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TL;DR:

  • The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz said one album captured the “insanity” surrounding the group.
  • He said The Monkees were a “garage band” who couldn’t duplicate their recorded performances live.
  • The album in question was not released until decades after it was recorded.
The Monkees' Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork on a boat
The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork | Getty Images

The Monkees‘ Micky Dolenz said he had some “pretty brutal” experiences with the band. In addition, he said one of The Monkees’ albums captured the “insanity” surrounding the group. Notably, the album would not get released until the 1980s.

The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz said his band had no preparation for performing for humongous audiences

During a 2012 interview with Music Radar, Dolenz discussed the dramatic rise of The Monkees. He said nothing could prepare the members of the band for touring.

“Usually, you start in a new band and you play bar mitzvahs or bowling alley parking lots,” Dolenz said. “I’d done that in cover bands, playing cocktail lounges and stuff. But all of a sudden, our first gig was at a 10,000-seat arena.”

Micky Dolenz said 1 Monkees album shows the Prefab Four were a ‘garage band’

Dolenz revealed The Monkees’ fans screamed so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself perform. “That was probably the hardest part of the job, playing without being able to hear,” he remembered. “There were no monitors back then.

“I was singing leads and playing the drums — without monitors, without any help or assistance, and without being able to hear anything,” he added. “I couldn’t hear my drums, I couldn’t hear my voice, I couldn’t hear Mike or Peter or David.” He said this was “pretty brutal.”

Dolenz said one of the band’s albums captured the feeling of their tours. “There was a pretty interesting CD that Rhino put out called Monkees Live ’67,” he said. “You do get a sense of the insanity and the sound and us out there. We were essentially a garage band. So was everybody. You couldn’t duplicate the recorded sound — there just wasn’t the technology to do that.”

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How the album ‘Live 1967’ performed on the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom

For context, the album Dolenz mentioned is actually called Live 1967. The album was released in 1987 during a period of renewed interest in the Prefab Four. The album never charted on the Billboard 200.

According to The Official Charts Company, The Monkees had several hits in the United Kingdom. Despite this, Live 1967 did not chart there either. The group still found success in the U.K. in the 1980s, as Hey! Hey! It’s The Monkees reached No. 12 in 1989.

Live 1967 isn’t one of the Prefab Four’s most famous albums — but Dolenz said it captured the “insanity” surrounding the band.

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