And then there was one: Talking with Monkee Micky Dolenz

Hey hey, he’s The Monkee.

Davy, Mike and Peter have all passed on to that groovy beach pad in the sky, leaving Micky the sole remaining members of the Monkees.

He’s George Michael “Micky” Dolenz, 80, torchbearer of one of ‘60s rock’s most enduring legacies. And he’s performing his Songs & Stories show at the Capitol Theatre Thursday, April 10.

The Monkees was a two-season musical comedy series (1966-68) on NBC. Its four stars – Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork – auditioned like every other actor in Hollywood (Dolenz was the only one with TV series experience, having worked as a child star in the 1950s).

Improbably, the Monkees’ tie-in records, many of which (but not all) were created by studio musicians, with the actors overdubbing lead vocals, outlived not only the TV series but the ravages of time and changing tastes.

Today they’re considered cornerstones of solid ‘60s pop: “I’m a Believer,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” “A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You,” “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” “Daydream Believer” and “Listen to the Band.” And more.

St. Pete Catalyst: It’s got to be bittersweet, if that’s the word, to be the last man standing.

Micky Dolenz: That’s the perfect way to put it. It is. I’m still a little bit bewildered, a little bit like “What the hell happened?,” you know? Because they’re around me all the time. I’m sitting here in my office, going through old stuff and photos and things, and everywhere I look, it’s the other three guys. Everywhere.

I sat with Davy about 20 years ago at his horse stable in Florida, and the impression he gave me was that it was, over the years, more like a business relationship than anything else. Is that fairly accurate to say?

Business relationship between who?

The four of you – what he’d said was, doing those reunion tours wasn’t exactly a lot of fun. He was not kind about any of you. And then after Davy passed, Michael came back in after keeping clear for so long.

I cannot speak for anybody else. I won’t. I can only tell you how I felt about it. And if that’s good enough for you, fine, but I’m not going to even go there at all, what I think Davy felt about it, or Mike or Peter, no. I’m not going to go there. But remember that the Monkees started out as a television show, was not a group in any traditional, classic sense of the word. Never was. It was a television show about this group.

And speaking for myself, only, I was cast in this television show to play the part of a wacky drummer/singer. Which I did. We all met one day on the lot, when they said “You guys are the Monkees.” So in that sense, yeah, total business.

Especially for me – and I will say that David did approach it like that a little bit, because he’d also been in the business. He’d been on Broadway. He’d been on television in the U.K. So yeah, there was that degree of “This is a job, and let’s see how it goes” and all that.

In interviews, everybody seemed to have their own axes to grind about why they didn’t want to do (the reunions) any more. “We’re not really friends,” that kind of thing.

Yeah … what’s your question? [laughing]

Are you surprised to still be talking about stuff you did 60 years ago?

The Monkees in 1966, clockwise froim upper left: Nesmith, Dolenz, Jones and Tork. Photo: Rhino Records.

Not any more, frankly. You would think so, but there’s a lot of my peers, and people in the world of art, from that era, who are still talking about it. You know, we could name a whole bunch. And they’re still out and active, still doing projects, still recording, all kinds of stuff. They say that 80 is the new 40 or something, I don’t know [laughing]. Whatever.

I think the longevity, first of all, comes from the quality of the original material. And in my case, I had some of the greatest songwriters. I put an awful lot of the success of the Monkee music to the songwriters. Because we had some of the best. Well, that material stands up because the original material stands up. And when you have a song written by Neil Diamond or Carole King or Boyce & Hart, those people don’t write many duff tunes. That’s the reason, essentially, why the music stands up.

And of course, I’d like to think I had something to do with it, on vocals and playing and stuff. But there’s also producers, musicians, singers and record company promotion, all that kind of stuff goes along with it.

The TV show, I would put in a similar vein. If you looked at the pedigree of the people that were doing the television show … the guy that created it, Bob Rafelson, for goodness sake, who became a huge film director. And then you had the writers on the show. Paul Mazursky wrote the pilot. And Jackie Cooper, the former child star, was the head of Screen Gems television. So you had all this pedigree.

And there’s no guarantees, as we know. If there were guarantees, there’d never be a flop.

The way I look at it, suddenly the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Was there a point, say in the ‘70s, when you resented it? “I still have a career – can we put this Monkee thing behind us now?”

No, not at all. I can only speak for myself. I was a child star also, as you may know, in a show in the ‘50s called Circus Boy. And after Circus Boy was canceled – because I got too big, too old – I just went back to school. Both my parents were in the business; that was the family business. So when the show was canceled it was oh, show’s canceled, back to school. So there was no post-Circus Boy trauma of any nature. I was only 12 years old, so my parents very wisely took me out of the business. I did some guest shots here and there over the years, and almost to the day, 10 years later, I went to the Monkee audition.

But I’ve always approached it as a business, for the most part. So fast-forward, when The Monkees was canceled, I had already been there. I had no problem with moving on. I had already started a production company, because I wanted to direct. And write. I’d already been in the business 15 years. So I was ready to move on and do something else.

And again, I don’t want to speak for the other guys, ‘cause that’s not fair, but everybody, I seem to remember had this feeling – including the producers – of “been there, done that. Let’s move on.”

So the long answer to your question? No, I had no resentment. Because I also got lucky. I went to England to do a play, and I happened to have married an English girl, so I could work over there. I gave a local agent my reel at the time, and she got me a job directing for the BBC. And I never looked back. I was there 15 years, directing and producing. And I was very successful, if I do say so myself. After a while, people stopped referring to me as “Ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz.” It was “Television producer Michael Dolenz is announcing the launch of his new series.”

Tell me about this new Songs & Stories show of yours.

We all did solo shows, after the Monkees, and I’ve done (reunion) shows, with two, three and four. I have tended to be the consistent one, and that was mainly because I sang the majority of the hits. Not all! And also, I never had an axe to grind! I’ve been very, very successful, but then again I did not, after the Monkees, try to carve out a new career as a solo artist. And that is what most people do when they leave a show, a group, a this, a that.

What I learned, over the years: I’ve always done solo shows, and I’ve always done the big Monkee hits. No medleys; I do them in their entirety.

In England, my wife at the time got me tickets to see the Everly Brothers reunion at Albert Hall. And I was concerned because sometimes artists don’t want to play the old hits. But they did: When they did “Wake Up Little Susie,” I was clapping and singing along – [singing and mock-weeping] wake up, little Susie ….

This was when I was directing and producing, you know. No intention of going back on the road – or ever going back, singing or anything. But I remember thinking that if I ever do, if anybody ever asks me to go back and do this stuff, I am going to give the audience what they want. I’m going to make sure they get those songs as they remember them.

And I’ve stuck with that policy, all these years. But then I found out that once you’ve fulfilled this unspoken contract – they know they’re going to get “I’m a Believer,” “Clarksville,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” “Stepping Stone,” whatever, then you can go off and do deep cuts, album cuts, and in my case I started doing other people’s material that has a point to it.

I’ll do Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” for example, and I’ll tell the story of why it makes sense: That song was my audition piece for The Monkees. And the audience loves it.

It’s a rock ‘n’ roll concert, and I pepper the great Monkee hits with some of these stories.

Do you take any interest at all in the many reissues and special deluxe editions of the Monkees’ albums? Are you involved in any of that? Do they run anything by you?

Never. Never. I wouldn’t mind contributing, but to date, no. I don’t ever remember being approached about anything like that, ever.

For tickets to the April 10 concert, visit the Capitol Theatre website at this link.

RELATED READING: Peter Tork: Don’t step on my shoe suede blues (2004)

RELATED READING: Davy Jones: I don’t want to be Peter Pan all my life’