dancing monsters

Studio view of the chair stop-motion. Gives you an idea of how I have to think about it compared to what the camera is seeing.

Félix Vallotton,Fireworks, 1900

Woodcut.

I’ve posted the full transcript of Davy Jones’ commentary on The Monkees’ biography Daydream Believers (with a few sound clips) on my site. Below are some of my favourite stories and quotes from his commentary. Hopefully I’ll have Peter and Micky’s commentary up soon (but not too soon; midterms and stuff).

Hey, how you doing? This is Davy Jones here. I’ve been waiting to see this movie now for about thirty-five years, because I can’t remember a thing that happened.

First year, I mean, the first year uh, we were together, I remember Christmas time, I bought all the guys a little colour TV. Not too many colour TVs around in those days. I went over to Gene Ashman’s house for dinner one night. I said, “That’s a nice TV. I bought the guys one like that”. He said, “Oh, Mike gave me that”.

I was uh, watching the show the other day um, The Monkees’ TV show, with one of my daughters, and I was doing my little Davy Jones dance, and my daughter says to me, “Dad, why are you dancing like Axl Rose?”. Ha ha ha ha ha! I said, “Axl Rose? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt”.

I was once at Peter Tork’s house, and uh, it was, the pool was full of people. Naked. Jim, Jim Morrison was at one end of the pub—uh, pool. Ha, yeah, the pub. He’d been in the pub all night I think. I’m not sure. He had a bottle of something in his hand, and Barry McGuire, “The Eve of Destruction”. Stephen Stills. Uh, man, it was lots of times we hung out with lots and lots of people. It was, it was, it was more of uh, a fun party for everybody. We used to see like say uh, The Association or um, we’d see The Turtles, you know, Mark and Howie, and, you know, more or less like, “‘Ey, we’ll knock you off the charts next week, mate”. It was not sort of uh, run by the lawyers and, and, and businesspeople. I guess it was, but, you know, it seemed a little more freeform, I guess.

Actually, we were in London, Micky and I, and um, I took him for a, a walk around uh, um, uh, in this particular area, which, kind of trendy area, with all these like trendy shops, and we got chased and uh, went into a pub and got chased out of there and finally headed to the hotel. Back door wouldn’t open. Ran to the front, two big glass doors, and I can honestly tell you, we actually pulled the doors off. This was like with fear of so many people on our tails, you know, chasing us.

I used to go to work every morning, and every morning, on the way to work, I used to pick up this little girl. She’s like fourteen. I’d pick her up, she was there hitching a ride, going to the Hollywood High School, and it was like a, it was like a ritual, it was like. I never saw her out of school. I never saw her at all, but I wonder where she is. I wonder if she’s hearing this now. You know, that would be quite interesting.

[Jimi Hendrix] was a cool guy. Spent many an evening, you know, just with him, went fishing with him in Miami, Florida, out on a boat for a day and a half, you know, and just a regular guy, really. I had no idea what was going on in their personal lives, and I didn’t really much care. There was one occasion where Micky and uh, walked into a room where Stephen Stills and Hendrix was there, Joni Mitchell was there um, Graham Nash was there, and they were playing and singing and strumming away, and uh, Micky um, walked in and started, you know, banging sticks on the, on the side, sideboard or on the table, and I remember quite distinctly Hendrix saying, “That’s what we needed”. So I mean, that was like a little smile on your face, you know. A Monkee playing with Hendrix? And he liked it?

Um, the Monkee walk, I think that’s a variation on “We’re off to see the Wizard”, isn’t it, really? Hey, see, you can’t claim parentage. Ha ha ha. Yeah. We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. Ha! Well, you know, despite all this, you know, they’re brothers. They always will be. They were the greatest.

Davy does some funny impressions in the commentary, including John Lennon, James Cagney, his grandfather, and Texans.