I have a feature on the Monkees in the current issue of Uncut.
It’s the second time I’ve spoken to Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, having interviewed them both – plus the late Davy Jones – five years ago to discuss the recording of “Randy Scouse Git”. This time I also spoke to Mike Nesmith.
“Randy Scouse Git” was a song inspired by London. Dolenz wrote it in a London hotel, riffing on a line from Alf Garnett. He told me in 2011:
“We were in London doing press and the Beatles threw us a big party. We were staying at the Grosvenor. Mike and I had turned up on Top of the Pops to surprised everybody by saying hello and they’d smuggled us in in the boot of a car. That’s where I met my first wife Samantha who was a Top Of The Pops DJ, the record girl. It was an amazing experience. I am told I had a great time. I met Samantha and we had a massive love affair. Brian Jones hid in one of our rooms when he was hiding from police and then we got a letter from Princess Margaret asking if we could keep the fans quiet as it was disturbing her sleep.
The next morning there were a few people hanging around, Mama Cass was in town, and I’d met this girl and I just started doodling with the guitar and singing about Samantha and my friend in the room and the waiter who came in with breakfast and the girls outside screaming. It was like a diary, word association. There’s no deep hidden meaning.
‘The being known as wondergirl’ was Samantha and the ‘wonderful lady’ at the start was Mama Cass. I must have been watching Till Death Us Do Part on TV. Alf Garnett called the kid (Tony Booth, Tony Blair’s future father-in-law) a ‘randy Scouse git’. I had no idea what it meant, but I thought it was funny so I wrote it down.”
Dolenz also talked about visiting The Beatles at Abbey Road.
“I’d gone to a Sgt Pepper session at Abbey Road in my paisley bell-bottoms and tie-dyed shirt and hair in beads and giant sunglasses. I looked like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Charlie Manson. I was expecting a wild, psychedelic funfest freak-out happening, but it was more like a high school gymnasium with four guys in jeans and t-shirts sitting on folding chairs and playing. I must have looked such an idiot. John Lennon said, ‘Hey monkey man, do you want to hear what we’re doing?’ and in the booth is George Martin in a three-piece suit and he presses the button and played “Good Morning, Good Morning.”
Dolenz is something of an Anglophile. His first two wives were British and he lived in London for many years, in Tooting Bec. While working as a TV producer in the UK, he directed this 1979 take on the classic 1950s Denis Norden/Frank Muir sketch, “Balham – Gateway To The South“.
The Great Wen 