As I have mentioned before being in touch with folk on Facebook has great benefits and John French of Captain Beefheart Magic Band fame is one such in question and yesterday he posted this account in memory of Mike Nesmith.
"When we moved to RCA Studios from Sunset Sound Studios, we went from an 8 - track to a 4 - track studio because Richard Perry, producer, was fresh out of engineering school. It was a series of bad decisions which eventually led to Safe As Milk being, really, in my estimation, a sonically weak album. I digress, however. The Monkees just happen to be at RCA studios at the time recording "Headquarters." I heard that this was the first album where they actually had the chance to play their own music rather than studio musicians ( probably the Wrecking Crew) being hired to do it for them. During break ( most of the sessions were during the day, although it was hard to tell because there were no windows for obvious reasons), we often ran into Mike Nesmith. He was a very friendly, outgoing, and soft-spoken guy. His pride and joy was his brand new black Buick Riviera, which was always parked in the underground parking lot. I recall him showing us his car and then we all sat inside and smoked weed together. I sat in the back seat, right corner, and I couldn't help but contemplate the fact that millions of kids watched the Monkees on their TV show, and if their parents had seen video of this moment, it probably would have ruined the group. A few months down the road, we were booked at a small club on Sunset Boulevard. This was while we were working on "The Mirror Man Sessions" material. We arrived at the club, and it was such a small place that they didn't even have an in-house PA. After the Mt. Tamalpais debacle earlier in the year, the best we could do in L.A. was this kind of place. Don decided to call Mike Nesmith, who showed up about 30 minutes later with his small personal PA that the Monkees used for rehearsals. We actually bombed big time that night. Don decided to play guitar -- my acoustic electric in fact -- and basically just produced a lot of noise through a Fender Dual Showman. I was playing so hard that I broke the kick drum head, so spent most of the night with no kick. We could have used this as a "rehearsal" at least, for the upcoming album, but it would have been an instrumental set, as Don didn't have any idea yet what he was going to sing to the music. I didn't really get any kind of take on what reaction Nesmith had to the night, but we did help him pack up his tiny PA. All I could think was, "How nice of him to do this for us." The Monkees were HUGE at this time.
R.I.P. Michael Nesmith -- thanks for being a true human being."
John French ‘Drumbo’ The Magic Band
No comments:
Post a Comment