Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rock Monkee(1942-2021)

Subject: Obit: Mike Nesmith, founder of country rock?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 02:09 PM

I became a great fan of Mike Nesmith, after he left the Monkees.   He was also a regular facebook poster.   Wrote many a fine song, and made some terrific albums. And he was still actively touring, as far as I know, shortly before his death.



https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/music/news/former-monkees-star-michael-nesmith-dead-at-78/ar-AARGGv9?li=AAggNb9

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, founder of country rock?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 02:31 PM

The Monkees came along at exactly the time I was starting to follow rock music, and I remember pestering my piano teacher to use the book of their songs to play for part of my lessons.

RIP.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 02:43 PM

From AP News, 10 Dec 2021

Michael Nesmith, the Monkee for all seasons, dies at 78

By JOHN ROGERS and BRIAN MELLEY

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael Nesmith, the singer-songwriter, author, actor-director and entrepreneur who will likely be best remembered as the wool-hatted, guitar-strumming member of the made-for-television rock band The Monkees, has died at 78.

Nesmith, who had undergone quadruple bypass surgery in 2018, died at home Friday of natural causes, his family said in a statement.

Nesmith was a struggling singer-songwriter in September 1966 when “The Monkees” television debut turned him and fellow band members Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and David Jones into overnight rock stars.

After the group broke up in 1970, Nesmith moved on to a long and creative career, not only as a musician but as a writer, producer and director of films, author of several books, head of a media arts company and creator of a music video format that led to the creation of MTV.

Nesmith was running “hoot nights” at the popular West Hollywood nightclub The Troubadour when he saw a trade publication ad seeking “four insane boys” to play rock musicians in a band modeled after the Beatles.

The show featured the comical misadventures of a quartet that tooled around Los Angeles in a tricked-out Pontiac GTO called the MonkeeMobile and, when they weren’t chasing girls, pursued music stardom.

Each episode rolled out two or three new Monkees songs, six of which became Top 10 Billboard hits during the show’s two-year run. Three others, “I’m a Believer,” ?Daydream Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville,” reached No. 1.

Jones, with his British accent and boyish good looks, was the group’s cute lead singer. Dolenz became the wacky drummer, although he had to learn to play the drums as the show went along. Tork, a folk-rock musician, portrayed the comically clueless bass player. Nesmith, with his twangy Texas accent and the wool hat he’d worn to his audition, became the serious but naive lead guitarist.

A prankster by nature, he’d arrived at the audition carrying a guitar and bag of dirty laundry he said he planned to wash immediately afterward. With a harmonica around his neck, he stormed into a casting office, banging the door loudly. After pausing to gaze at a painting as if it were a mirror, he sat down and immediately put his feet up on a desk.

He got the job.

But he rebelled almost immediately when producers told him they were going to call his character “Wool Hat.” He demanded they use his real name, as they did with the other actors.

It would be the first of many confrontations Nesmith would have with producers during a tumultuous two-year run in which “The Monkees” won the 1967 Emmy for best comedy series.

Nesmith and Tork, the group’s two most accomplished musicians, railed against the program’s refusal to allow them to play their own instruments at recording sessions. But when Nesmith revealed that fact to reporters, music critics quickly turned on “The Monkees,” dismissing the show as a fraud and the band as the “Prefab Four,” a mocking reference to the Beatles’ nickname, Fab Four.

Nesmith, meanwhile, had written several songs he hoped to debut on the show, but almost all were dismissed by music producer Don Kirshner, as sounding too country.

Among them was “Different Drum,” which Linda Ronstadt recorded in 1967 for her first hit single, validating to Nesmith his opinion that Kirshner, hailed by the pop music industry as “The Man With The Golden Ear,” didn’t know what he was talking about.

Things came to a head when all four Monkees demanded they take control of the music. They were warned they would be sued for breach of contract.

At that, Nesmith rose from his seat and smashed his fist through a wall, telling Kirshner it could have been his face.

For years Nesmith would refuse to confirm or deny the incident, even as the other three gleefully recounted it to reporters. In his 2017 memoir, “Infinite Tuesday,” he did acknowledge it, saying he’d lost his temper when he felt his integrity was being questioned.

“It was an absurd moment in so many ways,” he wrote.

It did give the Monkees control over their music, however, beginning with the group’s third album, “Headquarters.”

After the show concluded in 1968 the band embarked on a lengthy concert tour where members sang many of their own songs and played their own instruments before crowds of adoring fans. Jimi Hendrix was sometimes their opening act.

Following the band’s breakup Nesmith rarely rejoined the others for reunion tours, leading many to believe he disliked the band and the show, something he steadfastly denied.

“I really enjoyed being in the show. I really enjoyed working with Davy and Micky and Peter,” he told Australian Musician magazine in 2019.

It was, he would often say, that he was simply too busy doing other things.

Over the years he recorded more than a dozen albums and toured with the First National Band, the country-rock-folk group he assembled.

He wrote scores of songs, including “Some of Shelly’s Blues,” “Papa Gene’s Blues,” You Just May Be the One” and “The Girl That I knew Somewhere” that he performed with the Monkees. Others, performed with the First National Band, included “Joanne,” “Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun to Care)” and “Different Drum.”

For the Monkees’ 30th anniversary he induced the others to reunite to record a new album, “Justus,” for which all four composed the songs and played the instruments. He also rejoined the others for a brief tour and wrote and directed their 1997 TV reunion film, “Hey, Hey, It’s the Monkees.”

Nesmith also wrote and produced the 1982 science-fiction film “Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann” and earned executive producer credits on “Repo Man,” “Tape Heads” and other films.

His 1981 comedy-music video “Elephant Parts” won a Grammy and led to “PopClips,” a series of music videos broadcast on the Nickelodeon cable network that in turn led to the creation of MTV.

Nesmith even published two well received novels, 1998’s “The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora” and 2009’s “The America Gene.”

In 1999 he prevailed in a bitter courtroom battle with the Public Broadcasting System over royalties from a home-video deal his media company, Pacific Arts, had struck with PBS. A federal jury awarded him $48 million, concluding the popular purveyor of children’s shows and documentaries had defrauded him.

Nesmith, showing he hadn’t lost his Monkees sense of humor, said afterward: “It’s like catching your grandmother stealing your stereo. You’re glad to get your stereo back, but you’re sad to find out that Grandma’s a thief.”

Both sides agreed on an undisclosed settlement and Nesmith founded another company, Videoranch.

After Jones died in 2012 he began to rejoin the Monkees more frequently, their concerts now earning glowing reviews from critics. He attributed that to most of the group’s original critics having died or retired.

Following Tork’s death in 2019, Nesmith and Dolenz took on the name The Monkees Mike & Micky.

Robert Michael Nesmith was born Dec. 30, 1942, in Houston, Texas, the only child of Warren and Bette Nesmith.

His parents divorced when he was 4 and his mother often worked two jobs, as a secretary and painter, to support her son and herself. It was that latter job that inspired her to whip up a typewriter correction fluid called Liquid Paper in her kitchen blender. By the mid-1970s it had made her a fortune, which she eventually left to her son and to nonprofit foundations she endowed to promote women in business and the arts.

Her son, who was married and divorced three times, is survived by four children, Christian, Jason, Jessica and Jonathan.

___

Former Associated Press writer John Rogers was the main writer on the story.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: Helen
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 04:29 PM

I just read this Australian ABC News article and I was going to start an Obit thread but you beat me to it.

I used to watch the TV show when I was young and I loved it. It was funny, clever and musical. A great mix.

I think Mike Nesmith was my favourite Monkee but it was a close race. I liked them all.

Ave et vale, Mr Nesmith. Rest in peace.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: JennieG
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 04:55 PM

Another name from my giddy youth gone......thanks for the music, Mike.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 05:20 PM

hey, hey, we're the Monkees ...

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 05:43 PM

Nesmith singing "Different Drum" in 2013.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 06:05 PM

It's like finding your grandmother stealing your stereo. You're happy to get your stereo back, but it's sad to find out your grandmother is a thief.

Producer credits:
The Swanky Modes - Ordinary Man (Tapeheads)
The Plugz - Reel Ten (Repo Man)

RIP Mike.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: GUEST,Lin
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 06:35 PM

Just watching Channel 7 Eyewitness News in the Los Angeles area. They made the announcement about Mike Nesmith passing away at the age of 78. So sorry to hear this news.
It was mentioned on the news that he died of "natural causes"
That was the cause of death from a statement from his family.
Mike was a very talented musician and song-writer.
I still have a old Monkee's LP or two around. I think he was living in Carmel Valley, California at the time of his passing.
Rest in peace Mike Nesmith.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rocker (1942-2021)
From: GUEST,LarryTheRadioGuy
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 09:20 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONyP1r7Ys_Q

I love his Tropical Campfires album from 1992. Here he is with a live version of the first tune from that album. Yellow Butterfly.   Demonstrates his great wit as well as his fine composing skills.

Yellow Butterfly

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rock Monkee(1942-2021)
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 11 Dec 21 - 01:31 PM

There is a headline in my Washington Post feed that reads "Michael Nesmith invented country rock. Or maybe something even better.
By Geoff Edgers". But I can't get the article because I don't have a subscription.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rock Monkee(1942-2021)
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Dec 21 - 04:59 PM

I don't promise anything, but because the article DOES come up
on this public computer station,
I will attempt a blue clicky thingy here.


Michael Nesmith Appreciation

Hope it works . . .

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rock Monkee(1942-2021)
From: Felipa
Date: 12 Dec 21 - 11:33 AM

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/michael-nesmith-tribute-rob-sheffield-1270202/
on the page there are also some videos, and links to other articles

A Loose Salute to Michael Nesmith, the Coolest Monkee of Them All by Rob Sheffield

Good night, Papa Nez. The music world is mourning today for the late, great Michael Nesmith, and celebrating his long, weird, beautiful life. He died today at 78, just weeks after the Monkees’ final show on Nov. 14. He was the coolest Monkee, the rock star of the band, the tall, lanky Texan in the wool hat. Nobody did more to eroticize aviator shades and sideburns than Nez. But he was the band’s dedicated musician, writing a slew of cowboy-hippie classics: “Tapioca Tundra,” “Listen to the Band,” “Circle Sky,” “Auntie’s Municipal Court,” so many more. If you were lucky enough to see the Monkees in recent years, you know Nez never lost his power to light up the room with one of his wry smiles.

Good night, Papa Nez. The music world is mourning today for the late, great Michael Nesmith, and celebrating his long, weird, beautiful life. He died today at 78, just weeks after the Monkees’ final show on Nov. 14. He was the coolest Monkee, the rock star of the band, the tall, lanky Texan in the wool hat. Nobody did more to eroticize aviator shades and sideburns than Nez. But he was the band’s dedicated musician, writing a slew of cowboy-hippie classics: “Tapioca Tundra,” “Listen to the Band,” “Circle Sky,” “Auntie’s Municipal Court,” so many more. If you were lucky enough to see the Monkees in recent years, you know Nez never lost his power to light up the room with one of his wry smiles.

Nesmith was a music visionary who saw connections between pop, rock, folk, and country, at a time when everyone just expected him to play the role of a teen idol. He was the Monkee who fought for them to write their own songs and play their own instruments. But he also helped pioneer country-rock in the 1970s, with his First National Band. These albums flopped at the time, only to get rediscovered later. “Dare I say it became hipster music?” he asked Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene in 2018. “No. I don’t say that. But dare I say that it’s music whose time has come? I’m pretty confident in saying something like that. I never thought it would happen.”

Nez kept going right up to his final days. Even when he seemed to be in precarious health, he had that drive to keep making music. The Monkees’ farewell tour was a beauty, even though Nesmith was clearly pushing the limits. At the NYC show a few weeks ago, he looked frail, sometimes losing his focus, but still thriving on the music, the crowd, his old friend Micky Dolenz. The set began with “Good Clean Fun,” one of his countriest Monkees tunes, with the final payoff line, “I told you I’d come back, and here I am!” You couldn’t miss the way his face lit up with radiant joy as he sang that line — three times — and breathed in the audience’s delight. It was inspiring to witness.

He grew up in Texas, with a single mom who invented Liquid Paper. He became an L.A. folkie, hanging at hootenannies in clubs like the Troubadour. Then he signed on to join a sitcom about a fictional band — Dolenz and Davy Jones were the actors, Nesmith and Peter Tork were the music guys. But to everyone’s surprise, the Monkees blew up into one of the all-time-great American pop bands.

As he told Andy Greene in 2016, “People think it was amazing that four guys hired for a TV show could actually form a band, but I don’t see it that way. It’s not that amazing when you think of the tenor of the times. You put any four guys in a room in the 1960s and you had a band, all the way from the Grateful Dead to Buffalo Springfield. It isn’t that amazing that four people in a group would start singing and playing together, especially since they were hired to perform that as actors.”

The Monkees’ TV show ran only two seasons, but it’s their music that turned out to be permanent. Nesmith is the main reason why. He wrote so many of their greatest songs — “Listen to the Band” has to be the best Creedence song that isn’t actually by Creedence. (“Play the drum just a little bit louder/Tell me I can live without her” — what a line.) He defined their sound with his trademark 12-string Gretsch guitar and his rugged adult drawl, in tunes like “The Door Into Summer” and “What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round?”

The Monkees took control on their third album, 1967’s Headquarters, playing and singing every note on their own. Nez really stepped out as a writer, with classics like “Sunny Girlfriend,” “You Told Me,” and “You Just May Be the One.” That same year, Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys had a hit with his “Different Drum,” a jaded break-up song far removed from any kind of teen romance. (Key line: “We’ll both live a lot longer if you live without me.”) Nesmith was also hanging with the Beatles — he was there at Abbey Road the night they finished off “A Day in the Life.”

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band did his “Mary, Mary” on their 1966 psychedelic classic East West — at a time when Nesmith was still struggling to get his own songs on Monkees records. “Mary, Mary” became a strange touchstone in hip-hop history, as part of the early DJ sets by Afrika Bambaataa in the Bronx. As Bam said in David Toop’s 1984 classic book Rap Attack, “I’d throw on the Monkees’ ‘Mary Mary’ — just the beat part where they’d go ‘Mary, Mary, where are you going?’ — and they’d start going crazy. I’d say, ‘You just danced to the Monkees.’ They’d say, ‘You liar. I didn’t dance to no Monkees.’ I’d like to catch people who categorize records.” Run-DMC did a 1988 version. “I just loved their take on it,” Nesmith said. “They changed around the lyrics some, but I didn’t care. The song isn’t exactly deep.”

After the Monkees split, Nesmith began his eccentric solo career, with amiably zonked records that were years ahead of their time. He did what his kindred spirit Gram Parsons called “cosmic American music.” Nevada Fighter is the best of these cult faves, but Magnetic South, Loose Salute, and Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash aren’t far behind. He revived these tunes on his great 2018 tour, with a new version of the First National Band. He finally got to sing gems like “Dedicated Friend” and “Grand Ennui,” and “Calico Girlfriend” for fans who’d waited years to hear him sing them, just as he’d waited for the chance to do this right.

He had a sense of humor about his cult status, calling one of these albums And the Hits Just Keep Coming. But it was painful for him to see the country-rock sound take off without him. “I was heartbroken beyond speech,” he told Rolling Stone. “I couldn’t even utter the words ‘the Eagles’ and I loved Hotel California and I love the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, all that stuff. That was right in my wheelhouse and I was agonized, Van Gogh–agonized, not to compare myself to him, but I wanted to cut something off because I was like, ‘Why is this happening?’ The Eagles now have the biggest-selling album of all time and mine is sitting in the closet of a closed record company?”

Nesmith kept behind the scenes in the 1980s, with his company Pacific Arts, investing in movies like Repo Man and Tapeheads. When MTV kicked off a Monkees revival in 1986, Nesmith sat it out, but he joined for the failed 1996 reunion album Justus. He wrote two novels and a 2017 memoir, Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff.

But after Davy Jones died in 2012, Nesmith surprised everyone by rejoining Dolenz and Tork. As he told RS, “Now is the time.” They finally made the album fans were praying for in 2016: Good Times!, with the late producer Adam Schlesinger. “Me and Magdalena” is a career-capping duet with Dolenz, showing off his weathered voice. “It’s a heart-grabbing song, Tork told Rolling Stone. “I’ve never heard Michael be so emotionally available as a singer before.” He sat out the 50th-anniversary tour that summer, but for the NYC show, he joined Dolenz and Tork to sing “Papa Gene’s Blues” — via Skype. He also turned into a hardcore fan of vaporwave.

Micky Dolenz did a great tribute album this spring, Dolenz Sings Nesmith. He made it feel like a loose salute to a 55-year-friendship, a dialogue between two guys from different worlds who’d seen each other through through ups, downs, and dashikis. Micky cheerfully admitted that even now, when he sang “Tapioca Tundra,” he had no idea what it meant.

But for Nesmith, the song was simple: a love song to the audience. As he explained in 2016, “The Monkees were playing live by this time, and the lyric to this was inspired by that.” Nez, with his solo-folkie background, was stunned by the sight of 20,000 fans. “Every time we played, an extraordinary thing happened. The performance turned us into something we weren’t offstage, which was the Monkees. Peter calls it the ‘fifth thing.’ It was the audience. They were there to bring this thing into reality, to make actual what the television show had portrayed. It was really about them. The lyrics come from a post-concert realization of the reality that had just occurred, the Monkees coming to life as the audience. Maybe that’s a little metaphysical.”

You could sense that metaphysical spirit on the Monkees’ farewell tour. This was a man determined to sing every ounce of music he still had left in him. There was a poignant moment at the NYC show where he faded out in “Auntie’s Municipal Court,” so Dolenz stepped in to take over and sing the rest of the song — a discreet gesture that nonetheless spoke volumes about the brotherhood between these two. It was also a tribute to how this man was so deeply beloved. Hearing Nez sing “Listen to the Band,” for what everybody knew was the last time, was an unforgettable moment. Thanks to Michael Nesmith for a lifetime’s worth of these moments.

see also https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/monkees-micky-dolenz-michael-nesmith-tribute-1270342/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ben-gibbard-michael-nesmith-tribute-different-drum-cover-1270547/

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rock Monkee(1942-2021)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 12 Dec 21 - 05:43 PM

link works, Keberoxu, thanks for posting it.

Subject: RE: Obit: Mike Nesmith, country rock Monkee(1942-2021)
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 12 Dec 21 - 09:09 PM

My friend wore his stocking cap rolled
up like Mike Nesmith. Memory Eternal