Last Train to Clarksville
"Last Train to Clarksville" is a song by American pop rock band the Monkees. It was released as the band's debut single on August 16, 1966, and was later included on the group's self-titled album, which was released on October 10, 1966. The song, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, was recorded at RCA Victor Studio B in Hollywood on July 25, 1966, and was already on the Boss Radio "Hit Bounds" playlist on August 17, 1966. The song topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 on November 5, 1966. Lead vocals were performed  by the Monkees' drummer, Micky Dolenz. "Last Train to Clarksville" was featured in seven episodes of the band's television series, the most for any Monkees song. Composition. The song, written by the songwriting duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, has been compared to the Beatles' "Paperback Writer", particularly in its "jangly" guitar sound, chord structure and vocal harmonies. The Beatles' song had reached number one on the U.S. charts three months earlier. Hart got the idea for the lyrics when he turned on the radio and heard the end of "Paperback Writer." Thinking Paul McCartney was singing "take  the last train," Hart decided to use the line himself after he found out that McCartney was actually singing "paperback writer." Hart knew that the Monkees' TV series was being pitched as a music/comedy series in the spirit of the Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night," and he was hoping that by emulating the Beatles the song might become a successful single. He included a distinctively rhythmic lyric and wrote in the "Oh No-No-No, Oh No-No-No" lyrics as a response to the Beatles' famous "Yeah Yeah Yeah," looking for a guitar riff to match  it in the studio. The lyrics tell of a man phoning the woman whom he loves, urging her to meet him at a train station in Clarksville before he must leave, possibly forever. There is no explicit reference to war in the song, but its last line, "And I don't know if I'm ever coming home," was an indirect reference to a soldier leaving for the Vietnam War. Hart has denied any connection by the song to the city of Clarksville, Tennessee, near Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the 101st Airborne Division that was then serving in  Vietnam. According to Hart, "We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarkdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarkdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn't know it at the time, [but] there is an Army base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which would have fit the bill fine for the storyline. We couldn't be too direct with the Monkees. We couldn't really make  a protest song out of it—we kind of snuck it in." Although Clarksville, a common location name in the U.S., is in the song's title, the video accompanying the song on the Monkees' TV show depicts a sign pointing to Clarkesville, a much less common spelling now used only for a single town in Georgia; other communities of that name have been either abandoned or renamed. Recording. Boyce and Hart's band, Candy Store Prophets, performed the instrumental session work on the recording. Their lineup included Boyce, Wayne Erwin and the Ventures' Gerry McGee on guitar, Hart on  keyboards, Larry Taylor on bass guitar, Billy Lewis on drums and Gene Estes on percussion. The song was written in the key of G, aligned to the electric guitar, and there were three guitarists on the recording: Erwin played chords, McGee assisted with lead guitar flourishes and the lead guitar part was written on the spot and played by session musician Louie Shelton on a Fender Telecaster and Fender Super Reverb amp. Shelton was hired by Boyce and Hart to participate in "The Monkees" television project. Hart had drafted a lead middle riff to match the lyrics that he had  written, but Shelton created the lead-in section on the spot. Shelton became a mainstay on Monkees recordings and went on to be a highly sought-after session musician in later years. B-side. The single's B-side, "Take a Giant Step," later appeared as the closing track on Side 1 of the Monkees' debut album. Micky Dolenz performed lead vocals. The song is presented as a plea to a heartbroken girl to move on from her past romantic disappointments and to "learn to live again at last" by "taking a giant step outside your mind." Critic Eric Lefcowitz  describes the song as "proto-psychedelic." Reception. Of "Last Train to Clarksville", "Billboard" remarked that "all the excitement generated by the promotion campaign for the new group...is justified by this debut disk loaded with exciting teen dance beat sounds." "Cash Box" said that it is "a hard-driving, pulsating romantic wailer with catchy repeating riff."