Well, it’s a question worth posing isn’t it? We’ve all heard so many rumours and counter-headlines POSITIVELY stating what is going to happen to the four greats who’ve rocked the show business scene so much during 67 and 68.
But there’s such a lot of guess-work going on around the boys. To get a clear picture of the situation, I must briefly hark back in time to those weeks when the whole pop world went Monkee mad.
At the start of it all Davy, Micky, Mike and Peter were going to play the parts of four zany young musicians in a series on television. Whether they played and sang as WELL as acting was purely a matter of luck. Yet there had to be music, obviously, in a series about a modern pop group… so a record was made. And it was a staggering big hit.
Six golds Permalink
Consider what has happened since then. Total record sales of more than twenty million. Six gold discs for singles and six for albums in the States. Plus that weekly half-hour show on television which was eventually sold all over the world. Plus tours that have busted box-office records and nobody who saw the boys at Wembley Pool last year can forget the incredible impact, the energy, the personality of the boys “In-person” act.
So back to our question: what next for the Monkees? One could argue that they’ve done just about everything they possibly could. And if they felt they’d reached that point… well, maybe they’d also feel they might just as well split up and go their separate ways.
In fact, though, we know they DON’T feel that way. BUT… their future plans must be rather flexible right now for purely business reasons. When that television series started, the boys were getting around four hundred dollars a week each. Since then they’ve become a multi-million dollar industry in their own right… and, more important for them, have developed an amazing sense of confidence in what they are capable of doing.
So now we have them in the throes of a dispute with Screen Gems, who originally sorted out the television series. How this will work out is anybody’s guess. And certainly it is not for us to go into the why’s and wherefore’s of the dispute.
But it HAD to be mentioned here because any business dispute simply is bound to interfere with the future. The boys, for all we know, are dead sure what they want to do next but there may be things that are holding them back on the contract side.
Now let’s dig a little deeper into what COULD happen. First, they are determined to buy themselves a lot more time. When one considers the pressures, the sheer pace of their career thus far, one can only marvel at the fact that none of them has collapsed with some kind of breakdown. Fortunately they each have the constitution of an ox—and have managed to keep going even if they’ve felt like collapsing and not working for a month or two.
New things Permalink
Time IS all-important. They want time to work out new ideas and get new things going on records. They want to explore the wider aspects of show-business. Remember what Davy Jones said on this: “One day we would like to do a whole show at, say the London Palladium. For we essentially are a performing group. We’re a film-making group who got into a musical groove…”
In fact, Davy went on to say: “First of all we were four actors together. Now we’re four actors and four musicians. We’ve been changing as people, but some of the things we’ve been doing have not shown just how much we’ve changed.”
It’s no secret now that the Monkees weren’t completely happy with every episode of their TV series. Sure, they knew it was a massive job to come up with a new half-hour segment each and every week—but they still didn’t like the way that certain parts, like at the beginning of the programme in a series, were the same week in and week out. They wanted TIME to work out something different but right from the start they simply had to work to a tight schedule and more or less do what they were told.
Old hits Permalink
Hear Davy again: “We know we’re doing a world tour. Some of these countries haven’t seen us before, so we’ll be singing ‘I’m Believer’ and all the old hits, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be the last time we include such material. Otherwise the world will get the impression that we’re strictly limited, whereas in fact we’ve been building our ability all the way.”
What they want then is TIME… and Freedom! More freedom, anyway, to do what they want. Through circumstances completely beyond their control, they’ve come up against terrible criticism… over the series, over their records. It comes from inside pop music and television—because we know that their efforts have, in any case, delighted millions of fans. But the boys WANT that artistic appreciation. They want the so-called experts to see that they have the power to appeal to all age-groups and types of people.
There’s been talk of the three big TV spectaculars to be made in America. Fair enough, because the boys themselves would like to see the Monkees projected in this way. But until contracts are settled, how can anything be really certain? They want to work on TV with artists drawn from other parts of the business—but again how can they be sure it will all come off?
Says Davy again: “We only want what is due to us. Our last tour, grossed two million but we only made a tiny percentage of that… well, something has got to be changed. For us the next twelve months will be hard, I’m not denying that. We want to do the world tour and hope we’ll be allowed to do it.
“We’re the Monkees, right now. There’s a lot to do in that direction, if only we get the time and the freedom to do it all. In twenty years time, we might not be the Monkees. But for now there’s no point in everybody asking if I’m going solo or anything, because there are three other guys, my three buddies, back there who are in it with me.”
They’ve made their first full feature film and as you’ll have read elsewhere in Monkees Monthly, it’s very much THEIR own effort, Many of the stunts and ideas came swelling from the boys’ own brains to a large extent.
Pride Permalink
But talk to any of the Monkees and you get an instant sense of pride in what they have managed to achieve, artistically, despite having to work schedules that would frighten off most performers. They’re specially proud of their stage act—and of the plans they are creating right now to make it even more spectacular.
I believe we can look for quite a few changes of image. They’ll stay the Monkees, but will not be projected in the same way via records or television.
But the TV shows, live appearances and records will all come flowing our way just as soon as the ink is dry on those new contracts. So lets hope everybody signs them real quick!
