#circlesky55

“I wanted to explore the power trio of us. In a strange way, we were actually pretty good. Micky was a real garage-band drummer. I was a real scream-and-shout guitar player and Peter was a very precise player. He could play interesting lines and fills on the bass. The power trio that existed between us was seldom explored.” - Michael Nesmith on "Circle Sky" (the Head sequence was filmed on May 17, 1968), Rolling Stone, August 23, 2016 "[Michael] caught the episode of Friends and he said, ‘Gee, that sounds like us playing the theme song there,’ and then his — he started to think about some old Monkees songs, and his girlfriend said, ‘Well, who’s playing bass on that cut there?’ He said, ‘Well, Peter.’ 'Did he write that part?’ ‘Yeah.’ Well, so his girlfriend liked my work and he said, ‘Maybe we should…’ And at that time, he was developing a thing for ZZ Top and he wanted to play guitar like that, sound like that on guitar, and we were the vehicle for it, so we joined, got together and we made a record called Justus." - Peter Tork, GOLD 104.5, 1999 Q: "What led Michael Nesmith to rejoin The Monkees in 1996 for the Justus album?" Peter Tork: "Mike had become boyfriend/girlfriend with this woman who listened to a cut of 'Circle Sky' [written by Nesmith, it appeared on the Head soundtrack in December 1968]. She listened and exclaimed, 'Who is playing bass on that?' Michael said, 'Well, Peter.'  She quickly replied, 'Well, who wrote the part?' And he responded, 'Well, Peter.' Soon he was sort of enjoying what we had done before. He thought, God, these guys are pretty good. So he invited Micky and me, and we took over a rehearsal hall. The three of us banged away for a couple of hours, and danged if we didn’t sound just exactly the same as we did when we left off nearly 30 years previously. And next thing we knew, Michael wanted to be back in the band for a little while. Michael is very much into, What’s the best you can get right now? He is kind of aggressive about getting the best studio, the best equipment, and the best approach to sound.  So we produced and recorded the Justus album on tape and transferred it to digital afterwards in an effort to keep it as warm as possible. I’m not so interested in the sound per se. If we had made it all digital, I couldn’t have told the difference myself. All I know is I hear the energy of the band. What’s interesting is for us to play together and make a record as best we know how.  I played all the bass parts on Justus, Michael played all the guitar parts, Micky played all the drums, and Davy played tambourine and some acoustic guitar. If you hear keyboards or piano on a track, that’s me, too. I would play one instrument and then overdub the other.  There are a couple of things I would have done differently, but all in all, I think it stands up pretty well. So there’s the Justus album for you.  Mike joined us in the UK for our 30th anniversary tour in 1997. I enjoyed that tour very much; it was a good time. Nevertheless, Mike never said anything to me when he decided to leave the band after the ’97 European tour, and I still don’t know why he left." - Pop Culture Examiner, November 24, 2011