think so. I think there’s a different mindset afoot out there.
KS: I hope it still doesn’t dissuade you from making new music.
MN: Maybe I’ll be some young Dwight Yokum’s Buck Owens, how’s that? (laughs)
KS: In 1979 you felt the audio end of schemes was going to be obsolete and in 1982 you closed the record division of Pacific Arts.
MN: Was it ’82? I thought it was earlier than that. Well, that sounds about right.
KS: Now ten years later with CD’s and DAT’s here and music sales at an all-time high, how do you account for that and did that enter in your decision to work with Rhino on releasing stuff.
MN: Well, no, it’s an anomalous bulge. It doesn’t mean that there’s a rebirth of audio-only stuff. I mean, I think you have to look at your own lifestyle and find out, you know, what do you do more of? Do you watch more television or do you listen to more radio? That varies from person to person, but I’ll bet if you took a national statistical average you’d find more people watch more television than they listen to radio. Simple. OK, start with that as a point of departure. Why did CD’s suddenly take off? Well, number one, it was exceptional sound quality. Number two, it was a very accessible and easy user-friendly medium, and, number three, you’re able to go back and hear stuff that you’d loved for a period of time but you’d basically worn your records out. So you drew from a huge catalog, a great library of material with people who were replenishing and restocking their early audio times. But these are people who grew up on audio. Now let’s shift to the 9-year-old, to the 8-year-old who is going to be 20 in the year 2000. What kind of equipment will this person have? Will they have a CD? Yes. What can a CD do that an audio record can’t? Well, it can play pictures. You’re seeing go into place the technological base for this video revolution and I still stand by my original statement that the audio medium is going to diminish and diminish and diminish and diminish until audio-only will occupy a very small part of the overall — what do you want to call it — entertainment spectrum. It’s like network television. Network television, look at the shrinking share. Are you familiar with these statistics?
KS: Go ahead, please.
MN: Well, I’m not so familiar with them that I can quote them with complete accuracy, but it’s something to the degree that it’s gone from a 93% share in the mid-‘70’s or early ‘70’s of the total homes using television to somewhere around 60% and one point represents millions of people. But you have to look at that they’ve lost, what, thirty, forty MILLION viewers? They’ve lost it. You also have to look at what videocassette has done to the redefinition of prime time television. Videocassettes are prime time television. And what it says is prime time television is not at 9:00. Prime time television is 2:31 in the morning, it’s 6:17 in the evening, it’s 12:11 in the afternoon, it’s whenever the consumer wants to put the videocassette in and watch it. Now you have an interested consumer, aware of what they’re watching with a high desire to view. That’s prime time television and videocassettes have simply robbed the network television market. Those are the sort of changes that you can’t overlook when you try to make a sense of what’s gonna come in the future, And I think you’re going to find this in the audio/video or video music or whatever name you want to put on it. I don’t know what you could call it. And all the things that are going into place now is not the resurgence of the audio-only medium but basically the audio-only medium riding the technological curve of the present day and with the music getting a nice free ride on this. When it’s all said and done, these are video discs.
KS: Back to “Nezmusic”…on a song like “Cruisin’ “, did you have the idea for the video in mind and then come up with the song or did you write the song first and then create a video around that?
MN: Well, with “Cruisin’ “ the video was very much in mind and all of the songs since then have the pictures very much in mind and try to make them both work together.
KS: Do you enjoy working that way? Does having the visuals in mind help your writing?
MN: Yeah, it expands it because sometimes when you’re writing one of the things you’re looking for is a proper way to express a particular emotion. So you might spend hours or days or quite a bit of time trying to find a word, a phrase or something that conveys some idea what you want to convey. When you put pictures into the equation, you can think, “All right, I don’t need to SAY this out loud. I don’t need to put this in a word because, when I marry the picture to it, it will convey this.” So many times just the presence of the video in your mind, the picture in your creative processes will help you out. For one thing, “Cruisin’ “ was this odd rap record, OK? Go figure. And to me it was OK to just say poems over the top of a kind of simple bleat, you know, it was just bass and drums.
KS: Ahead of its time, when you think about it.
MN: Yeah, when you think about it. (laughs) But at the time no one was thinking that rap would become what it became. And so with “Cruisin’ “ it was a fairly clear poem — the challenge became how do you pictorially represent a phrase like “the light behind their eyes”? How do you do that? And when you write to the video form, sometimes you’ll avoid a phrase like “the light behind their eyes” because it’s much more descriptive and evocative of a mental image than it is of an actual picture. And it’s very important for me to make sure that I steer clear of narrative interpretation of these things. So with “Cruisin’ “ I learned my way a lot and, yes, I did write it with the visual in mind, but I also drove myself into a ditch in several other instances, for instance “the light behind their eyes”, and what I was left with was a cheesy video effect. I mean, I had to do this thing that made this guy’s head blow up with light, you know, Well, OK, so that was fine, but still …
KS: On ”Nezmusic” the overall clips hold up so well — the humor in “Rio” and how current “Cruisin’ “ is — to look at it now.
MN: Well, you know, when we made ‘em a long time ago we were sort of on the cutting edge of the form and we didn’t have the mandate to make a commercial for a record. What we were trying to do was really work on the form. And so the result was that we employed a lot of really basic values and basic values have a tendency to be basic (laughs), to be permanent.
KS: It’s the 25th Anniversary of the Beatles’ arriving in America …
MN: When is that?
KS: Well, actually, it was February.
MN: Oh, it was?
KS: Yeah, Feb. 64. The song “I’ll Remember You” exemplifies your love for the Beatles. I wanted to talk about that and ask you a few Beatles questions.
MN: Let me tell you about “I’ll Remember You”. Have you heard this song? “I’ll Remember You” I wrote while John was alive. I wrote it in ’79 or ’78 and I wrote it to send to him. I was just gonna give it. You know you write songs to friends sometimes. So it was just a message I was gonna send to him and I knew he was living with Yoko at the time in the Dakota taking care of Sean as a househusband, and I admired that in him. I thought it was good, you know, especially after his sort of sowing some oats there before and so I realized that I was quite fond of John and I’d spent some time with him and I had never really, aside from “Lady Madonna”, I had never really expressed a lot of appreciation for his music. One of the things that happens is that as a writer and a famous or celebrated individual you very seldom have your peers walk up to you and say, “Say, you know, I really like what you did,” Very seldom. I mean, most of the time you’re in some major competition. So I wrote that song specifically with that in mind, just to express a little gratitude. And then part of it I was trying to think from what dynamic does this thing that I feel about John and the music that he wrote come? And I realized that I had the same level of appreciation for the Fred and Ginger movies and I began to draw the parallels between the two of them to enhance the song “I’ll Remember You”. But it was not posthumous to John.
KS: Did you send it to him before his death?
MN: Nope. Never got to it. I just kept it and I didn’t send it and then the next thing I know, Howard Cosell says, “At the end of the day, it’s only a football game …”
KS: You stayed with John in 1967. What was that like? There are a lot of comparisons between you and a lot of talk of the rivalry between the Beatles and the Monkees.
MN: It was like, you know, staying with you or staying with anybody else. You just go over somebody’s house and stay!
KS: Was John a fan of the Monkees’ series?
MN: Don’t know. Didn’t talk about it. Like I say, it’s the sort of thing you don’t talk about. They were recording “Sgt. Pepper” at the time and he played me some tracks for “Sgt. Pepper” and that was about as far as it went. We played a little bit. I mean, basically, that’s what you do. That’s what I did with those guys. When you hung out, you played. You picked up a guitar and played.
KS: There’s a video for “A Day in the Life” in the studio and you’re in it! What was that like, to be there for one of the greatest recording sessions? It must have been amazing.
MN: Well, I know, but you have the mists of myth around it. Whatever it is that’s your current discipline, look at what you’re doing and think about the friends that are involved in that discipline with you and think about going out and having a hamburger with them. How big of a deal is it? It’s not a big deal at all! But listen, I mean, it makes for great dinner stories and I can get anecdotal about it and I can tell you all sorts of things and create magical images and stuff but that’s all nonsense. Basically it’s just John says, “Well, we’re going to be in the studio. You wanna come down? And is it OK that we take some pictures? We’re going to have a camera crew there.” And I said, “Sure.” It was good ‘cause there was a stack of people there, you know what I’m saying, it was a party. “Well, Paul’s got this band together and we’re going to do this big orchestra thing and so maybe you’ll sop by.” And I said, “Hey, I wouldn’t miss it.”
KS: What did you think about the comparisons? A lot of people said there was a rivalry…
MN: What, between the Monkees and the Beatles? Well, it was lunacy. I mean, there was not only not a rivalry, it’s like the Beatles were the Green Bay Packers and we played tennis! You know, it’s just not the same game.
KS: Did you think they had an influence on you as a songwriter?
MN: Well, I didn’t feel any, but that’s not to say that they didn’t. I mean, I was not really a product of those times. My musical roots went back more to hymns and movie music, some of the classics and R & B and country. That was sort of my musical mix. It’s one of those things that makes me very comfortable with elevator music today. There’s such a thing as good elevator music. I’s hidden to most people because everybody thinks of dentists when they hear it, but nonetheless, every once in a while I’ll be standing in an elevator and start tapping my foot and everybody in the elevator will look at me like, “What is wrong with this guy?” (laughs)
KS: “Magic” was a great homage to the 1950’s era.
MN: Well, it kind of was, wasn’t it? I didn’t intend it to be but it sorta ended up that way, didn’t it?
KS: Being on the Monkees’ television show, did it plant some ideas in your head even back then about how far you could go with the visuals? Did you gain a lot from that?
MN: I think so, to a certain degree. There was a large amount of the technical and creative part that went on that I didn’t pay any attention to. So I didn’t get as much as you might think. What I learned from that was really how to work with a creative team. The musical dynamic, learning to put together the image with the music really came from watching musicals, “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Fantasia” and, you know, those musicals, those old, old musicals. You can rent them at the video store now. “Wizard of Oz.” You know, these are tremendous musicals. So that was, and I guess Busby Berkeley as much as anybody. Do you know his stuff?
KS: In ’83 you said you lost interest in music videos. You said it was like radio with pictures, whereas you saw it as an art form. I wanted to ask why you dropped out and why you didn’t stay with it to bring it into new areas?
MN: Well, the idea of radio with pictures came because most music videos are like commercials for records and I was being asked to do videos for people and I didn’t want to do that. It’s the same thing if somebody called me up and asked me to do a commercial. I don’t want to do a commercial. So I made a decision to do motion pictures which was where I felt like I could do the art form. I tried to put together music type of motion pictures — wasn’t completely successful with it. “Tapeheads” is the first time I’ve gotten even close. But it really was not an attempt to abandon the music video form but to get into an area where I could actually do it. And music videos weren’t it.
KS: Do you think music video is healthier now or is it even worse than it was six years ago?
MN: Oh, it’s gotta be healthier than it was because there’s just a certain law of progress that goes with everything. You gotta get smarter people. You’re saying to me now as if you understand it — and I assume you do — that the current music video is a commercial for a record. You also say that to me as if that’s a pejorative. You say it in a certain disparaging way, so I assume that you don’t think it’s a good thing, that you think it’s as least not a fulfilling element of the form. So I can tell you from talking to literally dozens of other people like yourself that you echo a common sentiment, at least in my experience. So I think that what that common sentiment is bringing forward is that, well, we’ll tolerate the radio with pictures things because at least it kind of pushes us along, but there’s more here than meets the eye, there’s a bigger bone buried in this backyard than we’ve dug up, whatever metaphor you want to insert. At some point somebody’s gonna come along, grab hold of the form and do it, whether it’s me or whether it’s somebody else, I don’t know, but it’s gonna be somebody who’s gonna come along and do it.
KS: And there’s the occasional gems that do come through that make you still believe in the form.
MN: I think heavy metal is probably the most fertile ground right now for something to come along. Well, it’s Wagnerian. You have to look at it that way, number one. I’m talking about heavy metal as a real point of departure. Heavy metal is a good example of music that’s really taken a left turn somewhere along the line and you have to keep in mind that Hendrix was on the first Monkees tour, you know. That’s one of the great ironies of the 60’s. And it was Hendrix who infected me with a love for heavy metal and made it stay forever, which, you know, I’m still a big heavy metal fan. I couldn’t find much that I liked with heavy metal. I liked AC/DC and I liked some of the stuff, you know, from Aerosmith, Foghat, REO Speedwagon, and some of these things that weren’t really heavy metal but kind of were heavy metal pop. It really wasn’t until Eddie Van Halen came along. And Van Halen was the first time that I thought, “Ah! There’s been some life breathed in here.” Of course, now, I don’t know what he’s doing, he’s off in some other zone again, but where he was working with David and those guys, that was HOT. That was real Iwo Jima stuff. Eddie plays the guitar a lot better than Jimi played it. The difference is Hendrix didn’t play the guitar, Hendrix WAS the guitar. Major difference. This guy, when he would touch the neck of his guitar, number one, it was upside down and backwards, or backside down and upwards, whatever you want to call it, but it was screwy. When he touched the neck of his guitar it was very hard to see where his fingers ended and the guitar started. I mean there was a kind of glow around the whole thing. I know this sounds all kind of cosmic, but it’s true! He really was an amazing dude. With Van Halen, I think what Eddie’s got is the same kind of wonderful sensibility that Jimi had but the guitar is a technical extension. He’s very organized in the way he plays and very soulful but Hendrix was…you cannot compare those two. In terms of real crash/burn rock’n’roll there’s a band out there which is somewhere between my absolute favorite band, which is Z Z Top, to Metallica, which is from some other place. And then I sort of like but ignore the Bon Jovi’s of the world, Poisons and Whitesnakes and stuff and Ratt. It doesn’t work. I thought for a while Michael Schenker’s group was gonna do it, right after he left the Scorpions and he did that one album that was just wow! This guy has flat got it. And then he just went nowhere. I think, drogas, el drogas.
KS: You stated recently that putting movies on videocassette was like driving an Indy 500 car to work, a major misuse of the medium. What do you feel can be done to rectify that, and is that where “Overview” comes in?
MN: Well, I think you have to look at the whole user event, yeah, and “Overview” is a part of that. “Overview” is information carrier, though. “Overview” was a magazine on videocassette that just brought previews and reviews and things of coming attraction and it was designed as kind of a video guide. I think that hews closer to the form. At the end of the day, I gotta tell you I think home video is an entertainment medium and I think it’s gonna occupy the same place in the minds of the future people that records kind of do now. That’s where I think it’s gonna extend from, not from motion pictures, do you know what I mean? So you have to think in terms of contemporary music, what records are, in order to get a handle on how to use the video medium. That’s me. That’s the way I think of it.
KS: The first version of “Overview” that you put out, about two years ago, it failed. You’re doing something again with it. What will be different in terms of concept, marketing, distribution?
MN: You have to be careful about thinking that “Overview” failed. “Overview” did what it was intended to do, which was to provide me with a test market. The reason that it appears to have failed is because I thought that the test results would be more positive than they were and that I would go with it immediately. The test results were negative nit it wasn’t a result of the magazine. The test results were the result of the distribution system not working. I had to redesign the distribution, redesign the marketing system, and once that was done I felt like I could go forward. Well, that’s what I did. I went forward, redesigned the marketing system, redesigned my distribution system, and you’ll see it this fall. Again with another test. It may not work again, but we’ll try it again.
KS: Good. I think it’s a phenomenal idea. Just to have, like even on cable TV, the access of a library in front of you where you can just get any information you want, read the newspaper, do all that…
MN: Well, you’re talking about the Holy Grail right now and what that is is the interface of the computer with the video medium, movies on demand, pictures on demand.
KS: Does that interest you?
MN: I’m into it up to my eyeballs! And as a matter of fact you’ll see me come back through here in August with some announcements along this line. But with the availability to take the computer, interface it effectively with video, you’re very close to what you want and all of us want. All of us want to download. All of us want a couple of keystrokes, gimme the data. But you know the data stream in this thing is so dense. Do you have any idea of the technological mountain you’re trying to climb there? The data stream — and I may get this wrong — the data stream on a color video picture, one second, is 80 megabytes! If you know anything about computers you know that that’s a lot of storage. And most people have a hard disc and maybe have 20 megabytes, 10 megabytes, 40 megabytes on a hard disc. By the time you get up to 80 megabytes you’re starting to get into some serious computing power and BIG BUCKS. Well, to get one second of color video with sound on a screen uses 80 megabytes. It uses all the storage space that you have on one 80 megabyte hard disc. So just figure out how many billions of bytes you have to have in order to get 90 minutes. Apple, Hypercard, some of these other computer programs are really blazing the trail with graphics based computer technology that’s gonna make something of what you want. You might be having to live with black and white slides for a while or just somebody talking underneath it, but, hey, it’s a start. And that’s gonna be there. Everybody wants this. Me, too.
KS: It’s the 15th Anniversary — another anniversary — of the formation of your company, Pacific Arts. Being a musician for your whole life and moving into working as an executive and working on that level, was it a difficult transition?
MN: Well., let me answer it this way because it’s a question that’s commonly asked, which is how do you manage to change hats so often and so easily and the answer is, which is a good answer, is that I don’t change the hats. It’s the same hat. The dynamic and the values that I employ to write a song, make a record, do a video, make “Tapeheads”, is the same one that you use to run a company and it’s just different applications of the same values.
KS: Are you pleased with where the company is now? Is it beyond what you envisioned at the beginning?
MN: Well, it’s different. I don’t know. Every morning I get up and I wonder is this the right place to be going? And a company is a very hard thing to project, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men… The important thing in a company is to be adaptable. U see a lot of people come to me with systems analysis, management systems, a way to control this, that, and the other thing, how to make 5-year projections, 2-year projections, 1-year projections. They all have their place, but none of them occupies as an important place in the hierarchy of things as being adaptable, being able to think fast, be quick on your feet so that when everything goes to hell in a handbasket you can make a decision and ether do something that either saves the day or gets you out of the mud. And when it comes to running a company it’s a question of getting up, assessing the day, and saying, “Well, am I stuck in the ditch?” Or am I on the road? Or is the ditch really the road?” It gets very subtle and curious out there sometimes. So you know one day I may wake up and there will be no Pacific Arts. One day I may wake up and Pacific Arts will be Warner Brothers. I don’t know.
KS: Let’s talk about “Tapeheads”. I loved it. What was it that attracted you to the project? Was it an almost instant affection for the story that made you feel it was right for Pacific Arts?
MN: Well, it was the Swanky Modes. I mean, you know, there was a script that had running through its core the heart and soul of 160’s R & B. Now I don’t mean to indicate that’s what the movie’s about, ‘cause clearly it isn’t. But I thought, depending on who we cast for the Smoky Modes, this could be an unbelievable thing to see. Then when Same Moore and Junior Walker were cast, I was even more thrilled. Of course, all the musicians in the world began to say, “Gee, can we come down and work?” and “Can we come down and play and do all this stuff?” And then when I started hearing the music that they were recording originally for the movie I was just blown away. So the first thing that appealed to me was the music and at the end of the day the thing that makes me the happiest with it is the music. I think “Ordinary Man” is a hit!
KS: Is filmmaking the primary interest for you? Or is it one of many?
MN: Well, right now, I gotta save “Tapeheads”. I gotta make “Tapeheads” work and that’s what I’m talking to you and what I’m talking to everybody I can talk to about right now ‘cause “Tapeheads” has gotta get a shot. If people can understand what is at the root of “Tapeheads” and it can grow, it’s a point of departure for me to make other musical movies and it has to be demonstrated that this is a valid form. I don’t know whether it’s gonna make a lot of money. It may or may not. So far the video looks like it’s gonna do very well. But it’s the music part of this and the combination of movies and music is where I want to be, it’s where I’m totally focused and where I want to ultimately be. And like I say, maybe the next one will be a heavy metal movie. Don’t you think that would be cool? A heavy metal movie? Think of that. I mean, you go into a nice big theatre, I’m not talking about some little squeezie 14-plex, I’m talking about something with this humongoid screen where you can do all this major kill sound and you go in there and you get a couple of concert stacks. You don’t use the speakers that they’ve got ‘cause they’re kinda twinky, you know, you get some concert stacks and you put ‘em in there and you get some big sound and you just do it a little bit like a concert. Why can’t the cinema experience be like a concert experience?
KS: Would it be something like a “Spinal Tap” or a documentary type?
MN: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, something entirely of its own. You know there’s a dynamic, there’s a creative imperative inherent in heavy metal music. It’s male adolescence, it’s cars and women — spelled W-I-M-M-I-N. They’re into it and it works!
KS: And you can identify with it, as well.
MN: You can identify with it. I mean, it’s not the way I lead my life, I’m a fairly conservative guy. But as an art form, I mean, cripes, you can’t ignore that and I think if you’re looking to put some power up on the screen, you know, these guys have got their hands on the trigger.
KS: Which part of the creative process do you enjoy the most? The ideas, the writing, the filming, the editing, or just sitting back and enjoying the end result?
MN: It’s the end result. Yeah, sit back and watch it. I make movies ‘cause I want to see ‘em! It’s the only reason. I don’t know why else to make a movie. You make a movie ‘cause to want to see it. I don’t like chopping the onions and dicing the carrots and standing over the stove much. I don’t like that much.
KS: Same thing with music, as well?
MN: Yeah, you write music ‘cause you want to hear it. That’s why I started writing music. I couldn’t play the guitar. So I couldn’t sing and so anything anybody else was doing so I said, “OK, let’s all sing this song. I don’t know how to play that’ song.” So you make up a song you can sing.
KS: It’s funny that you talked about “Cruisin’” being early rap, because I wanted to ask you about Run DMC’s “Mary Mary”, which you wrote.
MN: Well, I don’t know. My life has been nothing if not poetic. You know what I mean? (laughs) There are certain closed great parentheses is my life and I wonder what open parentheses I’m in the middle of right now. You know, every once in a while, I’ll look at “Mary Mary” and I think, “My Lord! Is this unusual or what?” And then to see this come back around! People say to me, “Are you surprised that the Monkees are doing so well in their reunion?”, and I say, “No, I’m surprised that Run DMC recorded ‘Mary Mary’ as a rap single!” That’s the surprise.
KS: And they did a real good job, I thought.
MN: I thought so. Sure. I mean, if that’s the rap dynamic. I thought when I was doing “Cruisin’” that what I was doing was just reciting poetry over a very spare and simple musical bed. I like the concept of rap because it gives people who can’t sing the ability to express themselves musically. I think that’s cool. I’m not sure what they’re talking about a lot of the time. I suppose it’s OK to talk about “I like the way you look, baby”, but, I mean, I don’t know, it burns out pretty quick for me.
KS: It seems like you’ve reconciled with your past with the Monkees, recognizing that you’ll always be identified with that.
MN: Well, you’re right. The curious thing to me is that there’s ever any question that I may or may not do that. I mean, why in the world wouldn’t I do that> I don’t have anything to reconcile. It’s always been just fine with me. I knew when I got involved in the thing that IU was going to be a Monkee for the rest of my life. You don’t get involved in things that hot and not have it stay around. Christopher Reeve knew when he took the Superman part that he was gonna be Superman so he better get peaceful with that before he does it. I was peaceful with it before I did it.
KS: Do you think if you did anything with the band, especially a movie, would it adversely affect you or would it fit into the scope of your company? Would you consider something like that?
MN: Sure. We’ve talked about it many times. The problem is not whether or not I’d do it. It’s whether or not anybody would make that movie. And there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of interest in it. I mean, I think it would make an interesting film. You wanna know my guess, I think of there was gonna be something on film it would probably end up on television. Television is the Monkees’ medium. And I don’t know whether or not we could pull it off — the four of us as adults could pull off — what we pulled off 25 years ago. Probably not. So that you have to look that pretty hard.
KS: Would you get involved in a Monkees’ record, maybe contributing a couple of songs?
MN: Sure. Absolutely. All those things are up in the air and up in the wind and we talk about ‘em all the time. I would’ve gone on tour, but I didn’t have the time. I was just finishing “Square Dance” and just starting “Tapeheads” and as a matter of fact I told 'em I would. We were gonna go out and just do half a dozen dates, you know, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, something like that. They called up and said, “Listen, we went to get a drink of water and the faucet fell off in our hand and now it’s 280 dates.” I said, “Well, partners, I can’t do that. I’ve got 25 employees here. I can’t walk away from this.”
KS: On the follow-up tour in 1987 they did quite a few of your songs, “Circle Sky” and “You Just May Be The One”. Was there any plan of your doing a few shows in 1987? It seemed that’s why they had those songs in.
MN: That is constantly in our minds. I think they’re gonna come back this year. We’re trying right now to figure out how to make some dates work. We tried to make one work in Philadelphia. I couldn’t get there. We tried to make one work in Chicago. I couldn’t get there. You know, it’s a nightmare.
KS: There’s a video floating around of the Greek Theatre in 1986. It was just so heartwarming to see.
MN: Oh, you should’ve been there! Oh, it was terrific, it was great. You know, we just tried to figure out the right way to do it and decided I’d come on at the end. And so we put together a couple of numbers and, you know, he guys went through their whole show and it was like, “So long, goodbye,” they’re taking their final bows and then I walk out from the edge and hey hit me with the spotlight and I’m telling you the place went up for grabs! It was unbelievable. It exploded!
KS: The big question is did you have to relearn “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Listen to the Band”? You were playing that lick on “Pleasant Valley Sunday” pretty good.
MN: No, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. Number one, it’s not that hard. Like I say, it’s a big part of my life. I like that part of my life. I wish I could do it more and, if we can figure out a way to do it more…you know, we talk all the time, trying to figure out how to get me back un on the TV show. You know, they’re off in Europe right now doing some big tours and I’d love to be there. I’d love it! It’s be great! But…we gotta get people out there to see “Tapeheads”. (laughs)
KS: The Monkees are receiving a Star this year on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. How do you feel about that and will you attend?
MN: Oh, yeah! You bet! I feel great!
KS: If you were watching TV and a Monkees episode came on, would you watch it?
MN: No. I’ve seen ‘em too many times. I’ve seen ‘em all dozens of times.
KS: You saw them as a spectator in ’86 in Texas. What was that like?
MN: Well, that was real edifying. I’ve been asked about that before, too, and the one thing that was obvious to me was that Micky should’ve been in front all along. You know, he is so good. Why we stuck him back on the drums, that was one of the dumber things we ever did. Between David and Micky up front, I mean, you got two power hitters up here, you know? I just stand there, I don’t do anything. I go over and stand by my amp and play the guitar. And Peter probably could have been a better drummer than Micky because Peter’s a better musician than Micky. So I don’t know, maybe we should’ve given Micky a bass and let him play bass or something, but he was great. It was wonderful to see, too, I’ll tell you.
KS: “The Girl I Knew Somewhere” was the first song you guys all recorded together, which you wrote. The first session, was it a big relief or a lot of pressure?
MN: Well, there wasn’t any pressure to it. You know, there wasn’t a lot of support for us playing, because it was like, “Come on, guys, you’re actors,” and “How are you gonna play and make the music? You know, it’s just too big of a workload, number one. Number two, what kind of material are you gonna play? What are you gonna do?” So it wasn’t a question of “Can you play, can you make decent music?” It was a question of “If you play, how are we gonna make all this fit into what we’re doing? ‘Cause there’s so much other stuff!” So the pressure was never really “Can you play and can you play well?” The question was “OK, we figure you can play and we figure you can play well enough and we know Nesmith writes and we know the rest of you guys write, so maybe this well all come about, but then what?” And that was the big question, because as they predicted it got tougher and tougher and tougher as we got busier and busier and busier.
KS: The “Live ‘67” album on Rhino is interesting to listen to because you guys were a great garage band.
MN: That’s exactly what we were. We were a garage band.
KS: Have you heard it?
MN: Well, I mean, I heard it when we made it. (laughs)
KS: It had electricity that blew away a lot of critics when they reviewed it, and it had an almost psychedelic version of “Steppin’ Stone”.
MN: It was a psychedelic version of “Steppin’ Stone”. Unequivocally.
KS: What direction do you think the Monkees would have gone if “HEAD” had been a success?
MN: We would have just continued to make films and records. Abandoned television. Probably have jumped into the video form about the time I did. That’s my guess. We would’ve stayed right there.
KS: Would you have veered into a country direction, as “Good Clean Fun” and ”Never Tell A Woman Yes” indicated for you?
MN: No, I don’t think so. Micky was always the voice and Davy was always the voice of the Monkees and they didn’t…Micky was never comfortable singing those country type songs. But you know Micky’s got a terrific pop voice.
KS: I’ve interviewed him, but he seems very insecure and underestimated himself about how good he is and what a great showman he is.
MN: Yeah. Yeah, he does. That’s one of the reasons he ended up sticking back there on drums. I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll play drums.” “Mick, get up, get out here.”
KS: In 1969 you went to Nashville and recorded material for an album side of a Monkees LP. What happened with that?
MN: Well, nothing. By that time he show was off the air and there wasn’t any place to put it. That band went on to become a band that had a little bit of success in their own right called Area Code 615 and they were a session band. One of those songs that we recorded was “Listen to the Band”. And then there were some other songs in there that I can’t remember what they were. “Saint Matthew”, I think, was a song that we did. There was some other stuff. It just got stashed in a vault somewhere.
KS: Why was the live “Circle Sky” replaced with a studio version? A lot of critics have said it was a fantastic live performance. In fact, Peter felt it was the best recorded example of the band.
MN: Well, that was done, and I think Peter’s right. I think, if you talk about the Monkees as a band, you have to look at “Circle Sky”, number one, and “Girl I Knew Somewhere”, number wo. I mean, that’s basically a garage band. And that’s the way garage bands play — loud and fast. (laughs)
KS: Were there any songs Davy or Micky sang that you were especially partial to, that you wish you’d sand? Like you did a demo of “Daddy’s Song” first.
MN: No, I was always happy with the way the vocals went down. Every time I’d sing a Monkees’ song it’d sound like a country tune…and at the time having it sound like a country tune wasn’t a good idea. Maybe it’s different now, I don’t know.
KS: It’s interesting how critics hated the Monkees but the public loved them, while your solo career as a country rock pioneer was a hit with the critics but not with the public.
MN: Well, you have to let history write that chapter, Ken. I don’t know what place I have in all of that and don’t really much think about it one way or the other.
KS: One last question, if you could choose three Nesmith songs for a time capsule that would be discovered in a thousand years from now…
MN: Well, I wrote one like that, you know. Because I thought about that. It’s called “Capsule” and it’s on the “Infinite Rider” LP…
[Transcribed from a PDF found on Monkees Live Almanac]
FNB Redux "Live at the Troubadour” Album Liner Notes
I wrote most of the songs on this album while I was working with The Monkees…not that I was writing for The Monkees, because I’ve never been able to write for anything, but the job for the Monkees was my daily driver. Sadly, I had very little direction from the execs on the show, even less from the crew and writers and the parts of the creative work that fell under my desk were unformed – more precisely to say, uninformed and unclear.
At the time there was little to draw from in pop music – a situation that I was to learn was much more normal than not. The music I was hearing on my own stereo system and the music on my radio was dominated by The Beatles, and others like them. And auspicious beginning for sure, but not too much help for a TV show about a band.
Over time, the definition of a pop song had become mysterious to me. I couldn’t tell what exactly was meant by a pop song. Down at the Monkees operation headquarters – in an effort to contribute – I’d say, “Well, how about this?” and I would play them something like my demo for Different Drum. “Will this work?” and they said, “Oh no, that won’t work, much too twangy” and so early on I was flummoxed. I was stopped and I thought, “Well…” I didn’t really understand twangy as a musical element – perhaps affecting performance more than structure – but as I say, I didn’t really have a handle on a design element of ‘no twang’.
The various music producers said to me on many occasions, “Don’t put any kind of twang in there because twang sounds ignorant to the Upper Northeast, while it might be appealing to the Lower Southeast. Most of our audience are U.S. Northeastern television watchers and they notoriously turn off twang if they hear it.”
The exec producers seemed to have this vague sense of regionality, and the kind of records and songs they could safely use to put the band together were, in essence, from the script for the show and the marketing push.
One guy’s from the Northeast, and one guy’s from Southern California, one guy’s from England and another guy’s from the South – from Texas – and all the characters were cut to fit into that mould [sic]…from bit parts to howling oratory. They all live together in a funky old house on the beach, rehearse there, and hatch schemes and ideas that are designed to fit the show.
As I began to express the character that I thought was playing with the character that I was naturally, I unsuspectingly pushed up against the edge of the entire concept itself.
At which point I started thinking. “Wait, what is this thing?” Because we’re suddenly and surprisingly in the ring with The Stones and The Beatles – and by that I’m talking about the size of the effort. The Beatles were international multi-million sellers and The Monkees were international multi-million sellers after their first record but not in the same league as The Beatles or The Stones, who were the referenced standard at the time…the 60s.
The whole music scene was burgeoning – mostly in England – and I was producing some of the best music of its time. And it was due to this rising English music sense that the notions first arose for me about just what defines a band. What creates it? What makes it turn into a band? Why is it even a band? All the questions that come into play in order to start a band…oddly, but not surprisingly, none of those questions were asked and none of those questions were answered in the Monkees TV show.
All of them were asked, and all of them were answered by the music in the British Invasion…revolution. To my mind, one must answer the question of not only how you are gonna do what you’re gonna do with the band but why are you doing it. What’s the focus? Why are you singing this song about this subject right now? Why is it performed in a certain way? The answer is obvious and easy – I guess it’s just assumed that everybody knows…
The answer is music.
But that answer requires a broad understanding of music outside technical, stylistic or regional constraints. The answer requires a spiritual understanding of music. I was surrounded by music all the time in my thinking. And after I discovered the roots music of Texas, I began to understand where that music was coming from – country blues – and it was out of the spirit of the Southeast, and out of Nashville, marrying there on the Texas Gulf Coast and traveling up through Houston, coming up through Austin, and making itself known in that way. By virtue of that journey, it had a personality. It had a raison d’etre. People danced to it, made love to it, made babies to it…the music had its own presence. It was on every car radio – the only radio I knew was in the car. And it had that sort of DJ presence in there that was clatter and clutter to me. Twangy did not feel out of place there.
At the bottom line, it was – music with rhythm and tone and everything else. With all that to consider I realized, “I’m not understanding something here that maybe I’m going to understand in times future. So just keep your eyes open and your ears open and listen and see what it is, but do NOT chase it. Let it unfold before you.”
It wasn’t too long after The Monkees that I began to recognize what critical path is, and the reason to adhere to it. First, because it’s a good time – it’s an evening’s noise, all that kind of thing. But for me, it was a deep spiritual sense that was unspoken and unsung unless you actually wrote it and sang it. I had to write it and sing it so that it was embedded in the songs that I wrote.
When I played all that music to the powers-that-be at The Monkees, they said, “Well, first of all we don’t like it because it is twangy, and it’s country, and it sounds like you’re stupid, And second of all, we don’t know what you’re singing about – this sounds like acid flashes, like you’re smoking a bunch of dope, and you don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
But really what had happened was I has simply stepped off into the other world that these guys in the creative community had apparently avoided, so about all I could say was, “Wait for me, wait for me, wait for me!” to no avail…or perhaps more dire, “Ok, leave without me. I’ll get a ride from someone somewhere.”
I was to distill that environment into song and sound and music in my head that I worked. I thought, “I gotta render this in poetry. And I don’t know how to do that.” A lot of people made their way because they sang good, and a lot of people made their way because they played well, but mostly it was because they had something to say.
That will happen when a band coalesces. First, the coalesce around the music, so you have to start with the music – OK, what’s the music about? Most of the time it’s about love songs. What about lost love? What about the death of a treasured parent or grandparent or child? What about death in general? What about sorrow? What about High Lonesome? What about all these things? Are they ever rendered in song? Well, yes they are…but not so much in pop sings. I was watching The Beatles touch that and I was watching Dylan give us all a license to do it, and then it dawned on me as if it were a continuous sunrise, that this unfoldment is not only the reason to do it, it’s a critical path. One must do it if they’re going to make music. You must have something to say.
You may say, “My heart is broken.” “Really? So is mine. Why is yours broken? Why did yours break?” “Because my girlfriend ran off with another guy.”
That was Garry Shandling’s joke – I broke up with my girlfriend because she moved in with another guy.
There are these unspoken, unsung ideas that we live by, that when they are spoken and when they are sung, energize us and lift us up, make us laugh and make it possible to get it through the next fifteen minutes.
By the time however I was invested with the First National Band. The TV show was over and I’m out of work and back to being just this guy – but I figure I got a lot of license here.
Someone…I can’t remember who…when wondering with me what the resistance to my music was, said, “Maybe it was the steel guitar?” My mother had pointed that out, too. She had said, “I don’t like the way that guitar slides around, and swirls. Sounds like the lady behind me in church singing the hymns.”
And I understood that buy I also saw my own sense of it was, “Well, actually, there are things here that are a touch of the Infinite in this music.”: And when you expand that, you’re expanding the spiritual side of it – and that will leave the lady singing in church to find her own way, and most importantly, sounding better.
John Ware who was the drummer for the First National Band and John Kuehne – John London Kuehne, who was bass player for the First National; Band – and I were all friends, and we talked about this. “Well, what should the band be?” and they both said, “Just do what you do.”
But John, Johnny, and Red Rhodes were a little more specific. “What you’re doing here is different and it’s useful.” And I had a friend of mine who would drive me around from time to time. He would say, “Those songs that you sing are great.” He was English. “Those songs that you sing are fantastic.” Well, by the time I got to Nashville, the players there sure did think he songs were fantastic. I played them and they all said, “Man, this is good stuff. Who wrote this?” And I was happy to say, “Me.”
But at this point I was so far on the outside of the traditional record business and the Nashville business and anywhere the music centers were because I was seen as a rebel – seen as being opposed to the music of The Monkees – which wasn’t true.
What was true was that I didn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t music that I liked, it wasn’t music that I listened to, but it was all fair…and in any case that wasn’t my job. My job was not like that. On the other hand it was also not my job to impress Stockhausen on an unsuspecting world. I wanted beautiful music wherever I could find it. If that was in a supermarket, that was OK with me. Or an elevator, I didn’t care. But if I wanted to sing it myself and write it myself, I had to have an understanding of what that music was and how to get to it.
So, the first place I looked was in my own history, which was hillbilly country. And then I started looking at the other kind of influences… “Where am I gonna find the stuff that I really love?” And as I’ve written in my book, where I found it was in Bo Diddley – his rhythms - and where I found it was in the blues and not so much in pure country music, except as it was rendered by guys like Hank Williams, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash and so forth. The big guns… the lions… and I thought, “I can fly in that flock… not to compare myself to them… but they’re not doing aerobatics that I can’t do. I can do that. That sounds pretty good to me.”
And from that began to be, “Well, why don’t we get country players?” “Who’s the first guy you want to get?” “Well, Red Rhodes. He’s he steel player down at the Palomino and he’s the guy that I want.”
And I talked to Red, and I realized Red was not anywhere on this page – he was a very conventional country steel player but he has these wild swings and when he had them they were a very clear touch of the Infinite. And once he got turned on, these wild swings became magnificently wild. They went crazy off the charts. And he was playing out loud what I was hearing in my head.
From Red’s excursions among the stars, the band slowly began to play. My band – First National Band – began trying to play what we were hearing in our heads as a collective.
That’s when a band really starts to come together – when everybody hears the same song in their head. We call it different thing, “We’re on the same page, we’re playing the same song”, so on and so forth, but everybody is of one mind about where one should be, what key it should be in, what instruments should play it, and so forth. Within this is a lot of room. ANs when I saw The Beatles venture far out into these extraordinary territories, I thought, “Hey, I can do that, too.” It wasn’t so much that I was inspired by The Beatles alone, but I was certainly inspired by the tenor of the times and the people who were doing it…everybody from this side of the pond to that side of the pond. It was a great time to be in music, in a band, looking for some place to play.
But The Monkees had this appendage called Television that was starting to hang off me. This extra fame did give me an introduction wherever I went – whether it was a restaurant or a grocery store – but it was weird for me personally.
Nevertheless the four of us in the FNB – John, Red, me, and Johnny – kind of had a focus on saying, “Something’s coming out of this and let’s continue to play it. Let’s rehearse and rehearse and see how it will go.” RCA made us a deal, we got a tour together, but sadly it never got the commercial traction that I wanted it to. ‘Joanne’ went up the U.S. charts to the low twenties, but I was watching the Monkees records get huge commercial traction, and I thought, “Well, those producer guys know something I don’t know.”
And always when that thought would come in to me, right behind it would be: “That’s nothing you need to know right now. You need to know how to extinguish a cobalt fire. You need to know something very arcane. You’re after something here that only certain people can find through this door. And if you don’t know how to extinguish a cobalt fire, don’t set it on fire until you do!”
So, I pulled back from that and moved on to another train of thought that was organically based. It came from someplace inside, not from someplace outside where you say, “Oh, let’s play it like they play it. Let’s play it like he says. Let’s sing it like she sings it. Let’s dress like her. Let’s get a lead singer that’s cute and short or cute and tall or black, white, or pink. Whatever it was, let’s do it.” But it was all coming from the outside.
And glancing on the inside, you turn back in on this question: What’s really pushing this music? For me, I wanted it to be my means of livelihood and so the idea that it would be named after the First National Bank – which was where I kept my money – and turn it into The First National Band, made perfect sense. It’s a bit of a joke. Maybe not a good joke, but it’s a joke, a funny joke. Not quite enough to play and sing yet, but close.
If you have a clear, distinct point of view then you’ve gathered elements that are combustible, and if you can render that point of view in your art – photography, painting, musicianship, whatever – blended with a touch of the Infinite, then put them altogether in a room, raise the temperature a little bit, and you’ll have warmth all the rest of your life. That’s what The First National Band is to me. An attempt to express these infinite ideas as a band.
Now, Redux, well… that’s a whole ‘nother thing. John London has passed, as has Red, so I needed to find some other inspired players.
Now, because Redux is 50 years after the first First National Band, it is the first First National Band with new players. People have come up, who can play better than I could ever play. And this new album that we’ve just made, Redux, is possibly the best album I’ve ever made. I can say it unequivocally.
I don’t know how to describe this process contained here in any other way than I have. And I don’t think I want to spend too much more time trying to figure out how to describe it, because it takes me away from the focus. I can see a future for this band. I can see something really great waiting for us to go out and play a stadium and play a country and do that kind of stuff because the music has that kind of persistence to it. Whether that actually happens is nothing I can predict…
All the Redux players are just outstanding and amazing to work with.
As you listen to it – thank you – let me say here… I’ve never been happier with a record. I’ve never been more proud and pleased to hey it put in front of people, and play it and leave it with the people in their core. It’s at the top of my form. It’s the best I can do.
So if I die now… that was it, guys.
Michael Nesmith
[Transcribed from a PDF found on Monkees Live Almanac]
I’ve gotten to know Davy Jones very well during his (and the other Monkees’) trips to London -- which is where I cover the action for FLIP.
As two Englishmen speaking casually and comfortably to each other about the pop world we both live in, Davy and I enjoy each other’s company.
This is Davy Jones -- as I know him...
Davy Jones, as one young girl pop star here (Lulu) put it, “knows where it’s at.” And that rather simply sums him up. Davy is not a newcomer to showbusiness. He did not suddenly become a Monkee from nowhere!
You know of Davy’s early career as a boy actor playing bit parts on BBC-TV and working in the stage musical “Oliver.” Davy started out early and learned fast.
“By the time I was sixteen I had left school and was out earning a living,” Davy one told me. “You learn fast at that age -- and you learn to fall on your feet.”
Davy is first and foremost an actor and in spite of his delight at finding himself a pop star he stresses the emphasis. “I started out acting a pop star in the Monkees -- suddenly the public decided to accept me as a pop star but I still feel I’m an actor.”
Another of Davy’s less obvious assets is his ability to hold life in perspective. He is most unlikely to let success go to his head -- firstly because success is not entirely new to him and secondly because he has a built-in protection against conceit. His weapon is humor and he uses a laugh to put the world into shape. When someone comes up with the intentionally stupid question “Do you like tall girls?” he refrains from tearing his or the reporter’s hair out by the roots and let’s go with: “Sure -- I like someone to look up to” or talks about himself as “That winkle-nosed little boy...”
Because his early experiences of showbusiness have given him a natural slant on life he is able to sum up his status and position with frankness and without fooling himself.
His reaction to that last paragraph would probably be to hold his sides with laughter. Davy possesses one other very important human stabilizer -- the ability to laugh at himself.
When I first met him in London he meant nothing in Britain -- neither did the Monkees. But in America they were already the new sensations.
“I’m nothing to you here, am I?” he smiled pleasantly over breakfast. “It’s funny, I can’t explain to you what being a Monkee means in the States -- we’re enormous. In a way it’s nice to come back to England and find you are treated as a normal everyday bloke. I’ve got a feeling that things will be different in a couple of months, though.”
They were, but the refreshing thing was that Davy was not.
I think the sheer professionalism of Davy’s manner with the press is probably one of the most incredible things about him. I watched him reel off an interview with a TV team which had come for a five minute interview and wound up doing a half hour spot. I watched a radio DJ with a tape recorder meticulously arranging his equipment and preparing for a long chat find himself with a breezy narrative which never even necessitated him posing a question. I watched Davy trot out the room convinced that the long day was over and called back to do a further hour’s chat with me.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were the fellow with the tape,” he grinned. “I’ll just take a keep-awake pill and be right back.” He did come back and did about two and a half hours straight chat with me.
Another thing which impressed me about the mini-Monkee was his refusal to be drawn into any kind of a slugging match with some misguided English pop stars who had slammed the Monkees as cheap fabrications.
“Look, man,” he said, “I’m here to entertain people. I’m here to make people happy -- least that’s what I hope we do. [W]e’re not anxious to put anybody down. Do you think I need that kind of publicity. Look around you -- I don’t need to say bad things about someone to get in the papers.” And I think he was really sorry for those that seemed to have to resort to this kind of behavior.
I remember one other act -- simple but very Davy. A TV studio technician admired his cuff links. Davy was up fro his chair on the set off to the bedroom and he returned with an identical pair for the delighted cameraman!
Where have all the jazzmen gone? And where are all the popmen headed?
The scene in one of Hollywood’s biggest recording studios the other day provided a viable answer to both questions.
On the podium was Shorty Rogers, 43, the composer and trumpeter who in the 1950s was an umbilical figure in west coast jazz. Standing next to him, young enough to be his son but talented enough to be his collaborator, was Mike Nesmith of the Monkees.
Facing them was an orchestral colossus of more than half a hundred musicians: Among them was 16 strings, 18 brass, six woodwinds, five percussionists, three guitars. Scattered through the ranks were alumni of the Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Duke Ellington bands, rubbing mutes with both pop and blues percussionists and a country and western banjo player.
The name of the ensemble was the Wichita Train Whistle. Nesmith had composed all the music, which included a number of songs recorded vocally by the Monkees, as well as a new extended instrumental work recorded in five sections. Rogers was hired as amanuensis, documentor and orchestrator. In effect, the was the creation of the first genuine rock ‘n’ roll symphony.
“All right,” said Nesmith, “guitar, at bar 60 -- you should kinda get lost on that last run. It would be groovy if you didn’t end up where you’re supposed to.”
Tommy Tedesco understood. t the end of the next take of “Don’t Call on Me,” not even his guitar ended up where it was supposed to. He threw it into the center of the studio, like a candidate’s hat into the ring. As the band guffawed, Nesmith turned to engineer Hank Cicalo: “Don’t turn off the tape. Keep the laughter in.”
Glancing through the conductor’s music sheets for some of the themes, I found not only conventional notes and chords, but such injunctions as “Shearing bag,” “Shearing thing with organ,” “Artie Shaw clarinet solo,” “Glenn Miller clarinet with saxes,” “as lib goofs” and “funky guitar run.”
“Nesmith may not be a schooled arranger,” said Rogers later, “but he’s a superior musician, and he knows about voicings, from Stravinsky to Charles Ives.
“Starting last June, we put this album together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Mike sat and dedicated hours and hours of ideas into a tape recorder: ‘Here’s how I want the French horns to sound,’ or ‘Let’s have some calculated mass goofing like this.’ And he’d sing, or play piano or guitar or organ, to explain exactly what he wanted.”
The music of the Wichita Train Whistle reflected this mosaic of influences. A string introduction suggested the imminence of an Andy Williams ballad; instants later, the threshold of aural tolerance would be threatened by a stampeding brass tutti, with Bud Brisbois’ ad lib trumpet soaring an octave or two above the entire organized pandemonium. Just as suddenly, the gears would shift into a pseudo Shearing passage or a Glenn Miller glide.
Asked to analyze the motivation behind this unique enterprise, Mike Nesmith -- 6 feet 2 inches of Texas stringbean, 155 pounds of quiet intensity -- offered a lucid explanation.
“I’ve been writing for a year and a half, and I didn’t want to be blinded by dollar signs or tied down to what’s considered ‘commercially acceptable’ -- which means pimple music. I realized there are no new ideas in music -- only different combinations of the old ones. So I wanted to find some new combinations.”
“How do you define what you’re doing?”
“For one thing, I’m putting big band ideas within the framework of rock ‘n’ roll. Rock is a very free form of music, and I want to free the big bands, give them something they can make their own statement with.”
Orally and musically, Mike Nesmith is one of the most articulate spokesmen for the new and literate breed of pop musicians who have sprung from the loins of primitive rock. The Wichita Train Whistle signals the advent of a new kind of locomotion. This train, with its carriage trade of symphony, rock, country, western and swing, and with jazz riding in the caboose, may well indicate where contemporary popular music will be situated in the early 1970s.
In September, 1959, Peter H. Thorkelson entered Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Steve Pope was a member of that same freshman class, and was graduated from Carleton in June, 1963. Peter, of course, never graduated, having already decided that music meant more to him than anything else in the world. But, during the two years that Peter did attend Carleton, his best friend on campus was “Poper” -- Steve Pope, who shared all of Peter’s happy and unhappy times. In an exclusive series beginning in this issue of FLIP, Steve will take you through these exciting years of Peter’s life.
I’d just moved into Carleton’s freshman dorm, when I saw Peter for the first time. Wearing short hair, looking very puckish and plucking on one of his oldest banjos, there he was -- in one of his most familiar poses. I was to see Peter often like this. It seemed as if that banjo never left him!
We weren’t introduced yet, but a couple of days later I found out that we were in the same math class together and that Peter’s room was just down the hall from mine. Soon, I was introduced to Peter H. Thorkelson, beginning a friendship with Peter which lasted even long after he eventually left Carleton.
Funny about that name. You’d never think that there could be two Peter Thorkelsons in any one place at the same time. But there were actually two Peter Thorkselsons in my freshman class. The only difference was their middle initials and the fact that Peter pronounced the first part of his name “TORK” while the other pronounced his “Thork.” Peter usually used his middle initial to keep their identities separate.
Right away, I knew that Peter was OK. Sophomores at Carleton haze the freshmen, but Peter would have no part of it from the start. Like, for instance, he refused to wear the beanie that all freshmen were supposed to wear to show their inferior status. Then, as always, Peter kept his cool!
I got to know Peter’s room down the hall from mine very well. Banjos and guitars were hanging all over the walls. (But this room was nothing compared to the room Peter would have during his sophomore year! Which I’ll talk about when I get to that period of Peter’s life.)
The reason I got to know Peter’s room so well is that he loved to stay up all night to talk about philosophy and politics, and those of us who shared Peter’s thoughts usually did so in his room. There he would talk about anything that came to his crowded and creative mind. In old faded Levis, wearing a straight T-shirt (for some reason, during his freshman year, Peter always wore faded blue-and-white horizontally-striped T-shirts), with his banjo nearby, Peter would talk...and talk...and talk.
By the time Pete would be finished talking, you were convinced that what he was saying was right. He was (and still is) a very convincing talker whose arguments and thoughts would fall nicely together as he developed them.
When it came to girls, however, Peter would often let his banjo do the talking. Playing love songs and ballads, he was an outgoing and popular date. As I remember, he dated very sweet and pretty girls and he used to frequently fall in love. But that’s a natural extension of Peter because he’s a very loving-type person. Yet, in his own way, he was shy...if you can imagine someone being shy and outgoing at the same time.
About the only place where Peter didn’t take his banjo was class, when he went to class. When he did attend classes, he usually went barefooted. All the teachers and professors thought that he was tremendously intelligent, but they would get mad at him because he wouldn’t study. He’d get “A’s” on all his papers, and then ruin all his brilliance by not studying for the final.
Peter was already beginning to feel that he wasn’t getting anything out of his formal education. He believed that he was getting more knowledge from our conversations and bull sessions than he was getting from all his classes. But he promised himself that he wouldn’t decide whether or not he would come back to Carleton until after the summer.
That summer, I worked in an orchard near my hometown of Downington, Pennsylvania, and Peter made the first of his many trips in Greenwich Village in New York. When school was over, we promised each other to keep in touch and meet again (maybe) in the fall up at Carleton.
So, you can imagine my surprise when one night in the middle of the summer, around 10 o’clock, the telephone rand and I heard a familiar voice: “I’m here, Poper...next to the Chevron station...in Paoli.”
When I got to the station, there was Pete, with a hamburger in one hand and a banjo in the other. And, for the next two days, we both got very little sleep.
We talked a lot, as ever, and set up a Dixieland band which played...and played...and played. Peter serenaded my little sister, Janet, who was 12 then, with all sorts of happy songs, like “Inky Dinky Spider.” And we drove around a lot, enjoying the beautiful countryside, which Peter appreciated as much as I did.
He told me that he hadn’t made up his mind about whether he’d come back to school. And he was restless and anxious to move on.
So, I took him to the Pennsylvania Turnpike entrance, from where he hoped to hitch-hike to the midwest. As I looked back, there stood Peter -- his shirt sticking out, a big old leather flight bag which was bulging in one hand, and his banjo in the other...
KS: Will you release any videos for the Rhino earlier material? Something like “Joanne” that you never did a video for to promote it?
MN: Till you said it I hadn’t thought of it. Maybe it’s a good idea. I don’t know. Do you think it would be a good idea to go back and do old songs? Creatively, do you really? I don’t know, because I think of the video as a form and there is such a thing as an audio-only record. Can you imagine a video of “Joanne”, takes picture of a beautiful woman in a filmy dress living in a house by a pond? It starts to get kind of dumb. (laughs) The emotion that it evokes is different. When I wrote “Rio” I really had a picture in mind, although I didn’t realize at the time that it was gonna father an entire way of life, but I did sort of have in mind that this would make something nice to put on film.
[...]
KS: Back to “Nezmusic”…on a song like “Cruisin’”, did you have the idea for the video in mind and then come up with the song or did you write the song first and then create a video around that?
MN: Well, with “Cruisin’” the video was very much in my mind and all of the songs since then have the pictures very much in mind and try to make them both work together.
KS: Do you enjoy working that way? Does having the visuals in mind help your writing?
MN: Yeah, it expands it because sometimes when you’re writing one of the things you’re looking for is a proper way to express a particular emotion. So you might spend hours or days or quite a bit of time trying to find a word, a phrase or something that conveys some idea that you want to convey. When you put pictures into the equation, you can think, “All right, I don’t need to SAY this out loud. I don’t need to put this is a word because, when I marry the picture to it, it will convey this.” So many times just the presence of the video in your mind, the picture in your creative processes will help you out. For one thing, “Cruisin’” was this odd record, OK? Go figure. And to me it was OK to just say poems over the top of a kind of simple bleat, you know, it was just bass and drums.
KS: Ahead of its time, when you think about it.
MN: Yeah, when you think about it (laughs) But at the time no one was thinking that rap would become what it became. And so with “Cruisin’” it was a fairly clear poem—the challenge became how do you pictorially represent a phrase like “the light behind their eyes”? How do you do that? And when you write to the video form, sometimes you’ll avoid a phrase like “the light behind their eyes” because it’s much more descriptive and evocative of a mental image than it is of an actual picture/ And it’s very important to me to make sure that I steer clear of narrative interpretation of these things. So with “Cruisin’” I learned my way a lot and, yes, I did write it with the visual in mind, but I also drove myself into a ditch in several other instances, for instance “the light behind their eyes”, and what I was left with was a cheesy video effect. I mean, I had to this thing that made this guy’s head blow up with light, you know. Well, OK, so that was fine, but still…
Mike Nesmith? Well, hang onto your “wool hat” cats and kitties, because this album is good.
Mike Nesmith, you will remember, was one of the plastic Beatles, the Monkees, who can still be seen on Saturday morning TV, somewhere between The Archies and Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. Besides being a Monkee, Mike was a composer of some talents -- “Different Drum” was a strong enough song to bear the weight of Linda Ronstadt's entire career, and (though I’ve never been completely sure), Mike is often credited as composer of “Mary, Mary,” first recorded by Paul Butterfield.
Well, no Monkeeshines here. Loose Salute shows that Mike is firmly planted in country-rock territory with his group, the First National Band, which features Red Rhodes on steel guitar, one of the better technicians of the instrument. The production is flawless (remember when Frank Zappa said that Monkees albums were put together better than most San Francisco acid-rock records?), the music is nice to listen to, and the boys all play their own instruments.
The album features a beautiful “hit single” than never was played on the radio, “Silver Moon,” a flashy rendition of Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard’s classic, “I Fall to Pieces,” a catchy rocker, “Dedicated Friend,” and some pretty acoustic folk songs “Conversations” and “Thanx For The Ride.” “Listen to the Band,” which features Red Rhodes, deserves to become a country and western standard, and the rest is good Hollywood cowboy music, fun to dance to, or eat enchiladas to.
Mike’s straightforward, no-bullshit vocals are a welcome change from the usual Byrds-y, constipated singing style generally preferred by country hippie bands, and the nine Nesmith originals on Loose Salute radiate, if not genius, then a good, solid versatility. The flavor of the songs goes from country to Latin (”Tengo Amore,”) to big band (”Hello Lady”).
I have never considered myself a real Monkees fan, but I think Loose Salute by Mike Nesmith and the First National Band is one of the hippest country-rock albums in some time, certainly the most listenable. Mike Nesmith? Well, why the hell not?
#project hail mary
#cats of tumblr
#pride month
#lana del rey
#photography
