On Tour With The Monkees

copyright 1967, "Teen Screen" Magazine
Note: this is a reproduction of an article appearing in "Teen Screen" Magazine in August of 1967.

Hullo again. I'm writing this on the plane back from Toronto and another fantastic Monkees tour. Everyone is exhausted and half asleep, not only from the hard weekend they've had but also from a heated pillow fight I started a little while ago by clubbing Davy in the back of the head with my pillow. Davy retaliated and the whole thing turned into a huge free-for-all. Everyone has been really on edge because of all the excitement and lack of sleep. So they started to unwind by heaving pillows at anyone who came within range; passengers and stewardesses included. Mike was the only one who did not join in. Instead, he crouched behind one of the seats and captured every unsuspecting passerby that came near by handcuffing them to the floor with a pair of seat belts he had got ahold of somewhere.

Anyhow, back to the tour. It was a fantastic success and once again the Monkees had a chance to test their musical abilities, this time in front of crowds numbering up to eighteen thousand.

We left Los Angeles on Friday, March 31st and arrived in Winnipeg, Canada at about six o'clock that same evening. Around four hundred kids were waiting at the airport so the limousines and police escort had to drive out onto the runway to pick everyone up in order to avoid being mobbed. There were twenty-three of us all told -- Davy, Micky, Peter and Mike included, of course. The remaining nineteen consisted of one of the producers of the Monkees TV show, Ward Sylvester, and the Monkees road manager, Steve Blauner. Also the back-up band which played behind the Monkees when one of them does an individual number and who call themselves "The Candy Store Prophets". Plus these were all the stage managers, light and sound men, photographers, and public relations men, without which there would be no Monkees tour.

We were all packed into three limousines and taken directly to our hotel, the Fort Garry. After registering, everyone went up to their rooms to unpack, eat, shower and generally revive after the effects of being tied into an airplane seat for eight to ten hours at a time.

Several hundred fans had found the whereabouts of the hotel and were standing outside in the snow and freezing cold (17 above zero) hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the guys. The security at the hotel was so well organized that hardly any of the kids were even able to get into the lobby, let alone all the way up to the sixth floor, which the Monkees and the Monkee crew had entirely to themselves.

Although there were policemen at every single entrance and exit to the hotel, two girls of about fifteen or sixteen had managed to get all the way up to our floor and about two feet away from the door to Micky's suite before they were discovered by the policeman on duty. This seemed to me to be an amazing accomplishment so I asked them how they had gotten that far without being caught.

They had simply hidden in a large laundry cart and had talked one of the chambermaids into wheeling them, hidden under sacks of clean linen, past the guards and all the way up. I was really impressed and went over to Peter's room and told him what the two girls had done. Peter came out and talked to them for a few minutes and gave each an autographed picture of the group for being such true blue Monkee fans.

The show was to be held the next afternoon at the Winnipeg Arena in front of a sell-out crowd of twelve thousand kids. The Monkees are really big in Canada. For example, to insure a seat at the Monkees show, some four hundred fans had lined up in front of the ticket booths in near zero weather the night before the tickets even went on sale. By the time th ebooths opened at eight the following morning, the line had grown to incredible proportions.

The kids were lined up six abreast in a line that stretched completely around one city block and dozens of policemen had been called to keep the whole thing orderly. By eleven o'clock that same morning, the tickets were completely sold out. Twelve thousand sold in a little under three hours, coupled with the fact that this sellout occured a full three weeks before the Monkees were even due to arrive makes the whole things even more amazing.

Micky, Davy, Peter, and Mike left for the arena a bare half hour before they were to appear on stage. I had been there for serveral hours already and had watched the arena fill up. Every seat was taken and an additional five hundred kids had been sold standing room tickets which upped the total to twelve thousand five hundred.

A Monkees show is exactly that. A *show* in every sense of the word. At the beginning of the show, before any one of the guys had made an appearance, the lights in the auditorium were dimmed down very low and then turned back on again. The second time they were dimmed, the guys sneaked out from backstage over to two huge false amplifiers on either side of the stage and crawled inside them. When the lights were turned back on again, the Monkees were still not visable. The crowd was going crazy. They knew that something had happened but they couldn't quite figure out what. A recording of "Hey, Hey, We're the Monkees" started playing and at the end of the first verse, Mike, Micky, Peter and Davy all burst out of their fake amplifiers, ran across the stage to their instruments and started into their first number, "Clarksville".

This was my first tour and I was really floored by the response that the guys were getting. After the first number, the noise was literally deafening, I mean to the point where your ears ring and you can't hear yourself talk even after it gets quiet again.

I was standing right by the exit from the stage, ready to take Mike's guitar from him when he came off stage for a costume change, when a guy about fourteen came flashing past me and ran onto the stage. I didn't know exactly what he planned to do, now that he was there, because he just stood out there in the middle of the stage in front of twelve thousand people and did absolutely nothing. Stage fright, I guess. Anyhow, I was the nearest one to him so, feeling like a complete fool, I ran out in front of all those people right after him and tackled him, and with the help of the security policeman who had followed me out after the kid, got him off stage. The guys hadn't missed a single beat while all this was going on which really amazed me. Mike told me later that he was really worried for a minute when he first saw the kid run onto the stage because there was a very good chance that he could have tripped over the wiring and unplugged everyone and thereby bring a stop to the show.

The Monkees had started off their show with three songs: "Last Train To Clarksville", "Kind Of Girl I Could Love", and "Sunny Girlfriend" which not too many people have heard because it's on the new album which hasn't been released yet. At the end of the last single, Peter left the stage and came back with his banjo. Then Micky, Davy and Mike left and Peter played some folk music, the entire audience clapping along with him. then it was Mike's turn. Wearing a fringe-covered leather shirt, and backed by the Candy Store Prophets, Mike sang an old Bo Diddley song, "Can't Judge A Book By Looking At The Cover" while playing maracas and a harmonica. DAvy was next and sang, "Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow" and I think that he and Micky, who was next to appear after Davy, were responsible for the mass outbreak of fainting that came over several of the girls in the audience.

Micky's solo number can only be described as totally unbelievable. He came strutting onto the stage combing his hair straight in a James Brown hairstyle, took the microphone from Davy who then left the stage and began to sing a James Brown hard rock song. This song had so much pure soul in it that, well, all I can say is that when micky sings this song, the soul has actually been known to ooze into the microphone, travel through the sound system, and finally come dribbling out the loud speaker at the other end, completely ruining five hundred dollars worth of amplification equipment, but that's a hazard that every real soul singer must face, I suppose.

Seriously, though, Micky started to sing this song and everyone in the whole arena became very quiet for a moment and every eye in the room was on him. He started to sing louder and louder and than sank down on his knees with the microphone in his hand. Someone put a strobe light directly on him which had a devestating effect on the audience in that every one of Micky's movements was distorted.

Micky was now on both knees and all hunched over until his head was just a few inches from the floor. He was holding the microphone in both hands down near the floor and sobbing into it, and I think that the entire audience was seriously on the verge of tears.

Then Mike came out onto the stage, and with Micky's coat folded over his arm, he began to walk slowly across the stage towards Micky, who was still crying his heart out into the microphone. As Mike walked up to Micky's sobbing figure, he took the coat from his arm and placed it very gently around Micky's shoulders and was saying, "There, there Micky, everything will be all right, buddy, you'll see." It was a tremendous put on.

Mike slowly lifted Micky to his feet and started to lead him off stage, Micky with both hands over his face as if he were really crying over some great personal sorrow.

Most of the thousands of girls in the audience were *really* crying. The music that Micky had been singing to had softened but was still going strong.

Mike and Micky had just about reached the stage exit when micky tried to shove Mike away from him and breaking free, Micky ran as fast as he could back toward the microphone. Micky slid the last ten feet to the microphone on one knee and grabbing it as he slid past, he brought it down to his mouth and started singing again with even more feeling than before, if that's possible. This whole thing was repeated again, with Mike putting the coat around Micky and leading him off stage, except that this time when Micky broke away and ran to up to the mike, he turned a complete flip in the air and grabbed the microphone as he spun past. He ended up kneeling again, finished his song, and when he stood up and bowed I thought that the whole building was going to vibrate apart from the applause.

I really believe that entertainers who can put a spell over an audience the way Tork, Jones, Nesmith and Dolenz can, deserve all the possible riches and fame that ever happen to come their way.

We all went directly to the airport from the Winniped Arena and within thirty minutes our plane was on its way to our next stop, Toronto.

Once again an escort was waiting out on the runway for us. It was about two o'clock in the morning, so as soon as we got to our hotel everyone wne straight to bed to get rested up for their last show of the tour the next afternoon. That is, everyone except David Jones and his stand-in David Pearl who went hall-crawling up and down the corridors of our hotel, but gave it up when they realized that everyone of us was asleep and there was nobody to scare.

There were only a few outstanding things about our stay in Toronto. First and most important, the Monkees played before the biggested audience of their career. They played before a crowd of eighteen thousand five hundred people at the Mapleleaf Gardens. The sound systems and the acoustics, two of the biggest problems on the tours, were both excellent at the Gardens which made both the sound technicians and the audience very happy.

The guys had to be smuggled to and from the Gardens in a police paddy-wagon which only succeeded in making everyone incredibly paranoid.

Mike sat around in a state of mild confusion for several days trying to figure out what you would call a Mountie on foot. A walkie?

Micky expressed a desire for a fur Royal Canadian Mounted Police hat, which I readily "found" for him.

Peter didn't want much of anything except to be back home again with his friends and his books, and Davy I think just wanted very much to find a quiet place to go to sleep for at least a week or so.

All I know is that I wouldn't have missed it for the world.