My Favorite Monkee Davy Jones

It's been over a year, but I still cannot believe that Monkee Davy Jones is dead. I had first learned of his premature passing on that terrible February 29th last year via a Facebook post, and cried for a good while. As I watched episodes of the Monkees reruns and listened to my Monkees music collection as the days passed, I realized that, although I was not even alive during the height of his popularity, no celebrity will ever mean more to me than Davy Jones.

During summer vacation in Maine in 1979, I was playing billiards with my cousin Peter in his basement. Peter put on his turntable a record by a group I had never before heard, the Monkees' eponymous 1966 debut album. To my musically unsophisticated nine-year old ears, I liked what I was hearing, and also liked the other Monkees album he had, the Monkees' second LP More of the Monkees. Always on the prowl for the obscure to like, I taped both LPs on cassette, and wanted to learn more about the group.

Back then, both music and biographical information about the Monkees was hard to come by. I treasured my first Monkees 45 (a reissue featuring the Monkees Theme/Last Train to Clarksville). I distinctly recall my first-ever purchase of a Monkees LP, the Monkees Greatest Hits, and remember asking for and getting the Monkees Greatest Hits, Volume 2 one Christmas. I remembered being thrilled to see the Monkees featured in a segment on an ABC summer replacement series titled "Whatever Became Of?" and enjoyed Davy Jones' appearances on Scooby Doo and on the Brady Bunch. I pronouced myself a Monkees fan, which caused me no small amount of ridicule from my peers on the basis of their name alone.

The dearth of accessible Monkees-related output started to change when Rhino Records reissued Monkees' LPs. I saw a Rhino cassette of More of the Monkees in Sam Goody's, and asked my mother to buy it for me. 1985 saw the release of the Monkees Tale by Eric Lefcowitz, the first serious biography ever penned about the group.

1986 was the big comeback year for the Monkees, when a 20th anniversary reunion tour coincided with MTV running a weekend marathon of their innovative series, sparking an immediate Monkees revival. Suddenly, the Rhino album reissues were charting, and everyone knew the Monkees. And LOVED the Monkees. I felt vindicated.

As the Monkees' popularity increased, a strange internal dichotomy appeared. Although I prided myself on being different and, although it would have been more hip to declare the witty extrovert Micky Dolenz, the most musically-authentic Peter Tork, or the principled Mike Nesmith my favorite Monkee, Davy Jones, the most popular member and one of the biggest teen idols in pop-rock history, was still the one I liked the most.

I liked Davy because he was as authentic as a teen idol could be. Although Davy began to write songs only after the critical backlash the Monkees faced in 1967 for not playing on their first two albums, he understood that he was an actor and an entertainer more than an ambitious "aritist." Rather than yearning to direct, as the other Monkees did during the original series run, Davy unpretentiously admitted, "I'm best directed." Although as popular as any celebrity during the Monkees heyday, Davy had no public meltdowns, never succumbed to the trappings of rock stardom, never embraced the excesses of that era, and carried himself with a simple dignity that reflected his working-class English roots.

I saw Davy in concert on four separate occasions, and found him to be the most accessible celebrity I ever met. The first occasion was a solo appearance at a free concert at Smith Point Beach, NY (aborted by a driving rainstorm), the second a Monkees 1997 concert appearance at the Westbury Music Fair in Westbury, NY (a show where I simply marked out after Davy replicated a signature shuffle first seen during the Monkees 1967 video clip of Daydream Believer). I met Davy for the first time in 2001 after a Monkees concert in Portland, Maine. After the show, Davy came out to greet all the fans who waited, signing anything (including my then-girlfriend's chest!), and posing for pictures with anyone who wanted one, a gesture he repeated when I saw him for the fourth and last time during a solo appearance in Wilmington, DE in 2005, as gracious and friendly to everyone as ever.
More than any celebrity that I'm aware of, Davy appreciated his legions of loyal fans, understood their importance in his life (and he in their lives), and, without any fanfare, gave FAR MORE than someone of his status needed to, regardless of the locale. "You can't ever forget your reponsibility to your fans," wrote Davy. (For an exemplar of the wonderfulness of Davy's heart, please read the following link: http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/music/articles/20120313davy-jones-monkees-rhonda-cook-phoenix-cave-creek.html).

Davy was quite underrated as a performer. The 58 episodes from the two-year run of the Monkees television series, which feature Davy's versatility and comic talent, are as fresh, innovative, and effervescent today as they appeared when the comedy premiered back in 1966. The Monkees' only motion picture, Head (1968), is one of the greatest rock movies ever released and, unlike most features in that genre, can withstand repeated viewings. Surprisingly (given the critical reception during their heyday), the Monkees' music holds up just about as well as any music released during that era. While no LP in the Monkees catalog is entirely unassailable (Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones (1967) and the Head soundtrack (1968) come the closest, in this writer's opinion), each release has several stand-out moments and are warmly recommended. Among Davy's shining moments on vinyl include gritty pop (Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow), She Hangs Out, Valleri, and the unreleased Love to Love), comedy (This Just Doesn't Seem to be My Day, Laugh), Tin Pan Alley (the Nilsson tunes Cuddly Toy and Daddy's Song- for the latter, the movie version is superior to the track released on LP), self-penned tunes (the underrated the Poster, the rocker You and I (featuring one Neil Young on guitar), the unreleased Changes), Someday Man, and the song for which Davy will forever be linked, Daydream Believer. 

Thank you, David Thomas Jones, for being a great entertainer, a great father to your daughters, and, forever, My Favorite Monkee.