By Dale King
Monkee-mania gripped Boca Raton for a couple of hours last Saturday night.
The surviving three members of the Monkees — the put-together pop quartet assembled by NBC executives in the mid-1960s for a TV show designed to capitalize on the success of the Beatles flick, A Hard Day’s Night, are still performing 47 years later.
The Mizner Park Amphitheater concert marked the Southern swing of the 24-date A Midsummer’s Night with the Monkees tour, which began in Iowa and then came south through New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
Monkees members Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork roused a mixed-generation crowd with an agenda of their tunes, going back to the group’s breakthrough hit, Last Train to Clarksville. They traced the Monkees’ musical itinerary from album to album, ending pretty much with songs and video clips from their musically heavy and sublimely dated film, Head.
The Boca audience of more than 2,000 people included die-hard fans decked out in Monkees T-shirts. Others wore black tees with “R.I.P. Davy Jones” and a picture of the late band member on the front. Jones, the single British member of the otherwise American group, died of a heart attack in February 2012 at his home and horse farm in nearby Wellington.
Near the end of a musically fulfilling and fun show, the Monkees paid tribute to Jones with a performance of Daydream Believer, the tune most associated with the late singer. Band colleague Dolenz told the audience that he, Tork and Nesmith pondered who should sing the tune for the Jones elegy. Then he turned to them and said, “This is your song.” Folks in the gallery sang the Jones favorite accompanied by the Monkees on stage and about a half-dozen backup musicians.
The Boca concert did answer an age-old question: Do the Monkees really play instruments? On Saturday night — and ever since the groundbreaking Headquarters album — that query was answered in the affirmative.
This summer’s concert tour was billed as a tribute to Jones, and even attracted back Nesmith, who has been reluctant for the past 40-some years to rejoin his ex-band colleagues. At age 70, Nesmith proved he is a consummate performer. The night was filled with songs that the long, tall Texan either wrote, sang, or both.
Nesmith, Dolenz and Tork took center stage, literally, as they opened the dusty Monkees Songbook. Tork, never known for his exceptional singing ability, ripped into an actual on-key version of Your Auntie Grizelda and then took it down a bit as he talked about the first song he wrote. He told how Nesmith helped with it, and even gave the nameless tune a title — For Pete’s Sake (also known as “In This Generation,” often featured as the TV show’s end theme during the second season). Tork also excelled on keyboards, bass and banjo.
Playing what appeared to be the same blond-body Gretsch 12-string guitar that he used on the TV show almost a half-century ago, Nesmith led a set of three of his self-composed tunes from the Headquarters album: You Told Me, Sunny Girlfriend and You Just May be the One.
Tork took the lead on a performance of Early Morning Blues and Greens, sung by Jones on the Headquarters release. Dolenz came forward to sing another track from Headquarters, Randy Scouse Git, an audience favorite at most of his concerts as a single performer. Dolenz also presented a good old-fashioned rock-and-roll song, No Time, from the aforementioned album.
In actuality, Headquarters marked a sea change for the Monkees. It was the first album that featured all four performers singing and playing their own instruments. Additional instrumentation and vocals — including a bass line added by album producer Chip Douglas — was under their control. It also showed the impact Nesmith was having on the direction the Monkees were taking.
As Saturday night’s concert progressed, band members seemed to get a little friskier and talkative, revealing they still have the soul for silliness that was a hallmark of the TV show that lasted just two years on NBC, but was revived in the 1980s and can be seen today on the Antenna Channel.
Singing between mini-jibes, the Monkees took the audience back to the ’60s with The Kind of Girl I Could Love, Sweet Young Thing (again by Nesmith) and a song that was written specifically for the group by Neil Diamond — I’m a Believer.
Throughout the concert, memories of the Monkees — TV clips, videos, interviews and bloopers from the production years — flashed on a screen at the rear of the stage. It also showed copies of Monkee Magazine and other teen reading material such as Tiger Beat and 16. TV commercials featuring the group in its heyday, plugging such products as Kool-Aid, Rice Krispies and Nerf balls, were also shown.
The Monkees wrapped up the night with another Nesmith song, the country-flavored What Am I Doing Hanging ’Round? The encore was Listen to the Band, a tune from late Monkees history.
Despite the disagreements, defections and strife that affect all pop groups, the Monkees have survived to entertain a third generation of kids.