What Happened When The Monkees Battled a Punk Rock Song for No. 1
The Monkees and punk rock debuted in the same year: 1966. The two battled for chart supremacy. Interestingly, Jim Morrison of The Doors had a similar view of both.
1 of the masterminds behind the 1st punk rock song liked The Monkees a lot
Punk rock didn’t start with The Clash or the Sex Pistols. The genre began with a mid-tempo, sad song called “96 Tears” by a forgotten group called Question Mark & the Mysterians. It’s far from the hardest or most provocative punk rock song you will ever hear. “96 Tears” might sound a bit quaint in 2024, but for the time, it was groundbreaking.
During an interview published in Vice in 2014, Bobby Balderrama from Question Mark & the Mysterians recalled sharing the charts with the Prefab Four. “When ’96 Tears’ went to No. 1 nationally in the fall of 1966, we knocked The Monkees’ ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ out of the No. 1 spot,” he recalled. “That blew me away. I used to watch the Monkees on TV all the time. To me, they were like The Beatles when they first came out. They’d ignite chaos, running all over the place, playing their songs, and their TV show was the first kind of rock ‘n’ roll video program, years before MTV. And I loved it.”
Balderrama recalled the entire top 5. “So when ’96 Tears’ went No. 1 nationally, ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ went to No. 2, ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There’ to No. 3, ‘Poor Side of Town’ to No. 4, and ‘Walk Away Renée’ to No. 5,” he said. According to The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, Balderrama’s memories of the top 5 are correct. However, he got the order of events wrong. “Last Train to Clarksville” knocked “96 Tears” off the top spot, not the other way around.
Why Jim Morrison disliked Question Mark & the Mysterians and The Monkees
In a way, it’s fitting that Question Mark & the Mysterians and The Monkees blew up at the same time. Both groups paved the way for a lot of the punk rock that came after. Much like “96 Tears,” The Monkees’ “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” became a prototype for a lot of later punk rock songs, even if it doesn’t get much attention today. However, Balderrama said one rock star took a similarly negative view of both groups.
“I read something by Jim Morrison, who said, ‘Well, I don’t like bubblegum music like Question Mark & the Mysterians and The Monkees,’ and all this stuff,” he recalled. “He was putting us down!” Balderrama was very upset by Morrison’s comments because he was a big fan of The Doors in general and “Light My Fire” in particular. He cannot hear “Light My Fire” without thinking of Morrison’s harsh words.
Was the 1st punk rock song also a bubblegum song?
So were Question Mark & the Mysterians a bubblegum band, just like The Monkees? Truth be told, the term “bubblegum pop” is pretty vague and almost always used as a pejorative, so it’s hard to say that a decent little rock song like “96 Tears” really counts as bubblegum. What matters is that it was a game-changer. Nothing can change that — even getting knocked off the top spot by The Monkees.
