The Monkees - Developing The Music For Their Debut Album

Developing The Music For Their Debut Album

During the casting process, Don Kirshner, the Screen Gems head of music, was contacted to secure music for the pilot that would become The Monkees. Not getting much interest from his usual stable of Brill Building writers, Kirshner assigned Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to the project. The duo contributed four demo recordings that they sang on to the pilot. One of these recordings was "(Theme From) The Monkees" which helped get the series the green light.

When The Monkees was picked up as a series, development of the musical side of the project accelerated. Columbia-Screen Gems and RCA Records entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records primarily to distribute Monkees records. Raybert set up a rehearsal space and rented instruments for the group to practice playing in April 1966, but it quickly became apparent they would not be in shape in time for the series debut. The producers called upon Don Kirshner to recruit a producer for the Monkees sessions.

Kirshner called on Snuff Garrett, composer of several hits by Gary Lewis & the Playboys, to produce the initial musical cuts for the show. Garrett, upon meeting the four Monkees in June 1966, decided that Jones would sing lead, a choice that was unpopular with the group. This cool reception led Kirshner to drop Garrett and buy out his contract. Kirshner next allowed Nesmith to produce sessions, provided he did not play on any tracks he produced. Nesmith did, however, start using the other Monkees on his sessions, particularly Tork as a guitarist. Kirshner came back to the enthusiastic Boyce and Hart to be the regular producers, but he brought in one of his top east coast men, Jack Keller, to lend some production experience to the sessions. Boyce and Hart observed quickly that when brought in to the studio together, the four actors would fool around and try to crack each other up. Because of this, they would often bring in each singer individually.

According to Nesmith, it was Dolenz's voice that made the Monkees's sound distinctive, and even during tension-filled times Nesmith and Tork sometimes turned over lead vocal duties to Dolenz on their own compositions, such as Tork's "For Pete's Sake," which became the closing title theme for the second season of the television show.

The Monkees' debut and sophomore albums were meant to be a soundtrack to the first season of the TV Show, to cash in on the audience. In the 2006 Rhino Deluxe Edition re-issue of their 2nd album, More of the Monkees, Mike Nesmith stated, "The first album shows up and I look at it with horror because it makes appear as if we are a rock 'n' roll band. There's no credit for the other musicians. I go completely ballistic, and I say, 'What are you people thinking?', 'Well, you know, it's the fantasy.' I say, 'It's not the fantasy. You've crossed the line here! You are now duping the public. They know when they look at the television series that we're not a rock 'n' roll band; it's a show about a rock 'n' roll band. nobody for a minute believes that we are somehow this accomplished rock 'n' roll band that got their own television show. you putting the record out like this is just beyond the pale." Within a few months of their debut album, the Music Supervisor Don Kirshner would be forcibly dismissed, and the Monkees would take control as a real band.

The Monkees' first single, "Last Train to Clarksville" b/w "Take a Giant Step", was released in August 1966, just weeks prior to the TV broadcast debut. In conjunction with the first broadcast of the television show on September 12, 1966 on the NBC television network, NBC and Columbia had a major hit on their hands. The first long-playing album, The Monkees, was released a month later, which spent 13 weeks at number 1, and stayed on the Billboard charts for 78 weeks. 20 years later, during their reunion, it would spend another 24 weeks on the Billboard charts. This first album is also notable, in addition to containing their debut single, for containing band member Michael Nesmith's first foray into country-rock, "Papa Gene's Blues," which mixed country, rock and Latin flavors.