Hey! Hey! I’m a Monkee!

Continuing our series on aging rock stars…

Last night it was back to the Snoqualmie to see Micky Dolenz. We had a great view from dead center in row three.


For a 64 year old dude, he has a lot of energy and belted out the first four songs without a pause. He knew what his audience wanted and performed mostly Monkee songs, which was great. None of this “I’ve moved on and don’t do old material anymore” attitude. He seems genuinely happy and content with the whole Monkee nostalgia thing.

He talked about previous bands and then launched into his audition song for the Monkees television show. With guitar in hand, he did a screaming version of Johnnie B. Goode. Interestingly after he got the role, the producers then decided to make him the drummer.


The story of Jimi Hendrix as opening act for the Monkees first concert is fairly well known. Micky demonstrated how the show sounded that day with the audience of 12 year olds and their parents. He belted out the first verse of Purple Haze and then broke into a high pitched chant: … ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky, We want Davy, We want Micky, etc. After the laugher died down, the band restarted and performed the entire song.

Micky talked about meeting the Beatles for the first time at the Abbey Road Studios. He said John Lennon always referred to him as “Monkey Man”. Micky asked him what they were working on. A four-track recorder was switched on and out came “Oh Darling”. After this reminiscence, Micky and the band performed an excellent cover of the song.

After the show, Micky came out, sat down, and signed autographs. With the large crowd, it was pretty much a production line process. He rapidly signed anything that was placed in front of him. We got a signed picture and signed CD.

Micky was pretty quiet (his voice was probably shot by this time), but we chatted with his sister Coco for a bit. She sings backup in the band and has a pretty good voice of her own. When Micky took a couple breaks during the show, she performed Linda Ronstadt’s Different Drum (written by Mike Nesmith) and did a good cover of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit. (It is hard to hit the word “remember” near the end of the song.)


As we were leaving, The Princess happily exclaimed, “Now I’ve seen a Beatle and a Monkee!”