Transcript of Nez on Later GK. My guest tonight was a member of the legendary group, The Monkees. He has since gone on to executive produce such movies as "Repo Man" and "Tapeheads," and he has just released a new album entitled "The Garden." Here he comes, walkin' down our hall, ladies and gentleman: Michael Nesmith. (Nez appears wearing a mostly yellow shirt with orange pineapples, not to mention other stuff that's red, blue, and green.) GK. Wow! That is some shirt there, mister! MN. Pineapples. Pineapples and more pineapples. GK. Where do I pick me up one of those is the question. MN. This is -- this is from a shop down in Venice. GK. Is that right? Do you live here in Los Angeles? MN. Well, a little bit of the time. I live out in Sante Fe, outside of Sante Fe mostly -- I try to get over here because the longer you live in New Mexico the more turquoise you tend to buy. GK. I notice you're already doing a little bit right here (points to Nez's belt buckle). MN. Yeah it gets bigger and bigger, you know I don't want to end up like one of those guys in a bolo tie.. GK. Yeah, rock the size of a football... MN. ...talking about UFO on cable access. GK. You know, I was a big Monkees fan when I was a kid, and I want to talk about your new CD, but let's do talk about The Monkees. There's been so many misconceptions and so many discussions about what when on... MN. Well, give me a couple of the misconceptions -- GK. Well let me give you a couple ideas here, Michael... MN. Tell me like one misconception that there was. GK. First of all, let me ask you, was it a good experience for you -- when you look back? MN. For me it was very good. There is some amarcord, you know -- I'm grown up... GK. Now see I don't know what amarcord means, so -- MN. Well it means "I remember," and it's from a Fellini film which kind of colors the past so that you remember the good stuff -- we tend not to remember the pain. GK. Uh huh. Part of the misconceptions or some of the things that people talked about said that you didn't want to go back and play with The Monkees, and that's why for twenty years you guys were split apart. MN. Well, I, you know, the press -- the press just had a field day with The Monkees, by and large. I mean one of the great and most peculiar things that ever happened to me was when the media began to report -- with genuine alarm -- that The Monkees were not a real band. GK. Mm hmm. (Audience laughter.) This was huge news. MN. Big news, yeah. I kept thinking, well, gee, uh... And I guess it was the same guy that reported that Sally Field couldn't fly, because -- there was sort of the same dynamic at work. So it's a TV show about a make-up make-believe band, and -- so they started in on that and I was absolutely perplexed. I had no idea where this was coming from. Of course it wasn't a real band. It was a TV show. GK. How did you all get along? MN. The four of us? GK. Yeah. MN. Oh, very well. GK. Mm? MN. Sure. We were kids, and enjoyed -- GK. Now that's what I mean -- at that time in your life and being in the limelight like that I would think there would be little bit of squabbling, or some problems, no? MN. Well, we were all actors, so, I mean we -- you know, there was a certain professional level of "getting along" -- and we made friends like you do, working with people over a period of time. I'm, you know, very fond of everybody -- you want to know who my favorite Monkee is? It's Micky. GK. Now I thought for sure you'd go with Michael on that one. MN. No no no. I never liked his hat thing. GK. Do you remember this? This is back in September, 1965. (Shows reproduction of the page of Variety that contained the famous advertisement of open auditions for The Monkees.) This is the actual Variety article: "Madness. Auditions. Folk & roll musicians/singers for acting rolls in new TV series. Running parts for four insane boys..." MN. "Spirited..." GK. "17 to 21." Right there... MN. But wait, Greg. GK. I'm sorry, what. MN. "Spirited Ben Franks types." GK. Yeah, what is that talking about? MN. Ha ha, see -- Americana. GK. I don't understand what that means. MN. Ben Franks is a joint down on Sunset Boulevard. GK. Right. MN. You remember the -- do you know this coffee shop? GK. Yeah, I do, actually. MN. And people were down there wearing granny glasses in the Sixties. This was -- this was the shibboleth. Granny glasses was the way into the alternative culture in the Sixties. I didn't have any granny glasses -- the Reverend Frazier Mohawk brought me the advertisement, and... GK. How is the Reverend Frazier Mohawk? MN. Well, first of all he sends his regards. GK. Good. MN. He says he's sorry about that whole thing with the couch and whatever. GK. Yeah, yeah, great. MN. And he just wished it hadn't happened. GK. Ah. Were you nervous when you went into the audition or did you even care that you got this or not? MN. Well, you know, I was working as a musician, and I had no idea that I would come out getting a television show, but I liked television, and I liked the idea of doing it, and I liked the idea of the show. And then when I met the people -- the producers and the directors and stuff that were around, I thought, "Mmmm, this could be good, this could be a good time." And, it was steady work. Let's not put this completely behind us. GK. Let me ask you -- I know this has nothing to do really with The Monkees, but your mom invented Liquid Paper. MN. This is true. GK. Huge revolutionary thing, right? MN. Well, wait a minute. (Laughs.) World War II was revolutionary. The telephone was revolutionary. GK. Did she come -- MN. This corrects things on -- have you used this stuff, Greg? GK. Actually... MN. You know, this paints stuff out, is all this does. GK. Do you remember when she came to you and said, "I've come up with this thing?" And did you think -- MN. Well, she was working as a secretary, and she was doing graphics art work at night, and she paints mistakes out at night in the graphics stuff. So she figured, "Well, I'll apply this to typing," and painted out the stuff. And, you know, the secretary sitting next to her says, "Gee, Betty, that's great! Could I have some of that?" And she says, "Sure, for a dollar..." GK. Right. We're going to do a quick break. We'll be right back with Michael Nesmith. (excerpt from the "Circle Sky" scene from "Head") (commercial) (excerpt from "Tonite" video from "Elephant Parts") GK. We're back with Michael Nesmith here. You've always been kind of a media visionary. They told me, in fact, that you in some ways helped create MTV. MN. Well, in some ways, I was part of the original concept of it. GK. How so? MN. Well, I had done a music video in '76 with a friend of mine, Bill Dear -- GK. And this is before MTV or anybody knows about music videos. MN. Yeah, these were -- these were played over in Europe on these little clip shows. And so they asked me to it, because my record was coming out over there. So I did it, guy named Bill Dear and I did it together. Bill was a commercial director, so he was -- he had a kind of sensibility about cutting things together fast. I'm coming out of The Monkees and learned a little bit of filming from those guys. So we end up with this music video, and when I'm over there watching the shows I think, "Boy, this would make an interesting idea for a 24 hour a day music thing." Came back here and -- just cutting right down to it -- sold the idea to Warner Brothers, and they said, "Well this works great, you want to come back and run it?" And I said no. So a fellow named Bob Pittman, who was really the father of it, I mean he was the guy that was the architect of it. You know he took that idea and ran with it. GK. Yeah, he was the guy who took all the money from the idea. MN. He took a bunch. He did well. Happy for old Bob. GK. Yeah, we all are, I think. (Shows "The Garden" CD.) This is your -- this is your new CD here... MN. My new CD, yes. GK. And they tell me this is like CD-ROM also. MN. It is. It's -- GK. "The Garden." MN. This is not the CD-ROM, but it is in CD-ROM... GK. Now what does that mean? And since you're talking to the most computer illiterate person you could possibly talk to, what does that mean, "It's in CD-ROM?" MN. Ohh. Well, we're in trouble here. GK. We are? Well, OK. We can go long by about three or four hours on the show. Go ahead. MN. Well, you know -- years ago, twenty years ago -- what I've done over the years is just hang onto the stuff that I've made. And twenty years ago I did a project called "The Prison." And "The Prison" is a book and a record, and you put the record on and you read the book. And it's a kind of a media experience. It was nominated and won, I think, in many critics polls the award for the worst concept album of all time. (Audience laughs.) Thanks. GK. (Shakes Nez's hand.) Congratulations. MN. Thank you very much. So I thought -- (Audience laughs and applauds.) So I thought, I thought, "Well then, I should do a follow up." (Nez now has the audience in his pocket.) GK. Of course. I mean your window's wide open there. MN. ...because the sequel has got to work. So -- "The Garden" is that, except now, with "The Garden" I have more technology available to me, and instead of the text being just on a book I'm able to use part of the CD as data storage and access it through a computer, and thus the CD-ROM. GK. This music that we're going to hear here obviously is a lot -- all your own original stuff. MN. This on "The Garden?" GK. Ah, yeah. MN. Yeah, mm hmmm. GK. Was any of the -- how much of The Monkees stuff is original? MN. To me, that I write? GK. Yeah. MN. Oh, I don't know. Ten percent? GK. Did they not want you guys to write your own music? MN. Au con -- no, au contraire. GK. Au contraire? MN. No, they wanted -- they were happy for us to involve ourselves as much as possible in making the music for the show. You know, nobody thought we would. We were just soundtrack, so we thought -- but as it went along, we decided, "Well shoot, we can play, we might as well." GK. Uh huh. MN. Hence a lot of confusion about The Monkees, which was a make- believe band that actually played. (Laughs.) (Greg and Nez do the regular "Later" segment in which Greg opens an envelope containing a question from the previous night's guest. Nez puts a spin on the segment by offering to give the answer before the envelope is opened. His answer is "Little packets of Chinese mustard." The question, from Gary Busey, is "What is your favorite smell, and when did you first experience the sensation?" Nez is disappointed that the answers actually fits the question and isn't as funny as it could have been.) (Long excerpt from video promo for "Live At The Palais.") (commercial) (Nez performs "Some Of Shelly's Blues" while sitting on the steps at the front of the set.)