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‘Good Times!’: Monkees’ Dolenz promotes surviving members’ fine new album

By Steve Knopper, Chicago Tribune
Published: February 18, 2017, 6:04am

Unlike Peter Tork, who brought a bass guitar into the studio for Monkees recordings, Micky Dolenz had no problem with the idea of being a fake musician. He was an experienced actor, having portrayed the childhood friend of Bimbo the baby elephant on the ’50s TV series “Circus Boy,” so musical authenticity wasn’t his top priority.

“I did absolutely start with this attitude of, ‘I’m being hired to play the part of the wacky rock ‘n’ roll drummer,’ ” says Dolenz by phone from his Los Angeles home. “Natalie Wood in ‘West Side Story,’ obviously, didn’t sing a note, or more recently, (in) that wonderful movie Sean Penn did about (guitarist) Django Reinhardt, they had a double, clearly.”

Dolenz, 71, was the curly haired heartthrob who sang on numerous hits by the made-for-TV ’60s quartet, including “Last Train to Clarksville,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “I’m a Believer.” The Monkees began in the shadow of the Beatles, who’d hijinksed their way through “A Hard Day’s Night”; two producers envisioned a weekly TV series in which a fake rock band captured the same kind of energy, and NBC cast Dolenz, Tork, Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith in the roles. The late Don Kirshner took over the music, hiring songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to write and produce many of the songs, although the Monkees also covered some of the greatest songwriters in pop music history, including Gerry Goffin/Carole King (“Pleasant Valley Sunday”), Kingston Trio member John Stewart (“Daydream Believer”) and Neil Diamond (“I’m a Believer”).

The series, jammed with matching, multicolor band suits, deadpan puns, youthful good looks, relentlessly sunny dispositions and a beautiful bright-red Monkeemobile, became a hit right away. “The people I admired got it,” Dolenz says, still a touch defensive after all these years. “John Lennon got it. Frank Zappa (who appeared on the show) got it.”

After NBC did not renew “The Monkees” in 1968, Dolenz toured with Jones, Boyce and Hart, then shifted to TV and movies. The “quantum geek” obsessed with particle physics directed clips for NASA and did some cartoon voice-over work, then relocated to the U.K.

A few years ago, the surviving members began to talk about a 50th-anniversary tour or album; by coincidence, they also uncovered unfinished tracks from 1967 and 1968, by King and Dolenz’s late friend Harry Nilsson, and Neil Diamond’s “Love to Love.” (The latter contained a finished, unreleased vocal by Jones, who died in 2012.) The Monkees’ record label, Rhino, then approached Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne to produce a full album, and he was able to sign on newer songwriters such as Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Oasis’ Noel Gallagher.

The resulting “Good Times!” took two months to record, and it’s the Monkees’ strongest album in decades, full of sprightly pop enthusiasm, with Dolenz nailing the high notes on “She Makes Me Laugh” and the band channeling droney indie-rock bands on “Birth of an Accidental Hipster.” “This really did light a fire under everybody,” Dolenz says.

Dolenz, who has also done Broadway work and solo albums over the years, loads up on Monkees chestnuts for live shows.

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