Monkees fans will remember that the Beatles’ “Good Morning, Good Morning” appears as part of “The Frodis Caper,” the Micky Dolenz-directed final episode of their television show which aired on March 25, 1968.
Turns out the song has always had special meaning for Dolenz.
Long before the Summer of Love release of from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,, where the song originated, Micky Dolenz visited the studio and heard an early playback of “Good Morning, Good Morning.” “I listened to the track, and I’m trying to be so cool,” Dolenz said, during a Monkees convention Q&A. The song stuck with him and later, while at work on “The Frodis Caper,” he was able to secure a snippet of the song — making for the perfect opening, as the Monkees roll out of bed.
Micky Dolenz — who says John Lennon used to call him “Monkee Man” — says he overdressed for the occasion, thinking that there would be a party atmosphere during the Sgt. Pepper sessions. Instead, he found the Beatles and a three-piece suit-wearing producer George Martin hard at work in the Abbey Road studios.
“I got dressed up like I was going to a major party — a Beatlemania funfest, freak-out psycho Jell-O thing,” Dolenz admits, saying he wore “paisley bell bottoms, tie-died underwear, and my hair up in beads and the Lennon glasses. I looked like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Charlie Manson. I show up and there’s nobody there except the four guys. The place looks like my high school gymnasium, with flourescent lighting. And there’s just the four guys, sitting there playing. I was so wiped out. I was, like, ‘Where are the girls?!'”
“The Frodis Caper” was subtitled “Mijacogeo” after members of Dolenz’s family: Beginning with the m and i from Micky, then taking letters from the names of his mother Janelle, his sister Coco and his father George.
