The Monkees: the 60s pop band that famously started as a TV show. But how did that happen? *Why* did that happen? Are they even a real band?
The answers to these questions are complicated, and I’d like to guide you with more information, rather than tell you what to think. The short answer to the question everyone wants to know is: yes, The Monkees are, or were, a real band.
More or less.
The Monkees were created for a TV show by visionary producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider in the late 1960s. They were creating a sitcom about a fictional rock and roll group. The roles were cast from an ad that ran in trade publications seeking, “Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series.”1 Hundreds of hopefuls auditioned; fourteen were brought back for screentests; Raybert finally decided on four men based on audience screen test feedback: those men became The Monkees.
The Monkees was immediately a hugely successful TV show: so successful that the music created for it, which was made with the four men’s vocals and mostly backing musicians, created an uproar. Critics, fans, and civilians everywhere were begging the question: are The Monkees a real band?
Truthfully, the decades’ old investigation about whether or not The Monkees were “a real band” should have more to do with considering what constituted being a band in the 60s, and less to do with policing The Monkees: many critics who harp on the Monkees inauthenticity–before, during, and after The Monkees became a “real band”–would be horrified to learn that hiring session musicians to create musical tracks for bands was actually pretty common in the 1960s, and even bands such as The Beach Boys were using much of the same practices as The Monkees producers did before The Monkees became a “real band”. Yes, bands like The Beach Boys used hired session musicians for much of their incredible hits, such as the widely acclaimed, hypnotic, ethereal “Good Vibrations”2–and thank God they did, because “Good Vibrations” is among some of the greatest music of the 20th century, and those session musicians are amazing and helped create the fabric of music that is the 1960s.
Those session musicians would later be known as The Wrecking Crew –a name retrofit by drummer Hal Blaine, who, in addition to working for both The Monkees and The Beach Boys, worked for Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, The Carpenters, Neil Diamond, and The Byrds, to name a few.
No one is crying about their authenticity.
But there’s more to it.
What about the fact that everyone is comparing The Monkees to The Beatles? Oof.
Coming soon
