The member of The Monkees that Frank Zappa considered hiring for his band
The secret behind most manufactured boy bands, from The Monkees to One Direction, is something of a tragedy. The majority of the time, they’re made up of smart, switched-on people who want to make so-called real music themselves, who get tired of churning out the same teenybopper mush under intense scrutiny.
Pick a page of the great encyclopedia of boy bands at random, and you’ll find a fistful of burnt-out hipsters who got tired of the spotlight and decided to do things on their own terms. Zayn Malik, Robbie Williams, George Michael, you name it, they’re there. Williams (arguably) aside, each of them wanted to make music that was more interesting and artistic than what they made in their day jobs, but none of them was original in that desire.
In fact, the desire to be a “real musician” in the face of manufactured pop stardom goes back to the very first manufactured boy band. Though don’t let them hear you call them that, or they’ll have you on toast. Although The Monkees were formed via a casting call, the casting call asked for musicians first and actors second, which is always how they viewed themselves. You can also see this by watching some of the early episodes of the show. Yikes.
While each of them had acting backgrounds, they were musicians first, yet the only band member assigned to an instrument he couldn’t play was Mickey Dolenz. A talented singer and capable guitarist, Dolenz felt like he was set to be one of the frontmen of the band before getting what he felt was the short end of the stick by being cast as the band’s drummer.
However, Dolenz was arguably the best singer of the whole group, so he got the lead vocals on all their songs, and at least at first, none of the band members actually played their own instruments, so there was no real issue.
It’s also a testament to Dolenz’s talent that, in order to more convincingly play a drummer on TV, he took up drums and found that he was good at them. Really, really good at them. So much so that by the time his band had the clout to demand that they play their own instruments on their records, he was up there with bassist and keyboard player Peter Tork as the most capable player in the group. This, combined with the more alternative comedy sneaking its way into the show, saw a change in the reputation of The Monkees.
As you can imagine, many rock bands of the time sneered at The Monkees for much the same reasons that every manufactured boybands are sneered at. However, in the mid-1960s, that changed. The Beatles were fans of the band, and bafflingly enough, so was Frank Zappa, who became friends with Dolenz thanks to the drummer turning up in the psychedelic rock scene of 1960s Los Angeles. This also wasn’t just a pop tart clinging to a legit rock star for street cred, the way Robbie Williams clung to Liam Gallagher in the mid-1990s, as well. Dolenz and Zappa were genuine friends.
To the extent that Dolenz invited Zappa onto his show for the penultimate episode of The Monkees, where the duo performed an actually pretty winsome routine where Zappa (dressed up as Dolenz) interviewed Dolenz (dressed up as Zappa). However, if Zappa had his way, that wouldn’t have been the last of their professional relationship. According to an interview Dolenz gave to The Guardian, Zappa asked if Dolenz wanted to drum for the Mothers of Invention.
Dolenz was intrigued, but like with any boy band making as much money as The Monkees were, their record contract punished any activity outside of it, like they were breaking the Geneva Convention. Thus, he had to turn down Zappa, but in hindsight, he was glad of it. In the interview, he said, “I was sort of relieved, I mean, you listen to his stuff, and it’s like 7/13 time, you know, these ridiculous time signatures.”
Dolenz was a good drummer, but few people are good enough for Frank Zappa.