Remembering Michael Nesmith: Memories and Trivia

The Monkees. Michael Nesmith lower right.

The beginning of the end for any countercultural movement is when it has been co-opted by pop culture and commercialized. 

The Beats of the 50's eventually became Maynard G. Krebs of the TV sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The "radical" rock music of the British Invasion quickly spawned another TV sitcom called The Monkees, Hollywood's version of the "Fab Four." The show aired from 1966 to 1968 but their music continued, and like the breakup of The Beatles, the Monkees' Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz continued to have individual careers long after their sun on the glass onion. 

This past week the world learned that Mike Nesmith, a singer/songwriter in his own write, passed away. 

My memories of the Monkees sitcom was that it seemed juveniles and hokey, but even if you got that impression you pretty much had to agree they recorded a number of catchy pop tunes. When I'd become a "hippie" my youngest brothers were into their and had their albums. As it turns out the music grew on me to the point where I was reading the album liner notes and saw the name Chuck Berry as one of the songwriters. Other songwriters included Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Carol King, Neil Sedaka and even Neil Diamond. Diamond wrote one of their biggest ("I'm and Believer") as well as the Monkees' first Top 5 hit "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You."

In short, even if they were supposed to be un-hip, I liked their music and the songs. I also noticed that Mike Nesmith himself wrote a lot of their songs. 

My next memory was of Mike Nesmith performing at Ohio University, not to a massive audience in the Convocation Center but in a smaller intimate space at Baker Center, the student union. He struck me as unpretentious, unassuming and comfortable in his skin.

If I had been a fan of the show, of the four members of the band he would have been the one I related to. He seemed less silly, more thoughtful. You can see it in the photos that he's the contemplative one. I do not recall watching any episodes of the show so I don't know if that carried through there.

When I think of the Monkees other memories come to mind. One occurred in Southwest Ohio. Sometime in the late 60s while visiting my cousin Gary, we went to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. Uncle Orval was driving and as we drew near to Cincy there was a line of cars on the highway shoulder that may have been a mile long or more on the exit before ours. We were curious what the big event could have been. Turns out, the Monkees were in town.

Nesmith in 2017 in Parsippany NJ
Photo: Rob DiCaterino (Creative Commons)

Another memory that has always stuck with me was how the Monkees on one of their tours was paired with The Jimi Hendrix Experience as the opening act. Whoever put that show together was not altogether in his right mind. During the Hendrix set all the girls were screaming for Davy Jones. In the middle of the 8th concert a flummoxed Hendrix walked off the stage mid-show.

Here are a few more bits of Michael Nesmith trivia. He was born Robert Michael Nesmith and was an only child. I, too, have always been called by my middle name and my youngest brother is named Robert.

Of greater significance are these items. When Michael was 13, his mother, who had been an executive secretary at a bank, invented Liquid Paper. Over the next 25 years she built this product idea into a multi-million dollar international business which she sold to Gillette for 48 million dollars a few months before she died.

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There were quite a few articles about Nesmith's passing. Here's the one that first caught my eye:

Michael Nesmith, Monkees singer-songwriter, dies at 78
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-nesmith-monkees-singer-songwriter-dies-78-rcna8395

Flashback Friday: Off the Record, An Oral History of Popular Music

The late Tom Petty

Imagine that you have been invited to a huge party, and when you get there everyone is a somebody... a Somebody in the history of pop music. Who do you talk to first? Do you walk around looking for your favorites first? Or do you just saunter around talking with whoever you run into next?

 

That's what it's like to pick up the book Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music.

Obviously a party like that can only be assembled by someone with connections. In this case the author is Joe Smith, who happened to be president and CEO of Capitol Industries-EMI (the same ones who signed the Beatles, Dylan and so many more.) Before this he had been president of Warner Bros./Reprise and Elektra. A Yale grad who became a popular and successful disc jockey, Smith seems like just the right guy to gather all these other pop celebs under one roof.

The book is handled just right. There are no long interviews. Like the party, you can bounce around for a brief spell with Tom Petty, then George Harrison, Little Richard, Ray Charles. Over here is Dylan and is that Yoko Ono? Oh yes, talking with Joni Mitchell, Phil Collins and Ella Fitzgerald. Joan Baez, Robert Plant and James Taylor seem to be enjoying themselves over there with Tina Turner and David Bowie. Then you see the jazz guys, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck staring out the window onto the lawn where Quincy Jones is listening to Robbie Krieger, Mary Travers, Frankie Valli, Al Kooper and Herbie Hancock. Donovan pensively listens to John Fogerty and David Lee Roth. Judy Collins seems to be reminiscing with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. Lou Rawls and Tom Petty can't seem to get enough of Henry Mancini.

O.K., you get the picture. And the stories they tell are fascinating because pop culture has played a role in all of our lives.

My bedtime reading ended with Mike Nesmith talking about the Monkees. They were not a music group, they were characters on a television show. The purpose of the show was not to end up with hit records, he says. But one day they're driving along in the car and hear that their song Last Train to Clarksville is #2 on the national charts. Nesmith says the very notion of it was bizarre. Suddenly everything changed.

Jimi

The Monkees were shipped to London to prepare for a road tour as a music group, but they weren't really sure about how they really felt, nevertheless they followed through. One strange quirk about the tour was having Jimi Hendrix open for them. Mickey Dolenz had heard Hendrix in a London club and made the recommendation, which Nesmith off-handedly thought was O.K., sight and sound unseen. When they arrive in Raleigh, North Carolina, to do their first gig, the Hendrix trio is mind blowing, even in appearance, but the teeny bopper screamers are there only for one purpose, and it's not the Experience of Jimi Hendrix.

Nesmith says he disguised himself and went into the crowd to snatch a listen. He'd never heard anything like it. "It was the most exhilarating, the most majestic, the most entertaining, the most fulfilling music I'd ever heard," said Nesmith.

But the mismatch was self-evident and after eight gigs Jimi had had it. The girls were chanting, "We want the Monkees," and in the middle of a song the most incredible guitar player of a generation left the stage in the middle of a song, disgusted.

For the record, this book offers a lot. It's real, it's intimate, up close and personal. Recommended.

You can find the book here on Amazon

Illustrations by the author