Davy: Exclusive

A SPECIAL INTERVIEW FOR ALL MONKEES MONTHLY READERS

Davy Jones, hair that bit shorter than on earlier visits but with his usual tanned and healthy-looking face, relaxed in a leather-bound armchair, flicked a cigarette from a king-size pack… and said: “Let’s start right now. It’s always a pleasure to talk to our fans through our own magazine.”

Glowing a bit at the tribute, I started putting questions to Davy. And as he’s such a good conversationalist, I’ll just report what he said, in his own words. Well, all but one bit, which was about how he feels he HAS to get away from it all on his own sometimes… that will make a fascinating feature for a later edition.

“Say, let’s clear up this question of what we’re doing this year. There’s the film, of course and the end of the TV series as it is now. But we’ve got exciting plans in the pot for television on other lines. And towards late summer we’ll be on the road South America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and, oh sure, Britain. More towns in Britain this time… and I hope, specially, that we’ll include Manchester. It’d be a gas to go out there on stage in my home town.”

“But what I say is that I’m a part of a team—we all kick in ideas and it adds up to the Monkees. And that’s just what I want to be. What gets me is that when one of us does something outside the Monkee scene you get these stories that we’re breaking up. What we wanna do is expand our interests.”

“Sure the next year is maybe more critical for us than for most anybody else. We don’t want to stay just as we are now. Mike is getting more and more involved in record production and arranging. Peter is going deep into the Cream, Buffalo Springfield sort of stuff. And Micky has what he calls a mood [sic] synthetiser. It’s a groovy instrument which can produce just about every sound in the universe. Like a piano keyboard, but better than a melotron.”

“We don’t all have to do the same things all the time. But to those who insist we want to stop, I’ll just say that I don’t see why the Monkees shouldn’t be doing concerts for the next ten years. If folk wanna see us, we wanna appear.”

“Our film? Well, it’s different again. Sure I recall that the critics all said the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour was a flop, but I didn’t think it was. Even so, remember that they’re a rock ’n’ roll group, not a film-making outfit. But we are a film-making group.

“I don’t care what the critics say about us now, because I know that our music is good. There were hang-ups at first, but now we make good music. Our albums have proved the way we’re going. Sure the year ahead may be hard, but musically we know where it’s at.”

“Know what I want? I’d like for us to go on at the London Palladium in a stage show. Create our act and then build a whole production around it. We could do it, too. Too many groups nowadays just stand there and forget about entertaining. We’ve studied this scene and we’ve learned that there’s more to it than JUST playing, or JUST fooling about.”

Lulu Permalink

“Say, you didn’t ask me about Lulu yet… well, that makes a change! I still have this hang-up about all our private life having to come out in out in public, mostly because so many people get it wrong. You get it right, so I’ll tell you something. Lulu’s a great, sweet, talented kid. She’s groovy and I like to be with her.”

“But no wedding bells. Please get that straight, ’cos I know you get a lot of letters from readers. I have a girl-friend in New York and she’s groovy, too. There’s one, or two, or three in London and other parts. There are too many beautiful women in the world—so it’s no wedding bells. I’ll tell you, and this is real true Britain has the most beautiful women in the world. Beautiful clear skins, lovely. I just like a girl to be natural. I like them to like me for me, not what I may be in my working life.”

“You hear guys talking about girls as if they’re looking for perfection all the time. Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t mind the curlers in the hair in the morning, that kinda thing. Just so long as the girl is natural and kind and easy to get along with. But I’ve no ONE girl-friend, and that’s for sure! Footloose and fancy free—that’s for me. It’s sensible, don’t you agree? There’s a whole lot of career to come before I’d even have the time to think about settling down.”

“It’s always nice to get back to Britain but I really feel now that I have dual nationality. Sometimes I find myself talking with a big American accent, then sometimes I’m a sort of mixture of Cockney and North-country. This trip I’ve been living in a flat, but in the end people found out and I’m afraid I got in bad with the neighbours. I like the idea of being on my own, so I can entertain who I like. “What I really wanted to do this time was get together with some British musicians, using them as a backing group for a few things. But you know how it is, time slips by and your plans get put up there on the shelf.”

Evening date Permalink

Davy, in black boots, blue trousers and a blue sweater with red markings, said it was time for him to get changed for an evening date. Time had flashed by. He’d covered a lot of ground for this exclusive-to-you interview. He’d put down a lot of rumours and boosted our confidence in the future, which looks as if it’ll be pretty hectic for the Monkees.

He’d kept on saying how much he appreciated the kindnesses of his British fans. He said how touched he was by their gifts and letters, specially on his birthday. He was knocked out by their concern for his dad, who is still sometimes ill… “but happy”.

But there is also the deep-down “lonely” side of this world-travelling nice-guy star.

As I said earlier, we’ll hold on to that for a later feature. I’ll just whet your appetite by telling you that he came out with some eye-opening information!