Biography

Peter Tork noticed much about his Monkees audition was unusual or comical, so he joined the antics by walking into a wall when coming through a door. This got him noticed by the sitcom's producers, but also led to his getting cast as the "dummy" of the group. Anyone who knew Peter (or listened to him for more than a minute) knew he was far from it, and the Monkees parodied the typecasting during their second season, and in the movie Head (1968). Tork was also the most musically versatile member, playing a dozen or more instruments.

Producer Chip Douglas voiced his disappointment later that, with so much media coverage coming from the admission that the Monkees had not played on their first two albums, there wasn't similar coverage when "Headquarters" and "Pisces" were released, noting that they had played.

One of the Monkees' concerns as their fame loomed was comparisons to The Beatles, and they knew the Beatles' first two movies were directly responsible for the look and sound of their sitcom - and their first records. When the Monkees visited England in early 1967, they had been playing their own concerts for a few months and were preparing to record "Headquarters" by themselves, and were pleasantly surprised to find that the Beatles not only loved and praised their sitcom but accepted them as pop-star peers. The Monkees each stayed at a Beatle's house (Mike with John, Micky with Paul, Peter with George, and Davy with Ringo), and attended some of the "Sergeant Pepper" sessions. Later that year, Beatles manager Brian Epstein sponsored them for three days of concerts at Wembley - the only live shows the Monkees gave in England, during the 1960s. (Touring America that summer, the Monkees played "Sergeant Pepper" almost constantly in their chartered jet.) Michael Nesmith thanks the Beatles on the Monkees' behalf, in the "Monkees on Tour" episode of the sitcom.

Michael Nesmith wrote "Daily Nightly" (which appeared on the "Pisces" album) in reaction to the 1966 Sunset Strip curfew riot in Hollywood. Micky Dolenz sang, and played his new Moog synthesizer on the recording, becoming the first artist (and making the Monkees the first group) to include a synthesizer on a rock record (A video of the song appears at the end of two second-season episodes of the sitcom, in rare black-and-white.).

The only limitation on the Monkees' choice of music was that songs had to be owned or published by Screen Gems. Since this included both the Brill Building team and up-and-coming songwriters from around the country (like David Gates and Harry Nilsson), who made the Monkees top priority, it wasn't much of a limitation. The foursome had first crack at a wealth of great material, and never had to record a song they truly disliked (The Screen Gems-only rule was finally lifted in 1969, when Davy Jones recorded Paul Williams' "Someday Man", written with Roger Nichols.).