This year has been a bittersweet one for The Monkees, beginning
with the passing of Davy Jones in February at the age of 66, and ending with
the conclusion this month of the reunion tour of the remaining Monkees.
This has led me to listen once again to Justus, an original studio album that was released during The
Monkees’ 30th anniversary in 1996. It is the first album to feature
The Monkees writing, producing, and performing all the songs entirely by
themselves, and the last album to feature all four Monkees.
The Monkees have always been famously maligned for not writing
their own songs and playing their own instruments on the majority of their hit
recordings in the 1960s. Still, The Monkees at one point outsold both The
Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, proving that music lovers and buyers connect
above all else with the songs themselves and the singers who sing them.
On Justus, The Monkees
prove that in addition to being fine singers, they are also excellent
musicians. In fact, they’re so good that it’s easy to forget that they’re
playing the instruments in addition to singing. Micky Dolenz plays drums, Davy
Jones plays percussion, Peter Tork plays bass and keyboards, and Michael
Nesmith (the predominant holdout from various Monkees reunions throughout the
years, and the one who looks the least like his former self) plays guitars.
My favorite songs on the album are Nesmith’s progressive,
rollicking redo of his Monkees tune “Circle Sky,” the Nesmith-penned rant
rocker “Admiral Mike” with aggressive, in-your-face vocals by Dolenz, the
Dolenz hard rocker “Regional Girl,” Tork’s Cars-like “Run Away From Life” sung
by Jones and featuring an ‘80s-style synthesizer solo, Tork’s haunting “I
Believe You,” Dolenz’s self-reliance and self-empowerment ode “It’s My Life,” and
Jones’s album-closing anthem “It’s Not Too Late.”
In light of the fact that Davy Jones is the first of The Monkees
to leave us, it’s especially fitting that his are the last lead vocals on the
album, especially on a song that could be as much about the relationship of The
Monkees as it is about the relationship of a couple.
Because of this, no matter what the remaining Monkees do or
don’t do, they will never have any unfinished business.
Monkees forever!
--Raj Manoharan
Personal Monkees Tidbit: I had the pleasure of meeting Peter
Tork in the early 1990s at a local cable television station where I had been
working. Tork was the latest in a long line of vintage celebrity guests on the
poor man’s David Letterman show that was produced there. I was working master
control for the station (I had nothing to do with the show at the time), and
Tork came in asking for a bandage for his nicked finger. (I had actually met
him earlier in the evening and gotten his autograph on a Monkees LP.) I don’t
remember whether I was able to give him a bandage or had to refer him somewhere
else, but, ah, what a memory! --RM
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