By Paul Freeman [1987 Interview]

They were never the darlings of rock critics, but The Monkees, with engaging personalities and some of the 60s’ best pop records to bolster them, have retained the adulation of countless fans worldwide.

They’ve embarked on their 45th Anniversary Tour. As a fond tip of the hat (or wool cap), Pop Culture Classics would like to revisit our 1987 interview with Micky Dolenz.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
What was it like coming back together for the 20th anniversary tour?

MICKY DOLENZ:
When you’re young, 20 years old, nothing much bothers you. But the biggest problem for me, personally, was A, the traveling, not the shows, the actual traveling. And then B, getting out on stage and not being self-conscious. After directing and producing, for 15 years, being out of the business of performing, it’s pretty strange to get out on stage and stand there, with people yelling at me. It’s a very strange feeling.

It made me very grateful. And I became really aware of how really phenomenal the whole thing was... and is. And how difficult it is to achieve that kind of success and have that kind of an impact. So it’s made me very grateful to see that clearly now, after spending 15 years, like I say, trying to develop my own shows, writing, trying to create successful television shows. It ain’t easy [Laughs].

PCC:
But isn’t performing part of your nature?

DOLENZ:
Well, yes, but being away from anything for 15 years is a long time. Fifteen years never having been in front of a camera or on stage. Even taking a photograph, as a personality. In England, I didn’t do any of that, at all.

PCC:
The Monkees had been really popular in the U.K. in the ‘60s.

DOLENZ:
Yeah, that’s true. But I didn’t go over there as... Actually, I went over as an actor, to do a play, in the West End. It was ‘The Point,’ the Harry Nilsson musical.

PCC:
From the animated TV special?

DOLENZ:
Yeah, they did a musical version. And that was the last thing I’d done, in entertainment, until The Monkees reunion.

PCC:
Didn’t you have some involvement with Monty Python?

DOLENZ:
Yeah, Michael Palin and Terry Jones wrote a play, actually, a short little one-act play, that I adapted it into a theatrical short. That was for Paramount. It was called ‘The Box.’ Very unusual. And they did the voices, a lot of voices in there. We did that about 1980, I believe it was.

PCC:
Was that seen in the States, as well?

DOLENZ:
Oh, no. We don’t have a short program over here. That’s a shame, really. It’s too bad. It’s great to have these little one-reelers in front of movies. Actually, they don’t do much of that in England anymore, either. It’s a shame, because it’s a great training ground, to experiment with stuff.

PCC:
And you worked in British television, as well.

DOLENZ:
Mostly TV, yeah. I started out at the BBC. When I came over as an actor, in the West End, I brought over my director’s reel. I’d tried over here, in L.A., for a few years, to make the transition. But, you know, A, you’re furniture in your own hometown, anyway, after a while. And at that time, I’d been in the business 15, 20 years. And also, people do tend to pigeonhole you over here a lot more, in this business. And it was right on the tail of the massive, great success of The Monkees. I certainly don’t have any regrets, at all. I started directing on ‘The Monkees.’ That’s where I had my first directing job, with Bob Rafelson.

PCC:
How did that come about?

DOLENZ:
I don’t remember exactly how it happened. It was a natural evolution. These days, actors directing is quite common. In those days, not so much. But I don’t remember how it happened, if he offered, or if I wanted to. But as soon as I did, I realized it was what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be an actor. And I still don’t. I don’t want to be a performer. After this Monkee thing is over with, I don’t think I’ll be on stage ever again. It’s not what I want to do with my life. I want to concentrate on the directing and writing and producing.

Anyway, so I started on ‘The Monkees,’ directing that. And, after ‘The Monkees,’ did a couple of commercials. A documentary. A special. Bits and pieces, trying to make the transition. But like I say, it was difficult. A, people either thought I was a drummer or an actor playing a drummer or a drummer trying to be a director. And I’d heard stories about Richard Chamberlain going to England and he did Shakespeare. And I just remember thinking, in the back of my mind, that’s the kind of thing that I would like to do. It was totally by coincidence I got this job, went over there with my little reel. I was supposed to open at Harrah’s, Davy and I were going to go there, Dolenz and Jones, cabaret. We’d been working for a couple of years together.

PCC:
Was this with Boyce & Hart?

DOLENZ:
No, after that. And good offer, Harrah’s. Headlining. And I met this woman, an agent named Linda Seifert. Got on real well. She saw my stuff, liked it and said, ‘Well, should I show it around town while you’re here?’ I was only supposed to be there for eight weeks, nine weeks. Limited run in this play, then go back to the States. And she sent me to the BBC, to the drama department. They happened to be looking for new drama directors. And, lo and behold, I got a job at BBC, directing drama. And, you can imagine, that really altered the course of my life. I don’t know what I would have been doing. I’d like to think I would have been successful, whatever it was. But it really was a major, major turning point in my life. And I got the job at the BBC doing drama. And it just went on from there. I’d married an English girl, simultaneously, by coincidence. Met her here, actually. And I didn’t have to move back to the States. I canceled the Harrah’s thing. I just said, ‘Please, no thanks.’ We decided to just give it a shot over there. I didn’t have to get back, for any reason. I’d sold my house here, by coincidence also, because of the divorce. There was nothing desperately bringing me back. And I did this play at the BBC, this drama play, and it got good reviews, well received. And immediately fell into a series with another television network. And it just never stopped. And now, 10 or 12 years later, I’ve done 67 shows, shorts, commercials, documentaries, industrial films and a musical. I did ‘Bugsy Malone’ on the West End. I wrote and directed a musical version of that Alan Parker film.

Until about two years ago now, when Peter Tork called me up and said, ‘This guy wants us to go on the road.’ I said, ‘’What?!’ He said, ‘Yeah, 20th anniversary and all that.’ And I said, ‘Well, thanks, Peter. But no, thanks.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll have the guy call anyway.’ So the guy called me, David Fishoff. He told me what he had in mind. I said, ‘David, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. But I’m under contract to the studio to direct a series. I can’t do this.’ David said, ‘Well, thank about it.’ I thought about it for about eight seconds. It really wasn’t in my consciousness at all. And he called back. And he kept upping the offers. And he said, ‘I just discovered we can do this and this... and there might even be a movie.’ And with that, my eyes lit up. I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, David, if you can convince me that there might be a real possibility of a movie, somewhere down the line, that I would direct, then I will consider it.

So he came over to England. Then Peter came over. And he came over again. And it just sounded like a good idea. My wife was the one who actually talked me into it. She said, ‘Oh, what the heck? Let’s take the kids, take them around the States on a summer tour, ‘because we play a lot of amusement parks and fairs and things. What a great summer for the kids! It’s only going to be 11 weeks.’ Well, seven months later, we’re still on the road. And it’s turned into quite an amazing thing. It took me quite by surprise, the depth of the response. We always had fanatical, frenetic kind of fans. So I was expecting that kind of thing. But not the scale of it, not the depth of it, right across the board, mothers and daughters and grandmothers and every age.

PCC:
The crowds seem to have lots of young people, screaming, singing along to all the songs. How do you explain that appeal to new generations?

DOLENZ:
There’s no accounting for taste, is there? [Laughs] It does go beyond nostalgia. I think the main ingredient is the songs. We had great songs. And they were written by great songwriters - Carole King, Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson, Neil Sedaka, Paul Williams, Boyce & Hart, Carole Bayer Sager, Not slouch writers. And that, I think, is, fundamentally, why the music holds up, irregardless of the productions and the performances, although I’d like to think that we had a lot to do with it, too. The bottom line is, the music didn’t suck, essentially.

And then, the show, I think, stands up. Classic shows, anything from ‘I Love Lucy’ to ‘Star Trek,’ they were conventional in their dramatic appeal and in their pathos and in their merit. ‘The Monkees’ was, on the surface, the first time you saw it, a lot of flash cuts and a lot of editing and a lot of gimmicks and a lot of special effects. But after that’s all said and done, the bottom line was that the stories were conventional, in terms of situation comedy. We were the good guys. And there were was always the bad guy. And there was always a MacGuffin. It was the microfilm or a treasure or somebody missing or somebody in trouble, very often a kid in trouble and we have to get them out of it. And so, that’s what formed the foundation for the television show. And all the tinsel and fabric and stuff on top, it added to that, embellished it. But underneath, there was this very strong foundation of real, simple, classic relationships and a lot of heart. And a great sense of camaraderie, between us.

The thing that made The Marx Brothers work and Laurel and Hardy and the Hope and Crosby movies and all of those films had, essentially, something very simple and real about them - their narrative. Then you can do anything you want on top of that, as long as you have that. A lot of people lose that. They try to put the cart before the horse - ‘I’ve got a great idea. We’ll have a great series about a bear and a policeman. Isn’t that a funny idea?’ Which lasts about eight seconds. And then there isn’t anything underneath that to support it. On top of that, the show is very anarchic, certainly for its time, and even now.

It was the first time, to my knowledge, that young people, teenagers, had been seen without any adult authority, supervision. We were the masters of our own destinies. There was no uncle, no father, no my favorite uncle, no John Forsythe character that came in and guided us in the right direction. We were pure at heart. Never did anything wrong. Never did anything nasty. We brought long hair into the living room. Up until that point, it was very counterculture, in every way, politically, socially, emotionally. You usually related it to drugs, at best a kind of rebellious behavior. And here, along come The Monkees, every Monday night, at seven o’clock - and I’m quoting out of Timothy Leary’s book, actually, ‘Politics and Ecstasy.’ And he said - and it hadn’t occurred to me, none of it had occurred to me until just recently, the last few years, because I hadn’t thought about it. All of a sudden, here come The Monkees - long hair, rock ‘n’ roll music, all by themselves, living in a beach house, wonderful, very harmless kids. And I think, in many ways, it reflected, probably, what was going on with kids at the time. A lot of kids were just growing their hair long and they were still wonderful kids. They weren’t having any problem. Their parents, of course, reacted violently against rock ‘n’ roll and long hair. And these kids are saying, ‘Look! See! There’s The Monkees! They’ve got long hair. They’re not beating up little old ladies, doing anything nasty or horrible.’ At the time, I think that had a lot to do with the appeal.

PCC:
But didn’t the band try to get more politically inclined towards the end of the series’ run?

DOLENZ:
Well, whether we would have wanted to or not, it wouldn’t have made any difference, because they wouldn’t have let us. I, at the time, didn’t have much political awareness. And now, I care very little about politics. I study political philosophy. I study social philosophy. But politics, as such, I think is a non-starter, to be honest. Peter had, I think, the strongest political motivations. We all were very anti-war. And we tried a number of times, to get little references into the show. NBC immediately censored anything that they could find, that they understood. We did manage to get a few things in. ‘Take The Last Train To Clarksville,’ our very first record, was an anti-war song, a very subtle one, albeit, but nevertheless, it was about a soldier going off and probably would never see... [sings] ‘And I don’t know if I’m ever going home.’ We did a song called ‘Zor and Zam,’ another anti-war song. And, as I say, on the show, we made a few digs, but, in those days, boy, you couldn’t get away with much. We barely got on the air with long hair and without having an authority figure. In the pilot, in fact, the network insisted that we did have an authority figure. It was our manager. He was an adult. He was like Uncle Joe. They insisted on that. And it was a dismal failure, the pilot. And the producer, Bob Rafelson, insisted on taking that character out. They did some research to show that they should take this manager character out and cutting it much, much faster... and the rest is history.

But we had a lot of trouble. I mean, there was one episode, a very, very nice episode, that won the Emmy, as a matter of fact, called ‘The Devil and Peter Tork.’ And it was quite serious, well, serious for The Monkees. It was ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster, essentially, same story. And Monte Landis played the devil. He didn’t play a silly kind of caricature, goofy devil. He played a real, evil character, to whom Peter sells his soul, so that Peter can play the harp. And we weren’t allowed to say ‘hell’ in the show. And it’s pretty tough to do ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’ without ever saying the word. Imagine, couldn’t even say the word ‘hell.’ And so we bleeped it. And then we started referring to it as ‘bleep that place,’ [Laughs] stuff like that.

Under that kind of an onus, there wasn’t much we could do. And it wasn’t the platform for that, any more than The Marx Brothers would have been or Laurel and Hardy or Hope and Crosby. During the ‘40s, they didn’t make political references. Or social ones. It wasn’t the place for them to do that. And it wasn’t the place for The Monkees to do that. I think it would have been totally out of context. It just wasn’t what we were about at all. And we don’t get too involved now. We do a lot of charity work. But it’s always apolitical. We don’t agree, really, within the group.

You see, The Monkees is not a group. It’s an act. The Monkees is a very strange kind of beast. It was a television show about a rock ‘n’ roll group. And the actors in the show became a rock ‘n’ roll group. And it’s the equivalent of Leonard Nimoy really becoming a Vulcan. And that’s very phenomenal. People miss that. It’s really an incredible story. Superman really being able to fly. And to the best of my knowledge, that had never ever happened in this industry.

PCC:
Leonard Nimoy had his ‘I am not Spock’ phase. Did you ever want to turn your back on The Monkee fame?

DOLENZ:
No, I didn’t. The other guys did. You’ve got to remember, there isn’t a Monkee answer to any of these questions. I’m just answering for Micky Dolenz. No, I never did. I was always incredibly grateful and totally enthusiastic and behind it and never regretted doing it.

Now, having said that, there was a period where I couldn’t get work, doing anything else. I mean, everybody thought of me as a Monkee. Like when I wanted to direct, and when I wanted to act after ‘The Monkees,’ it was ‘Sorry, we don’t need any drummers.’ So I went through a period where I was having trouble with my career. But one should be so lucky as to have that kind of trouble [Chuckles]. I resent, terribly, people that resent their success. So many people would give their lives to have that success in the first place. Tough shit, if you have to weather out the down side.

It isn’t easy. And I’m not belittling it. Because it is difficult to overcome. And it becomes inertia. But it’s cool.

PCC:
But you weren’t concerned that a Monkees reunion would reinforce that image and endanger the new career you’ve established?

DOLENZ:
Oh, I have that career. That career is with or without The Monkees. I have three shows in development right now at studios. I just finished a screenplay. I’m starting another. In England, I can walk back into years and years of television and films and stuff, as soon as I want. So now it isn’t a problem at all. After ‘The Monkees,’ yes it was. And it always is when you achieve that kind of success. It’s tough at the time. And when you do create that kind of inertia, it is tough to overcome it. And one shouldn’t try. You shouldn’t try to just stop the train going a hundred miles an hour [Laughs]. And go, ‘Okay, sorry now, folks. I’d like to change direction.’ It’s impossible. It defies the laws of physics. And creating this kind of a momentum in a career is exactly the same. You just can’t do it. It’s stupid to try.

Now, having said all this, I was fortunate in that, when I was 10 years old, I’d been through it. With ‘Circus Boy.’ I had a family in show business. Very level-headed about it. I starred in this show called ‘Circus Boy’ Very successful show. Ran three years. I went and did concerts at that time, as Circus Boy, with my elephant. I was in parades. I did press conferences. I had hundreds of kids follow me around in shopping malls. So I’d been through it.

After ‘Circus Boy,’ my parents took me out of the business and back into school. And, at that age, kids are very resilient. They just snap back. My parents did a marvelous job at seeing me through that period after. Thank God they didn’t keep me in the business and try to get work as a has-been 12-year-old [Chuckles]. That’s what happened to a lot of my peers at the time. And it was deadly, literally, for a few of them. So I’m very fortunate in that sense. So I just went through it. And I don’t remember ever thinking, ‘Gosh, I’m not a star anymore.’ I was too busy. I had go-karts to build [Laughs]. My parents replaced it with school and friends and normal life.

So I guess after ‘The Monkees,’ I just went into that post mode. And I remember thinking about it. I knew what was coming. I’m not saying I didn’t have my down times, I didn’t have bad moments, I didn’t have my share of dilettantism. And being silly. For two or three years after ‘The Monkees,’ I went to a lot of parties, I guess. I didn’t have to work, obviously. Couldn’t do the work I wanted to do anyway. I played tennis. I learned to hang-glide. I became one of the first hang-glide enthusiasts in the country. I rode my motorcycle.

It was a very creative time, though, in one sense. I started writing a lot. And I started coming up with notebooks full of ideas for films and TV. I didn’t have the tools, the mechanism, the knowledge yet to put them into practice. I didn’t have the knowledge of how to be a producer. It isn’t easy to suddenly say, ‘I’ve got this great idea. I’m going to make a TV show or a movie.’ But I did do a lot of writing, a lot of creative stuff. And it wasn’t until years later that that came to fruition.

Just before the tour last year, I finished a second year of a series that I’d originally written the idea for in 1971. Just after ‘The Monkees.’ A thing called, ‘Luna’ [British children’s television show], a science-fiction/adventure/fantasy/comedy. So it was a very creative period. Careers work in waves. Everything does. Massive, great waves. And it helps to know when you’re at the top. It helps to know when you’re getting to the top, like on a roller coaster. It helps to know when you’re building up to peak of this incredible wave. But that’s the work. The slow, hard work bit. The fun part’s the ride down the other side [Laughs]. And, if you think of it like that, okay, you are going down, but it’s the fun bit - spending all the money you’ve made, having all the fun. The two or three years doing ‘The Monkees,’ at the crest of the popularity, that was all work. I don’t ever remember going to a party. I don’t remember ever doing anything, besides coming home shattered at 11 o’clock, after filming for eight hours a day, recording for two, rehearsing for four. And all the time, the show was very popular and we were incredibly successful, but we didn’t have time to appreciate it.

We peaked. We stopped working. And I rode it out. But a lot of people aren’t aware of that, don’t think of it like that. They think, [in a high screech] ‘Oh, geez! Oh, no! It’s all over! Oh, my God! Oh, oh!’ And I kind of think of it as, now you’re riding down this roller coaster, gathering momentum for the next wave, for the next crest.

PCC:
At the time you were approaching the peak, were you cognizant of all this? Were you able to grasp outselling The Beatles at one point?

DOLENZ:
I didn’t even know that until years after. You just look at any other act that’s just a recording act or just a television show or just a concert touring act and just multiply it times ten. That very seldom happens even today. It certainly had never happened back then, that kind of crossover we had. Very few groups had experienced those kinds of reactions on tour, except The Beatles and The Stones, the British acts. We had television, the first screens, a psychedelic light show. Jimi Hendrix was our opening act.

PCC:
And how did that work out?

DOLENZ:
I think kids quite liked it. The parents weren’t too crazy about it. We had a great time, backstage and jamming in the hotel rooms. That was an incredible tour. I found Jimi in New York. He was playing lead guitar with Albert Hammond. I shouldn’t say ‘I found him.’ He would have, I’m sure, done everything without the involvement of The Monkees. But I first saw him in New York, playing for Albert Hammond. Somebody had said, ‘There’s this guitar player who plays guitar with his teeth. He’s fantastic.’ I went down and saw him.

Months later, I’d forgotten all about it. I was at Monterey Pop Festival. And everybody said, ‘Hey, have you seen Jimi Hendrix Experience?’ ‘No.’ ‘They’re great!’ He had gone to England, gotten Mitch and Noel, put on gorgeous psychedelic clothes. And there he was. I said, ‘Hey, that’s the guy who plays guitar with his teeth!’ And simultaneously, the producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider were looking for an opening act. I said, ‘Colors and lights and very theatrical.’ And that’s what we were, in our act. And they said yes.

And it was great for us. I mean, God, we were in our glory. It was tough for him. But it was tough for every opening act. It’s always tough for opening acts, with a big headliner. People are essentially going there to see the headliner. The Fifth Dimension opened for us and they had a problem. I’m sure they weren’t totally happy with it. I’ve opened for people, before The Monkees, when I was an act. And it’s tough. But he did fairly well. We let him off the tour in New York, because he broke his record, ‘Purple Haze,’ I think it was. And he became a headliner. He asked to be let off the tour to headline and we said, ‘Of course.’ It was a strange mixture. Strange combination. But, in many ways, not. Both very theatrical. We got along great. He appreciated what we had done. We appreciated what he was doing.

People within the music industry, the entertainers at the time, they kind of understood what we were all about.

PCC:
And yet you didn’t get the critical acclaim.

DOLENZ:
No, the critics are always behind. The critics are always a couple years late.

PCC:
Or decades.

DOLENZ:
Or decades. But, in all fairness, the press is a responsive organism. It doesn’t innovate. It doesn’t instigate. It responds to things it sees. And, in our case, in a lot of cases, they didn’t get it. It went over their heads. They kind of missed it. Because they were sitting down right in the forest and something comes out left field and very often you don’t quite pick up on it. People in the industry, our peers, they understood what we were doing. Stephen Stills had auditioned for the show. We always received pretty good reviews from the television press, because they understood what we were doing. But the music press, the hardcore music press, Rolling Stain Magazine, they had no idea. We went right over their heads. They missed the whole idea, the whole point of it. Not that it made any difference, with all due respect to Rolling Stain. It made absolutely no difference at all to the success.

PCC:
Still, at this point, it must be great to be receiving recognition for having made classic pop records.

DOLENZ:
It is wonderful. It’s great vindication, to be honest, even though it wasn’t until years later that I remember hearing about it or thinking about it. You don’t come up to somebody who’s outselling The Beatles and having massive success and say, ‘By the way, there’s some bad reviews...’ So what?! Who cares? [Laughs] It made absolutely no difference. It became obvious to me what had happened. I cant blame them really. There was, and is, a fairly closed shop in the music industry in terms of record companies and promotion people and getting your record played and who you have to know, who you have to pay. And it was even more intense back then. A more closed shop. And all of a sudden, out of left field, here comes these Monkees, off television, cast as actors, two actors and two musicians, essentially, to play the part of these rock ‘n’ rollers. Songs written by a lot of unknowns at the time. Neil Diamond was doing jingles. Carole King, of course, had had quite a career. But Harry Nilsson, we gave him his first hit record. He was working at a bank, when he wrote his first Monkees hit.

And all of a sudden, the radio stations had to play the records, whether they liked it or not. The music industry had to acknowledge our existence... and our success, whether they liked it or not. And again, we went over the heads of the establishment chain of command. And we hadn’t paid dues, as a group, though we’d all paid dues, enormous dues, as individuals. But that didn’t count, apparently. I’d been in three rock ‘n’ roll groups before The Monkees, playing bowling alleys, cocktail lounges, singing, ‘There is... a house... in New Orleans... They call...’ But that didn’t count. All of a sudden, Monday night, 7:00, these songs were on the air and they had to play this stuff. And that pissed a lot of people off. They don’t like to be usurped. Nobody does. So you can’t blame them.

But the real truth is, they just missed the point, that this was musical Marx Brothers. We were a television show. And then it was confused, of course, by the fact that we became a group. And our first concert tour, in ‘67, 20 years ago right this moment, was only seven months after the show aired. We’d only been together 10. We were on the road, doing 40, 50 dates, the first summer, I think, all by ourselves. Me on drums, Peter on bass, Mike on guitar. Davy playing a little guitar, a little keyboard, tambourine. Essentially a three-piece. Doing all those songs. And doing them well. I mean, granted, it isn’t brain surgery. And Rhino just released a live album, from ‘67. The quality sounds pretty bad. But you can tell we were up there, hammering away, keeping in time, singing on key, doing all the songs, all the hits. And that’s not bad, when you think about it, for any group to get together like that in seven months.

PCC:
Having come together as a group; how did the breakup happen? Was the cancellation of the series a natural beginning of the end?

DOLENZ:
lI think everything - and Peter uses this line - every act, every career, has a natural half-life. And I think ours was maybe shorter, quicker than most. But it was also more successful than most. And I think that there’s a tradeoff. When you go up very fast, very hard, very quick, you also come down very fast, very hard, very quick. It burned us out. It burned everybody out. The phenomenal success happened so quickly.

And who’s to say? Look at Jimi. Look at Jim Morrison. Look at James Dean. I’m not comparing us to those people. And we didn’t die [Laughs]. But there is possibly some correlation.

Look at Frank Sinatra. He had massive, great success in the ‘40s. Then he came back in ‘From Here To Eternity.’ And he stayed around for years after. But he went through that difficult period in between.

Anyway, I think there’s a natural half-life. And the whole atmosphere of everything was spontaneity, improvisation. And purity. Everybody talks about it being manufactured. But it is the farthest thing from manufactured, in that sense. It was one of the purest, most spontaneous projects that I’ve ever been involved in. And I’ve been around for 35 years now. It was the least contrived, in many ways. It could have fallen on its ass so many times. We were really walking that fine line, that edge. All the time. Fighting the networks on censorship, trying to get things by. Improvising on set. Eventually, 80 or 90 percent was us improvising. Initially, of course, we didn’t. We were given a script. But even from day one, they encouraged us to be spontaneous, to improvise. The director never said, ‘Oh, excuse me, that wasn’t the way the line was written.’ And I think that’s one of the reasons the show was so successful.

It was the first television show where you could really tell there was something going on that wasn’t scripted dialogue that had been done four or five times and finally got it right. Very often, we actually used outtakes. We would break the fourth wall, playing with the reality of it. So I’ve always chuckled, when I’ve heard people talk about the manufactured Monkee phenomenon. It was the farthest thing from that.

PCC:
How will you transfer that spontaneity to a feature film?

DOLENZ:
Absolutely. I’ll demand it. That’s why I insist on directing it. It’s a very fragile thing. It’ll be like the ‘Star Trek’ features, bigger, wider, but essentially the same characters. Oh, yes, I’ll be Micky Monkee. It would be a mistake to change the formula, to change horses midstream. We film this winter and it’ll be released next summer. It’ll be a Monkee comedy/adventure/musical romp, somewhere between ‘Mad, Mad World’ and ‘Time Bandits.’ But we’ll surely keep the flavor and the techniques of the show, only ‘80s style. It’ll certainly satisfy all the fans, young and old.

PCC:
You wouldn’t go as far afield as “Head”?

DOLENZ:
No, it won’t be that great a departure. That was very ‘60s, very episodic in nature, very fluid, a psychedelic feel. I love that film, ‘Head.’ I think we should probably have made a proper Monkee movie. But I’m glad we made ‘Head.’ I think that’s a wonderful piece.

PCC:
It has developed quite a cult following.

DOLENZ:
i’m very, very proud of that film. I’m very glad we did it. It wasn’t very successful at the time.

PCC:
It was kind of shocking a the time, wasn’t it?

DOLENZ:
Very. But that was good.

But back to this question about the downfall, as it were. To me, it was like we’d had a good run. The show’s been canceled. The reason we were canceled was, we didn’t want to do it again the same way. We didn’t want to do another year of the same show. And we submitted some ideas, along with the producers, to NBC. And that said, rightly so, you can’t blame them, ‘No, we don’t want to change horses midstream. We’ve got a successful thing going here.’ We submitted ideas that eventually became ‘Laugh-In.’ Not that anyone stole our ideas. They didn’t. But at the time, there was a lot of that kind of feeling in the air. And one of the show ideas that we did submit was an awful lot like ‘Laugh-In.’ Very sketch-oriented, fast-moving kind of show. But they said no, we don’t want to do that. And we didn’t want to do the same show. I don’t know if we should have. Who knows?

Then what happened was that Peter, who had always been disappointed - The way he tells it, he had gone into it, thinking that he would be joining a group. Because he was essentially a musician. And he would be doing all the music and writing and singing. And he was disappointed. Mike was disappointed. Because they didn’t get to write a lot of songs. And that did start an internal kind of conflict. Not between us, so much, because Davy and I, as actors, it never even occurred to me. I don’t remember anybody criticizing Sal Mineo for not playing the drums on ‘The Gene Krupa Story.’ That’s exactly how I approached it. I was an actor, playing the part of a drummer. So I had no problem at all. And neither did David, who had been on Broadway and in television. There wasn’t any confusion. This was very normal, very conventional. Peter and Mike did have problems with it, because they had not been in television. They’d been accepted musicians.

PCC:
Mike did actually write quite a few Monkees songs, just not those released as singles.

DOLENZ:
Yeah, right. Essentially Mike had, and still has, very heavy country-western orientation. At that time, it was not deemed to be commercial, pop Top 10 commercial. Peter had very heavy folk orientation. Again, they didn’t think that style was Top 10 pop. Davy had very heavy Broadway, Anthony Newley- type voice and sound. So I’d kind of get the leads to the songs by default, [Chuckles] more than anything else. I was the one who could scream and sound like a garage band, which is essentially what we were. The Monkees were just a garage band. So I ended up doing most of the leads. That’s the sound they wanted. And rightly so. That’s the sound that was happening at the time. And the proof is in the pudding.

But it was frustrating for Peter and Mike. And eventually, Peter quit. And that’s basically when the group broke up. Peter quit, just before our last barnstorm tour. And then we did the special. [‘33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee’]. And who knows, if we had gone on, I don’t know, it might have died a terrible death. We might have milked it and it might have become old and boring. We might not be enjoying this resurgence today.

PCC:
It’s too bad Mike isn’t part of the reunion.

DOLENZ:
He’s very supportive, said he’d be around whenever he can. But he runs a big company. He can’t just suddenly go fishing for the day. I had a similar problem, but as a director and producer, I can kind of call the shots. When you’re the president of a company, you have a tremendous responsibility. And you just can’t walk away from it. He hasn’t done much performing in recent years.

PCC:
There seemed to be some bitterness in Davy’s comments about him.

DOLENZ:
Yes, Davy, it depends what mood he’s in. Mike said some things, too, at times, that could be construed as bitter. But a lot of people - not that you are - but a lot of people are muckraking, trying to stir something up. I wish that maybe there were something there. We might get a lot of press out of it [Laughs] But there’s not. Mike did the Greek Theatre with us last year, one of the dates. And he came on our MTV Christmas video. He’s kind of like Zeppo. Think of him as Zeppo. He’ll show up when he can, and when the time is right. Simple as that. It’s just a matter of schedules.

As far as the movie, he just said, ‘Call me when you have the production schedule.’

PCC:
And the movie shoud attract a wide demographic.

DOLENZ:
Yes. Obviously, it’s not just a nostalgia thing. Look at the concerts. It’s not just those who were fans in the ‘60s, politely applauding. You don’t generate that kind of frenetic mayhem and emotion from nostalgia. To the kids, it’s new. To them, it’s brand new. The ‘Star Trek’ phenomenon is not nostalgia. How can you be nostalgic about the future? [Laughs] It’s just finding something that works. It’s similar to fine art. When people discover an artist that’s been dead for a hundred years, that is not a nostalgic phenomenon. It’s discovering something that worked and, for whatever reason, still works. I don’t know - maybe we were ahead of our time. And yet it did work in the ‘60s.

I think there is a cyclic nature to the business, too... and to everything. Things do tend to come back. If they are going to come back, they come back in generations. There’s a resurgence of interest in the ‘60s, as there was for the 50s, for the ‘40s. So things like that do tend to happen anyway.

And for the reasons I gave you about the show, it has held up. The comedy was not topical or satirical. It was very funny. So it didn’t date, even though it was very ‘60s in a lot of the styles and techniques. But the comedy isn’t dated. It came out of real, essentially dramatic situations. So it stands up, the same way ‘The Honeymooners’ stands up. That’s why shows like ‘Laugh-In,’ a great show, wonderful show, you can’t show it now, because it doesn’t mean anything. You had to read the paper that day, really, to get it. But ‘The Monkees’ wasn’t like that at all. You watch it today and it’s just as funny as ever.

I can’t imagine the whole Monkees entitybeing any more successful than it was... or is now. We’re out on the road, competing with the heavyweights, without new records or years of album sales. It’s kind of phenomenal that we’re doing as well as we’re doing. It’s truly amazing.