MIKE NESMITH walked to the beat of a different drum.

MIKE NESMITH walked to the beat of a different drum,

by Norman Warwick

The press dubbed him the quiet Monkee but, tall and lean and identifiable by his bobble hats, Mike Nesmith (left) always seemed to me to be the glue that held The Monkees together in their tv heyday. Mickey Dolenz never got a fair press for either his skills as a comedy actor or his contributions as a unique-sounding lead vocalist. Former Coronation Street actor Davy Jones had a flair for the vaudevillian and Peter Tork was a gifted multi-instrumentalist but it could well be that The Monkees become forever seen as the early platform for a man who has strengthened the Americana music roots and has nourished them with new songs that will live in perpetuity. So, reckon all of The Monkees and Nesmith in particular, wrote important chapters in the genres of pop, rock and audio visual arts.

Andy Greene, writing in Rolling Stone, took a posthumous look-back at the solo career that Nesmith created post-Monkees and reminded me why I rate the works of Mike Nesmith so highly.

As he prepared for his exit from The Monkees, wrote Mr. Greene, Nesmith was approached by John Ware of The Corvettes, a band that featured Nesmith’s Texas band mate and close friend John London. London played on some of the earliest pre-Monkees, Nesmith 45s, as well as numerous Monkees sessions, and had 45s produced by Nesmith for the Dot label in 1969. Ware wanted Nesmith to put together a band. Nesmith’s interest hinged on noted pedal steel player Orville “Red” Rhodes; their musical partnership continued until Rhodes’s death in 1995.

The Michael Nesmith And The First National Band (right) is now considered a pioneer of country-rock music and recorded three albums for RCA. Nesmith wrote most of the songs for the band and he, himself, is considered one of the trailblazers of country rock. He also had moderate commercial success with the First National Band. Their second single, “Joanne“, hit number 21 on the Billboard chart, number 17 on Cashbox, and number four in Canada, with the follow-up “Silver Moon” making number 42 Billboard, number 28 Cashbox, and number 13 in Canada. Two more singles charted (“Nevada Fighter” made number 70 Billboard, number 73 Cashbox, and number 67 Canada, and “Propinquity” reached number 95 Cashbox), and the first two LPs charted in the lower regions of the Billboard album chart. No clear answer has ever been given for the band’s breakup. Nesmith followed up with The Second National Band, which consisted of Nesmith (vocals and guitar), Michael Cohen (keyboards and Moog), Johnny Meeks (of The Strangers) (bass), jazzer Jack Ranelli (drums), and Orville Rhodes (pedal steel), as well as an appearance by singer, musician, and songwriter José Feliciano on congas. The album, Tantamount to Treason Vol. 1, was a commercial and critical disaster. Nesmith then recorded And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’, featuring only him on guitar and Red Rhodes on pedal steel

Whilst the above seems a fair summary others have been less charitable. According to Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981) “Nesmith began his career on RCA as a crackpot inventor and ended as a bankrupt cottage industry.”

Nesmith then became more heavily involved in producing, working with former Fairport Convention man, and later of Mathews Southern Comfort, Iain Matthews‘s (left) on his album Valley Hi and with Bert Jansch‘s L.A. Turnaround. Nesmith was given a label of his own, Countryside, through Elektra Records, as Elektra Records‘s Jac Holzman was a fan of Nesmith’s. It featured a number of artists produced by Nesmith, including Garland Frady and Red Rhodes. The staff band at Countryside also helped Nesmith on his next, and last, RCA album, Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash. Countryside folded when David Geffen replaced Holzman, as Countryside was unnecessary in Geffen’s eyes.

In the mid-1970s, Nesmith briefly collaborated as a songwriter with Linda Hargrove, resulting in the tune “I’ve Never Loved Anyone More“, a hit for Lynn Anderson and recorded by many others, as well as the songs “Winonah” and “If You Will Walk With Me”, both of which were recorded by Hargrove. Of these songs, only “Winonah” was recorded by Nesmith himself. During this same period, Nesmith started his multimedia company Pacific Arts, which initially put out audio records, eight-track tapes, and cassettes, followed in 1981 with “video records”. Nesmith recorded a number of LPs for his label, and had a moderate worldwide hit in 1977 with his song “Rio“, the single taken from the album From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing. In 1979, Nesmith released the single Cruisin’, also known as “Lucy and Ramona and Sunset Sam”, which was popular on AOR rock stations and in New Zealand. In 1983, Nesmith produced the music video for the Lionel Richie single All Night Long. In 1987, he produced the music video for the Michael Jackson single The Way You Make Me Feel.(right)

During this time, Nesmith created a video clip for “Rio“, which helped spur Nesmith’s creation of a television program called PopClips for the Nickelodeon cable network. In 1980, PopClips was sold to the Time Warner/Amex consortium. Time Warner/Amex developed PopClips into the MTV network.

Nesmith won the first Grammy Award given for (long-form) Music Video in 1982 for his hour-long Elephant Parts. He also had a short-lived series (1984-5) on NBC inspired by the video called Michael Nesmith In Television Parts. The programme included many other artists who were unknown at the time, but went on to become major stars in their own right: Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Whoopi Goldberg, and Arsenio Hall. The concept of the show was to have comics render their stand-up routines into short comedy films much like the ones in Elephant Parts. Nesmith assembled writers Jack Handey, William Martin, John Levenstein, and Michael Kaplan, along with directors William Dear (who had directed Elephant Parts) and Alan Myerson, as well as producer Ward Sylvester to create the show. The half-hour show ran for eight episodes in the summer of 1985 on NBC Thursday nights in prime time.

Nesmith formed the Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. (left) in 1974 to manage and develop media projects. Pacific Arts Video became a pioneer in the home video market, producing and distributing a wide variety of videotaped programs, although the company eventually ceased operations after an acrimonious contract dispute with PBS over home video licensing rights and payments for several series,^[5] including Ken Burns‘ The Civil War. The dispute escalated into a lawsuit that went to jury trial in federal court in Los Angeles. On February 3, 1999, a jury awarded Nesmith and his company Pacific Arts $48.875 million in compensatory and punitive damages, prompting his widely quoted comment, “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.” PBS appealed the ruling, but the appeal never reached court and a settlement was reached, with the amount paid to Pacific Arts and Nesmith kept confidential. Nesmith’s most recent Pacific Arts project was Videoranch 3D, a virtual environment on the internet that hosted live performances at various virtual venues inside the ranch. He performed live inside Videoranch 3D on May 25, 2009.

Nesmith was the executive producer for the films Repo Man (right) , Tapeheads, and Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, as well as his own solo recording and film projects.

In 1998, Nesmith published his first novel, The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora. It was developed originally as an online project and was later published as a hardcover book by St Martin’s Press. Nesmith’s second novel, The America Gene, was released in July 2009 as an online download from Videoranch.com.

In the early 1980s, Nesmith teamed with satirist P. J. O’Rourke to ride his vehicle Timerider in the annual Baja 1000 off-road race. This is chronicled in O’Rourke’s 2009 book Driving Like Crazy.

During the 1990s, Nesmith, as trustee and president of the Gihon Foundation, hosted the Council On Ideas, a gathering of intellectuals from different fields who were asked to identify the most important issues of their day and publish the result. The foundation ceased the program in 2000 and started a new program for the performing arts. Nesmith also spent a decade as a board of trustees member, nominating member and vice-chair of the American Film Institute.

In 1992, Nesmith undertook a concert tour of North America to promote the CD release of his RCA solo albums (although he included the song “Rio” from the album From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing). The concert tour ended at the Britt Festival in Oregon. A video and CD, both entitled Live at the Britt Festival, were released capturing the 1992 concert.

Nesmith continued to record and release his own music. His final album, Rays, was released in 2006. In 2011, he returned to producing, working with blues singer and guitarist Carolyn Wonderland. Nesmith produced Wonderland’s version of Robert Johnson‘s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” on her album Peace Meal. Wonderland married writer-comedian A. Whitney Brown on March 4, 2011, in a ceremony officiated by Nesmith.

In 2012, Nesmith briefly toured Europe prior to rejoining the Monkees for their tours of the United States. Intermixing the Monkees concerts, Nesmith also launched solo tours of the U.S. Unlike his 1992 U.S. tour, which predominantly featured music from his RCA recordings, Nesmith stated that his 2013 tour would feature songs he considers ´thematic, chronological and most often requested by fans.´

Chris Scruggs, grandson of Earl Scruggs, replaced the late Red Rhodes on the steel guitar. The tour was captured on a live album, Movies Of The Mind.

In 2014, he guest-starred in season four, episode 9 of the IFC comedy series Portlandia in the fictitious role of the father of the mayor of Portland, Oregon.

In 2017, he released a memoir and companion “soundtrack” album titled Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff.

In 2018, he announced that he would be doing a five-date tour of California with a revamped version of The First National Band, including a date at The Troubadour, where he performed before The Monkees. On February 20, a tour was announced as “The Monkees Present: The Mike and Micky Show”, their first tour as a duo. The pair would play Monkees music and promote the tour under the Monkees banner, but Nesmith stated, “there’s no pretense there about Micky and I [sic] being the Monkees. We’re not.”

The tour was cut short in June 2018, with four shows left unplayed, due to Nesmith having a “minor health issue”; Dolenz and he rescheduled the unplayed concerts plus adding several other including an Australian tour in 2019. After recovering from his health scare, Michael Nesmith and the First National Band Redux went on a tour of the U.S., with mostly the same line-up and set-list as the southern California shows.

In 2019, Nesmith toured in a two-piece configuration with pedal steel player Pete Finney, focusing on his 1972 album, And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’. This was the first time Nesmith had performed in this format since 1974 with Red Rhodes. Nesmith was also joined by special guests Ben Gibbard and Scott McCaughey on opening night in Seattle.

In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Nesmith explained why he was so adamant that the Monkees write and record their own material despite the huge success they were enjoying at the time. “We were kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us,” he said. “It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us — sort of “What’s the big deal, why won’t you let us play the songs we are singing?”

Before he even joined the Monkees, Nesmith wrote a breakup song called “Different Drum.” The Monkees producers “said to him, ‘That’s not a Monkees song,’” Micky Dolenz told Rolling Stone in 2016. “Michael said. ‘Wait a minute, I am one of the Monkees.’ He gave it to Linda Ronstadt, and the rest is history.” (Ronstadt, Dolenz and Nesmith, right)

When the Monkees dissolved in the late Sixties, Nesmith formed the First National Band. And despite recording three classic country-rock albums, escaping the shadow of the Monkees proved nearly impossible. The group broke up shortly before the Eagles hit big with “Take It Easy.”

“I was heartbroken beyond speech,” Nesmith told Rolling Stone in 2018. “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 spent the rest of the Seventies recording under-the-radar solo albums. In 1977, he promoted his single “Rio” with a clever music video that got a lot of play in Europe and Australia, turning the song into a minor hit. It gave him an incredible idea. “[I realized that] radio is to records as television is to video,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “Then it was like, ‘Of course!’ and thus MTV was born. I just took that idea and put together some programs and sent it over to Warner Bros. and so forth. Next thing you know, there it was.”

His life changed forever in 1980 when his mother, Liquid Paper inventor Bette Nesmith Graham, died and left him her substantial fortune. He used the money to invest in a series of businesses along with movies like Repo Man and Tapeheads. He didn’t participate in the Monkees reunion tours of the Eighties, leading to the false impression he was ashamed of his pop past.

“Quite the contrary,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “It was a nice part of the résumé. It was fun for me and a great time of my life. I mean, where do you want be in the Sixties except the middle of rock & roll, hanging out with the scene? London was an absolute blast, and so was L.A. back then. There was so much going on back then.”

He returned to the Monkees in 1996 for the LP Justus and a brief U.K. tour, but he wouldn’t return on a permanent basis until 2012, when the surviving members toured in the aftermath of Davy Jones’ death. A series of American Monkees tours followed, and he participated in Good Times!, their 2016 comeback LP.

The Monkees launched a farewell tour earlier this year and played their final show at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles on November 14th.

Despite all this, he was never quite sure the Monkees, who were formed by TV producers, were actually a real band. “All three of us have our own ideas,” he later told Rolling Stone in 2016. “This being, ‘What is this thing? What have we got here? What’s required of us? Is this a band? Is this a television show?’ When you go back to the genesis of this thing, it is a television show because it has all those traditional beats. But something else was going on, and it struck a chord way out of proportion to the original swing of the hammer. You hit the gong and suddenly it’s huge.”

In an earlier 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Nesmith explained why he was so adamant that the Monkees write and record their own material despite the huge success they were enjoying at the time. “We were kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us,” he said. “It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us — sort of “What’s the big deal, why won’t you let us play the songs we are singing?”

The Monkees launched a farewell tour earlier this year and played their final show at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles on November 14th.

Despite all this, he was never quite sure the Monkees, who were formed by TV producers, were actually a real band. “All three of us have our own ideas,” he told Rolling Stone in 2016. “This being, ‘What is this thing? What have we got here? What’s required of us? Is this a band? Is this a television show?’ When you go back to the genesis of this thing, it is a television show because it has all those traditional beats. But something else was going on, and it struck a chord way out of proportion to the original swing of the hammer. You hit the gong and suddenly it’s huge.”

photo memoir Monkees singer and guitarist Michael Nesmith, a pop visionary who penned many of the group’s most enduring songs before laying the groundwork for country rock with the First National Band in the early Seventies, died in December 2021. He was 78 when he died from natural causes..

“With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement. “We ask that you respect our privacy at this time and we thank you for the love and light that all of you have shown him and us.”

Nesmith was known as the Monkee in the green wool hat with the thick Texas drawl, and the writer of songs like “Mary, Mary,” “Circle Sky,” “Listen to the Band,” and “The Girl I Knew Somewhere.” But he raged behind the scenes that the group didn’t have creative control of its albums, and in 1967 led the successful rebellion against record producer Don Kirshner. The group would subsequently release Headquarters and other albums created largely on its own.

A lot of hard work must have been undertaken by Andy Greene and other journalists to differentiate between Mike Nesmith, a quite pioneering musician, and the mad-cap in the bobble hat hat creation who was made a Monkee of. Several things struck me in the piecing together of their findings,…..I am at an age now where, although my memory is still in working order, the chronometer that keeps my memory ín order´ is a busted flush. That The Frist National Band preceded The Eagles was mind-blowing even though I was soemotionally invested in all those exciting sounds that emerged around that time. Secondly, I do recall getting Nesmith getting some retrospective credit as a pioneer of the incoming video era, but I don´t remember him being so universally accredited at the time.

However, as John Stewart said in one of his song titles that we borrowed for an article title a few weeks ago, … Its Alright, Its Only Music

Every song ever created has been intended for light years of travel, and till we reach the end of that journey we can make no judgement,…. but Mike Nesmith´s body of work will surely endure.

the primary source for this article was written by Andy Greene for Rolling Stone. The publication seems to be making all sorts of excellent promotional offers at the moment and has for decades now been referred to asd the Bible of rock music. They also keep a keen eye on the cultural and political landscapes and boast a team, still, of excellent writers. It would be well worth checking it out on line if you are not familiar with their output.

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This article was collated by Norman Warwick, a weekly columnist with Lanzarote Information and owner and editor of this daily blog at Sidetracks And Detours.

Norman has also been a long serving broadcaster, co-presenting the weekly all across the arts programme on Crescent Community Radio for many years with Steve Bewick, and his own show on Sherwood Community Radio. He has been a regular guest on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio Four.

As a published author and poet Norman was a founder member of Lendanear Music, with Colin Lever and Just Poets with Pam McKee, Touchstones Creative Writing Group (for which he was creative writing facilitator for a number of years) with Val Chadwick and all across the arts with Robin Parker.

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