The Monkees brought both professional and personal differences to the set
When four young men answered an advertisement announcing “Running parts for 4 insane boys, 17 – 21″ in trades magazines in September, 1965 they could not have known that records they would jointly create under the name The Monkees would still be in demand over fifty years later. But they are. The Monkees was conceived as a television program about a fictional band and their daily hijinks, a blatant copying of The Beatles’ success in the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! What ensued was a band which transcended the television program. The show lasted two seasons. The band it created continued to make music into the 21st century, tour to sell-out shows of appreciative fans, and sell over 75 million records. But the path was far from smooth, with drama over the ability of the musicians, who were hired as actors, to play their own instruments.
Music oriented media sneered over the band, calling them the Pre-fab Four, a degrading comparison to The Beatles nickname of the Fab Four. Differences on the set of their program focused on producers and writers, with several of the band members threatening to quit at different times. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were both accomplished musicians, and Davy Jones, the band’s teen heartthrob aimed at pre-pubescent girls, had achieved stardom on Broadway prior to joining The Monkees. In one argument over the music to be heard during the show, Nesmith put his fist through a wall. Officially, the band succumbed to the outside pressures, breaking up in 1970, but by the mid-1980s they responded to the demands of classic radio and began working together again in the recording studio. Reruns of their show brought them a new audience, added to the earlier one never really lost.