It’s a comparison that hides more than it illuminates and is frankly both silly and grossly unfair.
By this line of reasoning most groups are in a sense “manufactured” in that someone puts them together, even if it’s a member of the band itself. Or if your key point of comparison is “cashing in” on a fashionable musical style, then by that criteria, every musical act that doesn’t invent a style but plays in an existing popular style fails the same test. Which would count in most bands.
Further, PP&M were all existing singers and instrumentalists who sang and played their recordings themselves, and played live continually and successfully. They arranged or wrote a significant number of their own songs. They had no scripted TV show, and never represented themselves as anything other than precisely what they were. To compare them to a bunch of guys pretending to be a band in a TV show is frankly insulting.
So there. And yes that is a favourite ox of mine you are goring!
I think they were created by Albert Grossman. One of them was an emcee and comedian. And they had producers and session musicians guiding the project. They were a semi-corporate creation.
That definition stretches manufactured to where it snaps. The definition of manufactured in the music industry is having a producer conduct auditions to put together people who previously had no connection. The Monkees fall into that definition, so do most boy and girl groups, and so do Peter, Paul & Mary.
Like PPM, the Monkees had singing and instrumental experience before the band. Like PPM, they sang and later performed and wrote their own compositions. Like PPM, they covered many songs written by others. Like PPM, they put on live concerts doing all their own singing and playing. Like PPM, they eventually kicked out their management and went in their own direction. Like PPM, they were good.
It is not an insult to call Peter, Paul & Mary manufactured. Heck, Noel Paul Stookey dropped his first name just to fit into the rhythm of the band’s moniker.
I like both groups. I don’t care if they came together by a producer conducting auditions. Only music snobs care. My non-caring snobbery trumps their caring snobbery.
If you stretch the definitions here far enough you could say that only The Monkees as TV characters were manufactured. The Monkees the band were formed from the actors playing those characters of their own accord so they didn’t have to lipsync and pretend to play the instruments.
Was he the one who O.D’.d on heroin? He made enough for that! He would fit right in with all the druggies who keel over in all the Pleasant Valleys today.
Not really, especially given how many Most Definitely Not Fake groups used the Wrecking Crew and other studio bands.
I kind of shifted gear without using the clutch, but I don’t think I stripped too many gears: My underlying concept is authenticity, and how authentic a singer is when they’re on stage. Are they singer-songwriters reading pages from their diary, are they actors like opera singers, and is it still authentic when they’re singing their own original fiction in the first person?
It’s two separate axes: Their words vs their life. It’s most authentic when it’s their words and their life, least when it’s not their words or their life, but how about their words but not their life? Authentic-ish?
I can respect anyone who does a good job with what they set out to do. I really use that as my primary lens: If someone is trying to be a pure singer, and sing songs written entirely by someone else, while putting on a persona and acting like someone else while they sing, and they do a good job of it, I respect it. I also refuse to see some forms of art as inherently less than others.
(Now, to be clear, there are some genres I despise, and will not be able to enjoy no matter how well they’re being done, but I can separate my loathing for the genre from the admission that there may be truly transcendental examples of that genre.)
So this whole “Fake Band” thing tweaks me from the very start, but what really gets me is that of all the bands to accuse of being “Fake”, The Monkees were among the most “Real” even by the standards of the people doing the judging.
Maybe their sin wasn’t taking it far enough. Nobody sane would accuse GWAR of having been fake, even though they weren’t real space aliens, or Gorillaz of being fake, even though they aren’t real… cartoons… who can make music on their own… somehow. More likely, the people who throw around the “Fake Band! Sad!” accusations have never heard of GWAR or Gorillaz.
I was 7 years old when I first saw The Monkees on TV. Looking back I must have enjoyed the feeling of not being a “little kid” as I watched them–it felt like a step beyond The Flintstones or Road Runner or Wonderful World of Disney or Batman. I remember singing along with the theme song, as well as “Last Train to Clarksville.”
As illustrated by Elvis, Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys, Peter Paul & Mary, Dave Clark 5 and, yes, The Monkees, there is no simple real/fake or legit/scornworthy dividing line when it comes to rock musicians. Particularly in the 60s and before, it was just as common for performers/singers to not write their own songs or even play instruments. It is still very common in the Pop and Country genres, where lots of very successful singers don’t write their songs.
But comparing The Monkees to Milli Vanilli is not just exaggeration, it’s completely wrong. All four Monkees sang, and their vocal styles and talent were at least as good as most singers of their day. Not the best, for sure, but better than many. As pointed out above, they all had musical experience before being cast on the TV show.
To answer the OP question “why were they popular?” Is it really that hard to see that they were talented singers singing good songs? That they were marketed as wholesome guys singing fun songs? That the TV show was fun and amusing? I don’t understand why it isn’t apparent.
Not only this but the records, which were great and superbly played, were sang by guys on TV every week, acting them out and making their personalities part of the package when kids bought the records. They were buying “the Monkees” on TV too when they did it. Their talents made the records hits more than with some other manufactured group, because of the tv work. They were out there selling the songs all the time. That is a lot less manufactured than a lot of other acts.
