Fabulous Trouser Suit

BY MONTE VERDI

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[Magazine provided by Senti.]

An exclusive story by Derek Taylor

The Monkees are coming, so you might as well enjoy them, because that’s what you’re supposed to do!

There never was a more honest pinch than their dramatised finger-pop of a television series based on a rock’n’roll foursome, fringed, laughing and tumbling through a couple of dozen chapters of contrived accident.

The inspiration, clearly, is the Beatles, and the plot pattern comes directly from the paced excitement of “A Hard Day’s Night”.

The Monkees’ hit single, “Last Train to Clarksville”, made number one in the American Charts, and sold a million copies. Their album, simply titled The Monkees, also passed some massively established competitors to top the LP. charts. Their new single “I’m A Believer” has also taken off like a rocket in America.

The Monkees themselves are not a group in the Olde Caverne sense. They are not even musicians, though they have become musicianly—which, for the purpose of the television series, is enough.

The people planning the series auditioned hundreds of boys, and by process of elimination selected the four who looked right together, felt right together, sounded right together, and seemed most likely to become Monkees (whatever that term was going to mean).

And the pleasing thing about this calculated piece of chemistry is that it worked! The Monkees are now, like Pinocchio, real live boys. They have passed all the tests, survived the callous scrutiny of the music industry, shrugged off the sneer-jeers of the “real” groups. And if you like escapist entertainment, the Monkees are for you—carefully compounded, perfectly packaged like an individual fruit pie or a TV dinner.

And here they are: David Jones, 20; Micky Dolenz, 21; Mike Nesmith, 22 and Peter Tork, 22. Together they are the Monkees—harmless, happy, hopeful, humorous, home-made to an expensive “Do-It-Yourself Group Kit”.

I suppose there are worse ways of putting a rock’n’roll group together. Certainly there are better ways. But what the establishment of the Monkees has really done has been to signpost the end of whatever route the early, explosive Liverpool groups rough-mapped out.

If the Monkees can be “cast” like a soap opera, then we do indeed live in sophisticated times!

Well anyway, here they are, undoubtedly in for a long, long run on the world’s television screens. All the Universe loves rock’n’roll and if you can pick four Monkees out of five hundred potentials, then you can certainly replace one if he should lose his popularity rating.

Who is to say we haven’t got a pop Coronation Street or an Archers with amps?

For now, anyway, we have these four, very engaging lads. David Jones is the most obvious favourite and it is nice, though not necessary, that he is also the only British Monkee.

He was in the hit musical “Oliver” as the Artful Dodger, and in “Pickwick” with Harry Secombe. He is tiny and a jockey and very good too. From Manchester, now living in lovely-ugly Los Angeles and becoming rich and cheeky.

Micky Dolenz is very tall and looks like a young boxer does before the crunching gloves have begun to glaze his eyes and brutalise his skin. He wasn’t born in a truck (“Who was?” you may well ask), but his father was an actor, and at ten years of age he joined the cast of a series called “Circus Boy” on television. He has also appeared in “Peyton Place” and “Mr. Novak”. He is a good Monkee, and I am waiting for him to start worrying about the dangers of being involved in a long-running series which may “type-cast” him.

Reality Permalink

Micky was born in Los Angeles, which is one way of learning to live with reality!

Mike Nesmith was born in Dallas, Texas which is another.

He is the Monkee known as “Woolhat”, and when he was nineteen he learned the guitar. He became a country and western singer and followed in the steps of Cat Whittington and found his way to Hollywood, where the streets are paved with gold stars bearing the names of some truly appalling people who have become famous there.

“Woolhat” wears one, and it is very much part of the show. He looks right in it, and was probably wearing one before the Beatles ceased to be Silver.

He worked in a very good folk club in Los Angeles (Ledbetters), where he sang his own material.

Peter Tork may become the fave rave. He comes from Washington DC and has a rough grin which, in its infancy and youth, was practised in Connecticut (where he went to school), in Minnesota (where, at college, he prepared to be a teacher and didn’t become one), and in Greenwich Village (where, myth says, everyone is a folk singer, and almost everyone is).

Strangely he was playing at the Troubadour Club at around the same time as Nesmith was at rival Ledbetters, and it is probably helpful (though purely conversational) to point out that it was entirely coincidental that both should end up as Monkees! Neither helped the other in the casting, for they are, like everyone else in American television—bar the network bosses—quite without power.

Thus the Monkees in a capsule.

There are some good things you should know about them. One is that they don’t give a monkey’s… about public opinion which is in the Great Tradition Of Beatle-Launched Frank Talk.

When an American magazine asked for the standard loves and hates list, Peter Tork said, “I don’t keep a list like that at the top of my head.” He asked the magazine to print that and they did and it looked fine!

Mike Nesmith, lanky, long sideburned, gave his hates as iron, tips, grommets, set screws and hairspray, and I don’t believe he had any help from a publicist on that!

Contempt Permalink

In America, the show was powerfully promoted and long in preparation. I don’t recall any TV. series reaping so substantial and haphazard a harvest of contempt before anyone had seen it, heard the music, read the script or evaluated the personnel.

We were all in there, at the mass preview, muttering curses, fingers crossed for failure.

Lo and behold. It succeeded!

In lovely colour (write to your MP and ask him why you haven’t got colour TV) beautifully directed, spendidly edited with flair and sharp economy, musically elating, dramatically tight and right, the Monkees made it first episode out.

They pranced through a field of sophisticated corn with so much leaping elan that only the very mean could withhold mental applause.

“Last Train to Clarksville”, a very skilfully constructed song, well recorded moved easily up the Charts, followed by the theme tune “We’re the Monkees” and flanked by the million dollar album.

It was clear that nothing at all had been left unguarded. Someone, somewhere had said: “This is going to make it. We will make it.”

Enjoy the Monkees. They enjoy it.

Watch out for the Monkees in their own thirty-minute television show scheduled to appear on BBC-1 any moment now!

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

Terrifically simple! Simply Terrific!

in Courtaulds Sarille

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[Magazine provided by Senti.]

Here’s raver Maureen O’Grady with more facts on America’s overnight successes, and now Britain’s favourites—the Monkees.

Last month Hollywood writer Derek Taylor told you about the current hottest property in the States, the Monkees. Now, I can tell you about one of them first hand, for English Monkee Davy Jones recently paid a surprise visit here to see his family and go to his sister’s wedding, and I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to a breakfast reception held in his honour!

Twenty-one year old Davy, now resident in the States, first went over to America with the show “Oliver” and then “Pickwick”. In between this last show and “The Monkees” he appeared on several TV, shows like “Ben Casey” and got two discs into the American charts—“What Are We Going To Do?” and “The Girl From Chelsea”. David signed for “The Monkees” series, whereas the rest of the group—Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith were picked as Monkees out of five hundred applicants after answering a newspaper ad. requesting “four insane boys aged 17–21 required for acting roles in new TV. series.”

No-one could have guessed at the time just how popular the Monkees would become

It was only after the fourth episode of the show that the Monkees became the biggest happening in pop America, with a guaranteed thirty million viewers.

Davy told me, “On the show we sing two songs every week, and play the part of a pop group. One week we might be in a Western with gunfighting, next week we might get involved with bank robbers, then it might be the Mafia. It could be anything. As well as the TV. show we’ve just started personal appearances. Our first one was in Hawaii and we played for one hour and ten minutes, whereas most groups only play for about twenty-five minutes! Apart from singing together as a group, we also sing with different backing groups. For instance, I’d sing a Tony Newley-type number, while Micky, Mike and Pete do Motown, Bo Diddley and folk stuff. We’ve got quite a variety of music between us.”

Coming from Manchester Davy has the usual Mancunian personality, friendly and humorous. He’s short and cute, with hair that flicks up as it touches his shoulders. “It usually curls under” he said. “I’m glad that the customs man didn’t open my bag, I had four hair rollers on the top! I’m called Hayley Mills at the studio!”

Apparently very long hair for boys is still ‘in’ in Hollywood, especially if it’s bleached! Davy said the Monkees get upset about one thing—the rumour that they don’t play their own instruments. “Someone’s going to be in for a shock when we start our big tour in America” he said. “How do they think we’re going to get by if we only pretend to play? They’re mad!”

On the record scene, the Monkees have chalked up one phenomenal success after another. Their first L.P. “Meet the Monkees” sold three million, five hundred thousand copies after only two months on sale and all their singles have reached the top of the U.S. Charts.

“Most shops in America are out of stock of our singles as a matter of fact,” said Davy.

Thrilled Permalink

It looks as if the same thing might happen here in Britain!

Davy says that one of the reasons why the Monkees are so big in America is that English artistes in the States are spoiling things for themselves. “Herman especially” he said. “He has had about five singles out at the same time over there—it’s madness. At the most we have only three singles in the U.S. charts at the one time—I’m a Believer’, ‘Stepping Stone’ and ‘Last Train To Clarkesville’, and I think that three is enough. We don’t want to over-expose ourselves.

“We’re thrilled with our success here. We thought the series had a good chance. I’m sure everyone’s sick of programmes like ‘Juke Box Jury’ and ‘Top of the Pops’.”

The life of a Monkee isn’t all thrills. They’re up at seven in the morning, working till seven at night, five days a week. “With my spare time, which isn’t much, I like driving my motorbike down to the beach, do a bit of swimming and bowling.”

In America the Monkees’ story is the Beatles’ story all over again. They have set off fads like Monkee clothes, Monkee belts, Monkee bubble gum. But comparing the Monkees to the Beatles led Davy to say, “We didn’t intend to sound like them. We just wanted to sound commercial!”

Well, they’ve certainly done that!

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

RAVE man Mike Grant’s news, views and gossip on your favourite pop people.

Pop poll Permalink

Worst Pop Person—male: Napoleon XIV for making “They’re Coming To Take Me Away”.

Worst Pop Person—female: Mrs. Miller for ever having opened her mouth at all!

Worst Group: The Mothers of Invention for cutting the most dangerous nonsense on their Freak-Out LP.

Worst Interviewee: Bob Dylan for his patronising attitude towards the Press.

Worst Publicist: No special case, but all those who cannot yet distinguish between a news item and an anecdote.

There never was a pop person more obviously marked for enjoying life than Donovan, and he fills his future with travelling—Greece, Mexico, America—and his spare moments cramming the thoughts of others into his mind. In his bookcase at present are all kinds of literature on marine biology.

“So many people are looking out to the stars to discover new things,” said Don. “I can foresee what will happen there—we’re going to land on the moon and then on the planets—it’s all predetermined.

“I’m more interested now in inner space. You go a few miles down into our seas and no-one knows what they will find. Unbelieveable forms of life that we know nothing about, right under our noses. In a few years time I intend to go on expeditions of my own—deep sea diving. Seas have always fascinated me.

“When we were in Mexico we used to take a little boat out and at night you could dip your oar or hand in the water and it would sparkle like diamonds. Millions of little creatures shining like stars in the water as it was broken or disturbed.”

Also on Don’s schedule at present are six children’s TV. programmes for which he is thinking up new ideas, and a few weeks’ appearance at the Old Vic—where he will play some of Shakespeare’s sonnets to his own guitar interpretations in the play “As You Like It”.

To make the Top Ten with a first record is quite a happening! And the group that has made it? The Move, from Birmingham, with their disc “Night Of Fear”. On stage they usually smash up a few television sets for good measure, and I heard they also had a couple of strippers up there with them while they were chopping up a big American car.

“The audiences these days love destruction” they say! Incidentally, Move man Roy Wood wrote “Night Of Fear”.

New to you Permalink

A name to watch out for is the Loot—a five-man Andoverian group recently signed by Troggs’ manager Larry Page. Already with their first disc, “Baby”, released on January 20, they are out to emulate the success of their fellow townsmen. Guitarist Dave Wright was formerly a member of the original Troggs.

Things have been stirring down in the Scout Hut behind Mick Avory’s house in West Molesey. The Kinks have been in session—working up new material for their stage act. I dropped in on Mick for a cup of tea recently and he was able to tear himself away from an oil painting of a small Parisian scene he is doing to give me a progress report.

“We’ve got two new Bob Dylan numbers in the act—‘You Go Your Way’ and ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie”,” he told me. “We’ve cut the smaller venues and clubs right out of our schedule now and we’re just playing the really big towns and dates abroad. With a tour abroad about every two months we can clear the same money we’re getting by tearing up and down the country from John O’ Groats to Lands End—we’ve had that scene. We’re looking for different things to do.”

Let’s hope they find them so that we can see them—we see far too little of this talented group.

Quote of the month Permalink

RONNIE BOND OF THE TROGGS

“The secret of a good pop singer these days is being able to project the voice off the record and get inside someone’s head. Reg can do it—so can Jagger and Tina Turner.”

Spencer Davis, who spent nearly two years at Berlin University, recounted a story for me of one of the lighter aspects during the building of that infamous Wall.

“As you may remember the Berlin Wall went up virtually overnight in 1962,” said Spence. “I had a friend who was living right on the border, just outside the University. He had just bought himself a new tool shed—when he woke up on the morning of August 13th and looked out into his back garden he discovered the Wall had been built right through the garden cutting it in half! He had a house in the Western sector and a tool shed in the East!”

Thought for the month Permalink

Now that the Monkees have shown us that you can do something new with pop presentation, how about some enterprising British company signing Dick Lester, to put Britain back in the picture with one of our own groups, or is American initiative going to triumph once more over British originality?

Fats Domino has never managed to capture, in Britain, the huge following he receives in the U.S., where his albums crash regularly into the million sellers, but his career looks like receiving a shot in the arm this year when he tops the London Saville Theatre concert on March 27. One of Domino’s biggest hits, “Blueberry Hill” is included on the new Walker Brothers’ LP “Images”.

The informer Permalink

Mike “Woolhat” Nesmith, the only married Monkee, has a young son, Christian.

Astrologer Maurice Woodruff predicts that this year Paul McCartney will marry and the name of the girl will be a surprise!

After their break-up, Mick Jagger seen around town with Marianne Faithfull and Chrissie Shrimpton seen around with old friend Georgie Bean.

Graham Nash and Gary Leeds evicted from their flat the day after Maureen O’Grady’s RAVE interview!

New singer and guitarist Jimi Hendrix impressed John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Graham Nash, Gary Leeds and Bill Wyman at London’s Blaises Club recently.

Beach Boy Mike Love now a daddy!

The Move say that they hate their “Night Of Fear” record!

Paul Revere and the Raiders named top American group in polls recently. Lead singer Mark Lindsay came second to Dylan in the U.S. solo chart, and third to McCartney and Lennon in the International section!

Mike Leander to produce the first LP for actress Julie Christie.

Why does Cream member Ginger Baker throw discs at publicist Ray Williams?

Donovan’s friend Gipsy Dave a baked bean connoisseur.

Has Chris Andrews burnt himself out?

Trogg Pete Staples has written a hit song for someone with “Oh No!”

Davy Jones of the Monkees a horse-racing gambler.

Good to see Jim Reeves, Val Doonican, Frank Ifield and the Bachelors in the Top Twenty wasn’t it?

Scott Engel’s move from monastery to Playboy Club was good going!

Trogg Chris Britton converted Tim Hardin enthusiast.

Is that a “muffstache” in the Spencer Davis group?

Andrew Oldham’s new office a kind of magic cave.

Kink Mick Avory contemplating painting holiday in Sardinia.

London’s Bag o’ Nails Club becoming a veritable Hall of “Fame”!

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

Exclusively for RAVE, Peter Tork has filled in Marcel Proust’s famous questionnaire, that exposes a person’s true inner character through their answers to selected questions. And here it is! RAVE was the first to try out the questionnaire on the Beatles, the Stones and the Walker Brothers—with amazing results!

* Marcel Proust is a famous French author and poet who died at the beginning of the century. His questionnaires became famous for their ability to search and expose true character.

1. What is, for you, the height of misery? Answering questions.
2. Where would you like to live? Two blocks from here.
3. What is your idea of happiness? Cynthia, Jane, and Marie
4. What mistake do you disregard most frequently? Past ones.
5. Who is your favourite personality in history? Eliot Mertz
6. Who are your favourite heroines in real life? Elizabeth and Taylor
7. Who is your favourite musician? Durward Kirby.
8. What quality do you like most in a woman? Ab.
9. What quality do you prefer in a man? Tall
10. What is your most admirable virtue? Patience in answering questions.
11. What is your favourite occupation? Feeding monkey wrenches bananas
12. Who would you like to have been? Anywhere else
13. What is the main feature of your character? Right after the short subjects
14. What qualities do you appreciate most in a friend? Agreeable.
15. What is the main fault in your character? Hardly any.
16. What is the greatest misfortune that could happen to you? Someone else That you print these answers
17. What would you like to be? Taller.
18. What is your favourite colour? milk
19. What is your favourite flower? 3:30 a.m.
20. What is your favourite bird: The white-throated shuttlecock
21. Who are your favourite heroes in real life? Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz.
22. What are your favourite names? Fast and slow.
23. Who do you hate most? Liberace’s Aunt Sarah.
24. What historical character do you despise most? Arthur Somerset
25. What military event do you admire most? None
26. What reform do you admire most? Reform who?
27. What natural gift would you like to have? Manhattan island.
28. How would you like to die? hardly
29. What is the present state of your mind? Frozen
30. What is your motto? My fotto’s wife

Peter Tork: What his questionnaire reveals about him Permalink

His answers reveal a fine intelligence and a strong character. His mind is precise, decisive and forceful, but these characteristics are partly hidden by his readiness to laugh, his good nature and easy-going attitude. He is clown-like, tends to be free and easy, rather bohemian.

Separating the true Peter Tork from the false is difficult because he likes to play many parts. However, he believes very much in what he does and has a spontaneous kindness. Amid all the clowning, his critical intelligence is always at work, preventing him from going too far.

Generous and unselfish, he is a gay and sympathetic person who does not believe in getting bogged down.

What is strong in his character: he has intelligence and high spirits, good self control, is good-natured, gay and sociable. He knows how to adapt himself, is active and practical, and has artistic talent with strong commercial aptitudes.

What is weak in his character: he has a tendency to be too sceptical. He worries and is not generally satisfied with his situation in life. He has a distrusting nature, is too proud and a little conceited.

Conclusions: Peter Tork is an astute person with a practical sense and a desire for achievement which is often frustrated by his love of fooling.

(Analysis by International Psycho-Service, Paris)

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

Here are RAVE’s own comments on the fantastic election result. And to see if the rave you voted for was placed, look below.

Yes, Davy Jones is your Rave Of The Year!

What a fantastic achievement for our own pint-sized Monkee. And he wasn’t even known last year! Davy has certainly proved that you can be small in inches but big in popularity!

Scott Engel, now solo since the Walkers’ split, ran a close second to Davy and is the only one of last year’s raves to stay in the top three—a wonderful feat, especially with so many new, talented faces on the scene.

And talking of faces, that small one, Steve Marriott, got your votes rolling in to put him in third position!

We are sure that Davy will be delighted to hear the result and to know that his fellow Monkees are also well placed. It is a great honour for him to achieve such popularity in his own country, especially after working so long in America.

Both Scott and Davy are faced with problems for the year ahead.

Solo Scott Permalink

Scott and the other Walkers, John and Gary, have gone their own ways and Scott will be working hard to build himself into a top- flight solo entertainer. We have no doubt that he can do it and that his thousands of fans will stay with him throughout his career.

Steve Marriott didn’t have to move very far to win his place in your hearts, but he’s certainly gone a long way. The Small Faces climbed from strength to strength in the past year and Kenny Jones, Plonk Lane and Ian McLagan all got lots of your votes.

Next year? Permalink

Who will be the top rave next year? Well, Paul Jones is this year’s number eight, which is very good for so short a solo career, and after “Privilege” and other exciting plans he has for the future, who knows what he’ll do in a year’s time?

Or will there be another sensational group like the Monkees? Who knows? That’s what makes it so exciting. Congratulations, again, Davy, from all RAVE readers!

How you voted Permalink

Your top ten raves

1. Davy Jones - 5,773 votes
2. Scott Engel - 5,005 votes
3. Steve Marriott - 2,500 votes
4. Cat Stevens - 1,126 votes
5. Micky Dolenz - 1,000 votes
6. Paul McCartney - 591 votes
7. Peter Tork - 337 votes
8. Paul Jones - 326 votes
9. Mick Jagger - 248 votes
10. Ian McLagan - 175 votes

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

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[Magazine provided by Senti.]

While the Queen awards her New Year Honours to special citizens, we decided to award our own New Year Honours to all the stars of the pop world who have helped to make the past raving year so great! Our Order Of RAVE is a special tribute to them. All your favourite stars are honoured here, and for lots of different reasons. So read on and see if you agree with us! Our first Order Of RAVE is presented…

To Davy Jones,

for being such a nice, sweet person and coming home to see his dad whenever he gets a break from being a Monkee. And, of course, for winning our Rave Of The Year pop personality poll, which means that you must agree with us!

To Peter Frampton

of the Herd, who has been tipped as having a very big future in the pop world before him. He’s also sweet, gorgeous and very raveable, with the look of a young Scott about him, which can’t be bad! Watch out for him in ’68.

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

Jennifer Moss (Lucille Hewitt of Coronation Street), who has just returned from America after spending two weeks with Davy, talks exclusively to RAVE readers about the real Davy Jones that she knows—and loves!

“I wanted to kiss you but I didn’t have the courage. I was so shy.”

So said a young man not noted for his shyness, especially with girls! But then Davy Jones was only fourteen at the time and the object of his devotion, Miss Jennifer Moss, was a cool, worldly-wise fifteen year old!

At the time they were sitting on a bed in a hotel in Leeds, strumming guitars and singing. “Sounds very improper, but believe me it was so proper it was untrue,” said Jenny. Both were young actors playing radio parts and whiling away a Saturday night in a strange town. Now, six years later, Davy Jones, you may have noticed, is the chief heart-throb of the Monkees and Jenny Moss is a star in television’s “Coronation Street” And it was just up the street from the “Rover’s Return”, deep in the heart of Granada Television, that I spoke to Jenny, or as she is perhaps better known—Lucille Hewitt. She had just returned from America, where she spent two weeks with Davy.

An invitation Permalink

Theirs is a friendship that has lasted the ups and downs of show business careers. Jenny, now a veteran of seven years in Sharples land, recently went to America on holiday and Davy invited her to spend a couple of weeks at his Hollywood home.

But their story really began about seven years ago.

“We did a play called ‘June Evening’ for the BBC. That was the first time I met David—I call him David and he calls me Jennifer. At the time he was showing me some photographs. I asked him if they were of his mother and father and he sald ‘That’s me Dad and that’s me Mum, she died last week’. He was the saddest little boy you could possibly imagine. He was much smaller than I was. I must have been four feet, nine and he was four, two or three. When we had some photos taken together he stood on a hill to look the same size as me!

“Davy and I had one particular scene together and he had never worked before but he stole the whole scene from mel I thought then that he was tremendously talented.

“Then he went to Newmarket and he used to ‘phone me up because he had a crush on me at the time. He was very young and people do foolish things at that age! He spoke with a very pronounced Manchester accent which he tried to cover up, and he still remembers how he used to mispronounce words!”

In the past few years Jenny and Davy have, of necessity, rarely seen each other, although they’ve kept in touch by ‘phone and letter.

“He called me one day,” Jenny remembered, “and I said I was going into hospital and that afterwards I was thinking of going to the States for a holiday. He said come over and stay—so I went! Well, it meant I didn’t have to pay for my digs!

“I went to Los Angeles and he met me, but it was all very tense because he had to go in front of the American Service draft board the next day. I stayed with him for two weeks at his house with a swimming pool way out in the Hollywood hills. Marvellous.”

Here Jenny broke off as she was called back on the set for a shout up, in true “Coronation Street” tradition, with another denizen of that “typical” community. Somehow the comparison between Lucille Hewitt’s rather tatty boutique and Davy Jones’ luxury house seemed rather ludicrous. It was interesting to hear Jenny say that she had helped Davy choose stock for his own boutique which he has just opened in New York. It’s called “Zilch”, which ardent Monkeephiles will recognise as the name of a weird, talking track off their LP. “Headquarters”.

Back once more from the set, Jenny continued. “When you meet him, David is a laughing, gay boy, but I think in many ways he’s a very lonely person. He has still not got over his mother’s death. The paintings in his house, for instance, are lonely. They’re paintings of hands, of open sea. Whether he’s consciously lonely I don’t know, I never discussed it with him. There are always lots of people running in and out of the house. It’s like a station! He has a fairly large, mixed circle of friends. Some I liked, some I didn’t like. There are a lot of hangers-on and he’s consclous of it. I was very aware of the fact that he is a rich young man in a strange country, but that’s because I knew him before.

“He’s changed, of course. He’s impatient these days, if you’re working at that pressure you’re bound to be. It was nice in the evenings, when we were just watching television and there was nobody there. He didn’t have to impress anybody, himself included. I found that underneath he was still the same very gentle, kind, rather lonely boy. I still call him a boy and I don’t mean it disparagingly. I mean that he still has some naivity. He has grown up in many ways more than I have, because he has had to be so quick, but he’s missed out on lots of things.

Very moral Permalink

“Davy doesn’t have any particular girlfriend. If he does I didn’t see her, and he’s not likely to have me staying there and then bring various birds back is he? David is basically very moral, he has very high morals, and I know he was worried about going into the army because of the effect it might have had on his father.

“I don’t think he would have minded going into the army to fight, but they wanted him to go into entertainments. He told me he sald to them: ‘I’m not going in to entertain, if I go in I go in to fight’. He’s not a coward, but if you were in his position, making all that money, and you’d just got to the top of the tree, how would you feel? He’s not a violent person anyway.

“David’s a very considerate person. When I arrived in the States, although he was ill and really feeling bad about this draft board thing, he wouldn’t let me make myself a meal, he made it himself. He doesn’t expect people to wait on him hand and foot. He made me the best cup of tea I had in America. Apparently his father sends it out to him with cakes and biscuits. He got me to cook him some things the English way!”

How does this extraordinary young man appear to somebody who has known him and liked him for years?

“I am very fond of David. I would go as far as to say I love David, but I am not IN love with him. I keep saying that he’s kind and generous and gentle, but he IS. One day he’ll make somebody a super husband and father. He’s not interested in marriage yet, he’d be a fool if he was. He’s very career minded and publicity minded. I am more interested in David Jones, person than Davy Jones, star. I find it hard to realise how much he has. He has a show biz veneer, but he’s basically a home-loving boy who loves his father very much. And Mr. Jones is immensely proud of his son.

“David doesn’t like fuss, he hates to be fussed over. He likes to be alone. He’s a very easy-going character. If he was going to the studios and I wasn’t he would make sure there was a car at my disposal and that his secretary was there to go with me. Everything I wanted he would lay on for me. I went out to buy some trousers one day and he said ‘Why the hell have you done that?’ because his trousers fit me. So I’ve brought four pairs of his back with me! No doubt I could sell them for a huge price!

“One thing is obvious now though. He’s got past the stage where he used to trust everybody. Sooner or later he’ll really be able to size people up. He spends a lot of money, too. He would do something like give me a fifty dollar bill and tell me to go and buy some groceries. I would tell him that I didn’t need that much, but he’d insist! He was going to buy a ranch, but now he’s going to buy an apartment house which is a much more sensible idea. He’s also going to be a very good business man. He’s got a new business manager now because there was a lot of trouble with his old one.

“David’s house is decorated very tastefully. He has a baby grand piano in the lounge. I don’t know if he plays it. Micky was the only one I ever heard play it. There are a few guitars around, and some drums in the garage. David told me that Micky’s going to play the guitar and he’ll take over on drums.

“The house has two very large bedrooms, one with his hysterical circular bed in it. I got into it (he’d given up his room to me) and I didn’t know where to sleep on it. I usually like to sleep on the edge of beds, but his was a bit difficult—no edges! On the door is a poster saying ‘War is not healthy for children. Love living things’. All across the paintwork is ‘Make Love Not War’, which is under an ultra-violet light, so when it’s lit up it’s a psychedelic painting. There are clothes galore there. It was a very clean muddle!

“One evening David and decided to have a quiet time watching television. We were sitting reminiscing and the ‘phone rang. It was some girls who had found out the number and they giggled and laughed. David put the ‘phone down but it happened again, two or three times. And he said ‘You answer it and say you’re my wife’. I thought this was a dangerous thing to say. However, I picked the ‘phone up and a voice sald ‘Can we speak to Davy?’ I said ‘Do you want to speak to my husband?’ There was terrible confusion and I heard them saying ‘It must be true because she’s English.’ I said, ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning and you shouldn’t ‘phone this late’. Meanwhile Davy, in the background, was cradling his arms saying ‘Baby, baby’! I said ‘My husband’s had a very trying day and you’re going to waken the baby’, and put the ‘phone down! “While I was with David somebody stole his dog, Suzy. He was very upset. Now he’s got a cat called Tibs. He’s also got a lot of records—more of the Beatles than anybody else.

Davy’s girls Permalink

“When it comes to girls I suppose people make him seem like Mickey Mouse, but he’s not, he’s a normal, healthy boy. When I was there I was treated with the greatest of respect, which was a great compliment to me. If he goes out with a girl it’s for one night only. I mean, how can he differentiate between people who want Monkee Davy Jones and the real David Jones. He doesn’t admit it but I think this worries him. It must worry anybody who’s as sensitive as he is.”

Jenny spent two weeks with an old friend. Both of them have gone a long way since they first met, but they still retain close links. In many respects they are different people from the two kids who sat around singing and strumming guitars in a hotel room. Davy has almost become two people, the star and the person. Jenny is only interested in the star from a professional point of view. She is interested in the person because he is someone of whom she is very fond. As she put it: “He knows he lives in a false world. With phoney people he acts phoney. When he’s with real people he’s real. When we were together he was David Jones.”

[Magazine provided by Senti.]

Suddenly Sajid Is Being Compared to Davy as the World’s Grooviest New Star! How True are the Feud Rumors?

The deep look of wonder behind Sajid’s shining brown eyes is increasing every day. He can’t believe the love and success shown him here in America. It’s happened quickly with the arms of fans everywhere reaching out, clutching Sajid and telling him he’s their newest fave.

Being a stranger in a new land is difficult. Saj is grateful for everything done for him and, in his own quiet way, he returns kindnesses shown him. But he’s upset about some current stories being printed. One of the worst of these is the rumor that Sajid and Davy Jones are feuding.

Rarely speaking all his thoughts aloud, Sajid keeps many things buried inside. But when something hurts, he’s got to let out his feelings. The Davy story is one that must be put straight and Sajid is the only person who can do this.

What really happened Permalink

Several months ago an uninformed magazine printed a story saying that Sajid was going to become a Monkee or join the Monkees in their show. This was simply an attempt to hitch Sajid’s popularity on the tail of the Monkees and especially Davy Jones.

Monkees laughed Permalink

When the Monkees heard about this they laughed it off as another made up story just for the sake of something to print. But Sajid was more concerned than anyone else. He didn’t need publicity at the sake of anyone else and especially the Monkees. And the thing that concerned him most was the fear that Davy might be offended. After all, Davy Jones was a talented and very successful star and Sajid was just beginning his career in this country.

Late last year Sajid was invited to attend the TIGER BEAT-FaVE Christmas party at the Bel Air hotel. He was especially excited because he knew there would be lots of stars there and he had yet to meet many of them. On this particular night, Sajid took extra care to dress beautifully. He wore his dark blue jacket, a deep red scarf and several pairs of love beads. He washed his hair and brushed it until it gleamed. Then he took a very long time in front of the mirror, making sure he was just right. Saj is very careful about making a good impression and tonight was an important one to him.

Meets Davy Permalink

There were many stars at the party, but the one Saj was naturally drawn to was David Jones. Davy entered the room very late, as he had been shooting all day. Immediately all eyes were on him as he shook hands all around the room. Sajid was just as excited at seeing Davy for the first time as any fan would be. He had watched the Monkees ever since they began on television and loved the show. Secretly, as Saj’s eyes followed Davy around the room, he envied him. Not because Davy was a top star but because he was a working actor, spending every day in front of a camera.

Acting was what Sajid was cut out for and now that “Maya” had been canceled he was back in school once again. He missed working more than anything so naturally this topic of conversation came up immediately when Davy was introduced to Saj.

Davy’s bright, happy and easygoing way impressed Sajid quickly. He knew why everyone loved Davy at first sight. There was a realness about him that even the Monkee cameras couldn’t catch. Davy was equally impressed by Sajid.

They’re alike Permalink

Since both Saj and Davy are not Americans, many of their ways are similar. They both had been raised to work and work hard. Each is a success in his homeland. Saj in India and Davy in England. There is a formality about each boy that the other immediately picked up. As they talked each knew that he liked the other a great deal. Davy had watched “Maya” many times and regretted the fact that it would no longer be on television.

When Davy inquired what Saj was planning, Sajid revealed that at the moment he was free of movie and TV commitments. Quick to catch on to a good idea, Davy told Saj about the Monkee feature film that was about to go into production. He told Saj all about the wild non-plot picture that was to have a million things happening within 90 minutes of screen time. Davy thought it would be a groovy idea if Sajid were to have a part in the film.

Sajid laughed as Davy told him all about what was going to happen on the screen. He knew right then that he would love being in the film. But he didn’t expect that there’d be a part for him. The movie was just about ready to begin shooting.

Deep down inside Sajid was excited but he didn’t want Davy to know it and likewise Davy was excited because he liked Sajid very much and could see about him a quality that would definitely make him a star.

No film role Permalink

That night, after the party, Sajid lay awake a long time. He thought about Davy and smiled to himself. It was fabulous of Davy to even suggest that he appear in the Monkee film. Whether or not it happened, he would always be grateful for Davy’s idea. He thought, too, about how they were alike. Both of them had worked long and hard on their careers and both understood what it meant to have sadness and pain in their lives as well as the great joy of fame.

Sajid wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t cast in the Monkee movie. Davy had carried his idea to the front office at Screen Gems, but it just wasn’t possible at this late date to work Sajid in the film in a part equal to his talents.

So here’s where the story began that Sajid was going to join the Monkees and from this point on magazines began linking Sajid and Davy together by even suggesting that Davy was worried about Sajid’s growing popularity. None of this is true.

Today, though the boys’ lives and careers don’t run hand in hand, they are good friends. Sajid knows Davy Jones better than most people ever can because he understands Davy as a person. He knows what it’s like to be a stranger in a new land and to face a career that is possibly the hardest in the world. He also feels the conflicts and the desires within Davy Jones, wanting to be good to all his fans and still give the most energy he can to his career.

Sajid respects Davy, both as a person and as a star. Even if their personal lives are not close there is no competition between them and especially no jealousy. Sajid’s life goes on as does Davy’s and each in his own way is making the world a happier and more exciting place for those who love them.

When I meet Davy Permalink

When I meet Davy, and someday I know I will, I’m not going to scream and charge after him! Instead I am going to walk up and kiss him lightly on the cheek, hand him a bunch of flowers which I will have for him, smile, say hello, and then… faint!

Cindie Lacy
Oakland, Calif.

A different concert Permalink

Of all the concerts I have seen, the best by far was the Association’s. Their show was different! They played some of the best songs I’ve heard from any group! In between songs they said and did some of the funniest things. They really made you feel like you knew them personally.

Keep up the good work!

Taffy
Dayton, Ohio

Gone on Sajid Permalink

I’m gone on Sajid Khan! I’ve even named my room after his Bombay home, which of course is named “Shalimar.” Please, please, please have more stories and pictures on Sajid! And thanks for all the stuff you’ve done on tall, dark and handsom [sic] Saj!

A Sajid-Lover
Towson, Md.

Deprived Permalink

Believe me when I say that Kansas City, Missouri is a deadpan city! I know what I’m talking about! It’s so deadpan that “Happening ’68” is not shown here! Isn’t it awful that we should be deprived of such a with-it show for wrestling?!

Saturdays are Sad
Kansas City, Mo.

Loves the Buckinghams! Permalink

I’m just crazy about the Buckinghams ever since they came to Peoria recently! I got to meet them as they were leaving, and I got a kiss from all of them! Come back soon guys, ’cause I luv ya!

Debby Sand
Peoria, Ill.

Is it true? Permalink

Is it true Phil Volk (once Fang of the Raiders) married Tina Mason?

Disappointed Fan
Lind, Calif.

Yes, Phil married the former “Action” dancer.

Thank you Permalink

Not too long ago, I wrote in asking you to print something on the Buffalo Springfield instead of wasting ¾ of your space on those lucky groups, such as the Monkees. Well, all I can say is thank you! In the next issue I got you printed lots on other truly talented and hard-working groups (like the Springfield) who need more help to get the popularity they deserve.

Some people don’t realize how many other very good groups there are besides the Monkees!

Feather
San Antonio, Tex.

Hard of hearing Permalink

I was just thinking about what one of my teachers was saying today. She told us that all the guys in rock and roll groups, and the people who expose their ears to loud music for long periods of time are partially deaf by the time they’re 30!

Really, guys in rock and roll groups are so rich by the time they are 30 they could afford to have a hundred operations on their ears. But why should this happen when they make so many people happy? I simply adore the Association, and if this ever happened to them, I’d die!

Gail Arpia
San Diego, Calif.

A normal fan Permalink

I was one of the lucky people to see a Raider concert and it was great! I took 24 pictures of them, almost tore the shirt off the man sitting next to me, screamed, cried and did everything a normal fan would do!

When they come to Chicago on their next tour, I’ll be there!

Vanessa Soderberg
Skokie, Ill.

Sally Field, a hippie? Permalink

I just read in a magazine that Sally Field “is now wearing hippie clothes, much to the consternation of ABC executives who fear the publicity.”

Well! From what I know and have heard Sally Field say, I’m sure she is not wearing the clothes and beads just for publicity. She’s wearing them because she wants to! Because she feels right in them! It’s her life, and she’s 21 which means she is no longer a child. I wish people would realize this and leave her alone!

Sally, you’re all right… just don’t let people push you around!

Jeanne Rimes
Topeka, Kan.

Groups to be proud of Permalink

This is to all you kids who say that the eastern states don’t have any groups to be proud of. Sure, California has the Raiders, Dino, Desi and Billy and lots of other groups. But we have the Cowsills! And they’re enough to keep anybody happy! So I say, COWSILLS FOREVER!

Susi Griffing
Truxton, N.Y.

7 going on 14 Permalink

My brother is a seven-year-old teenager. He buys all the new records, he wears love beads, he buys TIGER BEAT, he dances, and he comes to all my parties. He’s even cut out all the colored pics from his magazines and has put them on his wall. Every morning I get up to Monkee songs. Disgusting, isn’t it?

13 Years Old
Hollywood, Calif.

Don’t cut Dino up! Permalink

I get a little tired of reading letters these girls write in cutting up Dino Martin because he now has blond hair, wears white socks, a scarf around his neck or “looks” conceited! He had to dye his hair for a movie, and anyway it’s his business if he wants to change his hair color! And how can anybody judge a guy on what color or type clothes he wears? And they say they know he’s conceited by the look on his face!

How does anyone have the right to write in cutting up someone like that when they don’t even know him? Dino is a great guy, and he will remain that way no matter what color his hair is or what kind of clothes he wears!

Belinda Cyckevic
Hopewell, Va.

Groovy lips Permalink

I read in one of your issues that some girl thought Davy Jones had wrinkles on his lips! Well, just want to say that I’ve tried them on for size, and they’re far from wrinkled! What a thing to say about groovy Davy!

Kissed him once
LaCrescenta, Calif.

At Last!

Here’s your chance to find out if YOU’RE the Perfect Girl for Davy Jones or Sajid Khan.

It’s easy… just follow our instructions, answer the questions on these pages, and you’ll discover the True Answer to the most important question ever… Have fun and good luck!

Computer dating is really the new thing! There are literally hundreds of organizations eager to find “ideal” dates for men and women across the country.

Have you ever wondered how you’d match up with your fave? Would you be his ideal date or would the evening end in disaster? Now is your chance to find out!

Just fill out the questionnaire on this page. Then flip to pages 62 & 63 where Davy and Sajid have filled out their questionnaires. Could be you’re the one they’re looking for!

NAME __________

How to fill out your Tiger Beat Date-Mate questionnaire:

1. For sections A and B complete all the blanks and mark either yes or no, whichever applies to you, where there is a choice.
2. For section C mark your interests and those you’d like to have in your fave date. Mark an “X” in the boxes where the items listed are meaningful to you. If they are not meaningful to you, put an “X” in the “Not Important” column.
3. Then flip to pages 62 & 63 and see how you match up with your fave!

A. All about me Permalink

My age is ___
I would be willing to date a person as young as ___ and as old as ___
My height is ___
I would be willing to date a person as short as ___ and as tall as ___
Do you have any serious problems?
Would you be willing to date a person with such a problem?
Do you try to discover and remove your faults and weaknesses?
Can you stand alone in a crisis?
Is your health what it should be?
Is your sense of humor enough?
Is your mental attitude usually positive?
Are you usually cheery?
Are you punctual?
Is it easy for you to express yourself?

B. What I believe and how I feel Permalink

Are your feelings easily hurt by criticism from others?
Are you usually happy in your outlook on life?
Do you lose your temper easily?
Do you enjoy social activities more than the quietness of home?
Would you rather have a relatively quiet date than an outgoing one?
Are you troubled with shyness?
Are you strongly attracted to members of the opposite sex?
Do you have an affectionate and warm nature?
Is organized religion a great force for good in the world?
Do you attend church regularly?

C. My interests and his Permalink

Me / Mate / Not Important

Intelligence level Permalink

• Average or below
• Above average
• Well above average
• Extremely high

Build Permalink

• Light
• Medium
• Slightly heavy
• Heavy

Appearance Permalink

• Very attractive
• Above average
• Average
• Below average
• Unattractive

Interests and activities Permalink

• Movies
• Theatre
• Art
• Literature
• Classical Music
• Popular Music
• Rock Music
• Folk Music
• Psychology/Sociology
• History/Politics
• Business/Economics
• Foreign Languages/Customs
• Science
• Current events
• Liberal
• Conservative
• Reading
• Sense of humor
• Good grooming
• Travel
• Bridge
• Automobiles
• Working with the hands
• Community activities
• Animals
• Ballroom dancing
• Modern dancing
• Spectator sports
• Golf
• Tennis
• Gardening
• Skiing
• Sailing
• Bowling
• Target shooting
• Hunting
• Fishing
• Swimming/Water Sports
• Camping/Hiking
• Photography
• Interior Decorating
• Gourmet Cooking

Religion Permalink

• Catholic
• Protestant
• Jewish
• Unaffiliated
• Agnostic/Atheist

Education level Permalink

• Grade School
• High School
• Business/Technical
• Some College
• College Graduate
• Higher

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD!

The Truth About Peter’s Marriage

By Ann Moses

It all began with a letter from a Monkee fan, and in particular a Peter fan. I received her letter in the Tiger Talk mail and decided to print it since I thought her ideas were unusual and needed to be shared. I couldn’t understand what “kind of person” Peter had been branded by the girl, but here at Tiger Beat we feel every opinion is important. Her letter read:

Ex-Peter fan Permalink

Peter Tork has always been my fave Monkee until I found out he had been married and divorced! I was furious! I never thought Peter was that kind of person! So now Davy’s my fave Monkee.

Brenda Rednour
Pascagoula, Miss.

It was only a matter of weeks before letters began to flood my office from fans in defense of Peter. Every single letter was outraged at Brenda’s thoughts and put her down for her narrow-mindedness. I thought it was fantastic that Peter’s fans were so loyal, but more than that they had obviously picked up on his belief that you should judge every person on his own merit, not by his color, his creed or his past! I wonder if Brenda ever thought that Peter is what he is today because of all the experiences he’s had throughout his life.

When I brought all the letters to Peter, he felt it was necessary to make an explanation to his fans. Here, in his own words, is what he told me:

The first time I laid eyes on Jody she was standing at the head of the stairs at the Four Winds Cafe on West Third Street in Greenwich Village. She had her feet about three feet apart, her arms folded, and she was glaring definantly [sic] on the street filled with long-haired weirdos and the even weirder tourists. She looked at me and said, “Ya got a cigarette?”

I had been working at the Four Winds regularly, but I’d taken a couple of days off and during that time she had come to work as a waitress. We hit it off right away. She really was brassy, full of her own spunk and fire. I really flipped out. I really liked that in her. I love that brassy, “get out of my way, Charlie, if you don’t have anything to do with what I’m doing” way. She was totally self-contained.

Love at first sight Permalink

It was really love at first sight. I found out that she was the child of a couple divorced very early in life, raised only by her mother, and she had been alone a lot. She was very interested in horses. I find that people that are terribly hung up in horses, the way Jody was anyway, are using it because their experiences in the people world have left them very disillusioned. Jody thought so too, that’s why she came to the Village, specifically to try and get back into people.

We started going together and we were really, really hitting it off. We were a team socking it to everybody; and doing good works. She was 16 and I was 22. I can remember I was walking around with this constant grin on my face. I just couldn’t stop smiling!

Had to be together Permalink

We finally felt pressured into marriage. She was under age, legally speaking, although not to me, but we felt we had to get married to try and maintain any kind of unity together. We were young and we felt we had to be together. We were certainly enough in love. We said, “no doubt in our minds.” We were just heavy into each other and ready. The problem was we had no idea what kind of emotional readjustment marriage takes.

It’s like marrying is getting back your parent of the opposite sex. A woman marries a man because of her father and a man marries a woman because of his mother. You’re both searching for your parent in the form of someone your own age.

Jody was young Permalink

Now Jody, at 16, was hardly my contemporary much less a mother. She was all willing to cuddle and hold, but I think she was cuddling her father and not her husband. A wife has to be both a mother and a wife to a man and the man has to be both a father and a husband. It all has to mix in and tie up.

So why couldn’t we make it work? Life is what you make it. When we first got married we said we were going to stick together for two years whether we were together or not, as a married thing. But after a month and half we separated and moved into our own places and after 18 months we got a divorce.

The big adjustment Permalink

There were so many things that contributed to our breaking up I couldn’t recount them all. I think most of the problems centered around not being emotionally ready for the great readjustment marriage requires.

For example, Jody didn’t feel capable of giving time to being both my social partner—like going out everywhere—and still doing the dishes at home. Like they’re [sic] be dishes when company came and I’d pick on her for it, I mean, really make an issue because I didn’t know any better. I was a blind, fool kid.

When she left Permalink

After a while she said, “I’m not going to take this abuse,” and went to leave. I said, “You’re not going to leave!” She said, “I am too!” And it was beat, bash, belt—I mean I actually hit her once. And that was it. She split.

After we were separated she took a separate place and I would drop by every so often. Once in a while it would be pretty comfortable. There was always enough tension to keep us from flinging into each other’s arms, but it was comfortable enough to where we could discuss it a little bit and skirt the edges of the issue. After the divorce she went to Paris and got into horses again.

Seeing Jody now Permalink

I’ve since seen Jody a number of times. She came back to New York for a while after Paris and she now lives in San Francisco. On her way to San Francisco she stopped here in Los Angeles to see what it was all about. When we’re comfortable together now, the spark is back. And it’s stunning again, it dazzles me! But when it’s not there it just puts me up so tight I don’t want to see her. If Jody was to come back suddenly and everything clicked and everything was cool, it would be new. It would be like it was some other girl, because we’ve both changed so much.

Jody’s reaction to the whole Monkee thing is she regards it only as public recognition of what she’s already known, as I do. She’s really capable of great business ability. If she took over an office, she’d make it a success. She already has. There’s a thing called Personality Posters for which she opened international offices.

Reaction to fans Permalink

About the girl who wrote in to Tiger Talk and said she was no longer a fan of mine, all I can say is she’s welcome to her opinion. Right and wrong are her business only. If I’m doing, or did, something that for her is wrong, if it’s impossible for her to like me any further, I say carry on. God bless you, say I.

I don’t think I’ll ever get married again. I used to say way back before that I didn’t think I’d ever get married, but then I did. I still say I’ll never get married again, but I probably will. I’ll get married when it’s demanded by society, if I choose to run for office. Then I’d probably marry whoever I was going with at the time to have a wife.

Worthwhile experience Permalink

The entire experience had a great effect on me. I remember three weeks after my marriage broke up I was sitting there shattered, wondering what had happened to me. How could I have lost myself?

I was pacifist at the time and here I was hitting a poor little girl, much younger and much smaller than me—really hitting her! Where was that at? It really brought me face to face with a lot of convictions that I’d held sort of on the surface and I hadn’t had a real confrontation with. Friends of mine remarked as little as three weeks after Jody had left that the whole experience had cleared my head out and it made a man out of me, right there and then.

The experience took me to the very bottom of my life. I needed it. Experiences like this, if they don’t break you, they strengthen you. I don’t believe much in people saying “it was a miserable time in my life, I wish I’d never gone through it.” If such an experience leaves you shakey and neurotic for the rest of your life, then maybe it’s an experience you could have done without. But most everyone who recovers from a really heavy experience is the stronger for it. I am, and I know.

Bobby’s father was the preacher at a church where music was a great part of the service. He grew up playing piano and organ in church and he remembers going to church almost every night just because the music was so exciting to him.

Tommy began singing at a very young age and recalls singing duets like “You Are My Sunshine” with his sister in grammar school. He used to do great imitations of Al Jolson, and when he was around seven years old he began writing poetry.

He continued to write poetry, but never any melodies to make them into songs. “Then one day when I was working in this cardboard box factory (I guess I was about 16) and there was this funny thing going through my head—it was a melody of a song. I said, ‘I wonder what that is?’ I thought I was freaking out or something. That’s basically how I began writing songs.”

How they met Permalink

The boys met one day by accident when each happened to be at a music publisher’s office at the same time. Tommy recalls, “We started talking together, asking each other questions—‘What’s your name?… What do you do?’ And I said ‘Let’s get together and write a song on the weekend.’ That’s how it all started.”

What began that day was to lead to a great writing career for two young artists. They had been writing groovy songs, but when they were signed to write the Monkees’ Theme Song and much of their early music, they suddenly came before the national eye.

Their own plans Permalink

With the success of their first A&M album and a great demand from eager fans across the United States, Tommy and Bobby’s latest project is preparing for many TV guest appearances and live concerts.

In the little spare time they have, Bobby loves taking and editing his own movies. Tommy loves to play tennis and ride his motorcycle. He’s also a collector of old movies like those of W.C. Fields and the old silent film stars. Dick Clark recently gifted Tommy with a copy of the very first “Dick Clark Show” from New York. He’s especially proud of this because there are only three in existence.

An individual look at each of the boys reveals:

Bobby Permalink

Full real name: Bobby Hart
Age: 24
Birthdate: February 18, 1944
Birthplace: Phoenix, Arizona
Personal points: brown hair and eyes, 5'8", 135 lbs.
Marital status: single
Parents’ names: Robert and Fern
Brothers’ and Sisters’ names: Becky and Debbie
Instruments played: piano, organ, guitar
Age entered show business: 19
Favorites:

• color: black
• food: rice
• drink: tea
• dessert: sugar cream pie
• clothes: Indian
• singer: Elvis
• group: Beatles
• song: “This Is All I Ask”
• car: Jaguar
• actor: Peter Sellers
• actress: Jane Fonda
• city: Hollywood

Tommy Permalink

Full real name: Tommy Boyce
Age: 24
Birthdate: September 29, 1943
Birthplace: Charlottesville, Virginia
Personal points: brown hair, hazel eyes, 5'8", 132 lbs.
Marital status: single
Parents’ names: Sidney and Evelyn
Brothers’ and sisters’ names: Betty Jean
Instruments played: piano, guitar, harmonica
Age entered show business: 16
Favorites:

• color: turquoise blue
• food: salad, rice, hamburgers
• drink: cream soda
• dessert: pumpkin pie
• clothes: casual
• singer: Diana Ross
• group: Beatles
• song: “Got To Get You Into My Life”
• car: Peaches and Cream 1957 Caddy
• actor: Warren Beatty
• actress: Sophia Loren
• city: Los Angeles

A Tiger Beat Monthly Column

The Monkees write to YOU… by Davy, Peter, Mike and Micky

Davy talking: Permalink

It’s hard to have a girlfriend if you’re a Monkee. You may not believe it, but Micky, Peter, and I can’t have a simple girl-boy relationship as easily as most of the regular boys in high school.

In the first place if we should get interested in a certain girl, right away she’s up for a lot of publicity and often some very unkind things are said about her in print. She’s put down by some fans and critics and all of a sudden the poor girl is getting knocked right and left. Most girls won’t put up with this so there goes one more fun relationship out the window.

There’s very little time to date when you’re a Monkee, as I’ve said many times before, so it’s more likely that you’ll meet many different girls and go out on one or two dates without getting serious over anyone. This is the way it has to be for all of us, unless, of course, the girl in our lives is totally understanding about the other demands upon our time.

We’ve been put down for having too many girls on the set when we work, but I don’t think this is quite fair. We enjoy having girls around whether they’re fans or personal friends. It’s important to us to get a girl’s reaction over our songs and performances. And it makes everything more fun. Also, there’s a certain excitement when girls are around that just plain isn’t there when you have a film crew working all alone without anyone watching.

Since we’ve been together, Micky, Peter, and I have all had quite a few different girlfriends. With each of these girls we shared a great deal of fun and understanding and we hope that their experiences with us proved valuable in many ways. When we go to choose a wife, it’ll be these experiences that help us know when the right person comes along.

The one thing that stands out most in my mind about Mike and Phyllis’ marriage is the fact that even though they love each other and are married, Phyllis is still Mike’s girlfriend. The fun and excitement of their relationship has never seemed to wear off. I hope this is the way it will be with me when I finally get the chance to marry. In the meantime, I hope all of you will learn to like our choices as girlfriends because they really do make our lives much happier.

David Jones

Micky talking: Permalink

How old are you? To me, it really doesn’t matter, because if you’re reading my column chances are pretty good that you like the Monkees. But it seems to make a big difference to some of our fans. They don’t think that someone nine or ten should be a fan of the Monkees. They think you should be a teenager to like the Monkees and to buy our records or watch our TV show.

So many fans have asked me what I thought about this that I just had to answer. I hope the people who like us number in age from one to 100. Does this surprise you? Well, I hope it doesn’t because we just try to be entertaining. We don’t limit ourselves to any particular age group. If you are seven or eleven or sixteen and you come up to me and ask me for my autograph, I’m not going to turn you down because you’re not the right age to be a fan.

I’m glad preteeners like the Monkees, just as I’m glad that teenagers like us. In our music we are trying to do different things that will appeal to everyone in one sense or other. Some songs you may like better than others because they appeal to your age group more. But this is fine with us. We hope we find something for all our fans to enjoy.

As far as younger kids go, I guess you’d have to say I’m sort of turned on by them. My younger sisters right now are really interesting because they don’t think like someone my age. When we get together to talk, I learn all kinds of weird things that I never would have thought of before if I hadn’t talked to them. They give me all sorts of ideas.

One thing I think is wrong is thinking that one age group is all you can have anything to do with. There’s no reason freshmen and seniors can’t get along in a school just as well as people in a similar grade. It’s groovy to know what people of all age groups think even if they can’t be our closest friends. We have to have respect for one another no matter what our ages might be.

So, anyway, I hope all of you will keep liking the Monkees no matter what age group you’re in.

Peace

Micky Dolenz

Peter talking: Permalink

So you don’t like school! Well, I guess that makes two of us. But don’t jump to any conclusions. There are some very groovy things about school even if you have to search very hard for them.

You’ve all heard the story about how I flunked out of college. It’s true, but at that time I just wasn’t very interested in getting an education. There were other things I wanted to do so I did them.

But I sure would have been sorry if I felt the same way about my high school education. Fortunately, things went smoothly there. Now, if you feel like tossing in the towel and quitting school before you get your high school diploma, it isn’t up to me to tell you what to do. Each person has to make up his own mind. But I will say this. You’d better think pretty hard about such a decision because it will change your life.

Parents have a hard time understanding about school because today’s classes are more difficult and time consuming than the classes they had to take. I guess the classes most of you have right now are even much harder than the ones I took when I was in school.

If you don’t like school and can’t think of anything good about it, try to find a reason for your being there besides the fact you are required to. For instance, you may hate a subject like geometry or algebra, but if it teaches you to concentrate on one thing, then it’s groovy. You see I have to work very hard sometimes on my music or the show and whether you think so or not, being a Monkee isn’t always as glamorous as you think. Anyway, I’m glad for those subjects in school that taught me some concentration.

Then there’re your friends. Once you’re out of school it won’t be easy to find something to do where you’re surrounded by as many good friends as you are right now. I’ll bet if you sit down right this minute and start making a list of the reasons you do dig school, they’d be pretty long. Hey, if you do this, how about sending them to me c/o Tiger Beat, 1800 North Highland Ave., Hollywood, Calif. 90028. If you come up with some groovy ones, I’ll do another column on school and publish some of your suggestions.

Peter Tork

Mike talking: Permalink

Has anyone ever accused you of being a “Tom Boy?” If they have, I guess you’re not the only one, because a few columns back when I asked you to write me, many of you asked what I thought about Tom Boys.

Well, to really tell the truth, I’ve never thought much about them either way. When I was very little there were lots of girls who could fit into that category, but as I grew up most of them sort of got more and more feminine and stopped playing any of the games they used to.

It’s kind of hard to know whether there really is such a thing as a Tom Boy because girls mature at all different times. I think a girl who’s out playing lawn football every day at the age of 16 might be called a Tom Boy. But I sure don’t think it’s wrong for a girl to want to play a sport like that once in awhile no matter how old she is.

Girls can be very feminine and still like to put on old levis and get themselves messed up. I think it’s pretty phony when a girl begins thinking so much about herself that she can’t bring herself to do anything except sit and look pretty.

I think a Tom Boy is actually a girl who doesn’t like to do anything that girls are supposed to like. For instance, if she doesn’t like to dance, use makeup, experiment around with hairstyles, try on new clothes, read fashion magazines, learn to cook or sew, or do any of the things girls are supposed to like, but does love sports, wearing dirty old clothes and generally rough houseing around all the time, then she certainly is a Tom Boy.

Is it so bad? Permalink

Since I don’t like extremes in anything, I’d have to say that this kind of girl is on the wrong track if she keeps this up until she’s way up in her teens. A little of this goes a long way with boys.

But I do think a girl can be kind of a Tom Boy and still keep her femininity. In fact, this is the kind of girl I really prefer. She’s sweet, feminine, and quiet, but occasionally she doesn’t mind getting out and having a ball, either doing some kind of sport or just generally letting her hair down and having fun.

I can’t tell any of you whether it’s better to be a Tom Boy or not. But what I can tell you is to just be yourself and do the things that make you feel most natural. If you do this there’s nothing to worry about because the boys you want to meet will like you for yourself.

Mike Nesmith

Ann Moses’ Meow

The latest about the greatest!

Would you believe after working with MIKE NESMITH for over a year and a half now, we finally got together for lunch the other day for the first time. We were sitting in MIKE’s jeep doing an interview while the rest of the MONKEES filmed a scene on the Western set at the Columbia Ranch. Suddenly MIKE started the engine and before I knew it we were driving through downtown Burbank on our way to lunch.

We each ordered a chicken salad, MIKE likes a light lunch, and then we finished the formal interview. We had a chance to talk as friends, which is rare because MIKE always has about a million projects going at once, which leaves little time for luncheon chats.

He’s recently finished his solo album “The Wichita Train Whistle” and is now busy on another project (where he doesn’t sing, write or play) which he said he wanted to keep secret for a while. As soon as he gives me the word, I want to tell you all about it.

On our way back, MIKE seemed to burst out of his serious mood and as we pulled onto the movie set (now everyone was around a huge swimming pool) MIKE yelled “Here we go!” and started to drive right into the pool! I thought it was a great idea, but just as we reached the edge of the pool he slammed on the brakes. He said it would take half a day to pull the jeep out and they had to film a scene there that afternoon.

SAJID took off for Palm Springs in the California desert over Easter vacation from school at Beverly High. I ran into him in Beverly Hills when he got back and he told me he didn’t rest for a minute there because there was so much to do horseback riding, swimming, golfing and taking the fantastic tramway ride up 8000 feet to the top of the mountains surrounding Palm Springs. It sounded like he had a ball and he looked so good with a touch of red still in his cheeks.

His friend DESI took off, too, and spent his last vacation for quite awhile in Mexico. There he spent a relaxing week fishing and swimming in the groovy waters off the Baja coast. He began shooting his new TV series with his mother and sister in May. Just before he left for Mexico, DESI confided that SAJID, a friend of theirs from school and he were all in love with the same girl! With each trying to outdo the other to win her affections, I think that’s one lucky girl!

Three of the MONKEES got a welcome 10-day vacation in early spring when DAVY had to rehearse a huge dance number for the movie. Rehearsals took seven days and it took three days to shoot. He wears both a black, then a white tuxedo and does an elaborate routine like you used to see in the musical films in the 1940’s.

ELVIS PRESLEY has really been looking groovy lately. About the time he was filming “Clambake” just before he got married he was getting a little overweight and they couldn’t even shoot the water-skiing scenes without his wearing a jacket. But in his newest flick “Stay Away Joe” he looks trimmer than ever. It’s a cute film, it has some groovy songs and Elvis really looks fantastic. Some of the shots for his movie now in production were shot at Malibu Beach.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? THE MAMAS AND PAPAS finished their new album in April using all new material. Besides their new album called “The Papas and the Mamas,” you can hear MAMA CASS singing on the ELECTRIC FLAG’S single “Groovin’ Is Easy.”

HERMAN’S HERMITS spent many of the spring months touring. Some of the new places they got to see were the Far East, Australia, Scandinavia and Italy. Even I was shocked when I got a post card from PETER postmarked Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel! PETER said he’ll be returning to the U.S. for a brief tour from July 24th to August 2nd.

Ever wonder what happened to the HARDTIMES, one of the fave groups on “Where The Action Is”? I saw LEE KEIFER at the Whiskee-a-Go-Go when I went to see England’s fantastic TRAFFIC and he filled me in on what they’ve been doing. Of course they split up many months ago, and LEE has been producing and writing for an LA group called THINGS TO COME. BOB MORSE seems to have disappeared, RUDY ROMERO and LEE have been doing some writing together and PAUL WHEATBREAD is the groovy-looking moustached drummer in the UNION GAP.

THE LOVIN’ SPOONFUL spent a couple of weeks recording in Hollywood recently but without JOHN SEBASTIAN. Their new single will feature drummer JOE on lead vocals because JOHN is planning to leave the group at the end of the summer following their scheduled concerts across the country. Already JOHN has a year of solo concerts booked and wants to do some writing and recording on his own.

THE SPOONFUL are hoping their next single will be successful. If it is JERRY YESTER, JOE BUTLER and STEVE BOONE will stay together as a trio without filling JOHN’s vacant spot. If not, they will probably go their separate ways.

Look for the BEE GEES in your hometown this summer! Their million-dollar seven-week United States tour begins August 1st in Sacramento, California. Other tour dates now set are the Hollywood Bowl on the 2nd, San Francisco’s Cow Palace on the 3rd, the San Diego Sports Arena on the 4th, Forest Hills Stadium in New York on the 10th, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera on the 11th and Detroit’s Olympia Stadium on the 24th. They’ll be scheduling many more dates before August, so keep your eyes and ears open and don’t miss their groovy show.

THE COWSILLS, the singing swinging family pop group, have signed to do a series of radio and television commercials for the American Dairy Association. While they were playing an Easter week engagement at Disneyland they were honored at a Beverly Hills party given by POLLY BERGEN. FAYE DUNAWAY and PAUL NEWMAN were just two of the fantabulous people on the guest list!

CHAD STUART is busy working on the music score for the next American International film “Three In The Attic.” JEREMY wrote the title song. The two were together again in April to film a sequence for a TV special. Some of the antics they went through for the camera were chasing each other down Sunset Boulevard on bicycles and special footage shot at the Los Angeles Teenage Fair at the Palladium.

When things got boring on the last RAIDER tour, JOE JR. up and bought a motorcycle. When the tour was over he had it shipped to Los Angeles. Both FREDDY and CHARLIE are currently apartment hunting in Hollywood.

Some of the groovy customers at GENIE THE TAILOR’S lately: the handsome star of “I Dream of Genie,” LARRY HAGMAN, DEBBIE REYNOLDS, SHARON TATE and Academy Award winner, ESTELLE PARSONS who GENIE used to work with in New York.

Keeping up with the ever-changing BYRDS—when DAVID CROSBY left the group several months ago, GENE CLARK re-joined their ranks, but only for a short time. There are now three BYRDS—ROGER MCGUINN, CHRIS HILLMAN and CHRIS’ cousin, KEVIN KELLY on drums. MIKE split with the group a few months ago when the pressure and responsibility got to be too much. He’s now residing in Hawaii. The BYRDS’ next album is going to be two whole records, 22 tracks, covering every kind of music from bluegrass to modern music using a moog synthesizer.

That’s all for this month.

See ya soon!

Hello—

It comes to mind that all is lost in singularity of thought—yet all is gained in singularity of mind.

Remember how much we love you gang.

Softly—

Carlisle Wheeling

Mike Nesmith

Who is the one lone, lovely, brown-eyed pussycat who’s been singing, playing, traveling and tripping out with that bunch of hardrock musical wildcats for more than two years? Who feeds their male egos when they feel lonely, rejected and cast down? Who mothers them when they are tired, bored or bugged? Who nurses them through their ills and aches and cools out their temperamental tantrums?

Who? Grace Slick, that’s who!

Gracie’s woman’s touch is one reason Jefferson Airplane survives all the tear-apart tensions and remains one of the most successful U.S. music teams of the era. Her big, belting, blues voice is what gives the group much of its go-go-go power. She and Marty Balin share vocal honors in live performance and recording studio.

“Living so close to a gang of dudes is a weird way of life,” she admits. “Each guy has his own trip. One buries himself in a mental cave for twenty days to see if he can make it and where his head is when he gets out. Then another gets screwed up and freaks out for awhile, and a fickle chick blows another guy’s mind. It would be disaster if everyone flaked out at the same time. It hasn’t happened yet.”

“Man, what cool!” fans gasped.

A few minutes before curtain time at Simon and Garfunkel’s UCLA concert they saw Simon sauntering down the middle aisle, saying hello to bunch of friends, kissing a girl or two, waving his fingers in the peace salute and creating a stir in the gaping audience.

As the curtain began to lift, Simon took a seat and sunk out of sight in a sea of heads. And now, in front of 10,000 puzzled eyeballs, Simon and Garfunkel in the flesh began their stage stint, tickling the guitar strings and vibrating their tonsils.

Q. Which one was the real Simon? A. Both. On stage was Paul Simon, in the audience was his twin brother.

Super-Simon, the songwriting man, last winter suffered one of those stupefying scary sterile bummers which sometimes hits creative geniuses when they are drained out by high pressures, low vitality, personal hangups or whatever.

The scary part is you can’t explain those barren cycles of non-creativity and you don’t know how long they’ll continue. You begin to fear you’re washed up forever. All’s well with Paul now and he’s bursting with energy and creative force.

Barely out of his teen years, shaggy-headed, trumpet-voiced Steve Winwood is sitting on top of his world. Already gorgeous as Adonis, Steve will certainly be rich, famous and the spoiled darling of the fair sex before 22 catches up to him.

What Stevie is, is vocalist, piano and organ player, harmonicat, guitar man and top dog of the Traffic, the English quartet who rated unanimously glowing raves from the greatest music pros. He and brother Muff were Spencer Davis originals. This year he returned to America with his own aggregation, The Traffic, comprising himself and two buddies from his hometown Birmingham, England.

Traffic’s first LP, Heaven Is In Your Mind, produced by Jimmy Miller, was such a blast that Mick Jagger asked Jimmy to do the next Rolling Stones album.

The Their Satanic Majesties, produced by the Jagger, was the first and only dud for the Stones, thus ending Mick’s ambitions to produce records. The Stones are also looking for a new manager to replace the one they fired, Andrew Loog Oldham.

What music you hear most depends on where you live maybe. Geography can dictate tune tastes. Radio stations in many parts of the Old South play nothing but country-hillbilly-mountain music. Eddy Arnold, Hank Williams, Jr., Sons of the Pioneers and Buck Owens with his Buckaroos hog the radio air there.

Big city pop stations often concentrate so heavily on Top 40 chart-grabbers that new groovy groups and songs are aced out of the playlists, a snobbery which is a pain to many listeners and singer-musicians who don’t conform to the rigid rules of commercialism.

Readers write us that listeners in huge hunks of territory of the eastern and north central states get to hear only the sounds out of the soul-rhythm-blues bag. Soul is something else when performed by greats like Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Lou Rawls and the late lamented dearly beloved Otis Redding. Many shouty soulers, we think, make more din and noise than lyrical melody. A solid sound-alike soul diet, perpetrated every hour of every day via jabbering deejays, lays on a monotony that can result in uncool headaches.

It happened in Portland, Oregon, where hardly anything ever happens.

Cheery multi-colored neon lights shone from a Scandinavian restaurant near the Portland hotel where the Union Gap were staying. Kerry Chater, bass, and Gary Withem, piano-woodwinds, pressed their noses against the plate glass window and viewed a huge table groaning under mountains of Swedish smorgasbord goodies. They went in, mouths watering. A checkgirl grabbed their coats. A hostess, lips curling at the sight of their seamy Levis, sat them in an obscure table and handed them poster-size menus. Wow, what prices: $6 for a shrimp cocktail, $2.50 for a napkin of French fries, etc.

Union Gappers were starters then, picturesquely bent, busted and broke. The two guys snuck away and devoured dogs and cokes at a street stand. Back at the hotel they raved to their three mates about the smorgasbord feed.

“Man, all you can eat for $1.50 per plate” they cried. “Don’t even bother to look at the menu, just load up on the smorgasbord.”

Hungry General Gary Puckett, Dwight Bement and Paul Wheatbread jogged to the place at a furious pace. Watching from the parking lot, the two guys saw the three fill their plates, eat all and go for seconds. Puckett even treated himself to a highball.

Then the waitress presented the check—$43.42. The threesome’s total capital, $10.25.

The really riled manager held Dwight and Paul hostage while Gary went out to raise the balance due. This took hours.

“We never laughed so much in our lives,” Kerry Chater told us. “We were rolling around in the parking lot having fits.”

“Now we’re waiting for them to even the score,” Gary Withem said. “We’ll get it when we least expect it. The suspense is terrible.”

Competition between cities for musical renown is the bunk. Boston, Mass., is now being hyped by MGM Records as “Bosstown, the New Liverpool, U.S.A.” after the label inked three or four Boston groups, including Orpheus, Ultimate Spinach and Beacon Street Union. Eden’s Children is another heavy Bostown band. The hottest rockers ever to come out of that old town were the Remains who, however, received only piddlin’ publicity from their lame label.

Boston’s bid for musical recognition is hampered, we are told, by hard-nosed city fathers who hate rock music, psychedelic light shows, discotheques, hippies and youthful life, liberty and the pursuit of happenings.

A greater claim to music fame could be made by the Pacific Northwest, Washington, Oregon and Idaho, whence came Jimi Hendrix, Grace Slick, Don and the Good Times, Kingsmen, Paul Revere and the original Raiders, to name a few. Latest group to explode out of that territory is the wildly imaginative Hunger whose debut performances at the Kaleidoscope and Whiskee-a-Go-Go in L.A. were sensational.

“San Francisco, the Dowager City That Blows Its Mind,” to quote Los Angeles Magazine, rocks out with nearly 300 R&R bands, of which only four are nationally known: Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Grateful Dead and Blue Cheer.

Nashville means country-western, Detroit is soul, New York is nothing, Los Angeles, something of everything. Perhaps the next big hype will be the “Teaxs [sic] Sound,” starting with the Fever Tree, a band backed by Dallas-Houston bread.

What’s wrong with the Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy Awards by the movies, telley, and music industries is the creaky age of the academy members who vote, says Peggy Lipton, the tall cool blonde feminine lead of the new Mod Squad TV series starting in September.

“Imagine awarding Katharine Hepburn an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress, and deliberately sinking as nominees, Michael J. Pollard, Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who are popular with young theater-goers!”

In the Grammy Awards, three songs and singers made a clean sweep and most teenage hitsongs were ignored by mildewed members, Peggy recalls. Snubbed by both Oscar and Grammy voters was one super-song, The Look Of Love, writ by Burt Bachrach and Hal David, recorded by 47 top disc artists, including Dusty Springfield, Vanilla Fudge, Sergio Mendez, Andy Williams, Barbara Streisand, Paul Mauriat, Ray Charles, Ramsey Lewis and the Lettermen. Also omitted was Lulu’s two-million seller “To Sir With Love.”

Peggy just turned 21, is not only an actress but also a singer and songwriter. Lou Adler, mentor of many ace artists, is producing her first records and perhaps a later album.

Is the world ready for another set of Monkees? Screen Gems’ masterminds are talent-hunting for another musical group of more than four to launch on another network this fall, according to the Hollywood Reporter, trade mag. Screen Gems created the original Monkeemen and signed them to a Columbia movie when the teleseries folded. The Monkees will be making millions for years to come, no doubt, but the SG people can use a few more millions.

The Vanilla Fudge turns on or turns off concert audiences and there’s no in-between opinion. The Fudge uses so many electronic gadgets, movie and slide projectors, massive amps, tape recorders and lightshows on 360-degree screens that, according to Phil Basle, “the only thing that can stop us now is a blown fuse.”

Dack Rambo of Guns of Will Sonnett pulls more fan mail at ABC-TV than any other actor active on their network. Although he dates starlet Christine Ferrare more than any other doll in town, he says he’s not serious about her and he hopes there are no marriage notions rattling around in her pretty head.

BeeGees Robin Gibb’s word of advice: A bachelor should get tangled up with many chicks in order to avoid getting tangled up with one. How come, when a guy’s got nothing on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married?

There were many mad-cap moments on the set of the Monkees’ “Untitled” movie before they finished filming in May. The four boys returned to the California desert for more shots there, they filmed some football scenes at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and then it was back to the Columbia Ranch in Burbank.

At the Ranch they filmed some western set shots and some unbelievable underwater scenes! Luckily it was a warm and sunny Spring day when they got to do the swimming shots. The final days of shooting were spent doing some flying sequences a la “The Flying Nun.” For this the Monkees had to have special costumes made so the heavy harnesses that make them “fly” would fit underneath.

As soon as the movie was finished, Davy took off for England to see his family and to appear on Lulu’s TV show. Micky put all his free-time efforts into finishing up the remodeling on his house and Mike and Peter spent many hours catching up on sleep.

This long-awaited film should be out in August. And all we can say is “DON’T MISS IT!”

Love, Ann