In his 2017 memoir, “Infinite Tuesday,” he did acknowledge it, saying he’d lost his temper when he felt his integrity was being questioned. They were warned they would be sued for breach of contract.Īt that, Nesmith rose from his seat and smashed his fist through a wall, telling Kirshner it could have been his face.įor years Nesmith would refuse to confirm or deny the incident, even as the other three gleefully recounted it to reporters. Things came to a head when all four Monkees demanded they take control of the music. Nesmith, meanwhile, had written several songs he hoped to debut on the show, but almost all were dismissed by music producer Don Kirshner, as sounding too country.Īmong them was “Different Drum,” which Linda Ronstadt recorded in 1967 for her first hit single, validating to Nesmith his opinion that Kirshner, hailed by the pop music industry as “The Man With The Golden Ear,” didn’t know what he was talking about. But when Nesmith revealed that fact to reporters, music critics quickly turned on “The Monkees,” dismissing the show as a fraud and the band as the “Prefab Four,” a mocking reference to the Beatles’ nickname, Fab Four. Nesmith and Tork, the group’s two most accomplished musicians, railed against the program’s refusal to allow them to play their own instruments at recording sessions. It would be the first of many confrontations Nesmith would have with producers during a tumultuous two-year run in which “The Monkees” won the 1967 Emmy for best comedy series. After pausing to gaze at a painting as if it were a mirror, he sat down and immediately put his feet up on a desk.īut he rebelled almost immediately when producers told him they were going to call his character “Wool Hat.” He demanded they use his real name, as they did with the other actors. With a harmonica around his neck, he stormed into a casting office, banging the door loudly.
Nesmith, with his twangy Texas accent and the wool hat he’d worn to his audition, became the serious but naive lead guitarist.Ī prankster by nature, he’d arrived at the audition carrying a guitar and bag of dirty laundry he said he planned to wash immediately afterward.
Tork, a folk-rock musician, portrayed the comically clueless bass player. Dolenz became the wacky drummer, although he had to learn to play the drums as the show went along. Jones, with his British accent and boyish good looks, was the group’s cute lead singer. Three others, “I’m a Believer,” ″Daydream Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville,” reached No. The show featured the comical misadventures of a quartet that tooled around Los Angeles in a tricked-out Pontiac GTO called the MonkeeMobile and, when they weren’t chasing girls, pursued music stardom.Įach episode rolled out two or three new Monkees songs, six of which became Top 10 Billboard hits during the show’s two-year run. Nesmith was running “hoot nights” at the popular West Hollywood nightclub The Troubadour when he saw a trade publication ad seeking “four insane boys” to play rock musicians in a band modeled after the Beatles. Nesmith was a struggling singer-songwriter in September 1966 when “The Monkees” television debut turned him and fellow band members Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and David Jones into overnight rock stars.Īfter the group broke up in 1970, Nesmith moved on to a long and creative career, not only as a musician but as a writer, producer and director of films, author of several books, head of a media arts company and creator of a music video format that led to the creation of MTV. Nesmith, who had undergone quadruple bypass surgery in 2018, died at home Friday of natural causes, his family said in a statement.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael Nesmith, the singer-songwriter, author, actor-director and entrepreneur who will likely be best remembered as the wool-hatted, guitar-strumming member of the made-for-television rock band The Monkees, has died at 78.
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