Before I decided I wanted to be John Lennon, long before I decided I wanted emulate Mike Watt or Clint Conley (note the change in verbiage that differentiates the teenage years from elementary school days), Mike Nesmith was the guy who I wanted to be. I figured I was halfway there, namewise. Besides, he had an aura that was more inviting than the two other guys on the first Monkees album with the "plays guitar and sings" credits. (The album cover must have been based on the pilot episode of The Monkees, in which Davy Jones played guitar. And that thing that Peter Tork played was almost a guitar, so the p.r. flacks must have thought.)
Copies of the first three Monkees albums landed in our house around the time I was five or so, in the early '70s. I can make the approximation because I remember not being able to read a lot just yet, which made a song title like "Pape Gene's Blues" kind of confusing since the title didn't appear in the lyrics. It seemed like it should called "I Love You and I Know You Love Me."
But one thing I did discern was that Mike's name appeared next to this weird title on the label, which at the very least meant that his voice was the one in the song. He also sang "Sweet Young Thing" on the other side, belting out the words over an overdrive wall of Wrecking Crew guitars and a violin. That was heavy.
The Monkees was broadcast in reruns on Saturday mornings somewhere around that time, but my real memories of the show began when I was in 6th grade and a new UHF station, Channel 22, came along and programmed the boys to appear five days a week. Our UHF reception was bad, with ghost images and usually a lot of static, but I was committed. Mike was still the coolest to me, not as zany as Micky, just as charming as Davy and definitely smarter than Peter. His deadpan comic delivery often wound up with some of the best lines. Plus, he wore a hat, something that appealed to me even back then.
In those days, those early Monkees albums were a dime a dozen, always to be found at flea markets and Goodwills, condition be damned. A friend gave me a copy of the slightly lesser known The Birds, The Bees and the Monkees, on which Mike went crazy, both in terms of genre and artistry. The lo-fi hillbilly tune "Magnolia Sims" was cute, with its built in surface noise and the moment where it appeared to skip (or "get stuck" as we said in our house) but "Tapioca Tundra" and "Writing Wrongs" were real stand-outs.
The former was Mike at his most psychedelic, thanks to a healthy dose of reverb and the crazy lyrics (which, again, don't include the title). "Writing Wrongs" was a slow, equally reverb-drenched piece, with a long instrumental break, which resulted in the whole thing sounding kind of dark. Mike's fourth contribution, "Auntie's Municipal Court," pre-dated his country-rock flair with another wall of guitars (some courtesy of co-writer Keith Allison) and a mysterious vocal delivered by Micky. To make things even weirder, all three of these bold songs appeared right after the more sappy, accessible Davy Jones tunes. Well, "Daydream Believer" wasn't quite as sappy, but it was sandwiched between "Tapioca Tundra" and "Writing Wrongs" so all things are relative.
The album that was most elusive back then was one that I had only seen on the inner sleeve of other RCA records: Head. I had no idea what it was all about, with its silver cover that featured the band name written in three sides surrounding the album title. It wasn't until after high school that I'd see the Monkees movie Head at the Pittsburgh Playhouse (whose film repertory program exposed so many people to classics and cult faves). Around that same time, Rhino began reissuing the entire Monkees catalog, so I bought it and listened to it constantly. I later bought an original Colgems copy for the hell of it, and a friend gave me a CD edition.
Mike only has one song on Head but it's one of his best Monkees tunes - the Bo-Diddley in the garage vamp "Circle Sky" which the band plays live in the film. (The version on the album comes from a studio session. Each has its own merits.) When I started playing in Mystery Date, I turned guitarist Bridget Jakub onto that song, thinking that she'd be perfect to sing it. I do believe I was right. Incidentally I did the same thing to Head's "As We Go Along" with the Love Letters, knowing that drummer Erin Dawes would make it her own. (It was a Carole King/Toni Stern song sung by Micky, to clarify.) But my Monkees sense started back in Bone of Contention when I convinced Patty Killi (nee Pisula) to try out "Daily Nightly," Nesmith's deeply metaphorical take on the Sunset Strip riots. She sounded perfect and we used to stretch it out with an extended guitar solo, during which I'd often slowly lay down onstage, because it felt like the right thing to do. (I was 19 at the time and didn't know better.)
All that Nesmith music, deeply ingrained in my head.
It's so ingrained that it has often become my pick-up music when I need a positive boost. Cue up "The Girl That I Knew Somewhere" and it'll put a spring in my step. Maybe I can't separate the song from the image of the band leaping around a hotel in the "Monkees, Manhattan Style" episode, which borrows from the fast-paced romp feeling of A Hard Day's Night. But that choppy 12-string guitar riff and the opening drum rolls (which were actually Micky Dolenz, not Hal Blaine) have some pent up energy as well. Things like this have become so deep-rooted in my head that it's easy to forget where they began and how important their source - Mr. Nesmith, that is - has shaped my world.
I never met Mike Nesmith, though I did get to interview him via email in 2013 to preview a solo concert. (My uncle, Rege Cordic, appeared in two episodes of The Monkees, but that's another story.) Normally I loathe email interviews but I wasn't going to say no to this one.
After asking him several questions about his career, his approach to songwriting and one or two things about the Monkees, I went out a limb. Always fascinated by the legacy of Lyndon Johnson, I asked Nesmith, a Dallas native, if the fact that LBJ was from Texas had any impact on how he felt about the 36th president.
I've told that story so many times that I thought for sure that it was published in the paper with my preview, if not here. But I was wrong. This is the first time I've printed it.
When the article ran, I heard from a friend who was doing p.r. for the Nesmith concert. She told me that Mike's management really liked my questions and that they were much better than other things he had been asked. All I know is I'm probably the only person to ask him about LBJ in recent years.
The other Nesmith anecdote that's been in my head lately is his soliloquy in the Monkees episode The Devil and Peter Tork. In the episode, Peter - who this time seems more innocent this time than dense - buys and learns how to play a harp from the devil, in exchange for his soul. A long scene trial scene follows, with several comic references to court scenes in movies. Eventually things turn somber when Mike tells Mr. Zero, the devil, that he never gave Peter the ability to play the harp. His love of music made him play the instrument. "The power of that love was inside of him...And it was that kind of power that made Peter able to play the harp."
Maybe Mike was just a really good actor but the way he speaks his mind, working the thought out in his mind as he speaks, sounds like it comes off the top of his head, ending with the hip statement, "Baby, in the final analysis, love is power." Some might find the scene cloying. Some might see it as a metaphor for what the band was going through, struggling for credibility when they didn't play their own instruments. Maybe Mike's passing is bringing out the sap in me, but that whole scene feels like a message that I received not only from that episode but from all the Monkees records: If you love music, you can play music.
But I'm still taking his death harder than I thought.
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