The Monkees in Crawdaddy! Magazine




Crawdaddy! is credited as being the first U.S Magazine of music criticism. It began in 1966 by Paul Williams who was only 17 at the time. My boyfriend recently bought The Crawdaddy! Book which features many of the articles and columns featured in Crawdaddy! circa 1966-1968, and I decided to transcibe any mention of the Monkees in Crawdaddy! mainly to give a balanced account of how the Monkees were perceived in the 1960s.

Obviously there are many articles on this site from Tiger Beat, 16 and the like, but Crawdaddy! was not considered a teenybopper magazine. It took itself seriously as a purveyor of music and pop culture and its stance on the Monkees was decidedly unflattering (until they split with Donnie).

However, Crawdaddy's! anti-Monkees stance was the norm for many rock magazines then and now, and it's interesting to read an interpretation of our guys from a source that is not too supportive.

All of these blurbs are generally from a section of the magazine called "What Goes On", where music news is discussed. The Monkees never received a larger story in Crawdaddy!.


Oct 20, 1966

"No the Monkees don't do their own accompaniments. The Monkees don't do their own anything."


Jan 1967

"The Monkees have received gold records for a million sales of "their" "Last Train to Clarksville" and their first LP, which is #1 nationally. They played a concert in Honolulu Dec. 3 for a five-figure guarantee. Money, Money, Money."

March 1967

"I'm a Believer" is the biggest selling single since "I Want to Hold Your Hand"; the 3 million figure has already been passed in American sales alone. In England, where "Clarksville" was a flop, the TV show just began its run, and 500,000 "Believer's" were sold within 5 days of release (less than two dozen records a year sell 250,000 in Great Britain). More of the Monkees had an advance order of 1.5 million, which makes it four times a million-dollar album before starting. The amusing thing about all this is its supreme unimportance-- after it's all over, and they've outsold everyone else in history, The Monkees will still leave absolutely no mark on American music."

July/August 1967

"Don Kirshner is a man who blew it. He created The Monkees out of a whole cloth, and he didn't miss a bet. The group succeeded in every way Kirshner planned, and his finger was in every pie. What's more, despite being based on manipulation more than quality, The Monkees' success did not fade after initial impact. It grew, and the entire business admired Kirshner's ingenuity and envied him his percentage of the cake. Then, suddenly, it was all gone--Kirshner was fired from Colgems Records, and shortly thereafter, lost his job at Screen Gems, whose highly successful music division he had been solely responsible for five years.

What destroyed him? In a word, power. Kirshner has sued Columbia Pix/Screen Gems for breech of contract, and Screen Gems' reply is very illuminating. Among other things, it charges that
A) The night before the scheduled premiere of The Monkees TV show, Kirshner threatened not to deliever the master recordings for use on the series unless the producers of the show gave up their share of the music publishing royalties from Monkees songs, which share would then revert to Kirshner's operation.
B) Kirshner tried to force RCA to distribute as the new Monkees' single a recording which, like most of the earlier ones, featured instrumentals and vocals by people other than the Monkees. This after The Monkees had decided to go straight, and had threatened to walk out on not only the record company but the television series if any record were released without their approval. (RCA followed the instructions of Screen Gems and refused to release the single, but only after spending $25,000 printing the jacket of the 45)
C) Kirshner secretly tape-recorded conversations between himself, various officers of Colpix and Screen Gems, and the general manager of RCA. Etc, etc. Power blinds people. Legally, Colgems couldn't fire Kirshner; legally the Monkees had no control over what was released under their name. But in actual fact, contractual obligations are only a sheet of paper until it is established in court that the misconduct is in fact one-sided. And regardless of what The Monkees must do, if they refuse, it may be difficult to force them (shotgun recordings sessions?) So, Kirshner is in court instead of in charge, and the Monkees are in the studios doing what they want."

October 1967

"The Monkees had to cancel a concert in Detroit because of the riots."

March-April 1968

(interview with Jimi Hendrix)

Crawdaddy: Could you tell us what happened with the Monkees' tour?

Hendrix: Oh it was great, you know? It's just that the Daughters [D.A.R] really got us. And so this didn't bother us. The little kids, they dug us. At least they acted like they did. They rushed the stage and all, and probably that's what turned the scene on towards us. They say, 'What is this about, kids rushin like that?! Ugh! Too erotic...' and all this. And actually we weren't really thrown out. We just decided it was best for us, you know..'Cause we had an average of three hundred [Monkees tour] gigs offered to us, which we couldn't possibly do anyway. But we still did a few of them, you know. Which I was very glad, 'cause we had to go to Sweden anyway. There was no big hassle about that."


Want more info on Crawdaddy!?

-Crawdaddy!
-Crawdaddy! on wikipedia



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