Because of The Monkees‘ plentiful catalog, Micky Dolenz by no means faces a scarcity of music to carry out. However he’s at all times blissful to have new songs, too — therefore the arrival of a brand new EP, Timeless, on Sept. 4.
“Nicely, I assume anyone simply wished to maintain recording me — there’s no accounting to style,” the 81-year-old singer, actor, author and director quips to Billboard from a residence he retains in jap Pennsylvania.
However not monkeying round, Dolenz — the final residing member of The Monkees — explains, “That’s how I’ve been recording as a solo artist for many years now; anyone involves me and says, ‘Do you need to report one thing, some new stuff?’ I’ve at all times gone on intestine intuition; I do know I’m not going to be promoting Platinum, but when the songs are there they usually hit me as one thing that will be good to sing, then the reply is sure.”
For the six-track Timeless, the individual approaching Dolenz was John Hughes, a former Rhino Data govt who had labored with The Monkees on the group’s lauded 2016 album Good Instances! Now main his personal firm, Close to Mint Music, Hughes took the same tract for the brand new EP, soliciting songs for Dolenz from formidable corps of artists — together with Good Instances! alumni resembling XTC’s Andy Partridge and the late Adam Schlesinger, together with The Replacements Paul Westerberg (who wrote Timeless‘ first single, “Terri”), the Bangles’ Vicki Peterson, Sam Hollander, Shelby Lynn and Pete Donnelly and Jonny Polonsky.
“It was nearly like, ‘Let’s get the band again collectively!’” Hughes tells Billboard. “Sam Hollander simply went out to all of our songwriter associates and mentioned, ‘Who desires to put in writing one thing for Micky Dolenz?’ And universally it was, ‘Oh, yeah, we love Micky!’ Nobody turned us down, not one individual. Some mentioned, ‘Hey, we don’t have time proper now. Can we do the following one?’ However no person mentioned no.”
Peterson, who penned the Mersey-flavored second single, “Ready for the Day,” which options Dolenz’s youthful sister and touring band member Coco, shares that “it’s an enormous pleasure for me” to have the tune on the EP.
“[Hollander] known as and mentioned, ‘Do you have got something that’s form of ’60s pop, and [‘Waiting for the Day’] instantly got here to the entrance of my mind,” recollects Peterson, who had written it as a form of takeoff on the Cowsills. (She’s married to John Cowsill.) “I mentioned, ‘I’ve a tune that ought to have come out in 1968,’ and [Hollander] mentioned, ‘That’s what I’m speaking about!’ So I despatched it to him, and fortuitously for me, Micky favored it they usually recorded it. I used to be a Monkees fan as a child, and we’ve identified Micky for quite a lot of years, form of casually, so this implies rather a lot.”
A significant monitor for all involved, in the meantime, is the bouncy, nostalgic pop tune “One thing Occurred,” which was cowritten by Hollander and Schlesinger earlier than the latter died in 2020 early through the COVID-19 pandemic. Schlesinger was deeply concerned with Good Instances!, writing and producing two tracks Dolenz sang; Hughes says “One thing Occurred” was additionally submitted again then, however Schlesinger finally didn’t really feel it was proper for the album on the time.
“We thought that as a result of Adam was such an essential a part of Good Instances! and [2018’s] Christmas Celebration, we needed to have him concerned in [Timeless] a way,” Hughes says. “Adam favored the tune; he simply didn’t prefer it on Good Instances! So once we began [Timeless], I went digging by the archives and located ‘One thing Occurs’ and went to Sam and mentioned, ‘Nicely, he can’t object now …’”
Dolenz, in response to Hughes, was blissful to have the monitor, however felt “it was a bit of to on-the-nose, lyrically, about Monkees historical past,” and requested Hollander to tweak the lyrics to make it “extra common.” However, traces resembling “Wipe your tears/ dry your eyes/ however we’ll by no means ever say goodbye/ Humorous how time slips by” come off as poignant within the wake of Schlesinger’s passing.
“He’s so sorely missed,” Dolenz says of Schlesinger. “What an excellent expertise, ?”
He demurs, nonetheless, when requested to establish what particularly spoke to him about Timeless‘ six songs.
“Y’know, I can’t cut back it in any scientific sense,” he explains. “I can’t say, ‘Ooh, it’s that G6 chord within the fifth bar of the second verse’ or something like that. If there was a system, there’d by no means be flops, proper? However you simply have a look at it and go, ‘That’s good. Let’s do it.’ Bob Rafelson, who created The Monkees, known as it lightning in a bottle, and to a point that’s how I have a look at this enterprise — and have, without end. I feel what occurs is you set collectively sure folks — sure writers, sure musicians, sure singers — and also you catch that lightning, like he says. The entire turns into better than the sum of its components. I don’t dissect it any greater than that.”
Timeless is Dolenz’s third launch of the last decade, following 2023’s Dolenz Sings R.E.M. and 2021’s Dolenz Sings Nesmith, and first solo set of unique materials since Keep in mind in 2012. It comes as he’s within the midst of commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of The Monkees tv present and of the group’s self-titled debut album, which got here out a month later in October 1966, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the hits “Final Practice to Clarksville,” “(Theme From) The Monkees” and “I Wanna Be Free.”
“Timeless refers back to the 60 years of The Monkees, after all, but additionally the thought was these songs would have that form of timeless really feel to them and hopefully not date,” Dolenz explains. “The stuff from the ’60s, that jangly guitar stuff particularly, hasn’t dated that a lot. Persons are coming again round to it on a regular basis, clearly The Beatles being the keystone to a lot of that. In my thoughts it at all times comes all the way down to the fabric; it did with The Monkees, and that’s what I search for after I do my very own issues now.”
Dolenz returns to the street together with his 60 Years of the Monkees present on Sept. 8-9 on the Music Devices Museum in Phoenix, and has dates scheduled into Might of 2027, adopted by a Sept. 12 efficiency on the United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles on the precise sixtieth anniversary of the primary episode of The Monkees airing on NBC. Subsequent 12 months will commemorate the 12 months (1967) that the group put 4 albums at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and gained a pair of Emmys. “We have now the present fairly properly locked in at this level,” Dolenz says. “I discuss rather a lot about The Monkees, the genesis of it, the origin, the way it all occurred. I don’t go on and on for hours, however I inform tales and now we have movies. Generally some associates pop in for a tune or two. It’s a good way to maintain it on the market.”
And, Dolenz provides, he’s blissful to take care of the recollections of his late bandmates Davy Jones, who handed away in 2012, Peter Tork in 2019 and Michael Nesmith in 2021. “It’s nearly like they’ve by no means left ’trigger I’m with them each evening,” Dolenz says. “I’m seeing them on the display. I’m listening to them. Individuals discuss it on a regular basis. The factor I miss essentially the most is simply not with the ability to name anyone and simply say hello. We have been actually like brothers, finally … And, like brothers, we fought generally, however you may’t undergo one thing like we did and never be that shut to at least one one other.”
