I've had the privilege to interview the shortest idolized Monkee twice in years passed, once during a tour with Peter Noone and Bobby Sherman. At the moment I was interviewing Noone on the phone, Davy was cracking jokes on the other end trying to break Herman up. "What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start," he guffawed.
Possibly the reason he thought the joke funny was because he got screwed out of millions that the Monkees accrued for their Screen Gems creators, and for Rhino who purchased the Monkees catalog, logo and series lock, stock and barrel.
"The logo is fine and it's very recognizable but the faces and the voices are more recognizable," he said. "You ain't got the logo if you ain't got the guys."
You ain't got the logo, the voices, or the guys on either this album of muzak versions of the Monkees hits, the same cash-in mojo that made millions of nearsighted Beatles fans curse The Hollyridge Strings.
But now in the privacy of your home or Malibu beach house if you're in a struggling young band, you can mourn Davy properly with the appropriate funereal-paced "Theme From the Monkees" housed here, and karaoke versions of Davy classics like "I Wanna Be Free" and "The Day We Fall In Love"; the last one's a recited ballad that was so excruciating it was the only 1966-1967 Monkees recording not featured on the TV show. On More of the Monkees, it was two and a half minutes of Davy with the dazzly eyes trying to make some girl but here it's the slow sound of a heart stopping, love losing consciousness and a lonesome tambourine rolling down the street were it not for the jarring muzak version of "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" generously programmed after it. R.I.P., Davy!
