Who, Exactly, Is The Leader Of The Monkees? An Investigation
I first pondered this question on July 2, 2015 with a post that published at Uproxx right before 4th of July weekend. What that actually means is I was finally allowed to write about a TV show that had been off the air for almost 50 years (at that point) because the attitude the day before a holiday weekend starts is basically, "Anything is fine, we just need something." (And that "something" is now so deleted by the internet even the Wayback machine couldn't find the whole piece. I did wind up finding it on a Word document that's still on my old MacBook.)
Also, there was a better than good chance my editor was already gone for the long weekend, so in those cases I'd just send it over to Brian Grubb instead and say something like, "Hey, mind looking this over and publishing it? Brett has already left." Which was usually met with, "Does he know about this post? Wait ... what even is this? You're trying to figure out who's the leader of the Monkees?" Then me giving a reassuring, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I mentioned it to him." Anyway, now I own my own newsletter and I can write about The Monkees anytime I want, which means this will probably be the only time.
At the time, The Monkees television show was in heavy rotation on the IFC channel and I became addicted. Now, I hadn't really watched The Monkees since they were on MTV and in syndication in the '80s but, back then, I couldn't truly appreciate the nuances. This show is incredible. Shortly after I wrote this, IFC would abruptly remove The Monkees and I was crestfallen because there was no other way to watch them. Because of music rights issues, The Monkees is not a streaming show. (If The Monkees ever wound up on Netflix, they would be immensely popular. If anyone from Netflix is reading this, please make this happen at any price. Shouldn't there be a lot of extra "we didn't buy Warner Bros." money laying around? Use that to get the streaming rights to The Monkees.)
In 2022, seven years after this piece, I had a Monkees resurgence. The complete series on Blu-ray was once again for sale – for years this out-of-print set would hover for around $1000 on eBay – so I bought it and we watched the whole series. Then Head. Then 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee. (Then I went on to watch some of Bob Rafelson's films I hadn't seen, like The King of Marvin Gardens and Stay Hungry.)
Having seen everything now, I neglected to take a few thing into consideration. First, Mike does just peace out on a few episodes in the second season for various reasons. Also, Peter was the first Monkee to leave the group, which doesn't really affect my conclusion ... but then Mike left, leaving only Micky and Davy. In this analysis I make it clear that I am talking about the band as it's presented in the television show, not real life. But even so, The Monkees with only Davy and Micky did not last very long. So my answer remains the same.
When The Monkees reunited in the mid 1980s they had a hit song with "That Was Then, This is Now," a song that would somehow reach number 20 on the Hot 100. Mike did not participate in this reunion, other than, I believe, playing one or two songs with the band at one concert. I remember at the time thinking The Monkees looked kind of old, which is funny because they were all about the same age as Lady Gaga is right now.
The other weird thing was, back in 2015 this post did surprisingly well. People were finally ready to take on some of the most challenging questions of our time, like who is actually the leader of The Monkees. Here's how that piece originally published in 2015. (Well ... at least I think, because I don't have access to the edited version.)
An In-Depth Investigation: Who, Exactly, Is The leader of The Monkees?
Recently, IFC started marathoning episodes of The Monkees on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It's weird to think that these episodes are almost 50 years old because, despite their age, they're immensely entertaining. (Well, entertaining enough to give me an excuse to stay in bed on a Saturday or Sunday morning. To be fair, that's a low bar.) But, now, watching these again for the first time since they were in reruns on MTV in the late '80s, I can't stop thinking about one important question: Who is the leader of The Monkees?
And I don't care who the leader is in real life, I'm talking about their leader on the fictional television series. They have such a strange dynamic; it's almost impossible to figure out. But, being that it's the last day before a three-day weekend, perhaps while we are celebrating our nation's independence, we can also take some time to ponder this question and come up with a viable answer.
So, let's try to figure out who, exactly, is the leader of The Monkees:
