Roman Gokhman
April 6, 2020, 5:30 am
Micky Dolenz of The Monkees
doesn’t remember another time in years that he’s gone more than three days
without having to pack a suitcase. Instead, he’s been spending the
shelter-in-place to stop the spread of COVID-19 by tending to his vegetable
garden and working in his woodshop.
“Yesterday I slept ‘til 2!” he
says.
It’s just him and his wife at
their home in the Los Angeles hills. The two have been spending time at home,
getting deliveries every once in a while—like most people.
“This phoner with you is the
first thing that’s been on my calendar in, like, a week,” he says.
At the end of the week, Dolenz
and Michael Nesmith will release their new live album, their first without late
Monkees’ members Davy Jones and Peter Tork, The Mike & Micky Show Live. But
a spring tour has already been rescheduled for later in the summer—if the
coronavirus threat is beaten back by then. Both Dolenz and Nesmith are in their
70s, a high-risk demographic, after all.
“It’s a worry. I personally don’t
have any serious preexisting medical issues. I’ve got a bit of high blood
pressure, mainly just because of my age,” Dolenz says. “But it’s still a worry
because I am smack in that demographic. So I’m just being extra, extra careful.
I’m not going out, not mingling, not doing anything social, keeping my social
distance and mitigating everything I can.”
But the silver lining for Dolenz
is the rest he can get right now. He’s had a very busy career, even without
considering his original hit TV show, “The Monkees,” and the band it bore. He’s
acted in several films and TV shows, such as “Boy Meets World,” and done
voice-over work for animated shows like “The Scooby-Doo Show” in the ’70s,
1994’s “The Tick” and “Batman: The Animated Series.” He’s also been a radio DJ
and acted in and directed theater.
“Most of my life is usually
packing, unpacking, traveling, touring, planes, cars, boats, trains; you know?”
he says. “That’s been interesting; to get up in the morning and not have
anything on my calendar.”
Dolenz and Michael Nesmith have
been touring together for several years and in that time, they’ve had to cancel
and postpone shows and tours. In 2018, Nesmith underwent a quadruple bypass
heart surgery mid-tour. Missing time on stage comes with the territory for
them.
“It’s out of our control when that happens.
There’s nothing you can do about it,” Dolenz says. “It doesn’t do any good to
bitch and moan. You just have to accept it and move on knowing that down the
line the shows will be performed, and the fans’ tickets will be honored. … Like
the old joke: They pay us to travel; we sing for free. There’s a lot of truth
in that. These days, that’s the last thing that anybody would be doing, and of
course you have a concert situation, which is a bunch of people packed into a
big venue. We’ve just got to wait it out.”
He and Nesmith pushed all but a
couple of their April dates to July and August. Dolenz also performs solo shows
and has rescheduled those as far into the future as 2021. They are making their
best effort to help flatten the curve right now.
“Things will eventually get back
to normal,” Dolenz says. “The fear of the unknown is the worst thing about
this.”
The new album should provide
home-locked fans some entertainment and diversions in the meantime. Recorded at
a 2019 concert, the album came about after The Monkees’ longtime label, Rhino,
approached the duo. The band had released several previous live LPs, but never
as a duo. Their most recent studio effort, 2018’s Christmas Party, included
Peter Tork, who passed away in 2019. It was produced largely by Adam
Schlesinger, who died of complications of COVID-19 last week at 52.
The two had also asked fans
online if another album that only involved the two of them was something they’d
want to listen to, and if seeing them perform Monkees material on stage was of
interest.
They were met with overwhelming
assurance.
“I’ll be honest, Nes and I …
before we decided to go out on tour, we were like, ‘What are we going to do?’”
Dolenz says. “But Nes wrote so many great songs for the Monkees, many of which
I sung, [and others] he did. I sung … probably the majority of the hit songs
and a lot of the album cuts.”
So Nesmith, who’d left the
Monkees decades earlier, and Dolenz got together privately to parse through
their material. A show wouldn’t be complete without hits like “Last Train To
Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone” and “Pleasant
Valley Sunday.”
Then it was onto the deeper cuts,
much of which includes the Nesmith-penned songs. Setlists at some shows include
Nesmith’s critically acclaimed solo country material with The First National
Band, such as the hit “Joanne” and “Different Drum,” which Linda Ronstandt
later covered. It became her first hit song.
Dolenz describes building a
Monkees show setlist as a potluck.
“The problem has been kind of
‘what not to do,’ because there’s so much incredible material written by all
these incredible writers,” he says. “I was blessed to have writing for me: Neil
Diamond, Carole King, and Gerry Goffin, Boyce and Hart, David Gates—just
incredible writers. In a way it’s kind of hard to screw up the songs because
they’re so good.”
On stage, Nesmith and Dolenz have
surrounded themselves with a talented cast of “studio cats and Broadway hit
cats and family” like jazz drummer Rich Dart and Paul Revere & the Raiders’
singer Mark Lindsey.
Dolenz’s sister Coco, who
performs at his solo shows, sings back-up and plays percussion with the band,
and Nesmith’s son Christian plays guitar. His other son, Jonathan, has played
with the duo as well.
“It is a bit of a family affair,
to some degree, and a big band. It’s like 10 pieces,” Dolenz says. “There is a
huge wall of sound going out there, which makes it a lot of fun, to be honest.
It’s very exciting to have that kind of power band behind you.”
Dolenz doesn’t know how he’ll
react when he and Nesmith get back to playing shows and when life returns to
some semblance of normal.
“I’ll have to tell you when I do
it,” he says, laughing.
He also doesn’t want to overlook
the people who in worse situations now; those who are sick and medical workers,
but also other musicians more desperate for a paycheck now and those with other
jobs and businesses.
“Whole industries are suffering,”
he says.
And that’s why he’s using the
quarantine to hit “refresh.”
“Even as a 20-year-old, [touring
is] tough. At my age, at 75, it can be very brutal, especially on my voice,” he
says. “So there is a silver lining to this horrible, horrible cloud. It’s
giving me a chance to recuperate a little bit. I’m looking forward to getting
back. I’m getting antsy. I don’t want to disappoint the fans.”
Roman Gokhman is the co-founder
and editor-in-chief of RIFF magazine. He has been covering music in the San
Francisco Bay Area since 2006, first as a staff writer for the Oakland Tribune,
Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, followed by five years at a San
Francisco music blog. He also contributes to several national publications.