The Monkees and serious music

We all know the story: The Monkees were made for TV and didn’t really play their own instruments. Right?

Not quite. And some serious music flowed amid the campy fun of their TV show.

Bloom County at least added a qualifying comment: “For the most part, the Monkees never played their instruments.”

Except when they did.

Mike Nesmith in particular fought to make the Monkees evolve from the Prefab Four to a real band. And he won, more or less. The foursome took charge of their own music for the album Headquarters, and a lot of their latter-day projects have Nesmith and Peter Tork — both perfectly capable on various stringed instruments and keyboards — playing their own parts. Micky Dolenz dutifully made his way through drum parts so the band could play live.

They’re better with a few supplemental musicians, but they’re not exactly the only band to do that. If you see Fleetwood Mac live, you’re going to see a battery of backup vocalists and the odd keyboardist or percussionist on stage. Muse has a keyboardist tucked away on stage along with the core trio. Green Day also doesn’t play live as a trio.

Nesmith did an interview with The Bitter Southerner, which refers to him as “the Southern Monkee” and laments his lack of recognition for his pioneering work in country-rock. (He’s better known for his pioneering work in music videos.) In that piece is a perfect and clever summary of the band.

In his book, Nesmith makes a comparison to a different famous puppet: Pinocchio. The Monkees were the fake band that became real. But no matter how much they moved on their own, people always saw the strings.

They certainly didn’t follow the typical rock career path. An effort to duplicate their success, the “New Monkees” created at the height of the Monkees’ MTV resurrection in the 1980s, went nowhere.

On the other hand, the Mickey Mouse Club revival in the 1990s launched the careers of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Maybe we’re due for another one?