This book tells the story of Davy Jones, the first Monkee. Jones was born into a working-class family in Manchester, England. He wasn't fond of studying, but his talent for acting was obvious from a very early age. Having failed the entrance exams for further education, he left school at the age of 15, which was common at the time. His interests were then divided between a career as a horse jockey or as an actor. It wasn't long though, before he got a chance to play the part of The Artful Dodger in Oliver. When the cast was asked to tour the US, he went along. After the run of Oliver, he was still in demand for various acting jobs, and it wasn't long before he was signed up to appear in Don Kirchner's concept for a new TV show featuring an up-and-coming rock group. In this book, Jones details some of the behind-the-scenes stories of how the Monkees was conceived and what became of the group in later years. He also describes how the fame and fortune that came with becoming a TV and music star affected his personal life.
Jones is a great story teller, but he does miss some of the big picture. He describes how, from the start, the Monkees were intended to be a commercial phenomenon, getting publicized on TV, and serving as a musical front for selling albums whose material, written by best-selling song writers, was carefully selected for its commercial viability and performed by top session artists. Apparently, once the group began achieving the expected levels of success, they forgot that they had been auditioned and hired to act in a role written by someone else. They had dreams of actually becoming a rock group rather then simply playing the role of one, and they wanted to take over creative control of their music. Once they had wrested creative control from the studio, their popularity plummeted, their albums didn't sell, and they lost their TV show. Even Jones doesn't quite seem to comprehend what happened-in response to critics who complained that the Monkees didn't play on their first album, he argues that TV doctors and lawyers aren't expected to actually perform operations or argue cases. But then, those same TV doctors and lawyers don't open and run clinics in their name or pretend to provide services to actual clients, whereas these actors, who were portraying musicians on TV, had their names on a musical product that was sold to fans as if they had actually created the music themselves. Nevertheless, for Monkee fans, this story is well-told, and can be an engaging diversion. But the song included in the audio edition of this book is definitely NOT destined to be a hit single.
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