Micky Dolenz Reflects on The Monkees’ Legacy, His Career and Why He’s Still Rocking Today (EXCLUSIVE)
From his days with The Monkees to his solo career, Micky Dolenz shares stories, memories and insights
For over half a century, Micky Dolenz has been entertaining audiences as a singer, drummer, actor, director, and all-around showman. Best known as a primary voice and energy behind The Monkees (the band inspired by The Beatles and, in particular, their film A Hard Day’s Night), Dolenz first captured hearts in 1966 when he and his bandmates—Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork—became the stars of their own groundbreaking television series. What started as a made-for-TV rock band quickly became a legitimate musical phenomenon, with Dolenz leading the charge on hits like “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” His distinctive vocals and natural comedic timing made him an instant fan favorite, and The Monkees’ impact on pop culture has never really faded.
But Dolenz’s career stretches far beyond his Monkees days. Before joining the band, he was a child actor on the series Circus Boy and after The Monkees’ initial run, he carved out a successful career as a voice actor, stage performer, and television director. His talents behind the camera—first developed during a stint in England—led him to work on series like Boy Meets World and Pacific Blue, while his unmistakable voice made him a sought-after talent in animation (including the animated series The Tick). And of course, The Monkees never truly went away—Dolenz has kept the band’s spirit alive through various reunions, solo tours, and new recordings.
Now, let’s dive in and hear directly from the man himself as he reflects on his career, The Monkees’ impact, and what keeps him going after all these years.
Woman’s World (WW): After all these years, is it commonplace for you now or is it weird that this whole fascination with The Monkees keeps going and going?
Micky Dolenz (MD): As you say, after all this time, no, I don’t find it weird. I feel… blessed. I would say that’s a good word. Over the years I’ve grown to understand it, because I’ve given talks on it. When I was in England, for instance, producing and directing television shows, people would ask me about the business in general and specifically about The Monkees show and why it had sustained for so long. I’ve been asked the question, of course, even recently. My take on it is simple, and it’s the same reason, ultimately, that a show like Star Trek still stands up, or Casablanca or The Beatles.
You can’t take it apart. It’s like the old story, taking the watch apart, seeing how it works and, of course, it doesn’t work anymore. You can’t reduce these things. You put together a team of people and an idea and you do your best and you work hard and you cross your fingers and try not to make too many mistakes, and at a certain point, the way that I look at it is that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
One of the producers of The Monkees once, when asked that question, said, “We just caught lightning in a bottle,” and that’s sort of the way I look at it. It was the writing, it was the songwriting, it was the comedy, the TV show, the directing and the four of us, and all of a sudden it just sort of self-ignites like an uncontrolled fission reaction or something. So that’s my answer, a long-winded one, but nevertheless…
WW: That enduring success, of course, has allowed you to do so many other things.
MD: Oh, absolutely. I didn’t rest on my laurels after The Monkees. That’s when I moved to England, because I wanted to start producing and directing. I went to England to star in a play, and I got lucky and had an agent send me around. First thing I did was a drama play for the BBC, and then I went on and for about 10, 15 years, all I did was direct and produce. It was good, because it gave me a chance to step back from it all, and I didn’t do any singing, no Monkee business, no entertaining, no acting.
That gave me a chance to step back from it and that was fortunate, because it can be a problem once you’ve become so identified, so typecast. You know, it’s called the Mr. Spock problem. Leonard, who’s an incredibly fine, highly-trained Shakespearean actor, must have been very frustrated not to get considered for some major roles after Star Trek. But that’s the price you pay to some degree.
WW: When you came back from England, the whole Monkeemania was happening and you guys reunited. Was that exciting?
MM: It was totally exciting and refreshing. That’s what I was just saying. Having been away from it for so long and, more importantly, having actually achieved a degree of success, and had gotten to be known and respected as a producer-director, with no Monkee business attached at all. So when I did go back to it in the ’80s for the reunion, I was thrilled. It was only supposed to be a little 10-week tour, if that, just for the reunion, and of course, it lasted … well, it’s lasted until this day.
WW: Emotionally, do you find that that was reassuring, discovering that you could do other things?
MD: Absolutely in every way emotionally, psychologically and creatively, because that post-success thing can be a problem, and we see it all the time. People react in different ways. Sometimes they just try to run away from it. I kind of liken it to this train, excuse the pun, but you work very hard to get your career going, and I liken it to getting this train rolling and that is your career. It takes a lot of work and a lot of energy and a lot of time and effort to get this thing rolling.
And then one day you want to get off, you want to stop the train … well, some people, they want to stop the train. You’ve seen that, where people just say, “I don’t want to sing my hit songs anymore” or whatever. And that’s impossible to do at that point. The train just has way too much inertia. Or you can try to nudge it sideways a little bit, sort of reinventing yourself, which people do. Someone like Madonna is exceptional at that, and David Bowie, of course, was another example.
Or you just get off the train, and that’s kind of what I did when I went to England. I just sort of got off the train and waved goodbye and said, “Have a nice time.” And that’s another way of dealing with it, but if you try to stand in front of the train and stop it, it’s probably not going to happen.
WW: And getting back on the train isn’t as hard as you imagined it would be.
MD: Exactly, and again, that’s kind of what I did.
WW: You were into music prior to the show anyway, weren’t you?
MD: Well, a little. I had cover bands for a few years before The Monkees, but primarily, I was a child star in the ’50s. I had my own TV series called Circus Boy. When The Monkees came along, that was my second series, so I was already familiar with the world of television. I slipped right into that new role as the wacky drummer in a rock and roll band. And that’s how I still see it to this day.
WW: Was there great excitement about doing The Monkees, or did it feel, as many dismissed it at the time, like a cash-in on The Beatles?
MD: My feeling at the time was that when you’re that successful, you really don’t give a s–t what people say, frankly. But the people I cared about got it. They understood what it was. It wasn’t, as you said, trying to cash in on The Beatles—it was a television show. The Monkees wasn’t a group or a band; it was a TV show about a band—an imaginary band that lived in a beach house, which was actually a set on the Columbia lot. And this band wanted to be The Beatles.
That’s what the show was about. It was the struggle for success, and I think that really resonated with kids around the country and around the world—kids in their basements, living rooms, and garages who also wanted to be The Beatles. We even had a poster of The Beatles on set, and we’d throw darts at it.
It’s important to remember that on The Monkees, we were never famous. We never “made it.” That struggle for success was a big part of what connected with so many kids.
Timothy Leary even devoted half a chapter in one of his books to The Monkees. He essentially said the show brought long hair into the living room. At the time, if you had long hair and bell bottoms, the only time you’d be on television was if you were getting arrested.
WW: You hippies!
MD: And then, all of a sudden, here comes this band singing, “We’re just too busy singing to put anybody down,” and it sort of made it okay to have long hair and bell bottoms. It didn’t mean you were going to commit crimes against nature.
Like I was saying, the people I cared about got it. People like The Beatles. John Lennon was the first to say, “I like The Monkees. They’re like the Marx Brothers,” which was absolutely true. The Monkees was much more like The Marx Brothers than The Beatles. And if you understand that—if you can wrap your head around that—then everything else about the show makes sense.
Frank Zappa, who was a good friend of mine, got it. He appeared on the show and in the movie we did because he understood what we were doing. Andy Warhol, who I knew of, got it too. He understood The Monkees as part of the larger pop culture movement. So yeah, the people I cared about got it, and as for the people I didn’t care about—well, I didn’t care.
WW: Why should you? Now, you pointed out something interesting—you said The Monkees was a show about a band, a band that wanted to be The Beatles. That being said, at what point did you realize that you four were no longer just actors playing a band, but actually became a real band?
MD: Well, it does get a little strange—especially for the time—but not so much today. Now, you see it all the time. People get cast into something, like American Idol, or some kind of project where they become real musicians in the process. Mike Nesmith put it best when he said that the moment we went on the road and started performing live, just the four of us, that’s when Pinocchio became a real boy. And there’s something to that.
It’s like Glee—when those actors went out and performed live, were they still their characters from the TV show, or were they themselves? It’s a good question. In a way, that was the moment when The Monkees as a band truly came to life.
I think there were really two Monkees. But that’s just my opinion. It’s kind of like Rashomon, that old Japanese story—everyone remembers it differently. For me, there were two Monkees. One was the fictional band on the TV show—the guys living in that beach house in Malibu, struggling to make it but never quite getting there. Which, by the way, does raise the question: how the hell could we afford a beach house in Malibu?
WW: Now that you mention it …
MD: But we never made it—at least, not on the show. Then there was The Monkees as a real band, rehearsing, working our butts off and eventually doing hundreds of live concerts on the road. Like Mike said, that was sort of like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. That’s how I see it, too.
WW: Was that tough musically? You had these great songwriters creating songs for the band, but you guys were itching to write your own material, right? And to perform your own music, which you eventually did.
MD: Well, not me, no. I was happy playing my role. I was happy being cast in a show—not as a member of a band, but as part of a cast in a television show about a band. That’s an important distinction.
I was playing the wacky drummer, and part of that job was showing up when they said, “Okay, Tuesday night at 8 o’clock, you’re recording lead vocals for a couple of songs.” Sometimes I’d record two or three songs in one night. I approached it as an entertainer, an actor and a singer—that was my job.
By then, I had already been in the business for 10 years, so I had no problem with that. Sure, I had written a few things, noodling around on the guitar. I was a guitar player before The Monkees, actually—my audition piece was “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry, which I used to play in my cover band.
So yeah, I had musical experience. I could read music. But when I was cast as the drummer, I said, “But I’m a guitar player.” And they said, “Well, we already have enough guitar players, so—”
WW: Now you’re a drummer.
MD: Exactly!
WW: But you had these amazing songwriters.
MD: Unbelievable songwriters. Are you kidding me? Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, David Gates, Diane Hildebrand, Carole Bayer Sager—these people don’t write too many bad songs. I was thrilled. I actually dedicate my solo show to the songwriters.
WW: That’s great, because a lot of people wouldn’t be so gracious about it
MD: Well, again, I can only speak for myself. Mike Nesmith had a very different take on all this, because he was a singer-songwriter, and he was very frustrated. We talked about it a lot. He was frustrated that they hired him—presumably as a singer-songwriter—but then wouldn’t let him write for The Monkees. He had never done any acting, so his expectations were different.
He told me a story about going into the music producers’ office early on, when the whole thing was just getting started—we were filming, starting to record—and he played them a song on his guitar. He said, “This is one of my new songs.” And they said, “Oh, that’s fine, but that’s not really a Monkees song.”
He must have been so confused. “Wait a minute—I am one of The Monkees.” And they said, “Yeah, that’s true, but no, that’s not a Monkees tune.”
So he gave it to this young girl singer who was kicking around L.A. at the time—a girl named Linda Ronstadt.
WW: Gee, that name is so familiar.
MD: Yeah, and her group, the Stone Poneys. That song was “Different Drum.” So Nes was very frustrated. Peter had a similar experience. He told the story of showing up at an early recording session with his bass guitar, and they basically said, “What are you doing here?” Peter was a folk musician. He played seven instruments, went to a music conservatory—so for him, it must have been really frustrating.
For me, I can only speak for myself—I was used to being cast in something and following directions, hitting my mark. That’s just how I approached it. Later on, though, it was Nes who got me into songwriting. He actually said to me, “You know, you really should start writing some stuff. It’s good.” So I did. I’ve never been prolific, but I wrote a few things.
WW: The Monkees movie Head … what’s the deal with that?
MD: I wish I knew. I have some thoughts on it and I’ll give you a few quick ones. The Monkees TV show had been canceled—it was mutual. [Producers] Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider came to us and said, “We have a chance to do a movie. What do you think?” We all agreed—well, at least I did—that we didn’t want to do a 90-minute episode of The Monkees.
We’d been pretty restricted during the TV series because of network censors, so the general consensus was, let’s do something a little out there. Bob introduced us to this B-movie actor named Jack Nicholson, who was going to be part of it and help write it. We all fell in love with Jack immediately—he was (and still is) incredibly charismatic, funny, brilliant. He hung out on set for months, and eventually, we all sat down to talk about the movie.
What came out of those conversations was Head. Jack was the one who actually wrote that very bizarre screenplay.
But you have to remember who was making this movie—besides the four of us. This was Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, Jack Nicholson. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were around, too—this was before Easy Rider, but these guys were already pushing back against the Hollywood system. At the time, unless you had a deal with one of the major studios—Columbia, MGM, Paramount, Universal—you could barely get a movie made. And if you did, you probably couldn’t get it distributed. The big studios controlled everything.
These young bucks were challenging all of that. In fact, there’s a book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls—
WW: A great book and documentary.
MD: They interviewed me for that. What these guys did—especially with Easy Rider, which was the breakthrough—was essentially deconstruct the Hollywood system. After that, the industry was never the same. To some degree, I think that’s what Head was doing—deconstructing the motion picture industry through The Monkees’ experience.
I don’t know if you remember, but there’s a scene with Mike and me and Teri Garr—it was her first part in a movie. It’s a cavalry scene. Mike and I are officers in the Wild West, there are Indians attacking and Teri Garr is lying there with an arrow in her.
The whole movie was full of pastiches of different Hollywood scenarios. In that scene, all of a sudden, I get hit with a bunch of fake arrows—special effects arrows. I look down, break them off, and say, “Bob, I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore.” I’m talking directly to Bob Rafelson, the director. Then I throw the arrows on the ground, turn around, storm off, and walk right through the backdrop of the Western set, tearing a hole in it.
For me, that moment is the central conceit of the movie—breaking through the old-school barriers of the Hollywood studio system. After Head, of course, the producers went on to make Easy Rider and the rest is history.
WW: You’re still out there touring.
MD: Well you know, I’ve been doing it now pretty solid for 30 years, three decades. I ain’t so crazy about the traveling, but they pay us to travel. We sing for free.
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