like a flower, fresh and pretty

Photo Credit: And The Hits Just Keep On Coming CD Booklet

Happy birthday to longtime musical collaborators and friends Red Rhodes (December 30, 1930) & Michael Nesmith (December 30, 1942)! Rhodes and Nesmith worked on over 10 albums together over the course of their 25 year partnership.

Both are pictured here at Countryside Records in 1973.

“What [Red] was bringing to the music was indescribable except unless you heard it on the records. So it was completely fulfilling for me and I just devoted myself to him. I said, ‘Well, I’m going to work with this guy for the rest of my natural life.’ Which is apparently what I did because he died before me.” - Michael Nesmith. Billboard Magazine, May 31, 2018.

“But Red was constantly bringing these swoops and swirls in that made me wanna spin and dance - and him too, although he couldn’t get up. That contributed a lot to the synchronization. The way these things went together with me standing beside Red and Red sitting beside me. We were very much dance partners. When we work off and followed the music around - he was playing his stuff and I was playing mine - he was so much more advanced than I was. All I was doing was accompanying him.” - Michael Nesmith, liner notes to Cosmic Partners vinyl, 2019.

“I had watched Red play many evenings [at the Palomino] before and would watch him many more. There was something about the construction, tone, and touch of the way he played that surpassed all the other pedal steel players I knew of……..Few people can play the instrument well, and Red Rhodes was an undisputed master of it. Red was a string section and a brass section and a Mars section all in one. The lines and fills he played inside the regular country tunes were like smoke and magic, wafting in and out of the soundscape like surreptitious sprites.” - Michael Nesmith, Infinite Tuesday, 2018.

Dean Jeffries: “A rotten person. He was a very bad person. That’s my personal opinion of him…because I had run with him quite a bit. He was just nasty with people. I thought he was a prima donna but he had no reason to be that way. Mike Nesmith was just up and down. One minute he was pleasant to be around and then you would leave him, and two hours later, you’d come back and he’d be a rotten son-of-a-bitch to be around. […]. He did it a few times with me and that was enough.”

Bill Chadwick: “He saw it (The Monkees) as an opportunity, as a stepping stone. He took every advantage he could. Mike was a very intelligent guy. He was a real good businessman and a real talented person. He was going to make the best of it no matter what the situation was. The Monkees was his vehicle.”

Lester Sill: “I hold Mike responsible for breaking The Monkees up. That was his intention and I tell him this when I see him. We don’t see each other that often, but when he came up here to buy some of his songs back, which I refused to sell him, I told him that I thought he played the part of a cold-hearted Rasputin that did not consider Davy, Peter or Micky. I feel he was the catalyst in helping to destroy the group because he felt that the other boys were inadequate.”

Micky Dolenz: “He was always kind of the loner out there. He always had some problems with The Monkees.”

David Pearl: “Mike has always been outspoken and more often than not, Mike has pretty much been right.”

David Jones: “Mike could be quite tall when he wanted to be. Not to mention rude, arrogant, belligerent and aggressive, and that was on a good day.”

Shorty Rogers: “He’s a very groovy person, a great guy. He’s one of the good guys. In my case, Michael couldn’t have been nicer to me.”

Steve Blauner: “Mike was interested in music. Not a very nice person, but he was interested in music.”

Marilyn Schlossberg: “Michael was half and half. When he was good he was very good. When he was bad he was a horror.”