{"id":23928,"date":"2022-10-24T05:30:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T09:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23928"},"modified":"2022-10-25T08:02:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T12:02:57","slug":"dolenz-jones-boyce-hart-remembering-the-feeling-part-1-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/24\/dolenz-jones-boyce-hart-remembering-the-feeling-part-1-of-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart: Remembering the Feeling (Part 1 of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Monkees were a \u201860s phenomenon, but their popularity extends to this day. Yet one significant chapter in the group\u2019s history is often overlooked: a mid \u201870s reunion of two of its members, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones. Working with the hit songwriting team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, they formed a mid-1970s pop supergroup of sorts. Two tours brought the group\u2019s music to enthusiastic audiences. But a studio album (and a belated live record) failed to sell, and the 14-month adventure was soon lost to time. A first-ever reissue of those albums in 2022 sparks the memories of those who were there: Bobby Hart, band leader Keith Allison (who passed away last fall) and tour manager Christian deWalden.<\/p>\n

After an impressive mid-\u201960s run of hit singles and albums, The Monkees seemed to drift slowly into oblivion. After two seasons on American television network NBC, The Monkees<\/i> was canceled in February 1968. Working with the show\u2019s producer and co-creator Bob Rafelson, they made a deeply strange motion picture, Head<\/i>, which aimed to reposition the group and move away from their cuddly television image. While Head<\/i> would eventually become a cult classic, it was a box office failure. The band\u2019s next project was a fascinating yet deeply idiosyncratic television special called 33-1\/3 Revolutions per Monkee<\/i>; when filming completed, Peter Tork quit the group.<\/p>\n

The Monkees continued as a trio, releasing Instant Replay<\/i> in February 1969. The album was assembled from new and old recordings. Sales were disappointing and neither of the singles released from Instant Replay<\/i> reached the American Top 40. The Monkees Present<\/i> followed in October of that year, and fared even worse on the charts. Mike Nesmith soon left the group; Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz continued under the Monkees name as a duo, releasing the contractual-obligation Changes<\/i> in June 1970. Continuing the Monkees\u2019 commercial slide, the album only briefly reached #152 on the Billboard<\/i> album charts.<\/p>\n

But the group\u2019s popularity would endure. In the period after the cancellation of the TV series, the Monkees embarked upon a tour of Australia and Japan. Greeted by rapturous audiences, they played three shows at Tokyo\u2019s Budokan Hall in October, traveling next to Kyoto and Osaka. One of the Budokan concerts would be filmed and shown on Japanese television; that run of live dates marked the final appearance of the original foursome until 1986. But those dates in Southeast Asia left a lasting impression upon fans.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart had been instrumental in the Monkees\u2019 success, writing several of the group\u2019s biggest hits. Working with a coterie of musicians including guitarist Keith Allison, they cut demos of many of their songs before delivering them to the group\u2019s musical supervisors. The pair had already scored major successes long before working with the Monkees; Boyce wrote \u201cBe My Guest\u201d for Fats Domino, and co-wrote a pair of hits for Curtis Lee. Working together, Boyce and Hart hit gold with \u201cCome a Little Bit Closer\u201d for Jay & the Americans, and composed the theme for the long-running television soap opera Days of our Lives<\/i>.<\/p>\n

After writing, performing and producing all of the songs for the pilot of The Monkees<\/i>, Boyce and Hart recorded all but the vocals for the group\u2019s first album with their band The Candy Store Prophets. The duo fell out with producer Don Kirshner, and when The Monkees began to play on their own recordings, Boyce and Hart would no longer be involved (though their songs would appear on every Monkees LP save the Head<\/i> soundtrack).<\/p>\n

Buoyed by their songwriting success, Boyce & Hart launched their own recording career, with a deal on A&M Records. They scored five hit singles including \u201cI Wonder What She\u2019s Doing Tonight,\u201d a Top 10 single in the U.S. The pair worked in film and television as well. But around the same time the Monkees were falling apart, the Boyce and Hart duo frayed, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cTommy quit the business at the end of 1969,\u201d says Bobby Hart. \u201cHe quit at the end of our Flamingo gig in Vegas.\u201d Boyce was shattered when the duo\u2019s manager blew their three weeks\u2019 salary at the gambling tables. \u201c$50,000 a week or something, it was,\u201d Hart recalls. The two went their separate ways, and didn\u2019t see each other for quite awhile. \u201cTommy withdrew,\u201d Hart says. \u201cThe next time I saw him, he gave me a business card that read, \u2018David Tucker, poet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Linking up with another songwriter, Danny Jansen, Hart would continue to write and perform. That duo enjoyed a hit in 1974 when Helen Reddy recorded their song, \u201cKeep on Singing.\u201d Hart says that he would occasionally run into his old partner. \u201cI never cut off my relationship with him. I would hang out with Tommy here and there, but we weren\u2019t tight ever again like when we were working together every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christian deWalden was an Italian-born travel agent, putting together all-inclusive package tours for wealthy clients; he had exactly zero experience in the music industry. But he made up for that with enthusiasm, hard work and aptitude. He also made some important connections once he moved to Los Angeles. \u201cMy mother was a very famous physiotherapist,\u201d he explains. One of deWalden\u2019s mother\u2019s clients was Claudia Jennings, an actress best known as Playboy<\/i>\u2019s Playmate of the Month (November 1969) and Playmate of the Year for 1970.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Monkees were a \u201860s phenomenon, but their popularity extends to this day. Yet one significant chapter in the group\u2019s history is often overlooked: a mid \u201870s reunion of two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51],"tags":[4961,4960,1235,1507],"class_list":["post-23928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","tag-boyce-and-hart","tag-dolenz-jones-boyce-and-hart","tag-keith-allison","tag-monkees","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23928"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24147,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23928\/revisions\/24147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}