On Sept. 12, 1966, a new television show called The Monkees premiered on NBC, running opposite The Iron Horse on ABC and Gilligan’s Island on CBS. And while The Iron Horse remains a minuscule footnote in pop-culture history, and Gilligan’s Island lived forever as a time loop in reruns, the Monkees saga is somehow still unfolding — even though Micky Dolenz, the voice behind most of their biggest hits, is the last living member following the deaths of Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith.
To celebrate the upcoming 60th anniversary, Dolenz is releasing the six-song EP Timeless on Sept. 4. Right now, you can hear leadoff single “Terri,” written by Replacements lead singer Paul Westerberg.
Timeless was produced by John Hughes, a key creative force behind the acclaimed Monkees 50th anniversary LP Good Times!, Pete Donnelly of the Figgs and NRBQ, and Sam Hollander, who has worked with everyone from Weezer and One Direction to Katy Perry and blink-182.
“I told Sam, like I tell all my producers now, ‘I don’t produce, and I don’t write. I don’t want to be in there working out the EQ on the bass. I’m not an engineer,’” Dolenz tells Rolling Stone. “I think I’ve gotten pretty good at delegating and relegating responsibility over the years. And I said, ‘Sam, you think of me as Frank Sinatra, and you’re Quincy Jones.’”
In other words, Dolenz placed tremendous faith in the team he assembled for the project. And they delivered not only Westerberg’s “Terri,” which was originally released as “Who You Gonna Marry” on his 2008 super under-the-radar LP 49:00, but also tunes by Andy Partridge, Shelby Lynne, Pete Donnelly, Sam Hollander, Adam Schlesinger, Vicki Peterson, and Jonny Polonsky.
Early on, they decided to cut an EP rather than a full LP. “It’s bloody difficult to find 12 great songs,” says Dolenz. “Nowadays, of course, nobody even plays an album top to bottom. It’s all playlists. And so why not just pick the crème de la crème?”
The EP was cut over just a few days early in the year at Raw Recording in Patterson, New York, and Farmland Studios in Nashville, utilizing veteran members of the Monkees touring band, including drummer Rich Dart, guitarist Wayne Avers, keyboardist Alex Jules, and singer Coco Dolenz.
XTC’s Andy Partridge, who wrote “You Bring the Summer” for Good Times!, contributed “Any Way You Want Me” to Timeless. “It has a Good Times! vibe to it, that jangly Sixties rock vibe,” says Dolenz. “But yet it wasn’t totally retro, like it’s trying to sound like it was from the Sixties.”
“Something Happened” was written by Sam Hollander, Steven Gold, and the late Adam Schlesinger — who co-produced Good Times! — about a decade ago. “It originally had a totally different theme,” says Dolenz. “It was originally kind of depressing,” says Dolenz. “It was like, ‘Something happened, we were doing so well and then it all fell apart, and what a shame, and it was really terrible.’”
Dolenz told John Hughes that the song didn’t exactly fit with the Monkees saga. “He said, ‘Well, the Monkees eventually broke up.’ I said, ‘No, we didn’t. The show went off the air, but we were very successful. We didn’t have vendettas against each other. We went out on the top of the world, with Number One fuckin’ songs, and look what’s happening 60 years later, so the sentiment is wrong.’ To his credit, Sam went back and rewrote it with that vibe, and it is spectacular. He took ‘Something Happened’ from something happened bad to something happened really good.”
“Waiting for Day” was written by Bangles singer/guitarist Vicki Peterson. It’s a duet between Micky and his sister Coco. “Coco and I have been singing all our lives together,” says Dolenz. “It’s that same Everly Brothers thing, but she would be doing the high harmony. This goes right back from the beginning, before the Monkees, when we were kids.”
Pete Donnelly and Shelby Lynne wrote “Where Do the Tears Come From.” “Shelby Lynne is a great singer, and she has that great bluesy feel,” says Dolenz. “The original demo had a bluesy kind of feel. But I didn’t want to try to sound like Shelby Lynne or Otis Redding or someone like that. We went instead with something that had more of a Burt Bacharach kind of thing. I love it.”
The EP ends with “In the Center of My Heart, There’s a Force Commonly Known as Love,” which was written by Jonny Polonsky. “That’s a strange song,” says Dolenz. “And it’s very poetic.”
At some point, Dolenz is going to work at least a couple of these songs into his live show. But right now, it’s focused solely on Monkees classics, which he’s presenting in chronological order to mark the group’s 60th anniversary. He sings most of them himself, but he occasionally takes a breath while members of his band take the lead on songs like “Your Auntie Grizelda,” “Valleri,” “You Just May Be the One,” and “Tapioca Tundra.” “I was worried about this at first,” Dolenz says. “I thought people might go, ‘Why is some strange keyboard player singing a song?’ But it’s really been working.”
And even though he’s now 81 years old, Dolenz is still able to deliver vocally demanding tunes like “As We Go Along” and “Porpoise Song” with an ease and comfort matched by very few other singers of his generation. He says it’s a mixture of genetics and hard work. “Your vocal cords are muscles,” he says. “And like any sport, you’ve got to take care of those muscles. If you were a tennis player, you wouldn’t walk out onto center court at Wimbledon without having warmed up or practiced.”
“What I learned from my wonderful vocal coach, Eric Vitro, is how to sing from your diaphragm,” he continues. “That’s not where the tone comes from — that’s from here — but all of the strength, all of the power, all of the control comes from there. That’s why people ruin their voices. If you’re going to scream or hit a big, high, loud note, they do it from their throat, and that’s when you rip the shit out of your chords.”
Dolenz also gives himself rest by touring in relatively short bursts, and only agreeing to “fly dates.” “I can’t do a bus tour anymore,” he says. “I just can’t. It beats me up too much. That last one with Nez [in 2021] really wiped me out, so I can’t do that. I have a lot of dates, but they’re spread out.”
Nez died less than a month after the end of that final Monkees tour. Since that time, some might see little distinction between Dolenz solo runs and “Monkees” tours since he’s the last remaining member of the band. But the solo shows feature a cross section of material, and don’t utilize the iconic Monkees red guitar logo on promotional materials. Dolenz has to pay a license fee to use that on Monkees tours, like the 2023 shows where he played Headquarters straight through, and this ongoing 60th anniversary celebration.
Dates run through Nov. 15, and more will likely be added next year. His plans beyond that are unclear, but he says that fans shouldn’t expect any sort of farewell tour, let alone retirement plans. “A moving target’s harder to hit,” he says. “That’s why I keep moving. And Einstein said, ‘Life is like a bicycle. In order to stay balanced, you have to keep moving.’”
