Trivia / Michael Nesmith

• Big Name Fan: Was surprisingly a fan of vaporwave, in particular ''Floral Shoppe'' by Macintosh Plus and Birth of a New Day by 2814.
• Breakup Breakout: The only Monkee to arguably achieve anything close to solo commercial success after the group's demise.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: For years, Joel Whitburn's Billboard chart books claimed in their bios for Nesmith and The Monkees that he did "session work for Stax/Volt" prior to the Monkees, which is nowhere even close to being true, though they dropped the error in later editions. Possibly it was a garbled reference to his post-Monkees Countryside label being inspired by Stax's company model (as mentioned below).
• Creator Backlash:
  • He viewed his Monkees fame as this for a number of years, often refusing to even acknowledge it. When TFNB was touring, they insisted on playing the United Kingdom where The Monkees were not as well known. He was a bit hesitant to rejoin his old bandmates for their various reunions but mellowed out around the mid-'90s, even writing and directing their comeback TV special. He eventually grew to truly appreciate being a Monkee, and what the group meant (and still means) to old generations and new, moreso than he did back in the day!
  • He admitted to being embarrassed by some of the Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness of his lyrics, specifically citing "how the phoenix of our love first flapped its silken wings" from "Carlisle Wheeling"/"Conversations".
• Creator Recovery: The mid 70s weren't a great time for Michael. RCA dropped him from their roster, his first marriage collapsed, Countryside (his record label/recording studio) failed due to music industry politics, and his multimedia project The Prison (the notorious "book with a soundtrack", and later a stage show) bombed. In Infinite Tuesday he discusses going through a spiritual re-awakening after this, studying with both an Indian guru and a Christian Science practitioner. This, plus a new marriage, gave him renewed confidence as an artist, which led to "Rio" and From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing.
• He Also Did:
  • His production company Pacific Arts was a major player in the early home video market, acquiring a huge catalog of documentaries and art films that other distributors had ignored.
  • He dabbled in feature film in the 80s, co-writing and scoring Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, as well as co-producing Repo Man and Tapeheads.
  • After his mother died he administered two trust funds she'd set up, which were aimed at helping women succeed in business and the arts. He also masterminded the Council on Ideas, a prestigious gathering of notable thinkers that existed for most of The '90s.
  • For his work on his Videoranch website, he was a awarded a patent for "Embedding a real time video into a virtual environment."
• Missing Episode: Although some of them weren't available at the time, all of the songs on the instrumental Wichita Train Whistle Sings album eventually had various vocal versions released either by The Monkees or by Nesmith as a solo artist...except "Don't Cry Now". It's not even certain if lyrics were ever written for it. ^note Linda Ronstadt's song of the same title is a completely different J. D. Souther composition.
• Screwed by the Network: Michael Nesmith in Television Parts was originally intended as a 90-minute summer replacement for Saturday Night Live, but NBC decided they could recoup the production costs easier by turning it into a half-hour prime time show. Unfortunately, they elected to put it in the Friday Night Death Slot. It languished at the bottom of the weekly ratings for a few weeks before getting canceled.
• Troubled Production: The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, though not so much "troubled" as "complete demented chaos". Nesmith enlisted over 50 musicians, crammed them into the same studio for two days in November of 1967, had them play instrumental versions of his songs with eclectic arrangements (which often switched gears in the middle of songs), and had the whole thing catered by legendary Hollywood restaurant Chasen's. The musicians themselves treated it more like a Wild Teen Party than a recording session. At one point, Tommy Tedesco tossed his guitar in the air just to see it smash on the ground (an incident included on the final record). It's worth remembering that Michael had attended the similarly shambolic orchestra session for "A Day in the Life" and perhaps wanted to re-create the feeling.
• What Could Have Been:
  • He held the film rights to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for a while, and ultimately assisted Douglas Adams in making his final deal for them.
  • Countryside Records was an intriguing concept that he tried to launch around 1973. Basically, he took the one-stop-shop arrangement of Stax Records (label specializes in one genre, owns its own recording studio, and has a house band working at the studio backing all its artists) and applied it to country rock. He worked out a deal with Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman, but David Geffen, who was in charge of Elektra at the time, didn't get along with Nesmith, in part because Countryside was trying to fill the same musical niche as Geffen's own Asylum label. As a result, Countryside folded after releasing just a few singles and two albums (one of which was by Nesmith's trusty steel guitarist Red Rhodes).
• Working Title: He wrote Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff under the title Listen to the Band, referencing one of his classic Monkees songs. It actually makes better sense as a title, since the theme of Michael being part of various "bands" (musical and otherwise) is a big running theme in the book, but apparently he was worried people would think it was just a tell-all book about The Monkees, so he changed the title to reflect another one of the book's running themes (important incidents in his life happening on Tuesdays).
• Write Who You Know: He said that the "Bobby with a dollar" verse in "Mama Nantucket" is about Monkees creator Bob Rafelson.

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