![]() An incompetent typist, in 1955, after evenings experimenting in her kitchen food blender, she invented a typewriter correction fluid called Liquid Paper, an early version of Tipp-ex. His parents divorced when he was four, and his mother Bette took him to Dallas, where she took a series of office jobs before becoming secretary to the chairman of a Texas bank. Robert Michael Nesmith was born on Decemin Houston, Texas. Nesmith was scheduled to undertake a solo British tour in 2014 but pulled out, citing “recent snags” and “privacy issues”. “A fate worse than death,” muttered Peter Tork. If the audience didn’t sing along, Micky Dolenz announced early at their gig in Liverpool, they would be forced into a Nesmith lookalike competition. The other three Monkees toured Britain in 2011 without him, although he was teasingly namechecked. He went on to reinvent himself as a solo artist, and reluctantly rejoined the group for a couple of years for “reunion” tours. ![]() Nesmith bought his way out of the group by forfeiting future royalties amounting to $160,000. Earnings he thought he was owed were wiped out after Peter Tork’s solo album ran over budget, and the Screen Gems producers demanded that the others foot the six-figure bill. The break-up was unpleasant and expensive, Nesmith blaming “a lot of internecine warfare” and “just weird wrongdoing”. They had a handful of further Top 20 hits including Pleasant Valley Sunday and Daydream Believer, written by the likes of Gerry Goffin, Carole King and other writers on Screen Gems’ roster, before the show was pulled in 1968, the group having sold an estimated 100 million discs. Nesmith, the most accomplished musician of the four, led the others in countering criticism that they did not play the instruments they toted on television, and the group “I’m a songwriter,” Nesmith complained, “and that’s no hit.” In the event, it shot to No 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, topping the UK chart for four weeks in early 1967. The Monkees had a hit with their debut single Last Train To Clarksville, but Nesmith was unhappy with the choice of the follow-up, I’m A Believer, written by the up-and-coming Neil Diamond. “See it once and you’ve seen it all,” grumbled The Sunday Telegraph’s Philip Purser. Derided by some as “the Pre-Fab Four”, the Monkees were billed on BBC1 on Saturday evenings, but their show’s prime-time spot did not meet with universal approval. Promoted by the Screen Gems production company, the squeaky-clean group was fashioned to recreate the huge success of the Beatles and the zany vibe portrayed in their debut feature film A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Strictly speaking, at 22, Nesmith, characterised as the quietest and most serious of the four, was a touch too old, as was Tork, the most sensitive, while Dolenz, the funny one, was 20 and Jones, the cutest, was the youngest at 19, but the Monkees - the first pop group to be specifically manufactured for television – seemed to appeal to the producers’ target audience of young teenagers, especially girls. Of the 437 hopefuls to audition for “four insane boys, aged 17-21” in 1965, Nesmith was picked along with a former child television star, Mickey Dolenz a singer and guitarist, Peter Tork and a diminutive young actor from Manchester, Davy Jones, who had played Ena Sharples’s grandson in Coronation Street. Mike Nesmith, who has died aged 78, was the woolly-hatted guitarist in the 1960s American pop group the Monkees he later struggled with a solo musical career before inheriting a multi-million dollar fortune from his mother.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |