The last Monkee standing is still making music and memories

Sixty years after the TV show premiered, Micky Dolenz is still Monkee-ing around -- willingly, and happilyDolenz, 81, is the sole surviving member of the band that was formed for a TV series (“The Monkees” on NBC) and became a star entity in its own right, with seven platinum-or-better albums and six Top 10 singles -- including chart-topping favorites “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer” and “Daydream Believer.” And you’ll find a legion of fans that feel the group is long overdue for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. For his part, Dolenz feels a responsibility to keep waving the Monkees flag, which he’s doing with a tour that celebrates the troupe’s 60th anniversary with songs, stories and plenty of video content from the archives. “I want people to understand how the Monkees came about,” Dolenz explained via Zoom from a residence he keeps in eastern Pennsylvania. “I talk a lot about the Monkees, the genesis of it, the origin, how it all happened. I don’t go on and on for hours, but I tell stories and we have videos. Sometimes some friends pop-in for a song or two. “It’s a great way to keep it out there.”For Dolenz it also helps to counter some assumptions that accompany the Monkees’ story.Coming in the wake of the Beatles’ world-changing success, the Monkees -- Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork -- came to be known by detractors as the pre-“Fab Faux,” put together during casting calls that attracted, among others, two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Stephen Stills. Its songs were, at least initially, written by luminaries such as Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, John Stewart and others -- as well as the dedicated team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Credibility was at a bit of a premium, in other words -- and wasn’t helped when the Jimi Hendrix Experience received an indifferent response when he opened for the Monkees on their first tour in 1967. But, Dolenz points out, there also wasn’t context for what the Monkees was doing at the time.“There’s still a lot of people who are surprised when I explain how it came to be, that it was a musical comedy sitcom on NBC with us cast in it, not a band in the traditional sense,” said Dolenz. who as a child actor starred in TV’s “Circus Boy” prior to “The Monkees.” “Even at the time, frankly, people didn’t get it... because it was the first time anything like that had happened. It’s happened many times since -- ‘Glee,’ for instance. They create the act then have the acts go out. “But there wasn’t anything like that during the Summer of Love, y’know? Next to the (Jefferson) Airplane and the (Grateful) Dead, it was like, ‘What is THIS...?!’”Dolenz still laughs when he recalls the Hendrix incident.“I had seen him in New York at the Cafe Au Go Go with (Columbia Records executive) John Hammond,” he recalled. “His claim to fame was he’s the guy who plays guitar with his teeth.” The following year Dolenz saw Hendrix and his Experience band at the Monterey Pop Festival during June of 1967 “and was blown away by him and, of course, his talent... Everybody was.” When the Monkees prepared to tour later that year Dolenz suggested the Experience as an opening act, nothing that, “(Hendrix) was very theatrical. And the Monkees, to me, was essentially a theatrical act.”The cosmic consolidation did not work on the stage, however. Eight shows in, tour promoter Dick Clark met with Hendrix’s manager Chas Chandler -- who was not in favor of the booking anyway -- to say he was receiving complaints from various quarters, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, that the Experience was too loud and “too erotic.” So the group was gone in a purple haze. “He felt bad, we felt terrible, but we knew it wasn’t our fault and we knew it wasn’t his fault,” Dolenz said. “It comes with the territory. We knew he was still great, and believe you me, Jimi Hendrix did fine without opening for the Monkees.”“The Monkees” TV show was canceled in 1968, while the group continued for another two years, making more albums and the trippy movie, “Head” (co-written by Jack Nicholson). By the time of 1970’s “Changes” album the lineup was down to Dolenz and Jones, but the duo and Tork reunited during 1986, with Nesmith joining on and off. A new generation of Monkees-influenced artists, meanwhile, burnished the group’s reputation, and its final album -- “Good Times!” in 2016 -- featured contributions from fans such as Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, XTC’s Andy Partridge, Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger.Jones was a posthumous presence by then, however, having passed away in 2012. Tork died in 2019, and Nesmith in 2021, just weeks after a final tour with Dolenz. Nevertheless, Dolenz said, “It’s almost like they’ve never left ‘cause I’m with them every night. I’m seeing them on the screen. I’m hearing them. People talk about it all the time. “The thing I miss the most is just not being able to call somebody and just say hi. We were really like brothers, ultimately... And, like brothers, we fought sometimes, but you can’t go through something like we did and not be that close to one another.”The Monkees mandate isn’t keeping Dolenz static, however. On Sept. 4 he released a new EP, “Timeless,” with six tracks written by “Good Times!” alumni Partridge and Schlesinger (who passed away during 2020) along with the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg, the Bangles’ Vicki Peterson, Jonny Polonsky and others. It’s Dolenz’s third release of the decade, following 2023’s “Dolenz Sings R.E.M.” and 2021’s “Dolenz Sings Nesmith,” and also his first solo set of original material since “Remember” in 2012. “I guess somebody just wanted to keep recording me -- there’s no accounting to taste,” Dolenz quipped. “That’s how I’ve been recording as a solo artist for decades now; somebody comes to me and says, ‘Do you want to record something, some new stuff?’ I’ve always gone on gut instinct; I know I’m not going to be selling platinum, but if the songs are there and they hit me as something that would be good to sing, then the answer is yes.”And he hopes to be able to answer in the affirmative like that for many more years to come. “Bob Rafelson, who created The Monkees, called it lightning in a bottle,” Dolenz said, “and to some degree that’s how I look at this business -- and have, forever. I think what happens is you put together certain people -- certain writers, certain musicians, certain singers -- and you catch that lightning, like he said. “The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t dissect it any more than that.”“Micky Dolenz: 60 Years of the Monkees” takes place at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6 at Northfield Park Racino, 10777 Northfield Road. 330-908-7624 or northfieldparkracino.com.