The Monkees TV Show Debuts

1966

The Monkees TV show makes its debut, with four actors chosen to portray a pop band based on The Beatles. While The Monkees are a fictional band, they become very real and eventually play on their own recordings instead of studio musicians.

It all started with an ad in Variety seeking "Four Insane Boys, Ages 17-21" to star in a new NBC-TV sitcom. Answering the call among 400 other hopefuls are two folkies (Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork), an English actor (Davy Jones) and a former child star (Micky Dolenz). Together they are the Monkees, an aspiring rock 'n roll band bumbling their way to their big break one zany adventure at a time. And they're too busy singing to put anybody down. Inspired by the prat-falling 1964 Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night, filmmakers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider wanted to exploit a youthful audience already enthralled with Beatlemania. Sunny Monkees tunes soon begin climbing the charts alongside the Fab Four, with "Last Train To Clarksville" and "I'm A Believer" landing at #1. Fans are startled to learn, however, that there are more than four Monkees in the barrel. Don Kirshner, future creator of The Archies, oversees the music while songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart write the songs. The instrumentals are almost entirely played by studio musicians, while at least one Monkee provides vocals. "At the same time, we were the Monkees," Tork explained to When The Music Mattered in 1982. "It was a unique phenomenon, to be a member of a group that wasn't really a group and yet was a group. If we'd been a group, we would have fought to be a group or we would have broken up as a group. But we were a project, a TV show, a record-making machine." At the height of their success, the Monkees are derided as a plastic, prefabricated, Beatles-wannabe band without any real substance. In response, the group ousts Kirshner in favor of former Turtles bassist Chip Douglas and announces their intent to write and play their own music. The result is another #1 album, Headquarters, followed by the chart-topping Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. The Monkees, which garners an Emmy win for Outstanding Comedy Series, ends its two-season run in 1968, but the now-legitimate band continues to perform until 1971. In 1986, MTV celebrates the group's 20th anniversary with a marathon of the series, sparking a resurgence of Monkeemania. The group embarks on a reunion tour and lands a record-breaking six albums on the Billboard 200.