Davy Jones: The Monkees episodes went out for $75,000 [each]. I mean that's all they cost. That was unheard of. And that was because of the co-operation and the excitement and because of the originality and the enthusiasm from all the different areas.
Peter Tork: My favorite Monkees’ music is Riu Chiu, an a capella song, done live for the 1966 Christmas Special, which was never done before because filming time is twenty fives times more expensive than recording time. The vocal work is wonderful, the best thing the Monkees ever did. My favorite single is Pleasant Valley Sunday and my favorite album is Head.
Micky Dolenz: Timothy Leary said that the Monkees brought long hair into the living room. I think that there might be something to that. The only times you saw kids with long hair on television was when they were being arrested. Then the Monkees came along and showed them four rather sanitized long haired hippies with bell bottoms. It was just being normal nice kids.
Michael Nesmith: There is a journey that we're all on, and I'm on it. Where it rolls, it rolls. There is a certain logic to events that pushes you along a certain path. You go along the path that feels the most true, and most according to the principles that are guiding you, and that's the way decisions are made.
Convicted mass murderer Charles Manson had been rumored to have been one of the musicians who had tried out for the Monkees, but this rumor was probably started by Manson himself, considering he was in jail while the auditions were going on.
It was not widely known at the time of the show’s run, that the Monkees did not play any of their instruments on their first two albums, except for Peter Tork who played guitar on Papa Gene’s Blues. All instruments were played by recording studio session players, including Glen Campbell, Mike Deasy, Hal Blaine and Carole Kaye.
Davy Jones had previous acting experience and was already under contract to Screen Gems studio, who were anxious to place him in a series and jumped to include him in the casting call.
Dolenz, Nesmith, Jones and Tork each were paid only $450.00 per episode during the first season of the show. With The Monkees being such a run away hit series, they got a second season raise to $750.00 per episode, a pittance compared to today's stars' salaries of $100,000.00 or more per episode on a hit show.
Singer/songwriter Stephen Stills was actually cast as a member of the Monkees, but dropped out of the band at the last moment when he discovered that the contract he was about to sign would grant Columbia Pictures the publishing rights to all of his songs, a mistake The Beatles had made in 1963 and he was not about to repeat. He went on to co-found the Buffalo Springfield.
During The Monkees original airing on NBC from September 12, 1966 to September 9, 1968, it dominated it's Monday night time slot at number 1.
The Monkees were Peter Tork (Peter Halsten Thorkelson), Michael Nesmith (Robert Michael Nesmith), Micky Dolenz (George Michael Dolenz Jr.), and Davy Jones (David Thomas Jones).
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