Day 53. Long title: Do I have to do this all over again? (22/2/19)

(Soundtrack: The Monkees, obviously. What else would I be listening to this morning? Specifically, the 'Head' album. The soundtrack to the film that, quite brilliantly, killed their career stone dead. Because it's the sound of four young men breaking free, taking back control of their careers and lives, making the music they wanted to make and making a statement that chimed far more with the times than the networks that owned them would have ever wanted.)

My love for The Monkees shows up a certain level of hypocrisy in my musical beliefs. And it also shows the absolute, total, consistency within it. Both at the same time. It's a dichotomy.

I have no time for 'pop puppets'. I have no time for 'boy bands'. I have no time for manufactured artists, controlled purely by their labels with no genuine artistic input. 

And you could say exactly the same for The Monkees, couldn't you?

Well, yes. And no. Very much no.

Yes, they were manufactured. They were four lads who answered an advert in the press:

They were the four lads who were successful. Those who were reputedly unsuccessful included Stephen Stills, later of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Charles Manson. There's a lot of debate about whether either of those applicants were ever truly involved in auditions but, let's be honest, for good and ill, there will never be apocryphal stories of that ilk attached to Little Mix.

And those four were designed for one very particular reason. They were to be The Beatles. They were to be the American TV version of The Beatles. Specifically the version of The Beatles seen in Hard Days Night. Which, as I think we're all aware, wasn't really how the lads themselves were; more a caricature designed by an excellent scriptwriter.

So, Davy Jones was the lovable McCartney. Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith the sarcastic and zany Lennon and Harrison avatars. And Peter Tork was the Ringo character: a bit daft, a bit sad, a bit put upon, a bit dim but sweet and innocent. The lovable loser.

And of course, they're characters. Dolenz and Jones were experienced actors but Nesmith and Tork were extremely experienced, extremely talented musicians. Peter Tork had been active in the GreenwichVillage folk scene for years.

Being successful in the auditions for the show may not have provided the result they anticipated.

The latter two were musicians joining a band for a TV show. They didn't expect to turn up on the first day of 'recording' their debut album (in place, if memory serves, before filming the show) to find that it was complete and only required their vocals.

Because, yes, The Monkees played other people's songs.

But those other people were geniuses. They were the cream of American songwriting. They were Goffin & King, Boyce & Hart, Neil Diamond, Mann & Weill. They were the Brill Building guys and they crafted masterpieces. And the musicians on their records? Their first two records at least? The Wrecking Crew. Quite possibly he best session musicians on the planet.

And you can claim that all this is everything I rail against. And in some ways it is.

But this works at a much higher level than anything we see now. This is genius brought about by necessity but it created songs that have already resonated for over fifty years.

And it wasn't enough for the band.

The band wanted control. By their third album, Headquarters, they're playing everything themselves (bar a couple of bass parts), they're writing the majority of the album, they're writing at the same pace and level as their peers. They're a band.

And they're a band that their peers rated. They're in the room when The Beatles are recording A Day In The Life, they're friends of the 'four kings of EMI', they're friends, compatriots, touring partners of Hendrix, Joplin, The Mamas and Papas, their TV show showcases Frank Zappa and Tim Buckley very early on.

The last thing on earth that they are is puppets. They have control.

And they still want more. They seek sabotage with the brilliant, dreamlike 'Head': the film and the accompanying album both being something that was so wonderfully random. It's a statement on Vietnam and commercialism and the star system. It's a cry of rebellion. It basically breaks the band.

Peter Tork is the first to leave. Dissatisfied, apparently, with the system he's still trapped in.

And all this happens before my generation has even really heard of them.

I grew up with the Monkees on TV. Endless re-runs of a colourful slice of rebellion in early afternoon children's TV, early mornings in school holidays. A madcap, zany comedy, indebted to the Marx Brothers as much as The Beatles. Even watching the show at such a young age (under 10 at this point) it was clear that, although Jones and Dolenz were clearly represented as the lead characters, Nesmith and Tork has something more. There was a wit undercutting everything they did. A slice of anarchy, although we wouldn't really understand that word until the Pistols came along (notably covering The Monkees' version of Stepping Stone, they grew up on them too).

It was The Monkees, as much as The Beatles that made me want to be in a band. Because being in a band looked like the best thing on earth (which, in fairness, it is): you got to live in a house with your mates, have adventures, defy the 'grown ups' and play two songs an episode (plus the intro and outro themes).

Listening to Headquarters right now (which was pulled out and played at every party my mate Geoff had in the early eighties as he'd been handed down a copy by his auntie), it clearly informed the way I listen to music, informed the way I think guitars, bass and drums should sound together. No screaming lead lines, just structure and harmony and the purest of pop. Horns where horns were needed, strings where merited.

(And try to talk along with 'Zilch' while drunk. Its something to add to your life. Or stoned. Stoned would probably work. As the performers may possibly agree.)

I've loved The Monkees for decades. There will never be a day that I don't love The Monkees. And I know, for my generation, I'm a long way from being alone.

So, losing Peter Tork yesterday was genuinely devastating. A slice of our childhood gone.

Seventy-seven isn't a bad age. Lots of people don't make that. And he had been ill for a while. But we didn't lose the seventy-seven year old Peter Tork, we lost the young man with the beads and one of the most sixties haircuts ever. We lost the man who we didn't realise at the time had written the song we heard at the end of the show so many times. We lost the man whose message to us was "Love is understanding".

And isn't that an incredible message to send out on a kids' comedy show.

RIP Peter.