The Monkees’ self-titled debut arrived 60 years ago this month, beginning an incredible 78-week run on the Billboard album chart that included more than three months at No. 1. (Micky Dolenz also sang “Last Train to Clarksville” to the top of the charts in late 1966.)
Yet misconceptions still surround them: That a mass murderer auditioned for the band. That Dolenz, the last surviving member of the Monkees, was passed over for Jim Carrey to play the Riddler. Even, as Dolenz has noted, that the Monkees were actually a rock band.
He’s spent years trying to clear things up, even as Dolenz lost bandmates Davy Jones, Peter Tork and then Michael Nesmith. That’s left him to lead the ongoing 60 Years of the Monkees Tour all by himself.
“There is the one about Charles Manson auditioning for the Monkees,” Dolenz told the Niagara-Gazette. “That never happened, and it still seems to go around.”
Manson was years away from leading a grisly killing spree that made him infamous when casting began for the Monkees TV program, though he had already begun a string of separate jail sentences for lesser crimes. (By the way, Manson did, in fact, have a connection with the Beach Boys.)
Dolenz says he didn’t go after Carrey’s role in Batman Forever, either. “I never auditioned for the part of the Riddler,” he added. “I did audition for the role of Fonzie in Happy Days, and Henry Winkler tells the story that when he saw me at the audition, he didn’t think he would get it. Of course, he did an amazing job in that role.”
As for the Monkees themselves, he is quick to caution: “It wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll band. It was a television show about a rock ‘n’ roll band,” Dolenz told the Huffington Post. “That was a character that I was playing, and I still look at it like that.”
The next stop on his Monkees tribute tour is on Friday, Oct. 30. Dolenz has currently booked shows into late May 2027. His official site has more information.
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Pardon my question, but are you still playing a character from TV when you go on stage since the show ended? O.o
Lol, well said. This is a tired old talking point, the reality is that they were always more of a band than a show, they had a hit single before the show even aired.
The thing about the Riddler role – Tim Burton had Dolenz in mind for the role before he got yanked from the project, and has said so many times
There’s a quite interesting true story about the Manson/Beach Boys/Tate
murders, about how it was a case of mistaken identity that lead to
Sharon Tate (et al)’s deaths. It’s in a book called THE MAN WHO KILLED
PAUL MCCARTNEY (and that’s a damn interesting true tale too!)
The Monkees were never INTENDED to be a real band, but when Mike and Peter started seeing the scope of the work their names were attached to, their artistic instincts kicked in, and they insisted on more control. Kirshner refused and got the boot (which was NOT what the guys wanted), and they essentially had little choice but to try to become a real band. Under that concept, they produced ONE album as a band during their initial incarnation. Everything after that moved farther and farther into the realm of collected solo efforts.
The reunions — that is a different matter. They had much more freedom then. During the ’80s, it seemed to be more of an entertainment act. In the ’90s, it seemed to be more of a band with a nod to the past. It’s fluctuated between the two ever since, mostly dependent on which of the guys have been involved.