The Monkees - The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees (1968)

The Monkees released their fourth album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd., on November 6, 1967, through Colgems Records. The second album in which the band exerted creative control, it marked a departure from its predecessor Headquarters by featuring hired studio musicians in a more prominent role, with drummer Eddie Hoh playing on nearly every single song on the album. The band still performed the majority of the instruments, with Mike Nesmith's guitar and Peter Tork's keyboards prominently featured in the album, but that move signaled that the group was losing interest in playing in their own records a mere six months after they began to do so. This loss of interest became apparent as, when sessions for a new album started the very next month, producer Chip Douglas was gone and the band had diverted to their old method of recording: completely performed by studio musicians, and with a single Monkee coming in to record lead vocals. The only difference was that before, those sessions would be produced by Boyce & Hart or somebody like Jeff Barry or Carole King, and this time around they were produced by the band members themselves. Sure, they still retained the creative control Nesmith and Tork so yearned for, but the togetherness and unity of something like Headquarters was long gone. And with the TV show coming to an end, the writing seemed on the wall.

And with the ease of recording by themselves and with the best musicians in town, the floodgates opened. More than forty songs were recorded, with each Monkee essentially recording a solo album without any input from the others. From that, we got many great songs, many awful songs, and just about anything in between. And then, there came the challenge of turning this diverse and often disjointed batch of songs into an album. Executive producer Lester Sill put together a provisionary tracklist for the album in March 1968, and such was the diversity of tracks available to him, that it featured three songs that wouldn't make the cut and excluded other three songs that would. And that was weeks away from release! That alone shows that the task of turning those 40+ songs into an album was a demanding one, especially given what was at risk. The album was the last released while the TV show still existed, their only chance at creating some kind of post-TV career, and they blew it by not making the best possible record. They could very well have released another psychedelic pop classic in the vein of PAC&J with the material they had available, but simply didn't, a missed opportunity that hurt them a great deal in the long run. But what if the Monkees had managed to assemble a great album, and create the version of The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees that should have been?

This post is an update to my The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees reconstruction from February 2019. This time, we will simply try to make the best possible album out of the songs that we know were shortlisted for inclusion on the album, walking the line between our meddling and the artists' intention. That means that for a song to be included it needed to, at the very least, have been seriously considered for the album at one point. We will do that as an abundance of songs were recorded for BB&M and it would be nearly impossible to listen to every single song and decide if it's worthy of inclusion or not, and even if I did, we'd end up with a record that was really far from what could sensibly be released back in 1968, and even further from what the band intended. Nothing included on my previous Changes reconstruction is considered, for consistency's sake, but songs included on post-Head albums that hail from the BB&M sessions will be considered, to give us a wider net to cast. Our reworked album will feature twelve tracks and a spoken word segment, just like Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd, and "Daydream Believer" is retroactively added to that album in "Hard to Believe"'s place, meaning we will only be using songs from the main November 1967/April 1968 sessions the other eleven songs hail from. Without further ado, here's what our updated reconstruction looks like:

Through the Looking Glass (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

We Were Made for Each Other (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Writing Wrongs (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

I'll Be Back Upon My Feet (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Valleri (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Lady's Baby (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

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Magnolia Simms (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

P.O. Box 9847 (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Tapioca Tundra (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Auntie's Municipal Court (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Alvin (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

The Girl I Left Behind Me (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Zor and Zam (The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees)

Download link:
The Monkees - The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees (1968)

Nesmith, Jones, Tork, and Dolenz on the set of HEAD, February 1968.

The album, as first compiled sometime in March 1968 by executive producer Lester Sill, consisted of "Through The Looking Glass", "We Were Made For Each Other", "Writing Wrongs", "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet", "Valleri" and "Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again" on side one, with "Dream World", "P.O. Box 9847", "Tapioca Tundra", "The Poster",  "Alvin", "Daydream Believer" and "Zor and Zam" making up side two. We can follow through with our new first side pretty easily in this reconstruction, as even the original March 1968 mixes of "Through the Looking Glass" and "Do I Have to Do This All Over Again" were featured in the Deluxe edition of BBM. However, since the latter was held over and used for the Head soundtrack, I felt using it would mess with our timeline too much, so I decided to substitute it with another Tork song, "Lady's Baby". It's a fair inclusion, in my view, as Sill expressed the desire to include the song on the album. The only reason why the song wasn't included in the first place is that Peter notoriously wasn't able to finish the song to his liking, creating just about a billion mixes and different arrangements, only to end up dissatisfied. We'll use the fourth mono mix with the baby noises in the intro and outro, as to me it sounds like the most finished version of the song, and it's a great addition to the record, and one that nearly happened at that.

It's side two that's going to need the most work, however. The two main offenders of the original album in terms of quality are the two Davy originals, "Dream World" and "The Poster". They stand out negatively among the nicely crafted psychedelic pop of the other ten tracks, and that's made worse by the fact that the LP actually starts with "Dream World"! If we actually want to improve on the album, we'll have to replace the two with superior songs. Thankfully, there are two songs that made it to the final album but are nowhere to be found in this alternate tracklist: "Magnolia Simms" and "Auntie's Municipal Court". They fit into the vacant spots left by the other two rather nicely, and "Magnolia Simms" in all of its lo-fi glory especially works pretty well as an opener, with its popping and clicking sounds, stuttering, and 1920s vibe. Sure to many many-a listeners check their stereo for issues! Finally, another controversial choice is removing "Daydream Believer" from the album, as it comes from the PAC&J sessions. I know it's probably the best song on the record, but it sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the album. I decided to replace it with a different song from the sessions that were similar in tone, if not in quality, and that could also be released as a single: "The Girl I Left Behind Me". A downgrade to be sure, but one that strangely enough benefits the album in terms of cohesion.

37 minutes long with a slightly longer side two, our revamped The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees is not as good as the two albums that came before it, but the substitutions we've made have helped create a much better album than we'd originally had. It now sounds like the logical next step for a band that was slowly going back to using studio musicians in their songs and moving away from working as a band, but still maintaining a more cohesive sound than what we got back in 1968. One flaw with this album is that it features a measly three songs sung by Davy, who was used to a much bigger share of the pie by then. However, I do consider this quota to be a fair representation of how much quality material he was able to contribute, and we can even have "Me Without You" as a non-album b-side to compensate. One thing this does have going for it, however, is that it doesn't mess much with their discography at all, as only "Through the Looking Glass" and "The Girl I Left Behind Me" were featured in any post-Head album, and they can both be easily replaced with period-accurate tracks. "I'll Be Back Up on My Feet" b/w "The Girl I Left Behind Me" would make a much better follow-up single to "Valleri", another song promoted by the TV show and a ballad with commercial potential. All in all, this makes for an album much more in tune with what the Monkees stood for in 1968, at the tail end of their golden era.

Sources:

- The Monkees - The Birds, the Bees, and the Monkees [Deluxe Edition]

- The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation