The Monkees
The Monkees
Jessica Jones, daughter of the pop star and main
Monkee, Davy Jones, is shown here on horseback, on a cold day in November, 1986,
in the front of the Long View farmhouse. Her father was scheduled to perform six
hours later in the Worcester "Centrum" arena.
The
Worcester performance was one of the last in an amazing 70-city "20th
Anniversary Tour" which was designed to exploit a great resurgence of interest
in the band in the mid-nineteen-eighties. The pundits called this hysteria
Monkeemania. This was perhaps the last such carefree expression of pop-lite
innocence in the Western world before that world passed — just a few months
later — into and under the long shadow of international terrorism.
It was Davy Jones and his family, and Peter Tork,
who had come to the countryside recording studio, just outside of Worcester,
looking for a place to base themselves before the important performance at the
Centrum. They did no recording while in residence. They ate well, however, and
rode the horses daily, and used Studio "A" in the farmhouse for light
rehearsals.
"Jees," said the young thing who was washing up the wine
glasses and the dinner plates in the kitchen in the farmhouse. "That song he's playing
inside there sounds like it could be a real hit." This young thing was not
very much older than Davy Jones' daughter Jessica, and had not yet been born 20
years earlier, when the song in question had sat as #1 on top the Billboard
charts for seven weeks.
"That song's called I'm a Believer," I said.
Editor's note: The original and famous version
of the tune is playable here on the Media Library. Micky Dolenz is heard singing the lead vocal.
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