Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin From the Archives: Micky Dolenz About this episode Micky Dolenz was a successful child-actor, but he became a full-fledged star at 20 in 1966 as the exuberant singer and drummer of The Monkees -- or rather, as the actor playing that character. At first, the band was a creation of NBC and only existed on the show The Monkees. For the first season, much of the backing music was played by a studio band. Eventually, that changed, and The Monkees' transition from a TV band to a real band is a fascinating story of hard work, perseverance, and marketing genius. Dolenz brings all the energy and humor he showed on The Monkees to this episode of Here's the Thing, telling Alec about the dynamics among the bandmates, his years as a successful TV producer in the UK, and what it's like touring -- and recording https://open.spotify.com/album/26BT8Q1A4YlGAYM7uwJAcI?si=B2cc9S2kR2CbCMSTt8ZO3A -- as a member of The Monkees 50 years after the end of the show.
Originally aired June 16th, 2020.
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1:51 Alec Baldwin? Hey, hey, it's Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. This song shaped my childhood and that of millions of other Americans.
2:04 Alec Baldwin? The voice is Mickey Dolan's.
2:18 Alec Baldwin? It's 1966, the year Timothy Leary tells America to turn on, tune in, drop out. TV executives know they need to make programming that reflects the times. Enter The Monkees.
2:32 Speaker 06 Hey, that's a groovy button. What does it say? Love is the ultimate trip. Oh, that's a nice thought. That's a groovy button. What does it say? Save the Texas prairie chicken?
2:40 Alec Baldwin? It was save the chicken, not stop the war. NBC wasn't about to risk a boycott of Bonanza after all. But the misadventures of four shaggy musicians in Malibu managed to be subversive anyway. The grownups were stiff, the sets were psychedelic, and the long-haired bandmates just wanted to be loved. Artistically, the show used new wave film techniques and brought the audience in on the jokes two years before. Laugh-In and Monty Python.
3:11 Speaker 06 Hey, wait, wait. How do I get in if the door's locked? Peter, you can't expect the writers to know everything. Improvise.
3:20 Alec Baldwin? Besides, the music is undeniably great. Soon, the fictional band morphed into a real band. They wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. And at the same time The Monkees, the TV show, topped the Nielsen ratings, the band topped the Billboard charts. The Monkees got the formula just right. But the concept wasn't unique. Throughout the 60s, movie and TV bosses were desperately trying to bottle Beatlemania. Mickey Dolan, with musical talent and floppy hair in abundance, was perhaps fated to end up in a band on TV. The question was only which one.
4:03 Alec Baldwin? There were at least three other shows that pilot season that I was up for as an actor. Similar?
4:09 Speaker 06 Well, in the sense that they were about music and about the young generation. There was a lot going on at that time. It wasn't just the Beatles. It was folk music. It was all kinds of, you know, youth-oriented music. One pilot was a Peter, Paul and Mary type of group called The Happeners. It did not sell. Another was this Beach Boy surfer group. And another one was a big family Mighty Wind, kind of, you know, those thirty people on stage singing, "I got a hammer."
4:43 Alec Baldwin? New Christian minstrels.
4:44 Speaker 06 Yeah, new Christian. So it was in the air. It was in the air to try to capture this youth movement and obviously exploit it.
4:54 Alec Baldwin? For this medium of TV that's important for people to remember.
4:57 Speaker 06 Well, in our case, for the first time, to really combine the power of television, radio and record companies. Now, it had been done before to some degree with Ricky Nelson. Once in a while, some TV act would come out with a little single. But this was the first time that it was a concerted assault on the
5:20 Alec Baldwin? Heavy artillery.
5:21 Speaker 06 American consumer. The Monkees was not the Beatles or an attempt to be the American Beatles. The Monkees was a television show about an imaginary group that wanted to be the Beatles. That's what it was about. It was the struggle for success. And that's, I think, one of the reasons it resonated with so many kids of our generation.
5:46 Alec Baldwin? Because you were hungry.
5:47 Speaker 06 Yes. So many shows since, you know, you see them, they come on the air, they're all beautiful, cute and lovely, and they're successful already. You know, the closest thing I've seen come around over the decades is Glee, which was a TV show about an imaginary Glee club. But I gather they go and perform because they could. So rather than the old-school Hollywood trick, having somebody else sing your vocals in West Side Story, or Sweet and Low Down, Sean Penn, I mean, it was a beautiful movie, but of course, he didn't play any of that. They had in mind That we were going to eventually go out on the road and perform.
6:32 Speaker 06 Because the audition process was nothing like I'd ever been through before. You had to be able to sing, you had to be able to play an instrument, you had to improvise, you had to do comedy scene work on the screen tests. So they must have had in mind, you know, that if this thing sells, then one day these guys are gonna go out on the road and perform. So after we got cast and started filming, early days, early, early days, I think maybe before I'd recorded anything. And they brought me to this apartment building and said, we want you to meet the writers who will be writing for you. And I go in and this little cubby hole, it reminds me of like a medical building where
7:17 Speaker 06 this dentist here in a chiropractor. And it's like, hello, Carol? Oh, hi, Mickey, this is Carol King. She'll be writing songs for you. Oh, my God. Oh, hi. And she's sitting at an upright piano in a little cubby hole, like the size of this little, less, less than the size of this little studio. And she has a woolen sack reel-to-reel tape recorder. And I remember that because I had the exact same tape recorder. So did my dad. Yes. Carol, this is Mickey, Mickey, this is Carol. Hi, how you doing? Nice to meet you. Hello, hi, oh, David, David Gates, this is Mickey Dolan, he's gonna be singing and you're gonna be writing for him. David Gates from Brett? D. David Gates, yes. My God. Yeah.
8:02 Speaker 06 Oh, my God. Oh, he wrote a big hit for us. And I don't know if you saw Beautiful, but Carol King at one point says, we gotta write some songs for this TV show in Hollywood. And Jerry Goffin goes, oh, fuck. Oh, sorry. It's okay. So knock, knock, it's David Gates. And then I heard about all these writers, but you know, even in that day, the writers were not acknowledged like they are now. Whenever I do a show, I immediately acknowledge the writers that wrote this stuff. Because without them, I'd be going...
8:40 Alec Baldwin? Yeah. When did Boyce and Hart come into the picture?
8:42 Speaker 06 Very early. So Boyce and Hart were trying out to be a cast as a couple of the monkeys. I have no idea why Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider. But you know how it goes. I mean, you've got development from NBC or wherever. I'm sure they were all watching the screen tests and making those choices. And I have no idea why they chose any of us, including me. But thank God they did.
9:11 Alec Baldwin? But what was your musical DNA? I mean, I know you performed since you were a child, correct?
9:16 Speaker 06 Yeah.
9:17 Alec Baldwin? And so what was your music DNA?
9:19 Speaker 06 Great question.
9:19 Alec Baldwin? When you went rolling into that scenario?
9:21 Speaker 06 Thank you, because it is important to me. I started out playing classical guitar, Segovia kind of stuff. As a 10-year-old or something like that. My dad got me into it and played me a Segovia record. And I was like, there's no way one person is doing all that.
9:41 Alec Baldwin? Right, right.
9:41 Speaker 06 And he said, yes, yes. And I got into it. I got really hooked. I got really passionate. My dad was an actor, a swashbuckling kind of Errol Flynn character in the 40s and 50s from Italy, so old school. And he got me into playing classical guitar. And I took lessons and studied and trained. But, you know, I'm 10 years old. Then I went to high school and I started going to parties. And they would invite me to parties. I was this little geeky mascot, you know? But the girls would invite me to parties because I could play something on the guitar. Then they would say, do you know any Kingston Trio?
10:21 Alec Baldwin? Yeah.
10:22 Speaker 06 I'll be right back. Hang down your head, don't do it.
10:29 Speaker 06 So I got OK at folk music. Peter, Paul and Mary. My sister and I would sing at parties and stuff.
10:36 Alec Baldwin? And you knew you could sing?
10:38 Speaker 06 Yeah, and my mom, because my mom was a singer and great singer. And my dad was a great singer. But he was like a, you know, operatic. He would do strangers in the.
10:47 Alec Baldwin? Some enchanted evening.
10:51 Speaker 06 You may see a stranger. But he would sing it walking through the living room in his underwear. So it's like, oh, Dad, that is so gross.
11:04 Alec Baldwin? With a glass of red wine in his hand.
11:08 Speaker 06 Anyway, so I'm brought up singing, acting, the whole thing. But I think nature also has something to do with it. You know, there's the physicality of it. You're born with the physique to be a tennis player or golfer.
11:22 Alec Baldwin? And the pipes to sing.
11:23 Speaker 06 Well, that's, it's a muscle. And so I think I was born with the muscles to do that. So, yeah, I could sing. My, after the folk music era, I started rock and roll. And I, you know, started playing guitar and rock guitar. And started going out with like, you know, cover bands. Mickey and the One Nighters. You know, just doing, you know, Walking the Dog and Money and, and House of the Rising Sun.
11:52 Alec Baldwin? Like everybody, like the Beatles, the Stones.
11:54 Speaker 06 Well, I talked to Ringo about it when I interviewed him one day. He said, well, we're all cover bands. And it's true. I used to do a tune in my band called Johnny Be Good because I was a huge Chuck Berry fan. That was my audition piece for the Monkees.
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12:40 Speaker 07 This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. ¿Qué tal, mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little oof, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise, the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today. Just be, breathe. Estás haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough.
13:23 Speaker 07 Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter, Alex Warren.
13:47 Speaker 04 I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, there's every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are an expert here.
14:13 Speaker 07 Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:23 Alec Baldwin? How did they find you?
14:25 Speaker 06 Oh, since I had already had a television show as a child.
14:30 Alec Baldwin? Oh, you were Circus Boy.
14:31 Speaker 06 NBC.
14:32 Alec Baldwin? You were Circus Boy.
14:33 Speaker 06 I was, yes. One does not go to the cattle call.
14:37 Alec Baldwin? Right. NBC knew you.
14:39 Speaker 06 Yeah. And the producers, and Bob and Bert, and my agent, I had an agent, you know. I was doing guest shots on Mr. Novak, Peyton Place, usually playing the bad guy, that little thug, the kinda, you know.
14:52 Alec Baldwin? Creepy kid.
14:53 Speaker 06 Yeah, the creepy kid.
14:54 Alec Baldwin? Well, you could tell, there's like the creepy kid thing. There's a little anarchy underneath everything you're doing. There's a little madness underneath everything you're doing.
15:02 Speaker 06 Under the, under the whole monkey thing was a little bit of anarchy. Bob and Bert weren't much older, the creators, producers.
15:10 Alec Baldwin? Right.
15:10 Speaker 06 They were not much older than we were. When I went to my first audition down on Gower there at the, at Screen Gems, I walked in and there were these two guys sitting there in jeans and t-shirts. I thought they were there for the audition. And that was Bob and Bert. I mean, they were part of that Young Buck, New Wave generation, which created the Hollywood independent film industry with Easy Rider.
15:35 Alec Baldwin? Hmm.
15:35 Speaker 06 So Bob and Bert were not much older than I was. And there's a wonderful chapter in Timothy Leary's book, Politics of Ecstasy. I don't know what you think about Timothy Leary, but he has like a half a chapter on the monkeys, describing how essentially we brought long hair into the living room and made it okay to wear bell bottoms and have long hair, because the only time you saw long-haired kids in sixty-six or seven on television, they were getting arrested. So the monkeys came along and said, "We just wanna be happy, having a lot of have our fun. We're just trying to be friendly, yeah."
16:15 Speaker 06 And it was a tough sell. Bob and Bert, I understand, had a real tough sell at the New York.
16:22 Alec Baldwin? The up-fronts.
16:22 Speaker 06 Up-fronts, yeah. NBC was nervous, but it represented.
16:29 Speaker 06 All the kids out there that were of the same mind. The majority didn't want to throw bombs at people or, you know, to them it was just, we wanted to just have fun and we loved the look. You know, the very similar thing happened with Harry Winkler in Happy Days. He made it okay to wear a leather jacket, finally, and ride a motorcycle and he wasn't Marlon Brando.
16:55 Alec Baldwin? And have a kiss of danger.
16:56 Speaker 06 The kiss of danger. Will Smith did a similar thing with Fresh Prince. He said, "It's okay to be a young black guy and sing rap music." Well, The Monkees did the same thing.
17:06 Alec Baldwin? And you mentioned Easy Rider. You know, we had Russ Tamblyn in here to record a show with us and what's interesting is I asked him how his career rolls after he does West Side Story. And then, within a matter of a few years, a handful of years, all that's crumbling. As you said, everything starts to change. Easy Rider, the anti-heroic period of filmmaking, Nicholson's career is born.
17:27 Speaker 06 Well, Nicholson had his first, I don't know, I don't want to say break. He was a B-movie actor.
17:31 Alec Baldwin? A corpsman guy.
17:33 Speaker 06 Corpsman. And I don't know if you've heard of the monkey movie called Head?
17:37 Alec Baldwin? Yes, of course.
17:38 Speaker 06 Written by Nicholson and us, we did get credit eventually. After The Monkees show went off the air, Bob introduced this to this guy called Jack, Jack Nicholson, who was doing B-movie, but wanted to write. And we just fell in love with him. I did. I can't speak for everybody else, but he's the, was and is the most wonderful, charismatic, funny, intelligent guy that I'd ever met. And we welcomed him with open arms. And he hung out with us for like, God, months it seems like. And then we all got together up in Ojai at the In-N-Out Spa. And we, I got film of this. I got actual film of us sitting around, you know, choreographing what this movie was
18:22 Speaker 06 going to be about because... Obviously, as a movie, we didn't have to stick to the NBC standards and practices thing, which was pretty brutal. But The Monkees wasn't about that, anyway. It was not our place to do that at the time. We left that to Laugh-In and to other shows. I had no objections to that. It was a wide demographic, young kids, 13-years-old. So, we went up and wrote this wacky script. And they took that, created this movie head, which I love. I mean, I don't get it still.
19:01 Alec Baldwin? You're not supposed to.
19:03 Speaker 06 And I wrote part of it.
19:05 Alec Baldwin? It's beyond you.
19:06 Speaker 06 But Quentin told me it's like his top five. So, that was our little kind of breakout, you know? And fans hated it. But now, now it's become this little cult thing. Because at the time, you know, they would not let us even touch upon anything political, social. It was NBC, you know, standards and practices. I'm not sure. It was only just after they let Ozzy and Harriet sleep in the same bed or something like that.
19:34 Alec Baldwin? Of course, yeah. But describe for people to hear it from your own mouth, this journey, everyone's impression who knows about that period of, you know, your careers in television, that you're lip-syncing, another band was playing, and you're simulating, correct?
19:49 Speaker 06 No.
19:50 Alec Baldwin? Early on, no?
19:51 Speaker 06 No, not. Well, it's not accurate.
19:53 Alec Baldwin? What's accurate?
19:54 Speaker 06 First of all, we sang all of it, every note.
19:57 Alec Baldwin? Right.
19:58 Speaker 06 We didn't lip-sync. No, you only lip-sync when you're doing a music video.
20:01 Alec Baldwin? Right.
20:02 Speaker 06 No, but the recording process was, was different. And I know that Peter, for instance, wanted to go in and play. Mike wanted to. But when we first were cast, they had already recorded a lot of tracks.
20:19 Speaker 06 They hired the wrecking crew, which I'm sure you've heard of.
20:22 Alec Baldwin? I read about that, yeah. A studio band.
20:25 Speaker 06 They were these studio cats.
20:26 Alec Baldwin? Right.
20:27 Speaker 06 Played all the tracks for The Beach Boys, for Association, for The Byrds. I frankly didn't care. I mean, I approached it like I was doing a musical. I was an entertainer, singer, actor. The Monkees was like a Marx Brothers musical. And it was John Lennon that first made that comparison. The Monkees was a little half-hour Marx Brothers musical.
20:51 Alec Baldwin? But what I'm looking for is eventually.
20:54 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah.
20:55 Alec Baldwin? You do play.
20:56 Speaker 06 Yeah.
20:57 Alec Baldwin? What's around the time when you're sitting there and you guys are playing and you say to yourself, wow.
21:01 Speaker 06 Yeah.
21:02 Alec Baldwin? We're there.
21:02 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah.
21:03 Alec Baldwin? When does that happen?
21:04 Speaker 06 That happened in Honolulu in 1967. But the prelude to that is that we start rehearsing. Because they say, we want to go on the road, want to take the sack on the road. And that is why they hired actor musicians. Mike plays incredible 12-string. Peter plays seven instruments, God rest his soul. I mean, he went to the Conservatory of Music in, like, in New York. David didn't play an instrument as such, but could sing, obviously, and played percussion. I was a guitar player, and when they said, you're going to be the drummer, I said, cool, where do I start? Like I'd said in Circus Boy, when they said, so you're going to ride an elephant? Okay, where do I start?
21:47 Speaker 06 Like they must have said to Lloyd Bridges when he started.
21:50 Alec Baldwin? Put that suit on.
21:51 Speaker 06 You're going to be a scuba driver. Great, where do I start?
22:18 Alec Baldwin? Actor and musician Mickey Dolan's. This album marks the beginning of the band's self-sufficiency. You're listening to Michael Nessmith in 1967, singing his own composition, You Just May Be The One. All the instruments are the monkeys themselves, too. At the same time as the monkeys were softening the edges of the counterculture, Andy Warhol was doing the opposite. He made Four Stars, a plotless, unedited, 25-hour portrait of his friends and collaborators doing drugs and having sex. That movie was also the debut of Warhol's favorite beefcake star, Joe Delisandro.
23:03 Alec Baldwin? But when the juvenile delinquent-turned-pin-up model showed up at the factory in 1967, he had no idea who his host was.
23:12 Speaker 07 I had a couple of friends in New York that introduced me to other people. And then one day, one of these friends said, "Hey, I know this person that's making these Campbell's Soup, you know, makes the Campbell's Soup." And I was thinking we were going to eat some soup, which I was all for.
23:37 Alec Baldwin? For a link to my interview with Joe Delisandro, text JOE, that's J-O-E to 70101.
23:53 Speaker 01 Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's Small Business Line of Credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. ¿Qué tal, mi gente? Honey German.
24:31 Speaker 07 Check in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little oof, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise, the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today. Just be, breathe. Estas haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
25:11 Alec Baldwin? Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Park.
25:31 Speaker 04 To this day, Ordinary would not have done anything, and I would have not been able to put it out if Book Talk didn't back it up and if my wife and her friend didn't back it up.
25:39 Alec Baldwin? Amazing.
25:40 Speaker 04 Pretty crazy how like, just one thing.
25:43 Alec Baldwin? Right.
25:43 Speaker 04 I mean, I bet you, we could point to nine different things in our careers where it's just one thing all of a sudden. If that one thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't be here.
25:50 Alec Baldwin? What you're talking about right now is what I've been talking about since the beginning of my career. There's these things outside of you
25:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
25:58 Alec Baldwin? that make everything happen. These other forces somehow came into contact with each other and helped propel you to this place.
26:08 Speaker 04 It's just insane.
26:09 Alec Baldwin? Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
26:24 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. My guest is Mickey Dolan's drummer and vocalist for The Monkees.
26:48 Alec Baldwin? The pandemic has meant no 2020 tour, but you can still hear his and Michael Nesmith's latest from the comfort of your own confinement. Their album called The Monkees Live: The Mike and Mickey Show was taped last year and is available on iTunes and Spotify.
27:08 Alec Baldwin? Their sound and the love from the audience is as strong as ever. But starting from just playing a band member on TV, it took Dolan's time and hard work to build up his skills.
27:20 Speaker 06 I had about a year and I studied very, very hard and I practiced very, very hard. It was rock and roll, just four-four time for the most part. We rehearsed diligently. David Winters, speaking of West Side Story, was the director of our first stage show. And all of a sudden, one day, they said, "Your first gig is Hawaii." I think they did that because if it bombed, no one would know.
27:47 Alec Baldwin? You were many miles off the coast of the United States.
27:50 Speaker 06 No internet.
27:51 Alec Baldwin? They could bury it like nuclear waste.
27:53 Speaker 06 Yes, that was us, Nukleus. Good name for a group. Turns out, we did pretty good. There's a Live in 67 CD, which was not recorded to be a record. It was some, I think the sound guy was just like holding a microphone up in the air to capture it. But it's not bad. There's only three of us playing, you know, it was Mike, Peter and I, Davey just doing percussion and of course the vocals. But it was a trio, it was a power trio. And Peter would play the right hand, he would play keyboard melody. And on the left hand, he'd play keyboard bass. Mike Nesmith always put it like, when we went on the road, it was like Pinocchio became a real little boy.
28:37 Speaker 06 And there's a lot of truth in that.
28:39 Alec Baldwin? And how'd you feel back then? Were you happy? How did they feel? Were they happy? Was it something, the other members of the band? Or The Monkees?
28:47 Speaker 06 Couldn't tell, I don't want to speak for them. Mike Nesmith, I know, and it's well recorded. He wanted to play and sing a lot more. He'd been brought into the... Situation, had no idea what a series was all about. They said, he said, I want to sing and play and write my songs. And he did not have a chance to do that initially. Eventually he did. And that's when we had the palace coup prompted by him.
29:14 Alec Baldwin? What year did that happen?
29:16 Speaker 06 I was sixty seven, I want to say.
29:18 Alec Baldwin? Right around the time of the live show in Hawaii.
29:20 Speaker 06 Just after. We had a palace coup mainly because Mike said, we can do this. Pinocchio can become a little boy. He was frustrated and I don't blame him.
29:30 Alec Baldwin? How'd you feel?
29:31 Speaker 06 I didn't care one way or the other. I was having a great time and I loved singing. It ended up that I was, I think I ended up doing the, most of the lead vocals kind of by default. Um, Mike had a very, and does still, has a very wonderful country western kind of flavor. All men must have someone, have someone.
29:57 Alec Baldwin? I love that song.
29:59 Speaker 06 Yeah, oh beautiful. We do that in our show, he and I now. Uh, Peter, like I say, could play like, you know, seven instruments. David, great singer, but definitely the crooner Broadway kind of Tony Newley.
30:14 Alec Baldwin? I read somewhere, yeah, I read somewhere where they had decided the, the powers that be, that your voice was more the voice of.
30:20 Speaker 06 I was the only one that could go.
30:22 Alec Baldwin? Exactly, yeah.
30:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. She, she, she, she. I'm not just the best star, I'm nice. So, like I say, I think. She told me that she loved me. You are really good at this.
30:37 Alec Baldwin? Thank you. So you have the coup, you get rid of Kershner, you're doing your own thing.
30:42 Speaker 06 Yeah.
30:42 Alec Baldwin? Does everybody sense that it's better and you're, everybody's happy now?
30:45 Speaker 06 Eventually.
30:46 Alec Baldwin? They do?
30:46 Speaker 06 Well, I can only speak again for myself. Um, uh, yeah, uh.
30:53 Speaker 06 During that period, I had, I guess you'd call it, an awakening or something. Because up until that point, we had, I'd been ensconced on the set from seven o'clock in the morning, makeup, until 11 o'clock at night, where I would be brought into RCA Studios to record two or three lead vocals a night, because they wanted so much material.
31:19 Alec Baldwin? They wanted you to do the show during the day and record at night.
31:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, I had to. They needed so much material, because they wanted two new songs for every episode. And so Boyce and Hart and Carole King and all these people are pumping out massive amounts of material. And Carole would come over to my house, I'd go over to Diane Hildebrand or Boyce and Hart and then to routine the stuff, and then go in the studio and just blow it out at 10, 11 o'clock at night. And that went on for months, because they needed so much material. There's material that is still in the can that we have not released. We released an album two years ago called Good Times.
32:00 Speaker 06 One of the songs, Me and Magdalena, written by Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie, is number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the entire decade on this album called Good Times. Very proud of that. So, anyway, I'm in the studio, you know, or on the set, basically 24/7. But I'm only 21 years old, so I'm just taking it for what it is. I mean, I was, had been brought up to be an actor entertainer, and you show up at 7 for your makeup and wardrobe call, and you do your job, and you go home.
32:39 Alec Baldwin? It's the whole Judy Garland thing.
32:40 Speaker 06 Yeah.
32:41 Alec Baldwin? Now, but let me ask you that, meaning you're 20 years old, and you're grinding this out. What was your life like? Did you have a life?
32:48 Speaker 06 Oh, absolutely. I had a wonderful life. I actually had a wonderful life. Again, I was used to it. I, you know, I had this series when I was 10, so I well knew what I was getting into. It was almost like home for me, because when you're 10, 12, 13 years old, and you're... You know, those are very formative years. And I was on a set with my mom and a bunch of smelly electricians. And so I went back to high school. And that was abnormal for me. I was like fish out of water until I got The Monkees, which was only a few years later. When I went to the audition interview for The Monkees at Screen Gems,
33:30 Speaker 06 the same guy was on the gate that had been there when I was 10 years old with Circus Boy. It was only 10 years later. This was home to me. I breathed a sigh of relief being on a set.
33:43 Alec Baldwin? You were comfortable there.
33:44 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah, big time. Because before that, I was on my father's set when he was doing movies for Howard Hughes. I didn't have to adapt. I just fell into it.
33:56 Alec Baldwin? And when, and when the show ends, is there a thought for you to say, I'm kind of done with music now and I want to go back to acting? Or no, were you now in your soul a musician?
34:07 Speaker 06 No, I was up for the Fonz. And it was between me and Henry Winkler. I don't know if he's ever told you this story. It was a mid-season replacement just after The Monkees. And I was up for it and went back for callbacks. And it was between me and Henry. He walked into the office, Gary Marshall's office, said, oh, shit, Mickey Dolenz is here. I'm never going to get this. And thank God he did because he was a much better Fonz than I would have been. No, I went for some interviews and I did a couple of little guest shots on, on some shows. My agent would send me out for little things. But I would go into the office and they'd say, we don't need any drummers. What are you doing here?
34:48 Alec Baldwin? So it was hard to get out from under the shadow of The Monkees?
34:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, talked to Leonard Nimoy about that. It's a classic problem in our industry. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't worry about it that much because the same thing had happened to me after Circus Boy. I'd go to an interview and they'd say, we don't need.
35:07 Alec Baldwin? We don't have any elephants in the show.
35:09 Speaker 06 And you're not blonde anymore. What's that? I was used to that, right. But also I had already started directing. And I directed the, the last episode of The Monkees, wrote and directed. I'd already decided. I kinda wanted to get into production. I'd already been an actor since I was ten. And I started a little film production company. But shortly thereafter, I moved to England, had married a girl that is English. And we went to England to do a play at the Mermaid Theatre, doing The Point by Harry Nilson, who was my dear friend at the time. And he'd written this animated thing, and then it became a play in London, in the West End.
35:53 Speaker 06 And he said, would you come and play in it? It was a limited pantomime season. And I went there with my wife. I brought my reels, what I had at the time. I gave it to an English agent. And all of a sudden, bang, I get this gig at the BBC directing a drama, a drama play. And I did it. And all of a sudden, I'd gone to England for three months, stayed for fifteen years. I directed big shows, long running shows for the BBC, for LWT, for Granada, for Tim's. I loved it. And I was doing something outside of the purview of what I was known for. Over there, within about a year.
36:36 Alec Baldwin? You escaped.
36:36 Speaker 06 The auditions, well, the, not auditions, the interviews, when I did a interview, it would say, BBC producer, writer, Michael Dolan's.
36:48 Alec Baldwin? Ooh. You became someone else again.
36:51 Speaker 06 I did.
36:52 Alec Baldwin? From Circus Boy, to Mickey Dolan's, to Michael Dolan's.
36:57 Speaker 06 Yeah, and back again.
36:58 Alec Baldwin? What brought you back? Fifteen years ago and you loved, okay.
37:03 Speaker 06 I'll give you the truth. A divorce. I had retired, actually. I had tried to retire. Thirty-five or forty or something. Big English rock and roll mansion, full-time staff of six, hunting in the winter and polo in the summer and.
37:18 Alec Baldwin? The rock star life.
37:19 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. And it was so boring. I was bored to death, because I wasn't working. I wasn't accomplishing, you know, I'd wander around the grounds, seven or eight acres of formal gardens, and the help would tip their hats, "Morning, governor, morning." And I was like trying to hang out with them. "Hey, what's happening?" "Morning, governor, morning." I got very bored because I wasn't working. Came back to the States, did a little directing, Boy Meets World, I did Pacific Blue. But I kind of, you know, I guess I kind of got tired of that too, I don't know. Here it's not the same. In England, I had, and I still think it applies, enormous amount of control.
38:04 Speaker 06 Over there, the showrunner is the producer-director, not the producer-writer. I hired writers.
38:11 Alec Baldwin? Here, the producer-writer is the more powerful.
38:14 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's the showrunner.
38:16 Alec Baldwin? Sorkin.
38:17 Speaker 06 Over there, I'd go in and pitch an idea, and unlike over here where it has to go through, you know, God knows how many network development executives, they would just say, "We'd rather like that idea. Here's the money, go ahead and do it." Seriously. And I wouldn't hear anything for weeks. I'm like, "Is anybody out there?" "Am I doing okay?" Enormous amount of responsibility, but also freedom. And that's why we get these amazing shows out of Britain to this day, because they don't fuck around with you.
38:58 Alec Baldwin? Now, when you and Nesmith go out on the road now, you go periodically, you guys are out there. And when you're out there, like, how does it begin?
39:06 Speaker 06 The show?
39:07 Alec Baldwin? Well, you both come together again.
39:09 Speaker 06 First of all, I sang most of the leads, and Mike wrote some incredible tunes for The Monkees and after. It's probably a lot more musical, we have an incredible band, ten-piece band. It's different, but the hits are there, because the people want to hear the hits. And I've always acknowledged that, and I do them as they remember them. It's very important to do that, so they can sing along. Peter Torek, God love him, you know, passed away last year, and Davy Jones passed away a few years ago, yeah. The Monkees thing will go on, you know, with or without me, because... A, the music was, you know, so special.
39:54 Speaker 06 And the show, you know. The thing about the TV show, the smartest thing they did, those producers, is that it was not topical and it wasn't satirical. Like I Love Lucy, or The Honeymooners, or the... It was about these four guys that were living in this situation.
40:12 Alec Baldwin? In Malibu.
40:14 Speaker 06 In Malibu. And wanted to be successful. And we never were on the show. That's, I think, one of the reasons why it stands up.
40:23 Alec Baldwin? My last question for you would be, music today, you know, contemporary music, are you a fan of much contemporary music, or it's not in your life as much?
40:30 Speaker 06 It's not in my life at all. Not that I have anything against it.
40:34 Alec Baldwin? Right.
40:35 Speaker 06 But I kind of, I guess I kind of dialed out with Sinatra and classical guitar.
40:43 Alec Baldwin? That's so funny.
40:44 Speaker 06 In the morning, my wife and I listened to Segovia. And in the afternoon, we listened to Billie Holiday. I mean, you know, it's, you know, because I do it for a living, you know, it's, I don't keep up, I must admit. I'm sure there's lots of wonderful stuff out there, but no.
41:01 Alec Baldwin? You have how many kids?
41:02 Speaker 06 Oh, I have four.
41:03 Alec Baldwin? You have four kids?
41:04 Speaker 06 Yeah. That I know of.
41:06 Alec Baldwin? What do they do? Are they, anybody in the biz?
41:08 Speaker 06 They're all having grandkids. Two of them are in the entertainment industry. One is a photographer and mom, stay-at-home mom. And the other is the chief officer for 13 African nations for the Clinton Foundation trying to eradicate malaria.
41:29 Alec Baldwin? Rookie from where?
41:30 Speaker 06 She lives in DC, but goes to Africa frequently.
41:35 Alec Baldwin? How many girls, how many boys?
41:36 Speaker 06 All girls. And now, two grandchildren and a third at Christmas. Beautiful. Not bad for a long-haired weirdo, huh, America?
41:50 Alec Baldwin? Mickey Dolan's, youth culture icon grandfather. That third grandchild was born right on schedule over the holidays. A healthy baby boy currently sheltering in place with his mom in Washington DC. Tomorrow's gonna be another day. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Mickey Dolan's, youth culture icon grandfather.
42:25 Alec Baldwin? That third grandchild was born right on schedule over the holidays. A healthy baby boy currently sheltering in place with his mom in Washington DC. Tomorrow's gonna be another day.
42:41 Alec Baldwin? Tomorrow's gonna be another day. I'm Alec Baldwin, here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
43:25 Alec Baldwin? Well, I ain't gonna think about ya, 'cause it ain't no use no more. I'm gonna make it fine without ya, just like I did before.
43:34 Speaker 02 I'm on my way.
43:39 Speaker 02 Tomorrow's gonna be another day. Hey, hey, hey, hey. And I don't care what you say. Tomorrow's gonna be, tomorrow's gonna be, tomorrow's gonna be another day.
43:54 Speaker 02 Hey, hey, hey, hey.
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