Davy Jones

[Incandenza]

The Monkees singer has died from a heart attack.

[Reed John]

Davy Jones

Fuck, no.

[Furtho]

Davy Jones

RIP Davy.

[WOM]

Davy Jones

Aw, crap. A member of one of my all time favourite bands (that I never got to see). They played in the Falls last year and I missed my chance.

[Last Years Man]

Davy Jones

That is shock. You can just about count the number of groups who began in 60's who haven't lost an original member on one hand-Cream, Crosby Stills and Nash, Status Quo, Spencer Davis Group,Manfred Mann and The Hollies.

[Taylor]

Davy Jones

Last Years Man wrote:

You can just about count the number of groups who began in 60's who haven't lost an original member on one hand-

... if you're Anne Boleyn.

Last Years Man wrote:

Cream, Crosby Stills and Nash, Status Quo, Spencer Davis Group,Manfred Mann and The Hollies.

Huge Monkees fan, though never a Davy fan. It's sad though - I think his life had been a bit chaotic over the last few years.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Davy Jones

Shame.

I know his ex, a really nice woman. He must have been OK.

Hey, I can wheel that out to impress women in bars, instead of "I frightened Jack Davenport with my bouncer. And he were keeping wicket at the time!"

[WOM]

Davy Jones

Taylor wrote:

... if you're Anne Boleyn.

Nice.

[Borracho]

Davy Jones

Now he's a bereaver.

[Renart]

Davy Jones

RIP Davy. The Monkees were an underrated band in many ways. The more "serious" rock fans never gave them a chance because they were a TV concoction. But they had some great songs, and the movie Head is awesome.

[Cal Alamein]

Davy Jones

Sucks. He was my wife's hearthrob when she was a kid.

Dies at 66, same age as Lemmy who's still seriously smoking, drinking, gigging, recording and living the rock and roll lifestyle.

[linus]

Davy Jones

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

[historyman]

Davy Jones

"We're the young generation, and we've got something to say."

Somehow it seemed that The Monkees would never grow old, but sadly they and Davy Jones did.

They made life happier for a lot of people, and their appeal seemed to be pretty universal. I remember being in Barcelona in 2006 and was sitting with historywoman on the seafront when a young couple walked past doing the 'Monkee Walk'.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Davy Jones

I went to see The Monkees in Nottingham last year. Here's what I wrote.

THE MONKEES
Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham

They may be apocryphal, but the tales about how the individual Monkees were auditioned for the TV series offer a great deal of illumination regarding why they would later evolve into the very strangest of manufactured pop groups.

Each hopeful, folklore has it, was sent into a room with four judges sat at one end, a pile of Coca Cola cans in the middle, and asked to improvise something to impress the panel. One future Monkee painstakingly built a wall of Coke in front of the door, and said “You have to give me the job now. No-one else can get in.” Another picked up a single can, slammed it down on the judges' table, and said “Checkmate.”

if you hire people on the basis of their spontaneity, then ask them to do a job as drilled and directed automata, then it will only be a matter of time before, like Skynet in the Terminator movies, the entity you've created becomes self-aware.

That's one reason why this band's 45th anniversary tour is such a strange and jumbled bag, and why so much of it baffles the people who only came to hear “Last Train To Clarksville”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and the two “Believer” songs.

Much of the show, of course, is an affectionate tribute to their younger selves, with scenes from their glorious sitcom rolling overhead. It feels a little like watching a particularly hi-tech DVD extra: press a button, and the players will leap out of the screen and appear in 3D, but four decades older and with slightly ropey voices.

Well, three of them, in any case. There's Davy Jones, The Monkees' Mark Owen figure -
a diminutive Mancunian pretty boy, the face that launched a thousand teen zines, who fell in love with a different girl every episode, cartoon stars spinning in his eyes - whose body language and singing style have been sent a bit Phoenix Nights after years of doing the oldies circuit. There's the permanently clowning Mickey Dolenz, with his Cherie Booth QC letterbox grin and his over-practiced anecdotes (“The Beatles threw us a party... and I'm told I had a wonderful time”), his wild mop long gone and replaced with a pork pie hat. And there's the befuddled beanpole Peter Tork, the proper musician of the ensemble (tonight he plays bass, guitar, piano, French horn and banjo). Unsurprisingly Mike Nesmith, the tea cosy-hatted folkie and first Monkee to break ranks, go solo and get 'serious' (penning the sublime “Different Drum” along the way), hasn't deigned to join this tour.

On a recent edition of Jarvis Cocker's BBC 6 Music show, journalist Taylor Parkes gave a spoken essay asserting that “The Monkees developed, contrary to popular belief, not by insisting that they have it all their way but through a fine mixture of arrogance and humility - a need to impose themselves and an understanding of their limits.“ And for five years, that blend worked gloriously.

Their high-budget, studio-moulded situation meant they were able to call upon the finest songwriters of the day: Harry Nilsson, the two Neils (Sedaka and Diamond), Goffin & King, Boyce & Hart, Mann & Weil, and “Marks & Spencer and Fortnum & Mason”, as Tork quips tonight in an unfunny running joke. But it also meant that when they ventured into less commercial territory (from psychedelic C&W to Indian-inspired trance-rock), albeit under the watchful eyes of their inventor Don Kirshner, they were also able to call upon LA's finest and hippest young musicians (the likes of Ry Cooder, Neil Young and Stephen Stills all played on Monkees records).

A couple of tracks tonight scrape the surface of The Monkees' secret history. “(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone”, as famously covered by Sex Pistols, is a genuine garage rock classic, the equal of anything The Standells or The Sonics ever released. And “Randy Scouse Git” (its Alf Garnett-inspired name changed to “Alternate Title” in the prudish UK) must be of the strangest smash hits of the Sixties, with its episodic structure, thunderous drum rolls, sudden bursts of rage, and a faux-Satchmo scat routine from Dolenz.

It's after the interval that the strangeness really kicks in, with an extended sequence from Head, the Bob Rafelson/Jack Nicholson movie which is generally held to have killed The Monkees' career stone dead, but has since become recognised as a cult classic. A psychedelic satire of surveillance, state control, consumerism and capitalism, it begins with Mickey Dolenz leaping off a bridge in an apparent suicide dive. The montage we're shown tonight includes the witheringly sarcastic lyric “Hey hey, we are The Monkees, you know we love to please/A manufactured image with no philosophies”, a waitress mocking them with the words “Well, if it isn't God's gift to the 8-year-olds”, as well as no end of acid-fried, retina-bending 'solarisation' effects and, I swear, a scene in which Davy Jones attempts to sell a cow to Frank Zappa.

Almost apologetically, they run through the reassuring hits to happy-clappy acclaim. As Jones, Dolenz and Tork lap up the applause, most of the hall is relieved they finally played “Daydream Believer”. Me, I'm thinking I need to buy Head immediately. Either way, everyone's happy. And yes, they do walk the walk. As, in many senses, they always did.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Davy Jones

As a teenager I would frequently, upon arriving home from school, take off my denim jacket (the one with all the Anthrax and Slayer patches on it) and listen to The Monkees. I still love them. Thankfully the jacket has since long gone.

RIP Davy.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Davy Jones

Good obit by our Taylor over at The Quietus

[Taylor]

Davy Jones

Cheers, although I'm out of practice at writing to an overnight deadline, like a proper journalist. Could have done better there, considering (note to self: half the length, twice the quality... also, don't leave the first bit till last, or you'll end up rushing and it'll come out dry and Telegraph-like). Without descending too deep into back-slapping, I'd forgotten how good that piece for the Independent was, by the way - very fine stuff indeed.

He may not have contributed that much musically (at least when you view The Monkees from a distance), but I think Davy Jones may well have got to sing the finest, or at least the funniest, opening line in pop history. From "She Hangs Out": "How old d'ya say your sister was?" It's supposed to sound protective rather than sleazy, but every time I hear it I rock with laughter. Would have taken on a different tone at the middle aged reunion gigs, perhaps (if they did it - I can't remember), but oh man, what a cracker.

I might watch a couple of episodes of "The Monkees" tonight, in fact. Most of the scripts have dated terribly, but you get the odd amazing moment. My favourite is in "Captain Crocodile" where the fictional Monkees are booked to appear on a kids' TV show. They wander in with their guitars and drums, glancing around at the chaos in the studio: "So this is the world of television", marvels Micky Dolenz. "That's funny", says Peter Tork. "It doesn't look like a vast wasteland."

Now if I ever have to write Tork's obituary, that's my lead-in quote right there.

[West End Zuma]

Davy Jones

That's a nice piece by Taylor in the Quietus.

Even as a music snob I was always had a soft spot for the Monkees. It was the great pop songs and the wacky tongue-in-cheek TV show that set them apart from the other bubblegum acts at the time. So I could abide them well. I have to say Davy Jones with his teenybopper appeal didn't do anything for me; probably they wouldn't have been as big without him, though. So fair-do to him. RIP, man.

[oldjack]

Davy Jones

Nice obit by Taylor.

The TV show was fun, and there wasn't enough of that on TV then: tea time on Saturday, after the post-Grandstand news, as I recall.

Nothing much to add to the comments on the band's music, except that "Goin' Down", the flipside of "Daydream Believer", is worth a listen or two - a relative of "Parchman Farm" that Dolenz, not Jones, sings as 'Mose Allison on speed', as I read somewhere.

RIP.

[historyman]

Davy Jones

oldjack wrote:

The TV show was fun, and there wasn't enough of that on TV then: tea time on Saturday, after the post-Grandstand news, as I recall.

I think by the time that I was old enough to remember the TV show it was on Saturday mornings, pre-Swap Shop. Or school holidays.

Even though the show was made in the late '60s it still seemed more modern than some of the British TV for kids.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Davy Jones

That's my recollection too, Historyman. Because it didn't seem to be specifically aimed at kids - at least not in the sense that the shows that came after it on a Saturday were - that made it all the more special.

I still want a hat like Peter Tork's end credits one.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Davy Jones

Taylor - incidentally, I only 'got' the title of your fictional compilation, That Could Have Been Your Face, the other day, after reading the extensive section on The Monkees in (the brilliant) Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music by Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker.

[Taylor]

Davy Jones

Yeah, a true story by all accounts. That's a good book, by the way - I can sort of take or leave the chapters on Neil Young, Monkees etc (i.e. the chapters by Mr Barker) because they don't seem to be going over very much ground that wasn't covered by the likes of me and you a million years ago, but the stuff about pre-rock-and-roll American music (i.e. the chapters by Mr Taylor) are really fascinating and very informative.

[Renart]

Davy Jones

That sounds like an interesting book. It's been recommended to me before. Does it have anything about The Archies?

[Taylor]

Davy Jones

Only mentioned in passing, as a contrast to The Monkees.