The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman

Author:Kent Hartman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

12

Let’s Live for Today

Never have so many played so little for so much.

—BARNEY KESSEL

In late 1965, two young music-loving producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, had a brainstorm. What if they took the basic concept of the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night—the fictional story of four zany, cute-looking twentysomething male musicians running amuck in a comically skewed world—and turned it into a weekly TV series specifically targeting teenage girls? With tapping into the burgeoning youth market a known priority for ABC, CBS, and NBC and with animal-oriented band names currently in vogue, the enterprising duo immediately began making a series of pitches around Hollywood for a program they wanted to call The Monkees.

After finagling a one-episode pilot deal with Columbia Pictures’ TV subsidiary, Screen Gems—a major supplier of shows to all three networks—Rafelson and Schneider, now going by the corporate name of Raybert Productions, set about the task of coming up with four suitable musicians, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Though they first considered using a novice band they had befriended called the Lovin’ Spoonful (“Do You Believe in Magic,” “Daydream,” and “Summer in the City” would be among their eventual hits), the producers ultimately chose to go the casting-call route in order to find their perfect set of joyful anarchists.

Accordingly, in early 1966 Raybert put a small, pithy advertisement in Daily Variety and in The Hollywood Reporter that read: “Madness!! Auditions: Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in a new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17–21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s-types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.”

With swarms of young male hopefuls easily several hundred strong descending upon their offices, the producers ended up with plenty of warm bodies from which to choose, including future well-known musicians Stephen Stills, Van Dyke Parks, and Gary Lewis. After hour upon hour of freewheeling auditions stretching over an exhausting two-month period, Rafelson and Schneider finally settled on their ideal fabricated foursome: Micky Dolenz, a former child actor and natural mimic, best known for playing the lead role in the Fifties TV series Circus Boy; Davy Jones, a diminutive British-born song-and-dance veteran whose most recent work had him on the Broadway stage in Oliver! as the Artful Dodger; Michael Nesmith, a laconic Texas-born guitarist and singer with minimal performing experience; and Peter Tork, a sometime-musician now washing dishes for a living in a Santa Monica restaurant.

Given that The Monkees was a show about a band, the first order of business, along with filming the pilot, was to record some music. Choosing to employ the services of a number of established songwriters, with Neil Diamond, David Gates, and Carole King among them, music publisher and Screen Gems music division president Don Kirshner—who had assumed the role of music supervisor on the show as well—also saw the need to bring in studio musicians to help cut the made-for-TV group’s records. In his view, the four actors were in no way ready to assume the duties of actually playing their own instruments.

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