Customer Reviews

Total Control: The Monkees Michael Nesmith Story

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Author Randi Massingill commits two cardinal sins with this book. She offers next to NO insight into the man's work, glossing over huge chunks of his career with mundane, trite or insulting comments like (re:Tantamount To Treason)"Most of the songs are too long with unneessary or badly done musical bridges", or (re: Pretty Much...) "...is great to listen to if you are in a bar and you are drinking up a storm...". The musical "observations" of his Monkee years or his Pacific Arts years fare little better. Secondly, you can feel Massingill's antipathy for the man drip off the pages. There's a sarcasm and condescension that mars the already razor thin insight into one of the cornerstones of not just the country rock movement, but of modern North American pop culture. No one digs a fluff piece, but this book smacks of haste, opportunism, and envy. One star for some of the (poorly reproduced) pictures, the little bits on the '97 Monkee reunion tour, and the idea of the book itself. Crapola.

Randi Massingill's biography on Michael Nesmith -- musician, actor, and visionary -- is the only one available on this seminal figure in pop culture and thus fills a gaping need. While engaging and accurate as far as basic facts go, there is not much in-depth analysis presented and little surrounding context to Nesmith's career and life. His music and filmmaking are not examined in the detail which they cry out for. It's a good book for a biographical overview and some observations from some of Nesmith's associates, but there is little direct input from the subject himself (as Massingill makes clear in her introduction, Nesmith avoided involvement, as did some of his closest compadres). There is, however, much material drawn from archival interviews with the other Monkees and Nesmith's first wife, Phyllis. The manuscript would have benefited from tighter editing. For example, although there are discographies and filmographies in the appendixes, in the main body the author frequently neglects to mention the dates of releases or events being described, making it unclear when important milestones have occurred. Massingill's prose betrays some awkwardness in places: among the clunkers that jumped out to me are sentences such as, "the completed 'Timerider' would sit on the shelf for a while so a distributor could be found," "Michael had several movies lined up for which he was going to serve as executive producer, but after time they vanished from the scene," "Michael's appearance would insure [sic] that they would get some publicity," and "it was astounding to the completest [sic] Nesmith collectors". And the presentation could stand some improvement. Don't let go of your first (1997) edition; many photographs have been changed, the text has been entirely reformatted, but most hurtfully, the reproduction quality of the pictures is substandard. The first, offset-printed edition offered acceptable image reproduction, but in this print-on-demand edition the images are sometimes grainy or indistinct, looking like photocopies of newspaper clippings. Possibly this can be addressed in the future as printing technology improves.

I first read this book back when I first became a Monkees/Michael Nesmith fan and didn't really know a lot about the man. Naturally, I liked the book. Now, years later, I picked up the book with much more knowledge and it's staggering how terribly it's written and how disrespectful it is to Michael. Also, this woman needs to hire a fact checker. There are a few extremely obvious glitches in timelines that she overlooks, and she barely glosses over other important events in Nez's life. Rumor has it that Massingill contacted Nez and wanted his input and initially he was going to help her out, but he asked her to wait because he wanted to finish a few other projects first. And she ignored his wishes and just charged on. In addition, she used some materials (photos, etc.) that Michael expressly did NOT want included. Obviously, he's not too fond of this project.

Basically, I think it says enough when Michael Nesmith himself doesn't even approve of this book or its author. Don't waste your money!

I really do like the Monkees music and TV show. I recently bought Micky Dolenz's autobiography and thought this could offer a bit of a different perspective. So far (about 1/2 way through now) the book does have interesting bits BUT this so called author is horrible! I can go and read magazine articles and reprint them, but I DO NOT call myself an author.

This book has a lot of interesting facts about Michael Nesmith, and outlines his life from childhood until 2005. It's also chock full of photos I had never seen of MN. It does provide some insight into his character and personal life via interviews with friends, associates, ex-wives, and other Monkees as well as segments of interviews with Nez himself. It was indeed a totally engaging read. However, for the most part, this publication still needs a lot of work. Firstly, the cover and back of the book are really cheesy and the layout looks like it was just thrown together by some hack. It doesn't look very professional or credible. The book at first glance presents itself as a joke, imo. It looks like a kid's book. I think some other people may have mentioned grammatical or puncuation errors, but I didn't really notice, or it wasn't so frequently that it jumped right out at you (and I'm a court reporter). I feel like this book could be miles better if turned over to the right editors and publishers.

What informative reading!. Randi Massingill has updated her already great book on Nez with new information on the events surrounding the Monkees 90's reunion. The facts are accurate, unlike many Monkees books on the market. She has listed the exact interview or court transcript each comment is from.

The detail is great.

Thank goodness we have a true Nesmith book with the real story. He is an amazing musician and video pioneer. I am glad he gets his due, with no stone left unturned. Bravo Randi!!!

I'm a big Monkees fan and I found this book rivetting. There's a lot to be learned from Mike Nesmith's respect for his own work and how protective he is of it , even to his own detriment at times (hence the undermining of the Monkees at the pinnacle of their success). There's so many Nez projects that his fans would have loved but never made it to completion. I'm a freelance artist with a strong sense of creator's rights which I defend unswervingly, thanks in large part to Mike Nesmith. This is good reading.Thanks, Nez!

This book is written by someone with basic understanding of jr high english! We'd be better off reading the old Tiger Beats and 16 Magazines for more indepth information on Nez....

This is a fan's tribute to the former Monkee, poorly written and assembled by piecing together clippings and other people's interviews. It's a bare-bones overview of Nesmith's history, trying to make a louse look good. But most of the stories she tells point to the fact that the guy was a mess psychologically and single-handedly destroyed the singing group.

The text I read (the 1997 edition) is filled with grammatical & typing errors. There are also factual mistakes and she misleads by claiming the Monkees TV ratings were strong in the second season when in reality the program didn't win its time slot. The author credits where she got some quotes and doesn't credit many others. It's very amateur. Other than her hunting down some legal paperwork, there is little here worth recommending because she skips many major portions of his life that she obviously couldn't find material for.

Since she is an admitted fan, don't expect objectivity. The author inserts her opinion or makes conjecture when she doesn't have facts. She does criticize some aspects of the subject but there's little to back up her opinions. There is no analysis of how many lives Michael destroyed, the impact of being an only child or having a mother who suddenly became rich, and the fact that just about all of his decisions about his career were wrong.

I take my hat off to Randi Massingill because it's obvious that she did her homework and then some, unearthing tons of intriguing information and rare photos. What bothers me about "Total Control" is that it doesn't present a complete picture of Michael Nesmith. A lot of ex-friends and coworkers remember him as being a difficult guy to get along with, but we never come close to an explanation for his behavior. We're also left in the dark as to Nesmith's artistic motivations, and with a songwriter of his caliber that's really a shame. I could have used a lot more analysis of classic songs like 'Hollywood' and 'Roll With the Flow' and a lot fewer "Mike was a jerk" anecdotes.

I also have to disagree with one of the author's key assertions: that Nesmith "ruined" the Monkees by wresting control of the group from Don Kirshner. How so? If Nesmith hadn't struggled to gain a degree of autonomy for the Monkees, it's doubtful that they ever would have produced work like "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd." or the "Head" soundtrack...and, decades later, people would have remembered them only vaguely as that goofy TV band who did 'I'm a Believer'.

If you're a Nez fan you'll obviously want to have this, and I'm not saying that it isn't a worthwhile purchase. I'm glad I read it. But "Total Control" could, without question, be improved upon.