LITTLE DID DAVY AND THE MONKEES DREAM THAT—JUST WHEN THEIR WHOLE WORLD HAD SEEMED TO TURN ITS BACK ON THEM—ONE CITY AND ONE CONCERT WOULD START THE WHOLE MONKEE MADNESS ROARING SKYWARD ALL OVER AGAIN!
After Peter Tork announced that he was leaving the Monkees, Davy, Mike and Micky didn’t sit twiddling their thumbs for very long. They decided that it was time for “the new dawn of the Monkees”—and they set to work to bring this event about. If you’re a real Monkee “fanatic,” it would interest you to know that one of the first things the boys did was to re-negotiate their Screen Gems contract. What this really meant was that after all the smoke and fire, Davy, Micky and Mike ended up with more control over what they could do and what they wouldn’t do!
Tv spec—“dawn” or disaster? Permalink
“I figured we were bound to make a few mistakes at first,” Davy says, “and maybe one of our biggest mistakes was our TV spec. In a sense, Peter was no longer a Monkee when that show was done. He had already told us that he was going to leave and even though we were all together in the show—well, in a funny way we weren’t together. We were ‘together’ as friends, of course and we still are.”
The national press gave split decisions on the merits of the Monkees’ NBC-TV special 33 ⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee. Some reviewers said it was the most important thing the boys had ever done, while others thought it was noisy and incomprehensible.
“Well,” Davy recalls, “we liked it then and we like it now. I think one day that TV special will have much more meaning than it does at the moment. I think that we were a little bit ahead of our time in doing it.”
Whether the show seemed good or bad to you, of course, depends on your individual taste. Meanwhile, the Monkees have also been appearing as guests in some other TV shows. You saw all of the boys in ABC-TV’s The Johnny Cash Show in mid-May, and Davy was super in his vignette in the Grammy Awards on NBC-TV. And, of course you know that you’ll be seeing the Monkees as they were originally when CBS-TV reruns the old Monkee shows on Saturday mornings this coming fall.
Monkee concerts Permalink
Late in March, the “new” Monkees began to do concert tours on weekends all over the States. Mike, Davy and Micky had gotten together with Sam and the Goodtimes (who used to be the back-up group for Ike and Tina Turner) and created a fantastic stage show featuring, among other things, a duet by Sam and Davy. By the way, the backdrop for the whole show is silent movies—filmed by Mike and Micky themselves!
The boys’ first big weekend was in Vancouver, Canada. Though the house was only three-quarters full, the Monkees felt O.K. about that, seeing as how there had been very little advance publicity. But when they appeared in Seattle at the Coliseum the next night, things got worse. When Davy peered out from backstage just before the show to get a glimpse of the audience, he saw that the place was only half-filled!
“I guess that was one of the darkest hours of my life,” he recalls. “We got out there and gave everything we have—that’s something we’ll always do—but afterwards, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all over for us as Monkees.”
Davy’s worries and doubts melted completely when the Monkees appeared at the Birmingham Civic Center in mid-April. There they faced a sold-out, standing-room only, screaming audience of pure Monkee maniacs! It was suddenly like old times again! The same thing happened in other cities they played, including Charleston, Augusta, Chicago and so on.
Future concerts Permalink
At press time the Monkees had scheduled a host of further concerts all over America. Who knows—yours may be the town they are coming to next! If you want to find out, and you are dying to see Davy, Mike and Micky in person, read on! Here is the list of future Monkee Concerts scheduled:
June 31—Newport News, Virginia (sponsored by WGH Radio).
June 20—Springfield, Mass. (sponsored by WHYN Radio).
June 21-Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, Forest Hills, N.Y. (tickets on sale at all local Singer Sewing centers in the New York City area).
*July 5—Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim California.
*July 18—Madison, Wisconsin.
July 25—West Palm Beach, Florida.
July 26—Tampa, Florida (both of these Florida concerts are promoted by Golden Shows).
August 28–29—Colorado State Fair, Pueblo, Colorado.
For full information regarding all Monkee concerts, stay tuned to your local pop-rock radio stations and watch your local newspapers.
*Indicates tentative booking.
(All of the above shows are subject to cancellation without notice—but it is highly unlikely that any will be cancelled.)
