Tiger Beat’s official Monkee reporter, David Price, tells all the inside info you’ve been waiting to read.
Talk about excitement on the summer Monkee tour—as soon as we got back to the States our airplane almost crashed! Oh, don’t get upset, we really didn’t go down, but for a few minutes there were some mighty tense people aboard. (Like me!)
As soon as we’d gotten back to New York we got our own private Monkee plane to use for the tour. It was a DC-6, and a pretty nice one at that. With our own plane we didn’t run into a lot of the hassles we usually have when the Monkees go on tour.
The storm Permalink
Well, on the flight to Greensboro, South Carolina, we ran into an electrical storm. For fifteen minutes we weren’t sure if we were going to make it to the next stop or not!
Lightning was flashing all around the plane, the rain was hitting hard against the windows, and the plane was going up and down like a roller coaster!
Micky, a clown to the bitter end, was rushing around taking pictures of everything with his flash camera. Everybody got kind of upset, ’cause when that flash thing went off it looked like lightning was coming into the plane! After a long time, it seemed to us, we flew out of the storm and through it all the plane didn’t get hit by lightning even once. But for those few minutes there was some serious thinking going on in that plane!
In New York Permalink
When we got to New York we were all dragged out from the European tour. A good night’s sleep, though, and we were ready to start doing up the town.
We all went to a club in Greenwich Village called the Electric Circus. They had jugglers that were great and a light show that Micky went absolutely ape over—he really loves those flashing, colored lights.
The entire party got invited to a real classy French restaurant called The Volsin. We had a really fantastic meal there—not at all like the French food we didn’t like in France! When we got invited we were told we could wear anything at all we wanted to wear, as far as they were concerned they just liked the Monkees, dressed in any old way at all. So we went in our usual weird assortment of clothes, wearing a lot of the things we’d picked up in Europe.
The Monkees’ new clothes Permalink
Mike was wearing lots of knit pullovers, mostly solid colors with a large stripe down the center and down the back. He wore blue jeans and boots with Western shirts and wide ties, too.
Peter had been wearing ultra-casual Village-type clothes. Tennis shoes, jeans, t-shirts and pullovers of leather and suede.
Davy got a lot of Eastern things while we were in Europe. (Far East, like Asia!) He’d gotten some jackets that reached to his calf. They had mandarin collars and flared bottoms.
Micky bought a lot of Eastern-type robes, too. His were silk and just totally wild. They were almost full-length.
So we went to this classy restaurant dressed in some of these clothes, and you can imagine how we all looked when we walked in the door! But the people were so nice, and the food was so good. Davy really enjoyed his, and you know how much he enjoys good food!
Micky & Samantha Permalink
Samantha flew in to be with Micky and they went to see “Mame” on Broadway. They both came back raving about it. They had a lot of fun together the whole time we were in New York, but there still isn’t anything really serious there. They just enjoy being together.
Davy spent most of his time seeing his old friends from his Broadway days. Peter spent his time seeing his old friends from his Greenwich Village days, so they both had a ball. Peter’s friends were running around everywhere, it seemed like. They were mostly musicians, so they had jam sessions every night in Peter’s room. There were a lot of Peter’s friends from Los Angeles in town, too, like Steve Stills from the Buffalo Springfield.
We stayed at the Hotel Warwick and security was pretty tight around the whole place. There were fifty New York City policemen on duty at all times and inside the hotel there were about twenty security guards and four or five bodyguards on duty on the eleventh floor where most of us were. The rest of the crew had rooms on the tenth floor.
It was sort of interesting living in the hotel because we had “hall people”. There weren’t enough rooms for everybody, especially with Peter’s friends from everywhere staying with us, so there were usually about ten or fifteen people living in the hall. They had a table up there for Cokes and things. Most of the people sat around or took pictures of the people coming off the elevators or played their guitars. There wasn’t enough room to move around.
Peter’s jam session Permalink
One night there was this huge jam session in Peter’s room and after he fell asleep the other guys left the room and stayed in the hall. There were about twenty-five people in the hall that night.
It’s a funny thing, but after the Monkees once got outside the hotel and around the fans they usually didn’t have much trouble. Like Peter just wandered around Greenwich Village saying hello to everybody and talking to everyone and he didn’t get mobbed at all. At the hotel, though, things were really different. Even I got mobbed.
The wildest thing happened at the hotel when we were there. A fan wanted to meet the Monkees so she crated herself up in this huge box and shipped herself to the hotel as equipment for the Monkees. She got caught before she got to see them, but they let her go upstairs and meet Davy, anyway. That has to be real devotion.
In Miami Permalink
After New York we flew South to Miami. We met the Miss USA contestants there and they were all very pretty and really nice. The only thing wrong was that they had such strict chaperones we couldn’t see them afterwards at all! We wanted to take them to see Miami with us or go swimming or something but they wouldn’t let us.
We did get to have the most outasite party ever, though. We took a boat trip one day that was a total gas! We sang all day on the boat and waved to every ocean liner that passed by. Micky wanted so much to stop one and go aboard. He wanted to sing to the passengers for small change, like he was in a folk club or something, but we finally persuaded him not to. Just imagine two boats stopped in the middle of the ocean listening to Micky’s clowning. Then another ship comes by and joins the party and then another and then… Would you believe the first traffic jam in the history of the Atlantic Ocean?
Everybody got sunburned. That is, everybody but Davy, of course. He just got the richest, most beautiful tan in the whole world.
Next month I’ll have more inside information on the end of the tour. Be sure to pick-up your copy of TIGER BEAT early! On sale, Oct. 10.
