Madness, chair-pulling, and musical insanity: The utterly bizarre audition process for ‘The Monkees’
Truly a show which could only have been drummed up in the acid-fueled age of the mid-1960s, The Monkees was always a pretty bizarre affair, with the four fictional rock and rollers riding around in their supercharged, convertible, three-rowed Pontiac GTO and becoming embroiled in increasingly off-the-wall antics.
Expectedly, then, that cartoonish nature also extended to the show’s audition process, which raises the essential query: how does one land a role in a fictional band? That was all down to the decision-making powers of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the collective brains behind The Monkees. Reportedly, the pair were first inspired to create a show about a rock and roll band after seeing The Beatles pull off some questionable acting appearances in A Hard Day’s Night, but without a group to rival the musical genius of the Fab Four, the next best thing was to invent one and recruit various jobbing actors and musicians to fill the roles.
If you were creating a real rock and roll band, you might place an ad in your local record store or start networking at a gig venue but, with the financial weight of a television production company behind them, Rafelson and Schneider chose instead to place advertisements in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety (or Daily Variety, as it was then called), rallying for “folk and roll musicians and singers for acting roles in new TV series”.
That demand, however, didn’t quite put across the whackiness that Rafelson and Schneider were going for when creating The Monkees. So, presumably, in an effort to pep things up a bit, they included the word “Madness!!” at the top of the ad, and specifically requested “insane boys, age 17–21” to apply. Seemingly, the United States was plagued by insanity in 1965, with some 437 young men responding to those advertisements.
Schneider and Rafelson weren’t going to take those hundreds of applicants at face value, though; their insanity had to be proved in an audition setting. Of the final four who made it onto the show, Davy Jones had the easiest time trying out, having already signed a screen deal with Columbia Pictures off the back of his legendary stage performance in Oliver!, and he even boasted a record contract with Colpix Records, an imprint of Columbia; Jones was, then, a ready-made Monkee.
Micky Dolenz was also a natural fit for the show, having amassed a wealth of experience as a child actor and part-time musician, so his audition was suitably seamless. However, when it came to Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, there seemed to be more at stake, and so the enforced whackiness had to be turned up somewhat.
The story goes that Schneider and Rafelson would act out in an increasingly off-the-wall manner, in order to see how the Monkee-hopefuls would react, including pulling a chair out from underneath Tork.
It’s hard to imagine most television auditions involving such antics, but the deliberate antagonisation of The Monkees during that process was essential to the final show, which basically needed live-action cartoons and four lads who would be able to deal with whatever bizarre and unexpected situations befell them. In the end, it is fair to say that the audition process paid off.
