'The last man standing': Micky Dolenz reflects on his life as the only surviving Monkee

It was Nov. 14, 2021, when Micky Dolenz last saw Michael Nesmith at the final concert of the Monkees Farewell Tour at the historic Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, not far from where they'd met as young men on the set of a TV show.

They didn't say goodbye that night.

"I think we both kind of avoided it," Dolenz recalls.

It hadn't been an easy tour.

"It was public knowledge that Nez had some health issues, some pretty serious ones, a couple years before," Dolenz says.

"It was pretty apparent that I wouldn't be doing many more shows with him. You can tell from the videos, he was struggling at times. Health-wise. We were doing everything we could to make him comfortable. But it was tough. And it was bittersweet. We asked him, 'Are sure you want to do this?' And I've got to hand it to him. He hung in there."

Nesmith, 78, died of heart failure at home in Carmel Valley, California, on Dec. 10 — less than a month after they closed that final Monkees concert with one last performance of "I'm a Believer."

"It did not come as a great surprise, frankly," Dolenz says.

But it still hit him hard.

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Losing Davy Jones and Peter Tork

It's been 10 years since Davy Jones became the first Monkee to leave us.

"That was right out of the blue, because by all appearances he was in pretty good health," Dolenz says. "He was the youngest one of all of us, and he was in pretty good health, supposedly. But they missed something. So that was a huge shock."

Jones' final outing as a Monkee was a 45th Anniversary Tour in 2011, which Nesmith did not join.

The three surviving Monkees staged a bittersweet reunion tour the year Jones died at age 66 of a heart attack, going on to record the highest-charting Monkees album since their '60s prime, 2016's "Good Times!," and 2018's "Christmas Party."

Peter Tork died of cancer in early 2019. He was 77.

With Nesmith's recent passing, that leaves Dolenz, now 77, as the only one to carry on the Monkees' legacy, which he intends to do when his solo tour with Felix Cavaliere hits the rotating stage of the historic Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix on Oct. 23.

"I think I'm still kind of processing it, to some degree," he says. "Being the last man standing."

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How Circus Boy became a Monkee

Dolenz never saw the famous advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter seeking "4 insane boys, age 17-21" for a TV show inspired by the Beatles film "A Hard Day's Night."

"When one has had a series, one doesn't go to the cattle call," he explains with a laugh.

As a preteen using the name Micky Braddock, Dolenz played an orphaned water boy for elephants in the title role of a children's television show called "Circus Boy."

"I had an agent," he says. "So I had my own private audition right away with the producers. I remember that first interview, reading lines from the script. So no, I didn't see the ad or even know about it until later."

There was a second audition for improvisation, and a third for music.

"I played guitar at the time," he says.

"And my audition piece was 'Johnny B. Goode.' I was in cover bands. One was Micky and the One Nighters. The other was Missing Links. I was the lead singer and I would sing all the hits of the day, including things like 'Johnny B. Goode' or 'Louie Louie.'"

Dolenz aced that part, of course. He went on to sing lead on a number of the Monkees'  biggest hits.

"By that time, it was down to eight of us, the eventual four and four others I vaguely remember," Dolenz says.

"I don't remember Peter or Mike from screen test day. But I remember Davy. We got paired up a couple times. We'd had similar backgrounds, as you probably know. He'd been on Broadway and done television shows in England. I'd had my series. So we had more in common."

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'The ratings came in and the show was a hit'

"The Monkees" premiered as a Monday night lead-in to "I Dream of Jeannie" on NBC in 1966 with an episode called "Royal Flush," in which the Monkees save Princess Bettina, Duchess of Harmonica, from her evil uncle Archduke Otto.

Did Dolenz know the show would be a hit when they filmed those early episodes?

"You never do," he says.

"Anybody that tells you they knew it was gonna be a smash is just kidding themselves. You never know. You can't. If there was a formula that you could follow, then there wouldn't be any flops. But there are flops."

All you can do is your best, Dolenz says.

"The only formula, if there is one, is surround yourself with people who have the same vision that are also talented, that are willing to work hard, and you just all do your best. And then you keep your fingers crossed. That's all you can do."

All he knew for sure before the series aired was that he was having a really great time as a Monkee.

"But, eventually, we found out, of course," Dolenz says. "The ratings came in and the show was a hit. And then of course the records were big hits."

The Monkees' first four albums topped the charts while spinning off singles as timeless as "Last Train to Clarksville," "I'm a Believer," "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" and "Daydream Believer."

And yet, the show only lasted two seasons.

"Well, that's true," Dolenz says.

"But you must remember, in those days, a season was 26 episodes. Now, a season is eight, if you're lucky. Sometimes six. So in today's world, we probably were on ... well, what's the math?"

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Why 'The Monkees' worked so well

Dolenz has his theories as to why "The Monkees" was a hit.

For one, they kept it light.

"The comedy wasn't as satirical or topical, say, as a show like 'Laugh-In,' which was a great show," Dolenz says.

"But it was topical. And satirical. 'The Monkees' was like an old Marx Brothers movie. It was John Lennon that first made that comment. And he's absolutely right. That's one of the reasons it stands up over the decades. Like 'I Love Lucy' or Laurel and Hardy."

It also also had great writers and directors, Dolenz says. And then, of course, there were the songs.

"We had such incredible songwriters," he says.

"Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Boyce and Hart, Harry Nilsson, David Gates, Paul Williams, Neil Sedaka. I mean, they didn't write a lot of duff tunes, those people. So, they stand up over the years with great producers and us. I'd like to think that I had something to do with it, singing most of the leads."

Beyond 'A Hard Day's Night'

Despite all that, the Monkees did have their detractors.

"Everybody has compared it to 'A Hard Day's Night' or said we were the Prefab Four, which is just not accurate," Dolenz says.

"The show was about trying to become the Beatles, trying to be famous. We had a poster of the Beatles on the wall that we threw darts at. And on the show, we never made it. We were never famous. It was the struggle for success that made it work."

They may have been a group of actors brought together to portray a band but they became a band as part of that portrayal.

"Nez put it great once," Dolenz says. "He said when we actually did go on the road and play the concerts all by ourselves for tens of thousands of screaming fans, it was like Pinocchio becoming a real little boy."

The Monkees' fight for creative control

By their third album, 1967's "Headquarters," the Monkees had won more creative control over the music, relying less on session players and outside writers.

Nesmith was the only Monkee with a writing credit on the first two albums, placing one song on "The Monkees" and two songs on "More of the Monkees." Eight of 14 songs on "Headquarters" had members of the Monkees in the writing credits.

"That was mostly Nez, as you know," Dolenz says of the struggle to win more creative control.

"I was quite happy to sing the songs. But there was a camaraderie. And I supported him. Eventually, we did put our collective foot down, had a bit of a palace revolt. And out of that came that wonderful 'Headquarters' album, which I'm very, very proud of."

Nesmith arrived at the Monkees audition as an aspiring singer-songwriter.

"He had been promised that he would record his tunes and sing his tunes," Dolenz says. "And then they pulled the rug right out from under him."

There's a story Dolenz likes to tell on stage about the early days.

"When we were gonna start recording, Nez said, 'I want to record this song,'" Dolenz recalls. "He played it for them. And they said, 'Yeah, no, thank you. That's not a Monkee tune.' He said, 'Hey, I am one of the Monkees. What are you're talking about?'"

The show's producers didn't budge.

"So he went and gave it to this young girl singer kicking around town, at the time, relatively unknown," Dolenz says. "I'm sure you know the song I'm talking about. It was 'Different Drum.' He gave it to Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys."

Dolenz put his own spin on that folk-rock classic on his latest solo album, 2021's "Dolenz Sings Nesmith."

It's in the setlist on his latest solo tour, surrounded by the Monkees classics you'd expect to hear as well as such lesser-known treasures as "Randy Scouse Git" and "No Time."

"How can you not enjoy singing that stuff?," Dolenz says.

"We have a saying. They pay us to travel and we sing for free. And there's a lot of truth in that. Playing music is fun. That's why they call it playing."

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Micky Dolenz and Felix Cavaliere

When: 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23. 

Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix.

Admission: $35-$85.

Details: 602-267-1600, celebritytheatre.com. 

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Micky Dolenz: What it's like to be the last surviving Monkee