Mickey Dolenz has reflected on the early days of The Monkees, saying the project leaned far more toward improvisation than pure musical performance.
The 80 year old musician, who is now the sole surviving member of the I’m A Believer hitmakers alongside Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones and Peter Tork, looked back on the group’s origins as a television sitcom that ran from 1966 to 1968 and explained how that shaped the way they were viewed behind the scenes in the beginning.
Speaking to Shindig! magazine, he said: "It wasn't a band, and the producers knew that. As you see on the screen test, it was comedy and acting.
"We did one little jam. I suspect but I don't know the music was not at the top of the list of their priorities.
"We had to be comfortable around music, but it was heavily weighted toward improvisation. The fact that I had the musical background, they saw me."
Mickey was already familiar with the entertainment world, having grown up as the son of actors George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, and he began his own career in 1956 on the children’s television series Circus Boy.
He explained: "I knew The Monkees was going to be different. I was coming from a showbiz family, and so much was second nature by then. I'd been through the process.
"However, I didn't get enormously invested in the whole thing. In late November '65, I was still going to school and would have taken the week off.
"I was never that comfortable at improv when we did the pilot. We'd only just met each other. But there was a buzz about it."
As time went on, the group began to realise they were becoming something much bigger than a fictional band created for television.
He said: "On the show, The Monkees never actually made it. Off screen, however, we sold out concerts all over the world.
"Mike [Nesmith] put it perfectly when he said, 'When we first played, all by ourselves, it was like Pinocchio becoming a real little boy.'"
