Yeah, yeah, they didn’t write their own songs, most of 'em. They lip-synced a lot. Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were never allowed to live up to their amazing potential, because of all the wackiness. Davy’s dead, and Mike’s mom invented Liquid Paper. I know…
But damn, play Monkee songs, and I am jammin’ and singin’ and feelin’ gooood. Songs like this and this and like this one here.
Now play me some Beatles. While I like a few of them (Eleanor Rigby, Hey Jude, Let It Be), I don’t get that involved. I might do a few “Nah-nah-nah-nanananaaaaahs…Hey Jude…” but that’s it. I don’t break out into bodily sways, and my mood doesn’t nearly soar as high as it does with Mickey Dolenz, (who’s my favorite!!!sigh!!!)
So I don’t care if the Beatles changed music or pop culture history. I don’t care if they were more popular than Jesus. I don’t care if they were more artistically pure or whatever.
I like the Monkees better. And I always will.
I don’t agree that they were better than the Beatles, but I do think that it is silly to dismiss them as a ‘fake’ band. They certainly weren’t any more fake (and in some ways much more real) than any number of manufactured more recent pop groups.
Big Monkees fan here. I have the “deluxe” re-issues of the early albums, both TV seasons on DVD and the Blu-ray of Head. I’v seen them three times (once without Mike in '86, twice without Davy in 2012) and I enjoyed myself immensely.
But I like the Fab Four better.
Monkees side note: Mike’s new book, Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff just came out this week.
Beatles side note: The deluxe Sgt Pepper 50th Anniversary box set…with a 5.1 surround mix!–is coming out on May 26th.
I liked the Monkees better than the Beatles too. When I was 8. After all, they had a neat TV show I could watch every week. I never got to see the Beatles have adventures like that.
I still enjoy the old Monkees tunes.
But over time, I came to appreciate the Beatles more. A lot more.
My old National Guard unit had its home station at the West Orange Armory on Pleasant Valley Way. I went there off and on for years before I found out relatively recently that Carole King and Gerry Goffin used to live on a little street off of PVW about a mile away. It’s there that they wrote Pleasant Valley Sunday.
Well I thought it was interesting.
The Monkees have a lot of good songs but they were just following the trends and playing good songs written by some great writers. The Beatles changed everything. It’s amazing how much they changed and music changed in less than 10 years.
I don’t have anything against the Monkees - they had some great songwriters (Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Boyce and Hart, etc.) and made some good music.
But if you’re going to compare the Monkees and the Beatles, let’s just start with the fact that Boyce and Hart’s starting point in composing “Last Train to Clarksville” was the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.”
I love both the Monkees and the Beatles. I don’t think their music is very similar, so there’s nothing strange about preferring the Monkees. I don’t think the Beatles really tried to lift your mood much, and I wonder if the Beach Boys actually influenced the Monkees more. It’s interesting that the Beatles songs you like are ones which (while good, and the lyrics of Eleanor Rigby being outstanding) I would class as being amongst their less interesting work. Have you heard the Hard Day’s Night Album? What do you think of the first side?
As for body sways, well there’s something curious about the rhythms which the band created and I’ve sometimes pondered creating a thread about. You can’t dance to a Beatles song like you can the Stones or most other pop from the period (I’m told I’m a very good dancer!) - the rhythm is too fast. I wonder if it could be a legacy of the dangerous amphetamine fueled nights in Hamburg, something the nice Monkees never experienced!
We all have our preferences. I mean, I deeply love and respect Bob Dylan, but I listen to more AC/DC at random in the car. Should I shout to the world that I love Bon Scott more than Bob Dylan and I don’t care who knows it?
The Monkees had some great songs and somewhat transcended their prefab roots. Yay! Not sure why they need to compared to anyone, let alone The Beatles.
The OP is of course welcome to prefer whichever bands he likes, but for me it’s Beatles all the way.
Just to refresh my memory a bit, I had a look at what are generally considered the two best Monkees albums: Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD. They certainly have some catchy tunes (I’m very fond of “You Told Me”, “For Pete’s Sake”, “Door Into Summer”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, “Words”, and “Star Collector”, among others). The jangly and (to my ears) tinny guitar sound wears on me after a while, however, and I’ve never been much of a fan of Davy Jones’ overly precious vocals.
What were the Beatles doing at roughly the same time? Well, they were at the peak of their psychedelic phase, with Sergeant Pepper’s and Magical Mystery Tour; Revolver, my personal all-time favorite by them, was more than a year in the past. In terms of innovative formatting and overall production values, the Monkees’ efforts simply don’t keep up. Comparing a few songs with thematic similarities, can it be plausibly argued that “Pleasant Valley Sunday” is better than “Penny Lane”? “Door into Summer” better than “Strawberry Fields Forever”? “Star Collector” than “Baby You’re a Rich Man”? Others are welcome to decide (or that the comparisons may be unfair, I’ll accept that), but for me the Beatles have to get the nod.
