The Monkees: Mike Nesmith’s Comments About His Love for Music Read Like a Romantic Poem
The Monkees guitarist and songwriter Mike Nesmith has a knack for making words have their own melody. Case in point: a comment he once made regarding his love for music, which reads like a piece of romantic poetry.
Mike Nesmith’s musical influences helped shape his songwriting
In an interview with Sound and Vision, Nesmith shared the varied musical influences that helped shape his perspective as a songwriter. These different tidbits of sounds became the soundtrack that would push him forward throughout his career.
“I was exposed to a lot of different music growing up. An organist played in a music store, and you could hear him on the street,” he explained. “There was an organist who played in the cafeteria. The Hammond organ was the sort of cocktail piano of its day. They would play things like “Tico Tico” — songs that had become standards by then. That had a big influence on me,” Nesmith explained.
He added, “There was a lot of country music and a lot of blues music that were just as important, but it all melted together in an odd way in my head. It was a strange amalgam that got in there and just never left. I can’t play it exactly — but if I hear it, I’m drawn to it.”
Mike Nesmith’s comment about music reads like a romantic poem
In discussing his love for music with Damien Love, Nesmith made a comment that read like a romantic poem. His eloquence drove his message home about how much being a songwriter and singer meant to him personally.
“I was following a sound in my head. I love music. I’m drawn to it like a fire on a cold day,” he eloquently stated.
“And because I didn’t play very well – I wasn’t a trained musician, and I didn’t have a lot of music theory – I had to make up things I could play. That’s how I became a writer. And the more I did that; the more these directions would open up in my head.”
He continued, “The way I knew something was good is when it came out unique, and I hadn’t heard it before. That’s how things bounced in there – it was a mixture of everything going on at the time, but from my own point of view. I knew what it should sound like before I actually played it.”
This amalgam of musical influences led him to feel like a ‘misfit’ among his co-stars
Nesmith addressed his concerns over fitting in with the other members of The Monkees, Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Micky Dolenz, in his autobiography titled Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff.
“I was not clear from the first meeting with Micky, Davy, and Peter how it would all work as a band. Peter, I knew as a solo folksinger who sang Pete Seger-type folk protest songs and played the banjo. Davy, I knew, was the Broadway star of Oliver who could dance and belt a song from a stage. Micky, I knew as a TV star from his days in Circus Boy,” Nesmith penned.
“Being from the south and drawn to blues and country music, I felt like a misfit. It seemed the differences were going to have to be managed somehow if we were going to be a band,” he concluded.
