Davy Jones–vocalist, tambourine player, actor, jockey and Monkee–is musing about the vagaries of being a celebrity and recalling an incident that increased his celebrity status in the eyes of at least one onlooker:
”Micky Dolenz (a fellow Monkee) plays polo, and I went to the polo games the other night,” says Jones, ”and I`m walking along with my 18-year-old daughter, Talia, who`s much taller than I am, and we see Sylvester Stallone walking along with this 7-foot woman next to him. Stallone`s walking toward me. My daughter sort of whispers, `That`s Sylvester Stallone.` When he gets to me, he leans over and says to me, `Hello, David, how youse doin`?` I say, `I`m fine.` He points upward to his wife and says, `The wife.` I point to my daughter and say, `The daughter.`
”He walks away and–I got a big kick out of this–my daughter says,
`Daddy, Sylvester Stallone came up to you and introduced himself to you.`
And I said, `Aw, listen, the guy`s just bugging me.` ”
A couple years ago, an encounter between Monkee and major film star might not have been such an even match, celebrity-cachet-wise. The pop-fave Monkees, after all, had been at the pinnacle of their popularity in the late `60s, with a TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968 and four albums that made No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1966 and 1967 (a fifth album made No. 3 in 1968). The Monkeemania of those days had been fervid and impressive–the group`s record sales were up there with those of the Beatles and Rolling Stones–but those days had been two decades ago.
But early last year MTV ran a marathon of episodes from the Monkees` old TV series, Rhino Records re-released the Monkees` 1960s albums–some of them again entered Billboard`s album chart–and a new generation of youngsters started to squeal over the same group that had captivated kids in the `60s. The press picked up on the rebirth of interest, and the Monkees once more found their names and faces regularly gracing the pages of newspapers and magazines.
Three of the Monkees–Jones, Dolenz and Peter Tork–mounted a live tour last year (the fourth Monkee, Michael Nesmith, declining to take part), and the three are on the road again, arriving Sunday at Poplar Creek. Their audiences this time around, says Jones, are two-generation affairs that include older fans who remember the `60s and kids who weren`t born until the
`70s. And there is, he says, a new working atmosphere onstage.
”This time around, we`re a lot closer to each other,” says Jones of the 1987 Monkees. ”When we first met, we were thrown together for the TV series, and we were all trying to find our own feet individually. Boys do tend to test each other, and there were black eyes and punch-ups and all kinds of stuff going on.
”The Monkees now are adults. We`ve had children. We`ve gone through divorces. We`re all aware of each other`s feelings, feelings each of us must have experienced before out there on our own, so we`re a little more cordial and understanding when one of us blows his top. You just turn around, and you start again.
”The jealousies I used to have, and the insecurities . . . . They obviously never leave you, but they`re not as prominent in my makeup as they were.”
Jones, 41, can be quite candid about the old Monkee days, his memory-lane anecdotes including a fair share of gripes and grumbles, often about money paid–or not paid–the Monkees. He will tell you, for example, about receiving a check in 1970, when Monkeemania had pretty much died out, for ”exactly $0 and 00 cents” from Screen Gems, a division of Columbia Pictures, which was the parent company behind Monkee ventures. ”Why would they do that?” asks Jones in disbelief. ”To say, `—- you, buddy` ?”
But wait. Punch-ups? Money woes? What about all that laughing and cavorting and monkeying around the quartet did on the TV show? Wasn`t Jones enjoying himself back then?
”I think I was,” he says. ”I mean, it was the `60s, you know? We were sort of doing what everybody else was doing. We`d do our set, and we`d go home, and we`d sit in the Hollywood Hills and smoke a joint.
”But that was then, you know? I don`t have time to get high anymore. I`m in bed at night very early because I`m up at 5:30 in the morning. I`m trying to keep fit. I work out. I`m not taking so many strides onstage now, but I am still quite active.”
Active he is. Among Jones` projects these days is work on a forthcoming album with Dolenz and Tork (”It will have some fun tunes, such as the Monkees always had, and some country songs”). There is also work on a proposed movie, which would be the group`s first film since ”Head,” the 1968 venture written for them by Jack Nicholson (yes, that Jack Nicholson).
”We`re now sitting down with the writers,” says Jones. ”While we`re on the road over the next couple months, we`ll be putting together ideas. We`re talking about people we want in the movie, for cameos or whatever. There`s no working title, but it`ll be along the lines of `The Monkees Save the World` or `The Monkees on the Moon.` It`ll have a lot of Monkee flavor to it, but it`ll be a semi-serious movie . . . . You don`t have a script, do you?”
Coming up soon will be bookstore autographing sessions to promote Jones`
new self-published autobiography, ”They Made a Monkee Out of Me” ($11.95
–plus $3 postage–from Dome Press, Box 400, Beavertown, Pa. 17813). ”It goes from my growing up in Manchester, England, to my going to Broadway theater to my going into the Monkees,” says Jones of the book, which contains some interesting reproductions of letters and memos related to the merchandising of the Monkees. ”I talk about my first sexual encounter in the book. It was a bit scary–and quite laughable now that I look back on it.”
(The prurient-at-heart should note that the encounter takes up a scant four paragraphs that do not exactly set the page on fire.)
There no doubt will be moments at the racetrack for Jones in the days ahead. As a youth in England, Jones worked as a stable boy and had aspirations of becoming a jockey. But it was not until 1980 that he finally obtained a jockey`s license in England. He has ridden at Newmarket and Newbury, among other British courses, finishing second or third on occasion.
And there probably will be more theater work for Jones, who first came to the States at age 15, playing the Artful Dodger in an imported London production of ”Oliver!” (More recent stage credits have included
performances as Jesus in ”Godspell” in British theaters.) Some Chicagoans might remember a pre-Monkeemania appearance by Jones in ”Oliver!” at the Shubert Theater. The play ran for four months in 1964 and 1965, and Jones recalls well his time here.
”Yeah, I remember that in order to go one way in Chicago, you have to walk the other way because you can`t make it against the wind. I mean, I don`t know why they haven`t developed wind-powered buses. I was 19 years old, and I was sort of chasing everything in the cast that had a skirt on. I was just young and carefree. I think that`s the secret of performing. You know, it wasn`t brain surgery for us in the old Monkees days. We were all young, and we were just doing it automatically. It`s not until later, when you start paying the mortgage and changing nappies, that you realize that there`s more to life than having fun.” That said, Jones emits a hearty, cackling laugh.
