The Monkees: The Missing Link Rock Won't Acknowledge

THE NEWS: Davy Jones, the teen idol frontman of The Monkees, died this past week at the age of 66.

THE PROVOCATION: I wasn't a believer in The Monkees back in the day. I was a little young for that - and too far away. When the phenomenon of "Monkeemania" hit its peak in 1966-67, I was a 3-year-old pipsqueak living in an apartment overlooking Botany Bay in Sydney, Australia. My only connections to pop culture? My Beatlesque bowl haircut and an episode of Star Trek that featured an actor named Ricardo Mantalban who had been placed in suspended animation aboard a spaceship called the S.S. Botany Bay.

I wasn't aware of Star Trek then, either, though it would later become my favorite show in reruns. The Monkees? They entered my prepubescent consciousness in the form of reruns, as well - as the final act of a Saturday morning lineup preceded by Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and interrupted periodically by the Frito Bandito the Trix Rabbit and commercials for various products created by a company called Wham-O.

I thought, at the time, that the show was actually a first-run program specifically designed as Saturday morning fare - albeit for slightly older kids who had outgrown Land of the Lost and The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour. The band itself I lumped in a category I might refer to as the "illiterate critters" - bearing misspelled monikers they shared  with various creatures: the Beatles, Monkees and Byrds being prime examples.

I didn't particularly care for the show. It seemed silly and frivolous (which, of course, is exactly what it was supposed to be), and spent far too much time dealing with that foreign species known as girls.

Despite this, I came to appreciate tunes like Last Train to Clarksville and I'm a Believer, which seemed as catchy and listenable as anything else I'd heard from the 1960s. Then I basically forgot all about them - until Davy Jones died. Then I started listening to some of their music again and exploring their musical legacy.

I discovered that in a space of less than two years, the Monkees issued five platinum or multi-platinum albums, four of which went to No. 1. It's a feat unrivaled by anyone before or since. Not Elvis, the Beatles, Elton John, Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees. You name it. And I also found that the band is, inexplicably, not in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

It seems there's a longstanding bias against the band because of the perception it was "artificial" or "manufactured" - even being labeled with the derisive nickname the Prefab Four by media types who viewed them as an inferior knockoff of the Beatles. They didn't play their own instruments and didn't write their own songs. They were merely creatures of a corporate establishment trying to exploit Beatlemania by creating an alternate version of the phenomenon, as though they serving up a tofu burger at a steakhouse. This created a certain resentment among snobbish types who forgot that Elvis hadn't written any of his biggest hits.

The Beatles? Half the cuts on their first two albums were written by people outside the band - including one by the songwriting partnership of Goffin/King who later wrote one of the Monkees' hit singles.

The Monkees were hardly some Sixties version of Milli Vanilli. They sang all the songs on their albums and at least two of them (Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith) were accomplished instrumentalists. Jones had a background in musical theater, and Dolenz had the best voice of the bunch. They produced much of the instrumental content and wrote a good deal of the material for their third album, which hit No. 1 on the charts.

But perhaps the most impressive fact about The Monkees was the fact that, although they were patterned after the Beatles, they turned out to be more innovative in their own right than virtually any other band out there. It served as an inspiration for MTV and numerous other attempts to use television as a promotional springboard for music. The Partridge Family, cartoon bands such as The Archies and Josie & the Pussycats, even The New Monkees have come and gone. Perhaps the most successful successor to Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith and Tork has been Glee, which uses music that's not only unoriginal but recycled.

Those who would deny The Monkees their due certainly can't site a lack of talent - or a lack of effort.  The four members had to go through something like 15 auditions before they were chosen for the band. They even beat out an accomplished pop/rock outfit known as The Lovin' Spoonful, which produced seven Top 10 singles of its own in 1965 and '66. (Ironically, band member John Sebastian would later produce a No. 1 single of his own that owed its success largely to its role as theme song for the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter.)

Once they got the gig, the members of The Monkees basically worked two jobs - acting for a television show and performing in a band - simultaneously. That's something no other band has been asked to do. Yet they not only pulled it off, they excelled in both arenas. The TV show won an Emmy as outstanding comedy of 1967, and the band put together the aforementioned string of four consecutive No. 1 albums.

Yet even today, The Monkees are seen not as trailblazers but as copycats. Instead of being praised as innovators who paved the way for the union of two great media - music and television - they're derided as second-class Beatles wannabes. On the one hand, comparing anyone to the Beatles is patently unfair, even if the band did owe much of its inspiration to the Fab Four. No one lampoons other artists who proudly showcase their Beatles influences, so why should The Monkees be singled out? On the other hand, no one can compare to the Monkees' success in blending the musical and the visual into a single potent entertainment potion.

When a lot of people hear the name Davy Jones these days, they thing of a squid-like character from Pirates of the Caribbean. What they don't realize is that The Monkees' Davy Jones was once so widely known that another British singer who shared that name had to change it to avoid any confusion. The singer in question became known as David Bowie.

There was a time when millions of teen and preteen girls would have given their right arms to find out what was in Davy Jones' locker, and it had nothing to do with Capt. Jack Sparrow. He was the Justin Bieber of his day, if you can imagine that.

But today, many people have forgotten Davy Jones and The Monkees. Perhaps someday they'll finally get their due. It's just too bad  Jones won't be around to see it.