page_title: Michael Nesmith
section_title: The Monkees
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Nesmith / Career / The Monkees
caption_attribution_description: Action photo of the Monkees from a full page ad for their third record album. From left: Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork.
context_page_description: Robert Michael Nesmith is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series The Monkees. Nesmith's songwriting credits include "Different Drum".
  After the break-up of the Monkees, Nesmith continued his successful songwriting and performing career, first with the seminal country rock group the First National Band, with whom he had a top-40 hit, "Joanne", and then as a solo artist. He is a noted player of the 12-string guitar, performing on custom-built 12-string electric guitars with the Monkees and various 12-string acoustic models during his post-Monkees career.
  He is also an executive producer of the cult film Repo Man. In 1981, Nesmith won the first Grammy Award given for Video of the Year for his hour-long television show, Elephant Parts.
context_section_description: From 1965 to early 1970, Nesmith was a member of the television pop-rock band the Monkees, created for the television situation comedy of the same name. Nesmith won his role largely by appearing nonchalant when he auditioned. He rode his motorcycle to the audition, and wore a wool hat to keep his hair out of his eyes; producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider remembered the "wool hat" guy, and called Nesmith back.
  Once he was cast, Screen Gems bought his songs so they could be used in the show. Many of the songs Nesmith wrote for the Monkees, such as "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", "Mary, Mary", and "Listen to the Band", became minor hits. One song he wrote, "You Just May Be the One", is in mixed meter, interspersing 5/4 bars into an otherwise 4/4 structure.
  As part of a promotional deal, Gretsch guitar company built a one-off, natural-finish, 12-string electric guitar for Nesmith when he was performing with the Monkees. The custom-made guitar was frequently cited at that time as being worth $5,000 (the equivalent of $36,500 in 2018), which was undoubtedly inflated for publicity purposes. He earlier played a customized Gretsch 12-string, which had originally been a six-string model. Nesmith used this guitar for his appearances on the television series, as well as the Monkees' live appearances in 1966 and 1967. Beginning in 1968, Nesmith used a white six-string Gibson SG Custom for his live appearances with the Monkees. He used that guitar in their motion picture Head for the live version of "Circle Sky", and also for the final original Monkees tour in 1969. In a post on his Facebook page in 2011, Nesmith reported that both guitars were stolen in the early 1970s.
  As with the other Monkees, Nesmith came to be frustrated by the band's manufactured image. Nesmith was the most publicly vocal Monkee about the band's prefabricated image.
  The Monkees succeeded in ousting supervisor Don Kirshner and took control of their records and song choices, but they worked as a four-man group on only one album, 1967's Headquarters. Nesmith withheld many of his songs from the final Monkees albums, opting to release them on his post-Monkees solo records. During the band's first independent press conference, Nesmith called More of The Monkees "probably the worst record in the history of the world". The band never regained its credibility after fans learned they had not played the instruments on their earlier records. Sales still continued to be profitable until the disastrous release of the movie Head.
  Nesmith's last contractual Monkees commitment was a commercial for Kool-Aid and Nerf balls in April 1970 (fittingly, the spot ends with Nesmith frowning and saying, "Enerf's enerf!"). As the band's sales declined, Nesmith asked to be released from his contract, despite it costing him: "I had three years left ... at $150,000 [equivalent to $980,940 in 2018] a year." He remained in a financial bind until 1980, when he received his inheritance from his mother's estate. In a 1980 interview with Playboy, he said of that time: "I had to start telling little tales to the tax man while they were putting tags on the furniture."
caption: Nesmith (center) with the Monkees in 1967
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