The Monkees are swinging again
Micky Dolenz is not taking the mickey when he tells John Moser The Monkees are in top form 45 years after their popular TV series ended
Micky Dolenz doesn't always monkey around. The drummer of the famed TV show band The Monkees, who were so popular in the late 1960s that they outsold The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, says he sees his spot in the band as just a role, similar to the ones that he's played in Aida and Grease on Broadway, and Hairspray in London.
"I was cast in that television show," Dolenz says from Los Angeles, where he lives. "I was playing the wacky drummer, and singing the songs and playing the drums, and acting and improvising and playing the part on the show."
And yet, there's no denying it was the role of Dolenz's life - so much so that, more than 45 years after the series was cancelled, Dolenz is again on a tour with fellow Monkees Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith. (Fourth member Davy Jones died in 2012.)
There's something about The Monkees - the show, the music, the songs, everything - that resonated with a lot of people and still does
"I'll always be associated with The Monkees … But I'm not a Monkee every day," Dolenz says. "I can imagine going back and recreating that role, and that is how I personally have always looked at The Monkees. It's like Leonard Nimoy going back to Star Trek and playing Mr Spock."
The new tour is the third by Dolenz, 69, Tork, 72, and Nesmith, 71, who came together after Jones' death from a heart attack at age 66. Nesmith hadn't been on an extensive tour in 25 years.
Dolenz, Tork and Jones toured as The Monkees off and on since MTV revived interest in the series (which aired between 1966 and 1968) with a marathon rerun broadcast in 1986 that prompted a 20th reunion. The original line-up, including Nesmith, recorded a comeback album, Justus, that hit the top 200 in 1996 and did a short British tour in 1997.
There wasn't anything about Jones' and Nesmith's relationship that prevented a reunion while Jones was alive, says Dolenz. For decades, "there's always been talk" about reuniting with Nesmith, "and we invited Mike on every tour that we did", but Nesmith was busy with his career in the production and distribution of television shows and movies, Dolenz says.
But when they got together "for a memorial for Davy at someone's house … someone suggested we do a memorial concert in tribute to him. Mike had not been on the road for literally decades, but he said, 'Yeah, I'll do that. That would be great'," Dolenz says. "So we thought maybe we'd ask to do two or three concerts. And then an agent got hold of it and said, 'Well, why don't you just go on tour and do, like, a few weeks?'