TOO MUCH MONKEE BUSINESS?

Mike Nesmith tells Peter Doggett how it feels to be the laughing-stock of
the British press

Few concert tours have been panned quite so comprehensively as The Monkees'
reunion. Depending what paper you read, it was either a joke, an
embarrassment or a disaster.

Then you talk to the fans, and you get an entirely different story. Monkees
fanzines have been dividing their pages between ecstatic reviews of the
shows, and vitriolic contempt for the British press. A quick survey of RC
freelances and other friends and contacts seemed to back up their
enthusiasm: everyone we asked loved it. The only people who didn't, it
seems, were those who got in for free.

There have been Monkees reunions before, and there will probably be more in
the future. But what singled out the 1997 U.K. tour as an event was the
presence of the man who had always said no: Michael Nesmith. The most
credible musician of the original quartet, he was the only Monkee whose
solo career had attracted any kind of enthusiasm from the press and public.
Indeed, country-rock experiments in the early 70s won him a cult following
that had no connection to his past in the original prefab four.

Why did Nesmith finally agree to go back on stage with Davy Jones, Micky
Dolenz and Peter Tork? Because, he says, "I felt like it, and I thought it
would be fun." That was also the rationale behind last year's "Justus," the
first Monkees album to feature no other musicians than the four originals
themselves. Ragged and sometimes amateurish, it still managed to capture
some of the chaotic spirit that Nesmith and his friends brought to the pop
scene in the 60s.

with the tour behind him, the press turning their spite on other targets,
and an entirely new career as a writer about to begin, Mike Nesmith
interrupted his breakfast recently to register his typically forthright
impressions of the reunion and the British media.

RECORD COLLECTOR: WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF THE BRITISH PRESS REACTION TO THE
MONKEES' REUNION TOUR?

MIKE NESMITH: The U.K. wears an international black eye, and it's the
tabloid press. On a global level, it's understood that the U.K. press is
the worst in the world. So I knew I was walking into the absolutely worst
possible place I could go.

Even so, I had forgotten how mean-spirited the press could be. I knew that
it was sub-standard and unintelligent and tied to what advertisers want,
but I didn't realise it was mean-spirited. And that was devastating, to see
that operating as the voice of the public. It put me right off. I walked
into that, and I thought, "My God, this is a terrible thing to be involved
in."

The converse of that is that the shows were fun enough. It's always fun to
play at an arena level. And the Monkees fans being what they are, they had
a good time. So there wasn't any unpleasant about that side of it.

RC: WHAT ABOUT THE ALBUM YOU MADE LAST YEAR, "JUSTUS"?

MN: You have to understand it as an artefact. The four of us were in one
place together, and we just thought, "This would be fun, let's do an album
that's absolutely self-contained."

My role on the record was really as a facilitator. I played guitar, and I
helped get everybody in the room together. But you can't really count it as
a Monkees record, because a Monkees record has to have a television show
about a fictional rock group, who have these songs - and that didn't happen
in this instance. I think it's a good enough record though

RC: IT SOUNDS LIKE FOUR GUYS WHO HAVEN'T WORKED TOGETHER IN A LONG TIME,
GETTING TOGETHER TO HAVE SOME FUN

MN: Enjoying it was the crucial thing. If we hadn't enjoyed it, there would
have been no point in doing it.

RC: YOU WROTE ONE NEW SONG FOR THE RECORD, "ADMIRAL MIKE." WHAT TRIGGERED
THAT?

MN: I didn't know quite what to write for this project, because I never
really did write songs for the Monkees. They always had to be sandpapered
and smoothed and polished to fit that format.

But while we were making the record, one of the highest ranking U.S. navy
officials killed himself because it was being reported that he'd been seen
wearing medals that supposedly he wasn't entitled to carry. The guy was
clearly unstable, but it brought into my mind in such clear focus the fact
that the U.S. press has got out of control. Someone has to stand up and
say, "Excuse me, are you watching this?" And as a poet and an artist,
that's what you do - give a voice to people who don't have a voice. You
provide leadership for ethical and moral values.

I didn't know whether this would be appropriate for the Monkees; in fact, I
was very dubious about it. But I played it for the guys and they said,
"Yeah, let's do this. It'll be great." Micky had a great take on how he
could scream out the lyric.

And then "Circle Sky," which is my other song on there, was one we did
years ago, for the HEAD movie. Whenever we got together, we always used to
play that song, because it's fun to play, a kind of crash and burn,
rock'n'roll garage band song. So I updated the lyric for the present day.

RC: IN RETROSPECT, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR CAREER WITH THE MONKEES IN
THE 60S?

MN: First of all, I was never confused about what the Monkees were supposed
to be, unlike lots of people. To me, the Monkees were a television show
about a fictional band. That was a sensational platform for us, because it
was using the most powerful medium around at the time, which was
television. And, of course, it gave me the opportunity to do all kinds of
things musically that I might not have been able to do otherwise - make
records with top session musicians in Nashville, experiment with combining
different genres together, things like that.

What I didn't know where I signed up for the Monkees was that I was being
hired to play a role that had serious limitations. When I made trouble was
when issues of quality began to roll up. They told me, "You're supposed to
be the guitar-player, you're supposed to have certain characteristics
within this fictional band. We will pay you a certain amount of money to do
that." That was all fine. Then they said, "Oh, by the way, do you write?
We're gonna want you to sing, cos that's part of the contract, and if you
write, we'd be very interested to see what you have."

So I would write the songs and bring them in, and they would say, "Well,
no, that's too country. No, that's too obscure. We don't want stuff like
that." I would find myself in a situation where this issue of quality went
beyond my job description. That's where it got tough.

I went outside the job description and said, "No, no, no, wait a minute,
I'm gonna go home. I'm not going to be a part of this. I don't want in. We
have an opportunity to make good music, to do something interesting, and if
we're not going to do that, then I'm outta here."

Anyone who'd made that kind of ultimatum in the past had been summarily
offed, or pushed to the side, so the television show could go forward. But
the producers of our show responded to that call. It was the 60s, and
people were more open to ideas from outside than before or since. They
said, "Why don't we take control of this system and try to do something
good? We can do something that is consistent with what Nesmith is talking
about, because that's really the way we all feel."

I'm not saying I led that revolt, but I found a friendly environment there.
So from that standpoint, the Monkees was a tough experience, but very
useful. I may have overstepped my bounds, but I don't think I did it to the
detriment of the project.

The media makes it's own truth, though, and there's this long-standing idea
that the Monkees should be written off in the world of rock'n'roll. This is
where it gets lunatic. Somehow, the Monkees were apparently a conspiracy of
corporate culture to usurp the prerogatives of rock. But they weren't - and
even if they had been, it would hardly have been the first time. And if
that was all they had been, then they'd have failed anyway.

So now I don't pay any attention to that kind of talk. The four of us can
go out and play Monkees songs and have a good time, but what people don't
seem to understand is that none of that has anything to do with the
television show. Monkees fans understand that. The people who don't get it
are the ones who don't understand the Monkees.

RC: ON THE BACK OF YOUR DEBUT ALBUM WITH THE FIRST NATIONAL BAND IN 1970,
YOU QUOTED YOUR THREE PRIME INFLUENCES AS BEING JIMMIE RODGERS, JERRY LEE
LEWIS AND HANK WILLIAMS. DO YOU STILL STAND BY THAT?

MN: As you mature as an artist, you find out more about yourself, and one
of the things I left out of that trilogy was Latin music. I didn't listen
to it as closely as I listened to Jerry Lee. But coming from Texas, and
being close to the merging of Tex-Mex cultures, what I realise in
retrospect is that Latin rhythm patterns had a tremendous effect on the way
I thought about music and the way I wrote.

I think that if I were ever to make another album - and I'm not sure I
every will - I would probably mine that influence much deeper that I ever
did. I have a collection of my songs at home that I sometimes listen to,
which has all my favourites on it, and they all have that Latin influence
on them.

RC: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT YOU WON'T BOTHER TO MAKE ANOTHER ALBUM?

MN: It's a different time for me. I've just finished working on a novel,
and albums and songs have a limitation that is difficult to live with.
Plus, in the landscape of the record business, I'm no longer viable as a
commercial act. When my records came out on RCA and Island in the 70s,
there was some kind of commercial role for them. But that doesn't exist any
longer. I don't have a mandate from the public anymore, or from any record
company that's trying to sell records.

So my life as an artist is drifting into different areas. The novel is
being published by St. Martin's Press, and it's magical realism. The four
points of the compass around it would be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo
Calvino, Henry Miller and Milan Kundera. I'm not putting myself in the same
league as those guys, that's just the territory I'm travelling through.

The book's about a search for a mythical blues singer. One of the things
I've toyed with is going down to Austin and recording the songs that the
singer would have sung. Maybe I'll still do that. And maybe I won't.

COPYRIGHT 1997 DIAMOND PUBLISHING GROUP LIMITED.