{"id":23930,"date":"2022-10-26T05:30:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T09:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23930"},"modified":"2022-10-27T06:58:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T10:58:11","slug":"dolenz-jones-boyce-hart-remembering-the-feeling-part-3-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/26\/dolenz-jones-boyce-hart-remembering-the-feeling-part-3-of-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart: Remembering the Feeling (Part 3 of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Continued from Part Two<\/a>\u2026 <\/i><\/p>\n

But a falling out with the backing musicians meant that they wouldn\u2019t last long. After the group\u2019s first week-long domestic tour leg, the backing musicians showed up with a manager. In Allison\u2019s words, they attempted to extort him, demanding a larger share of profits. Keeping them around while he quietly put a new band together, Allison fired the musicians at the first opportunity.<\/p>\n

The new players were young and enthusiastic musicians who had grown up listening to (and memorizing) Monkees records. \u201cThey were about 21 years old and nice-looking, \u201cAllison recalled. \u201cRick Tierney on bass and Jerry Summers on drums. They had been playing Monkees songs since they were in middle school.\u201d Adding keyboardist Skip Edwards from Johnny Rivers\u2019 group, lead guitarist Allison had a new band. \u201cThey were great,\u201d he said. Edwards didn\u2019t stay long, though. \u201cWe had a few different guys on keys,\u201d Hart recalls. \u201cYeah, we went through keyboard players like Spinal Tap went through drummers,\u201d Allison said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Between late June \u201875 and the end of that year, Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart played nearly 40 venues, ranging from amusement parks to clubs to high school gymnasiums to colleges and ballrooms. \u201cWe did the basic arrangements of all the Monkees songs and Boyce and Hart songs,\u201d Hart recalls. \u201cBut what Keith brought to it was an updating of all that. Instead of being Beatlesque, it was more Mick Jagger\/Rolling Stones-like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Echoing his approach of years before with the Raiders, Allison came out onstage before the headliners. \u201cI used to open for [DJB&H],\u201d he said. \u201cI would come out and do three or four numbers: \u2018Jumping Jack Flash\u2019 and stuff like that. And I\u2019d always sing \u2018Sweet Home Alabama.\u2019\u201d Allison would then lead the band while the famous foursome took center stage to sing their collective hits.<\/p>\n

And DJB&H closed every show by giving the spotlight once again to their band leader. \u201cThey\u2019d introduce me,\u201d Allison recalled, \u201cand I would sing \u2018Action.\u2019\u201d Written by Boyce and Hart, that song was the theme to Dick Clark Productions\u2019 Where the Action Is<\/i> TV program.<\/p>\n

\"\"The group was on tour right through the holidays, playing a series of dates in the American Midwest, including a December 25 show in New Brighton, Minnesota. \u201cThat\u2019s how I lost my girlfriend,\u201d Hart recalls with a chuckle. \u201cShe said, \u2018You took a gig on Christmas? Don\u2019t you know how important that day is to me?\u2019 When I came back, Claudia was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second leg of the group\u2019s first tour ended with a pair of January dates at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Early 1976 was consumed by the making of a self-titled album and a number of television appearances.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur lawyer got us a record deal at Capitol,\u201d Hart recalls. And the group had an ally in the person of Al Coury, the label\u2019s powerful vice president. \u201cWe went into the studio and did a pretty good album,\u201d Hart says. \u201cAl was hot on the project, but he left to run RSO Records a month before our record was to be released.\u201d The new regime at Capitol had little interest in the record, doing almost nothing to promote it. \u201cIt was kind of a lost cause,\u201d Hart says.<\/p>\n

The core band on the group\u2019s only studio release featured Allison on lead guitar and bass, along with the rhythm section of Summers and Tierney. Boyce played guitar, while Hart and Edwards played keyboards. Session players included percussionist Emil Richards, guitarists Chip Douglas, Jerry Yester and Louie Shelton (among others), and Henry Diltz on banjo. Recorded at Sound Factory in Hollywood, the self-produced album featured vocal arrangements by Ron Hicklin.<\/p>\n

Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart<\/i> was released on May 29, 1976 but sold only modestly. Christian deWalden \u2013 today a producer and award-winning songwriter in his own right \u2013 points to another reason he believes that neither Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart<\/i> nor its single performed well on the charts. \u201cIn America, if you don’t have a huge advertising machine behind you to do that, you will never happen,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd they didn’t have the money behind them.\u201d After a brief pause, deWalden continues. \u201cThose were the times of the scandals: people paying. I remember $50-60,000 would bring you up to [Top Ten] in the charts. After that, if you didn’t pay much more, next week you were down: \u2018Boom, boom, out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The group toured the U.S. \u2013 again playing amusement parks and theaters \u2013 ostensibly in support of the record and its single, the Boyce\/Hart-penned \u201cI Remember the Feeling.\u201d That song and three others figured into the group\u2019s live set, but the song selection leaned heavily toward Monkees hits, with a few Boyce and Hart hits (\u201cI Wonder What She\u2019s Doing Tonight,\u201d \u201cAlice Long\u201d) inserted as standalone songs or parts of larger medleys.<\/p>\n

Likewise, a 1976 television special featuring the group focused on the material that made its members famous. After a brief musical comedy sketch, the band launches into a rocked-up medley of Monkees hits. That\u2019s followed by a medley of songs written by Boyce and\/or Hart for other artists (Come a Little bit Closer,\u201d \u201cAngel Eyes,\u201d \u201cHurt So Bad,\u201d \u201cPeaches and Cream,\u201d \u201cSomething\u2019s Wrong with Me,\u201d \u201cKeep on Singing\u201d). Other segments double down on the Monkees hits, including sketches built around \u201cI Wanna be Free,\u201d \u201cCuddly Toy,\u201d \u201c(I\u2019m Not Your) Stepping Stone\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m a Believer.\u201d No music from DJB&H\u2019s studio album figures into the program, which is presented as a pilot (\u201csee you next show,\u201d says Boyce near the program\u2019s end).<\/p>\n

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

Continued from Part Two\u2026 But a falling out with the backing musicians meant that they wouldn\u2019t last long. After the group\u2019s first week-long domestic tour leg, the backing musicians showed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23947,"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-23930","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\/23930","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=23930"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24151,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23930\/revisions\/24151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}