Released
on January 9th, 1967, The Monkees sophomore LP, More of the Monkees, is
celebrating 55 years on the shelves today. It marked both the peak of
the band’s popularity and the turning point for them as a “manufactured
image”.
With the wild, unprecedented success of the TV show and
their debut eponymous LP in the latter half of 1966, their record
company was eager to get more product to market as soon as possible.
The whole processed was so rushed, in fact, that the band themselves
were not even aware of the 2nd album’s release until they stumbled on it
in a record shop while on tour in Cleveland, Ohio. Not only were they
taken aback by being so completely left out of the loop, but they were
also horrified by the cover. It used a photo take of them wearing some
decidedly unhip JC Penny clothing from a shoot they thought was only for
an ad campaign for that store. And again, Don Kirshner, then musical
director of the show, had exercised his control in picking the songs for
the album, out of a batch of some 34 titles they’d recorded late in
1966, without consulting any of the members of the band. Nesmith had
still been granted a couple of token tracks for his original
compositions, but only one of which where he sang lead vocal.
The
frustration at being so disconnected from the music production process
ate away at Mike in particular, more so than the others, but he was
still able to rally support for his concerns from the other guys as well
as series creator, Bob Rafelson, and producer, Bert Schneider. This
frustration all came to an infamous head during a meeting with Mike,
Kirshner and his lawyers where Nesmith put his fist through a wall right
next to the head of one of the lawyers after being presented with a
rather large cheque they assumed would buy him off. They got their
answer from Mike in the form of a dent in the wall. The final straw
came when Kirshner released a single without consulting anyone and he
was formally dismissed from his position and the group were finally able
to secure control over their musical output.
Despite the
contentions, lack of input and the godawful album cover, the record
still contains a host of songs which would become classics and it became
a massive hit record. Their debut was still in the #1 album spot on
the Billboard charts when More… pushed it off the top. Collectively,
the two records spent a whopping 31 consecutive weeks in that position,
with More of the Monkees taking up 18 of them. The album has since been
certified quintuple platinum. In addition to the smash hit single, the
Neil Diamond penned I’m a Believer, the album features such other
favorites as Nesmith’s Mary Mary, the Boyce & Hart proto-punk of
(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone and a second Diamond gem, Look Out (Here
Comes Tomorrow).
Though the group would assume significant
control over their music on subsequent albums, and those efforts would
initially prove commercially viable for album sales, their singles were
never quite as popular after the departure of Kirshner. The man simply
had an ear for infectious pop hits. However, what they lacked in
commercial savvy, they more than compensated for with artistic merit as
they took full advantage of their access to studios, musicians,
songwriters and recording time to create a massive catalogue of
beautifully crafted pop confections, exploring a sprawling array of
styles and techniques. While they were certainly a coherent band on the
Headquarters album that followed, where they played all the instruments
themselves, the albums that came after that reverted to a sort of mixed
usage of session players and undermined their cohesion, turning them
into four concurrent solo artists pooling their songs on the same
albums. At least they were each, individually, able to pursue their own
vision of what they wanted to do as artists. While More of the Monkees
may mark the high water mark for the band commercially, it was only a
stepping stone for them creatively. Yet with so much prolific output to
come, it’s still shocking to consider that it would all be over in the
span of a few short years. At least for the first chapter of their
story.
