Though Micky Dolenz crafted the Monkees’ highest-charting original song, he’ll tell you he’s never been the most prolific composer. In keeping, news that he’s writing again is huge, indeed.
“I’ve written a few things recently, but not a lot,” Dolenz tells Rock Cellar. “Funnily enough, when I tend to write a song — especially these songs — they tend to be sort of country [laughs], and I always have. Look at a song like [the Monkees’] ‘Midnight Train,’ for instance. I think maybe it has to do with the fact that I usually write on a guitar.”
Micky Dolenz hadn’t put out an album in 15 years when King for a Day arrived in 2010; he followed that up relatively quickly with 2012’s Remember, but has been musically focused on Monkees reunion tours more recently. The latest output is a first-ever reissue of his early-1970s recordings, titled Micky Dolenz: The MGM Singles Collection.
“I wrote a few tunes for the Monkees, but I’m certainly not an extremely prolific songwriter — certainly not like Mike Nesmith, for example,” Dolenz adds. “To this day, I can’t just sit down with my guitar and say, ‘Today, I’m gonna write a song.'”
When he does, however, it tends to count. “Randy Scouse Git,” that big Micky Dolenz-written Monkees hit, shot to No. 2 in the UK, but under a different name — literally, “Alternate Title.”
“They wouldn’t let me use that phrase, ’cause in England it’s kind of rude,” Dolenz says. It translated into ‘horny Liverpudlian putz.’ I wrote the song on guitar and I wrote in England about my experiences over there meeting the Beatles and the girl that was gonna be my first wife [Samantha Juste]. So, it was sort of a diary, stream-of-consciousness song.”
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