The Monkees - The Monkees Again! (1966)

The Monkees released their first, self-titled album in October 1966 through Colgems Records. A no. 1 record, it was released in order to promote the TV series of the same name, which had premiered that September on NBC. Since the album had to be recorded quickly, in order for its release to tie in with the beginning of their TV show, the choice was made for songwriting duo Boyce and Hart to write most of the album, with LA's Wrecking Crew studio musicians providing instrumental backing, and the Monkees' cast members providing vocals only. This upset Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork, the two real musicians of the band quite a bit, but considering they were working on a tight schedule, it was probably the only choice. Nesmith did end up writing two of the songs on the album, though, one by himself, and another with help from legendary songwriting duo Goffin & King. Considering both the TV show and the album were smash hits, the gears were put in motion for a second studio album to be released as quickly as possible, with sessions for it beginning immediately after their first LP was done, in early August 1966. With Boyce and Hart riding high due to the great success of the "Last Train to Clarksville" single, one could expect follow-up album More of the Monkees to be filled to the brim with B&H compositions. But that's exactly the point where things started going wrong for the duo, and where they started losing control over the Monkees' recorded output.

Following the success of the Monkees' first album, a bit of a power struggle formed between musical director Don Kirshner and the two songwriters. Kirshner, who considered the two inferior to the other Brill Building folks he was working with at the time, wanted to replace the both of them with more proven songwriters such as Neil Diamond and Goffin & King. Don's argument was certainly helped by Boyce and Hart insisting on recording two horrible novelty tracks, "Kicking Stones" and "Ladies' Aid Society" during those August sessions. Having burnt out all of the goodwill they'd garnered with the show's producers by recording those two tracks, they ended up relegated to a measly two songs on More of the Monkees, with almost a whole album of great songs by them being left unreleased. Kirshner had won the battle for songwriting dominance over the Monkees, at least for now. However, after the band gained control over their own albums and could play their own instruments in them, with 1967's Headquarters, they re-recorded some of the discarded songs by the duo. Even the band themselves thought the material they had recorded was more worthy of release than some of the stuff released on MOTM, such as the dreadful "The Day We Fall in Love". The Monkees' displeasure with most aspects of the album, from the album cover to the song selection, was one of the main catalysts to their desire to play their own instruments and become a real band.

So what you might be wondering by now is: what if the Monkees had followed their first album's formula, and had a Boyce & Hart dominated second album? Well, to answer that question, we need to know what that formula was, in the first place. When taking a look at the songwriting credits for their first LP, we see 7 B&H songs, 2 Mike Nesmith songs, 2 songs by Brill Building writers, and a tune by an outside writer, Bread's David Gates. If we follow the same ratio when compiling an alternate 2nd album, we will get pretty close to what they would've done back then. Another choice I made when putting this album together was not to use any songs that were on More of the Monkees, as there is such a wealth of material in the can, great songs with hit potential, that putting MOTM tracks into it would be simply a waste of space. That means this can also work as a companion piece to that record, sort of a part two to it, if you will. I also tried to use mainly songs that were either featured in the TV show or re-recorded by the band itself at a later date, in order to keep ourselves in tune with which songs the four of them thought were good enough and which were not. Most of the songs will come from the More of the Monkees sessions, obviously, with three exceptions, which are outtakes from the debut album that were also re-recorded or repurposed later on in their career. Not to stretch this out any further than I already have, here's what our alternate second Monkees album looks like:

Through the Looking Glass (More of the Monkees)
I'll Spend My Life With You (More of the Monkees)
Don't Listen to Linda (More of the Monkees)
I Don't Think You Know Me (More of the Monkees)
I Won't Be the Same Without Her (The Monkees)
Words (More of the Monkees)
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I'll Be Back Upon My Feet (More of the Monkees)
Valleri (More of the Monkees)

Mr. Webster (More of the Monkees)
You Just May Be the One (The Monkees)

I Can't Get Her Off My Mind (The Monkees)
(I Prithee) Do Not Ask for Love (More of the Monkees)

Bonus tracks:

Of You (More of the Monkees)

Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears (More of the Monkees)

The Monkees shooting their TV show, late 1966.

When selecting the seven Boyce & Hart songs we would be using, I ended up using seven tracks they later re-recorded as a real band. Album opener "Through the Looking Glass" and "Valleri", which were re-recorded during sessions for The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees, "I'll Spend My Life With You", "Mr. Webster" and "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind", which were redone for Headquarters, "Words" was used on the Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones album, and Tommy Boyce's favorite, "Don't Listen to Linda", re-recorded for The Monkees Present album. Of those, "Valleri" had already been used in the TV show back in 1966, and became an accidental hit when radio DJs started playing the song taped off the show on the air. Mike Nesmith's two songs will be "You Just May Be the One", which was both played on the show and re-recorded for the Headquarters album, and "I Won't Be the Same Without Her", another Goffin/King song with Mike on lead, as with "Sweet Young Thing" on their debut. The two Brill Building tunes will be Goffin/King's "I Don't Think You Know Me", and Linzer/Randell's "I'll Be Back Upon My Feet", with the latter both being featured on the TV show and re-recorded for The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees. Finally, Michael Martin Murphey's "(I Prithee) Do Not Ask for Love" is the outside songwriter song, seen as the band thought highly enough of the song to play it in their first tour, in early 1967. With that, we have a 12 song, 30-minute album.

In keeping with the balance established on the first Monkees record, the album is dominated by Micky, with six lead vocals to the first album's seven. Davy comes second with three songs, which was also the quota he got on the first album, as well as Mike with his two songs. We do get Peter's first solo lead, though, with "I Don't Think You Know Me", which is absolutely a better starting point than "Auntie Grizelda" was. For bonus tracks, we have "Apples, Peaches, Bananas and Pears", another B&H song that sounds a lot like "Last Train to Clarksville", and even though it's ok, it's also pretty derivative, and I decided on leaving it out in order to make room for stronger material. The one absence which breaks my heart is "Of You", the Bill Chadwick-written number sung by Mike. While it is a pretty strong song and the performance is great, it simply doesn't fit the album, in my opinion, which means we'll relegate it to a bonus track. Another track, Mike Nesmith's "All the King's Horses", was played pretty frequently on the TV show as well, but since I already use it in my alternate debut album in "Let's Dance On"'s spot, I decided against including that song here, to get ourselves some conceptual continuity. All songs were taken from the August/October sessions, with the exceptions of "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind", "I Won't Be the Same Without Her" and "You Just May Be the One", which come from the July 1966 sessions for the first record, on which they were not used.

Since the band (especially Michael Nesmith) seemed to dislike the More of the Monkees album cover, I decided against using a similar design to it. Instead, I used Sir Q's fantastic fantasy album cover, alongside the only name I could possibly think of that was more generic than More of the Monkees: The Monkees Again! The lead single off this album would probably be "Valleri", as even without a release back then it managed to get some serious airplay, followed by "I'll Be Back Upon My Feet" or "Words" as a second single. The sheer amount of great songs in this album means that even if it doesn't reach the same highs MOTM does with "I'm a Believer", for example, it's a much more consistent and solid album, without any of the horrible novelty-type songs from its real-life counterpart. Its consistency also comes from it being taken mostly from the same sessions, with the same producer. That means this is probably a stronger listening experience than More Of, and had it been released, would be as well-received as any Monkees album during the early part of their career. It really is a shame that Boyce and Hart's time as the Monkees' songwriters ended up being so short-lived, as their compositions were one of the main things that made the band great. But since it was the whole debacle surrounding More of the Monkees that lead the band to rebel and take control over their own career, maybe their demise ended up serving a purpose in freeing the Monkees to be themselves.

Sources:

- The Monkees - More of the Monkees [Deluxe Edition]

- The Monkees - The Monkees [Deluxe Edition]

- The Monkees' Sessionography [Reference Website]

- Monkees Live Almanac [Reference Website]