the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

UNDERSTAND THE MARKET 129
producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who advertised in Daily Va-
riety for “folk & rock musicians and singers.” They selected the four fi nal-
ists by analyzing their screen tests with one of the era’s primitive
computers. It was Hollywood television’s attempt to capitalize on the popularity
of the Beatles, with a thirty-minute sitcom about a similarly freespirited
rock group that affected the hipster look—shaggy coiffures and
sideburns, turtlenecks and love beads—minus most of the implied rebellion.
Only two of the members, the guitar-and-banjo-playing Tork and
guitarist Nesmith, actually knew how to play instruments at the start. But
that wasn’t a problem for pop music publisher and producer Don Kirshner,
who was hired to create music for them. Songs such as “Last Train to
Clarksville,” their first hit single, were composed by Kirshner’s crew of
professional songsmiths in New York, and were recorded by various studio
musicians (including drummer Buddy Miles, who later played in Hendrix’s
Band of Gypsys.) The sound was a workmanlike facsimile of
mid-1960s rock, but with lyrics devoid of any of the usual coded references
to drugs, sex, racial tensions, or Vietnam (though Dolenz has written
that “Clarksville” actually is about a soldier going off to war). The
music initially served mostly as a way of hyping the TV show. On the
program, musical sequences were used as breaks between playful gags
and footage of slapstick antics, often speeded up to make it seem manic.
Unless one was an aesthetic purist, that wasn’t all necessarily bad.
As a TV show, it wasn’t deep, but it was remarkably unconventional for its
time, with nonlinear story lines, herky-jerky editing, and unorthodox
camera shots—sort of the sitcom equivalent of avant-garde European cinema.
(A cynic might note that the show’s creators also none-too-subtly
imitated the style of Richard Lester, who directed the Beatles’ hit fi lms A
Hard Day’s Night and Help!) And while they weren’t much as musicians,
as actors the Monkees were funny enough to win an Emmy Award for
comedy. The group’s fans included psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, who
saw subtle subversiveness in their comedy, and Beatle John Lennon, who
considered them rock’s version of the Marx Brothers.