It was early 1967 The Monkees were frustrated. Sure, they had a successful television show — wildly more successful than anybody could have imagined at the time — and their first two albums, “The Monkees” and “More of the Monkees,” had reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart.
But The Monkees — Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones — weren’t being taken seriously as musicians and songwriters. And that was beginning to wear on them heavily.
So when it came time to make the third album, they went on strike, which was spearheaded by Nesmith.
“Mike had become very frustrated, and I don’t blame him because he had bought into this whole thing (The Monkees),” said Dolenz in a July 11, 2017, interview with The Vinyl Dialogues. “He was a singer-songwriter and he came into The Monkees with that in mind. I know … Read more