Why Davy Jones Stopped The Monkees From Being Named The Parrots
Davy Jones revealed The Monkees were almost called The Parrots. He protested against this name. In addition, Jones said The Beatles and The Byrds helped inspire The Monkees’ name.
Davy Jones revealed how The Beatles, The Byrds, and other 1960s bands helped inspire The Monkees’ name
In his book They Made a Monkee Out of Me, Jones discussed a conversation that led to The Monkees deciding on a name. Some suggested the band needed a gimmick of some sort.
“Well, the name hadn’t been thought of yet,” Jones recalled. “There was The Beatles, The Animals, The Byrds, The Turtles — so we started thinking of animal names. Somebody came up with The Parrots.”
Why Davy Jones didn’t want to be in a band called The Parrots
Someone suggested the band could be called The Parrots and wear parrots on their shoulders. “‘Not me, man,'” Jones protested. “‘I ain’t having no parrot on me … s*** all over my clothes!’ Good job, too. Can you imagine? — ‘Hey, hey, — we’re The Parrots!’ No way.”
Jones recalled somebody said the band could get a monkey to serve as a mascot for the group. “Suddenly, we knew we had it, Jones remembered. “‘The Monkees’ — spelt rong, like Beatles, Byrds. Everybody was excited about it.”
The way listeners in the United States reacted to The Byrds and The Beatles
The Byrds helped inspire The Monkees’ name. Even though there was a connection between the two bands, one was far more popular than the other in the United States. The Byrds released a pair of albums that reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200: Mr. Tambourine Man and The Byrds’ Greatest Hits. Both of those albums reached No. 6.
Two of The Byrds’ songs reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. One was “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season),” also known as “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” and the other was the band’s cover of Bob Dylan‘s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Both of those songs reached No. 1.
Meanwhile, The Monkees released five consecutive albums that reached the top 10 of the Billboard 200. Those albums were The Monkees, More of the Monkees, Headquarters, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees. All of those albums reached No. 1 except for The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, which reached No. 3.
In addition, The Monkees had three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: “Last Train to Clarksville,” “Daydream Believer,” and “I’m a Believer.” A trio of their other singles — “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You,” “Valleri,” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” — also hit the top 10. While The Byrds influenced The Monkees’ choice of a name, the Prefab Four outperformed The Byrds on the Billboard charts.
