Monkee business - The Monkees and the unique concept of mid 60's commercial television opportunity

 

Derided by many, the Monkees proved they could actually play

and their music continues to be enjoyed half a century later!

'Here we come, walking' down the street' - the familiar opening words of the Monkees TV series theme tune.

Manufactured by American TV executives the Monkees TV show was surely a new concept for the medium, of television the Monkees were created to ape, if that's the word, the success of the Beatles film 'a hard day's night' but on a half hour episode format

The premise of 4 young men sharing a house, the madcap adventures they got up to and the performance of the occasional song, were essentially a transfer of the old vaudeville theatre music hall template, onto television, except in the modern TV show there was only the same performers for the whole show, not the variety of acts of the 20's vaudeville shows.

The Monkees came along at the right time, in late 1965 into 1966, just as the Beatles had played Shea Stadium and called it a day for live touring. 'One more limousine, one more run for your life' George Harrison quipped on the chaos the Beatles faced every time they played live. Now the Beatles moved into the studio to explore the music and move into another musical dimension, only to play live once more on the famous roof top session in London.

Where the Beatles left off, the Monkees filled the slot, primarily on the commercially lucrative primetime children's hour 'after school' TV slots. Like the British ITV children's program of the same era called  'Do not adjust your set' which featured the Bonzo Dog Doodah band as the resident musical ensemble, the Monkees and ITV's 'set' both found an adult following, who liked the zany antics found in each of the shows. 

Do not adjust your set also featured Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones, all later Monty Python cast members. At this time, in the 1960's, television was growing massively in terms of content, programs and new directions including this alternative comedy of the day.

American television relied on advertising as a support for the operating costs and the program making and with a big hitter like the Monkees series, endorsement deals and/or endorsements opportunities with entities like Kelloggs Cereals and Gretsch guitars were great opportunities to promote the series. Likely as a result of the Monkees toting Gretsch instruments played through Vox amplifiers, sales of both sets of products in the US rocketed.

The commercially minded American product, had the concept of the Monkees defined into a carry case all of its own, that is that Don Kirshner the music executive had the call on some of the best songwriters in the US, songs were written by many greats such as Mann & Weil, Neil Diamond, Carol King and many more household names for the Monkees project.

Musically, many of the top session players of the time including Glenn Campbell would play on the song backing track recordings, the Monkees at that time only adding a lead vocal. This rankled with the Monkees, who decided they wanted to be playing on the records and writing the songs. 

This would be more lucrative for them, but the Kirshner model did allow a greater variety of songs from different writers so the problem of musical leit motifs cropping up in future songs was limited. In retrospect, perhaps a 1 original and 1 imported song might have given the Kirshner / Monkees situation more duration.

There had been mentions in the media of the Monkees not playing their own instruments and for Micky Dolenz, Peter Torq and Mike Nesmith, all people who had been musicians before the Monkees, this did not sit well. Seeing the Monkees playing unplugged electric guitars on the TV shows no doubt added to this view that they did not actually play their instruments.

For all that Don Kirshner held, reputation, musical control and contracts with the best songwriters, the Monkees felt too creatively constrained. As a sop to alleviate the problem, Mike Nesmith did get to contribute songs and these were popular as the public bought them enthusiastically which opened the doors to the Monkees having more creative control and eventual writing, performing and production on their music.

After two series, the Monkees TV shows were cancelled, it was probably only ever going to be a short lived 'Beatlesque' type television show in concept and the next project a film called Head, was started. 

Head had an R Rating and as such, many of the Monkees core younger audience could not get to see the film, so commercially this did not really achieve what for the Beatles a 'hard day's night' type of success had been and lead on to further film projects.

Pop music notoriously moves on and musical fashions quickly change, so the shelf life of the Monkees as a format for a TV series was likely never going to last more than another season if that.

The Monkees did take their music on the road to prove they could play live and Beatlemania was now replaced with Monkeemania, which lasted until around 1971 when the group fragmented with Peter Torq and then Mike Nesmith leaving.

Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees on a 1967 tour but the young audience couldn't understand or appreciate what Jimi was doing and he was drowned out by an ocean of teenage girls shouting for the Monkees. Jimi Hendrix went onto greater things thankfully securing his own musical legacy, the Monkees live shows were very successful in their own right and disproved the critics who now had to eat their earlier words.

I barely remember the Monkees from the time they were around in their pomp the end of the 60's into the 70's, seeing their shows on BBC children's hours television along with other great US imports like the Hanna Barbera cartoons, Top Cat, Tom and Jerry, the Wacky Races and the Banana Splits cartoons around 1971. This was often the case the UK TV stations buying in a lot of US made television content usually a couple of years or more down the line.

Now there is only one Monkee left - Micky Dolenz, I met him in 1979 or 80 when he was directing a play for the BBC TV corporation in London, my father worked for the BBC as a photographer and the scene Micky was directing was done at a shoe polish factory or similar at Acton, West London, on a saturday afternoon. 

Eleanor Bron (who I believe had also had appeared on the ITV 'do not adjust your set' series coincidentally) was acting the scene playing a Czech defector who had to walk through a pair of sliding doors on the camera shot, the doors out of camera shot, were pulled back by pieces of wood taped to them by two camera assistants, oh the power of television!

Micky was really nice to meet and the filming was nice to see, it was only a few months later on BBCTV that there was a rerun of the Monkees shows and I recognised Micky. Musically for me, around this time about 4 musical influences converged and helped me with my guitar playing which I enjoy more than forty years on. The Monkees playing on the TV show reruns was one.

The Monkees were of their time, a commercial opportunity, successful and now provide a great nostalgia fest to the who remember them, or have discovered them since. Their legacy is that they staged reunions years after and filled venues, their music is still popular today. They outlived their initial short project and continue to be popular more than half a century later.

And more importantly, they could really play!

Buddy Holly - Remembered 60 years on

Buddy Holly's legacy - 60 years on

Colourised picture of Buddy Holly, England 1958

February 3rd 1959, the day the music died but didn't.

The legacy of Buddy Holly's musical life remains strong and rightly so. If you dig into the past, here was a performer whose music shaped much that followed.

Buddy Holly was in the right place at the right time, in post WW2 America. America emerged from WW2 in a better position than countries in the European region devastated by 6 years of war.

Bill Haley's Comets - Hot Rods and rock n' roll - 

ingredients that lit the fuse for a generation

In the Texas state, in 50's America, Western Swing, Hillbilly mountain music and country music were ingredients waiting when Bill Hailey lit the fuse commercially in 1954 with Rock around the clock.

Buddy Holly's journey through musical styles led to country and as soon as Elvis played Lubbock, Buddy's style changed overnight. In 1955, Texas Rockabilly became an important local style of music - like jazz, it moved forward gaining and developing as new players emerged on the scene.

Being able to pick up music from Mexican radio stations had an influence on Buddy and the Crickets too, Heartbeat being just one of Buddy's songs, with the Latin beat combined with a country music double-stop intro and solo. 'Tex-Mex' they called it.

Norman Petty the genius musical producer

Whilst Buddy Holly was emerging as a songwriter and evolving his musical group into the Crickets, another catalysing force was about to enter the story. 

Norman Petty had learned about electronics during his WW2 military service and became the Texas answer to Sam Phillips who ran the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis producing Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and countless other stars.

Like Sam Phillips and Les Paul, Norman Petty was pushing the technological and music recording boundaries. All three were using echo, microphone effects and multi tracking and producing ground-breaking sound.

Fender Sunburst Stratocaster

In 1954, Leo Fender put his legendary Fender Stratocaster guitar into production and Buddy Holly purchased one in 1956 with the help of his brother. This guitar looked futuristic then and has not dated really since, seeing off many imitators and copies.

In the studio, Buddy Holly's style and songs combined with the studio production and use of the then basic studio effects produced legendary music. The Stratocaster and his 4x10 Fender Bassman amplifier were integral to this process too.

Use of tripping echo by Petty, where Buddy's vocal line was decaying as he was starting to sing a new one sound very effective. Flipping the drums through a natural sound and echo chamber sound during the solo, was simple but effective. 

Buddy Holly used his guitar as more than just accompaniment. His guitar was used more dynamically, like a piano and right out at the forefront. 

Although Buddy did play lead runs on the guitar, various Crickets line-ups did include lead guitarists such as Sonny Curtis or Tommy Allsup for example.

Hank Marvin in 1960 - the influence extended to the glasses!

However the end result was arrived at, the legacy of this great music continues. You only have to play one of the tracks and the sound is just electric. There is something that just sets it apart from a lot of other music. It never dates.

Play along to Buddy Holly's songs and something mystical happens, you start playing things that you wouldn't normally play, phrases, notes, chord variations - it is mystical and plain spooky. It is almost like the legacy is pushing you on, evolving.

The Buddy Holly legacy even in its early days influenced guitarists who would influence others. In Britain, guitarist Hank Marvin who would find fame with the Shadows wanted a Stratocaster after seeing one on the Chirping Crickets LP cover, going on to play the first new one imported into the UK in 1959.

The Buddy Holly statue in Lubbock Texas

The Shadows (then the Drifters) backing Cliff Richard, recorded a live LP at Abbey Road studios including a Buddy Holly track the day before Buddy died. Hank Marvin developed an instrumental style of playing and covered a number of Buddy Holly tracks on his Hank plays Holly CD.

Although Buddy Holly never was able to use the tremolo arm in his playing, Hank Marvin did, incorporating it into his style, to help the guitar emulate a singing human voice.

Players including Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, Andy Summers and George Harrison amongst many, cited Hank Marvin as a major influence.Keith Richards was also influenced by Buddy Holly's music too, 'he had everything' Richards said on a television program about Buddy Holly. Indeed he did. 

Bobby Vee - who stepped in to play on Feb 3rd 1959

The immediate vacuum left by Buddy Holly's death was filled by artists such as Bobby Vee, who would later play with a version of the Crickets and put out some catchy hits such as 'Rubber Ball'. 

The music that followed was in retrospect syrupy and often bland, succumbing to a 'Bobby syndrome'  - a singer often named 'Bobby' whether their original name or not, usually wearing a sport jacket, driving a Ford Thunderbird and with an immaculately coiffured hair.

This fitted the direction America was going in the 1950's towards a consumer society of white picket fence, white middle class citizens living in a land of plenty and opportunity. And safe. Like something out of a 1950's soap series.

Long gone was the now out of fashion wild and leather clad style of Gene Vincent or MArlon Brando's 'Wild one'. Eddie Cochran's 'Something else' predated Punk Rock by twenty years, but was way ahead of its time. It didn't fit with the preppy and acceptable saccharine mush of the new decade of the 1960s.

Buddy Holly was in his last months refining his songwriting style and moving and developing his career into something bigger. His move to Manhattan in New York, a cosmopolitan 24-hour town, away from the staid and conservative Lubbock, was opening up new possibilities for him including acting. 

Interestingly, John Lennon, another performer greatly influenced by Buddy Holly also lived in New York in his final months. If you compare one of Lennon's last tracks 'Nobody told me,' you can hear a 'Holly-esque' echo laden sound, it is almost like the whole thing came full circle.

The simple memorial stone to Buddy Holly at Lubbock

With Buddy Holly's death, we are fortunate that Maria Elena Holly and Buddy's family have allowed the legacy of work and his life to be accessible.

With a Buddy Holly Centre and a museum devoted to artefacts Buddy owned in his life, we are thankfully able to see the legacy large as life and not hidden away for the privileged few or family to see.

Rave On - a great compilation album

In 1983 I bought a double cassette tape that was called 'Then came rock n' roll.' I still have it, on that was 'That'll be the day' by Buddy Holly and it was just such a great sound. 

Around that time I was in a band with some friends I had been at school with and I was in a second hand shop that also sold guitars and I found 'Rave on' a compilation of Buddy Holly's songs. It opened with 'Rave on'.

When I heard that song I was blown away, I played it again to appreciate the sound and what was going on. It sounded immense. Having tracked down many of Buddy's songs over the years, what is apparent is there was so much potential in that music, intensely written and recorded. Who knows where it would have gone onto?

In 1992 I saw the Buddy Holly stage show in London and bought the cassette tape, on that was a track I hadn't heard called  'Its so easy' and what a great track that is. In the round, there are just so many great tracks to choose from them in this legacy that is Buddy Holly. 

Can you choose a definitive Buddy Holly track? Difficult. There are so many. Everyone has a favourite. That's the great thing, the songs sound fresh as though they were recorded yesterday and people still love them.