Contemporary Authors

• The Long, Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora ( novel) St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998
• Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff ( memoir) Crown Archetype (New York, NY), 2017

1. Infinite Tuesday LCCN 2016058926 Type of material Book Personal name Nesmith, Michael, author. Main title Infinite Tuesday / Michael Nesmith. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Crown Archetype, [2017] Description 306 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm ISBN 9781101907504 hardcover 9781101907511 paperback 9781101907528 electronic book CALL NUMBER ML420.N456 A3 2017 Copy 1 Request in Performing Arts Reading Room (Madison, LM113) 2. The long, sandy hair of Neftoon Zamora LCCN 98019510 Type of material Book Personal name Nesmith, Michael. Main title The long, sandy hair of Neftoon Zamora / Michael Nesmith. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998. Description 245 p. ; 25 cm. ISBN 0312192967 CALL NUMBER PS3564.E78 L66 1998 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

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  Michael Nesmith
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Michael Nesmith
  Michael Nesmith 2013.jpg
  Nesmith performing at the Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts, April 13, 2013
  Background information
  Birth name Robert Michael Nesmith
  Also known as
  Michael Blessing Nez Wool Hat Papa Nez
  Born December 30, 1942 (age 74)
  Houston, Texas, U.S.
  Genres
  Rock pop folk country rock pop rock psychedelic rock
  Occupation(s)
  Musician composer author songwriter actor writer director producer owner of Pacific Arts Corporation
  Instruments
  Guitar vocals
  Years active 1965–present
  Associated acts
  The Monkees First National Band
  Robert Michael Nesmith (born December 30, 1942) is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman, and philanthropist, best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series The Monkees (1966–1968). Nesmith's songwriting credits include "Different Drum" (sung by Linda Ronstadt with the Stone Poneys).

  After the break-up of The Monkees, Nesmith continued his successful songwriting and performing career, first with the seminal country rock group The First National Band, with whom he had a top-40 hit "Joanne", and then as a solo artist.

  He is also an executive producer of the cult film Repo Man (1984). In 1981, Nesmith won the first Grammy Award given for Video of the Year for his hour-long television show, Elephant Parts.[1]

  Contents [hide]
  1 Early life
  2 Career
  2.1 The Monkees
  2.1.1 Return to the Monkees
  3 Solo career
  3.1 PopClips and MTV, Elephant Parts and Television Parts
  3.2 Pacific Arts and legal dispute
  3.3 Movies and books
  3.4 Recent history
  4 Other appearances
  5 Discography
  6 Filmography
  6.1 Television
  6.2 Films
  6.3 Home video
  7 Books
  7.1 Audio books
  8 References
  9 External links
  Early life[edit]
  Nesmith was born in Houston, Texas in 1942[2][not in citation given] He is an only child; his parents, Warren Audrey Nesmith and Bette Nesmith Graham, divorced when their son was four. He and his mother moved to Dallas to be closer to her parents, sister, aunts, and grandmother. Bette took temporary jobs ranging from clerical work to graphics design, and developed very good secretarial skills, including shorthand and, auspiciously, touch typing. When Nesmith was 13, his mother invented a typewriter correction fluid later known commercially as Liquid Paper. Over the next 25 years she built the Liquid Paper Corporation into a multimillion-dollar international company, which she finally sold to Gillette in 1979 for US$48 million. She died a few months later at age 56.[3]

  Nesmith was enrolled in the Dallas public school system in 1949, at age 6. Describing himself as an indifferent student, he nevertheless participated in choral and drama activities during his years at Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas.[4] He also began to write verse poetry. When he was 15 he enrolled in the Dallas Theater Center teen program, where he was featured in several plays.[citation needed]

  Without graduating from high school, Nesmith enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1960. He completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, was trained as an aircraft mechanic at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, and then was permanently stationed at the Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base near Burns Flat, Oklahoma. While in the Air Force, Nesmith obtained a G.E.D. and was discharged under honorable conditions in 1962. He enrolled in San Antonio College, a community college, where he met John Kuehne (later to be known as John London) and began a musical collaboration. The duo won the first San Antonio College talent award, performing a mixture of standard folk songs and a few of Nesmith's original songs. He met another SAC student, Phyllis Ann Barbour, whom he later married.[5]

  While in college, Nesmith began to write more songs and poetry, and after he and Phyllis married in 1963, they decided to move to Los Angeles so Nesmith could pursue his songwriting and singing career. At the time, Phyllis was pregnant with their first child, Christian DuVal. Nesmith began singing in folk clubs around Los Angeles and had one notable job as the "Hootmaster" for the Monday night hootenannies at The Troubadour, a West Hollywood night club that featured new artists. Here Nesmith met, socialized, and performed with many different members of the burgeoning new L.A. music scene. Randy Sparks from the New Christy Minstrels offered Nesmith a publishing deal for his songs, and it was while Nesmith was at this publishing house that Barry Friedman, also known as the Rev. Frazier Mohawk, brought the ad for The Monkees TV series auditions to Nesmith's attention. In October 1965, Nesmith landed the role as the wool-hat-wearing guitar player "Mike" in The Monkees TV series, which required real-life musical talent (writing, instrument playing, singing, recording, and performing in live concerts as part of The Monkees musical band). The Monkees television series aired from 1966 until 1968 and has developed a cult following over the years.[6]

  When The Monkees TV series ended in 1968, Nesmith enrolled part-time at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and studied American History and Music History. Michael and Phyllis's second son Jonathan was born in February 1968. Nesmith's third son Jason was born in August 1968 to Nurit Wilde, whom he met while working on The Monkees TV series.[7] In 1969, Nesmith formed the group First National Band with Kuehne, John Ware, and Red Rhodes. Nesmith wrote most of the songs for the band, including the single "Joanne" that received some airplay and was a moderate chart hit for seven weeks during 1970, rising to number 21 on the Billboard Top 40.[8] The First National Band has been credited with being among the pioneers of country-rock music.[9]

  Phyllis's third child and Nesmith's fourth, daughter Jessica, was born in September 1970. Circa 1972, Nesmith started the record label Countryside Records with Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records. Also, in 1972, Nesmith and Phyllis were divorced and he moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. In 1974, Nesmith started Pacific Arts Records and released what he called "a book with a soundtrack," titled The Prison, as the company's first release. In 1976, he married Kathryn Bild. In 1988, following the ending of this second marriage, he returned to Los Angeles where he met Victoria Kennedy. They moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1992 and then returned to Carmel, California, in 2000. They were married in April 2000 in Monterey, California. They separated in 2011 and Kennedy filed for divorce.[10]

  Career[edit]
  After a tour of duty in the Air Force, Nesmith was given a guitar as a Christmas present from his mother and stepfather. Learning as he went, he played solo and in a series of working bands, performing folk, country, and occasionally rock and roll. His verse poems became the basis for song lyrics, and after moving to Los Angeles with Phyllis and friend John London, he signed a publishing deal for his songs. Nesmith's "Mary, Mary" was recorded by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, while "Different Drum" and "Some of Shelly's Blues" were recorded by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. "Pretty Little Princess," written in 1965, was recorded by Frankie Laine and released as a single in 1968 on ABC Records. Later, "Some of Shelly's Blues" and "Propinquity (I've Just Begun to Care)" were made popular by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their 1970 album Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy.

  Nesmith began his recording career in 1963 by releasing a single on the Highness label. He followed this in 1965 with a one-off single released on Edan Records followed by two more recorded singles; one was titled "The New Recruit" under the name "Michael Blessing," released on Colpix Records, coincidentally also the label of Davy Jones, though they did not meet until The Monkees formed.

  The Monkees[edit]

  Nesmith (center) with The Monkees in 1967
  From 1965 to early 1970, Nesmith was a member of the television pop-rock band The Monkees, created for the television situation comedy of the same name. According to his May 2015 interview on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast, someone showed him a copy of the famous press advertisement asking for "four insane boys" so he applied for the job. Nesmith won his role largely by appearing blasé when he auditioned. He wore a wool hat to keep his hair out of his eyes, riding his motorcycle to the audition. Producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider remembered "Wool Hat", and called Nesmith back.

  Once he was cast, Screen Gems bought his songs so they could be used in the show. Many of the songs Nesmith wrote for The Monkees, such as "The Girl I Knew Somewhere," "Mary, Mary," and "Listen to the Band" became minor hits. One song he wrote, "You Just May Be the One," is in mixed meter, interspersing 5/4 bars into an otherwise 4/4 structure.

  The Gretsch guitar company built a one-off natural finish 12-string electric guitar for Nesmith when he was performing with The Monkees (Gretsch had a promotional deal with the group).[11] He earlier played a customized Gretsch twelve-string, which had originally been a six-string model. Nesmith used this guitar for his appearances on the television series, as well as The Monkees' live appearances in 1966 and 1967. Beginning in 1968, Nesmith used a white 6-string Gibson SG Custom for his live appearances with The Monkees. He would use that guitar in their motion picture Head for the live version of "Circle Sky," and also for the final original Monkees tour in 1969 with Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz. In a post on his Facebook page in 2011, Nesmith reported that both guitars were stolen in the early 1970s.

  As with the other Monkees, Nesmith came to be frustrated by the manufactured image of the whole project. He was permitted to write and produce two songs per album and his music was frequently featured in episodes of the series. Nesmith was the most publicly vocal Monkee about the band's prefabricated image.[citation needed]

  The Monkees in 1966 (Nesmith at bottom right)
  The Monkees succeeded in ousting supervisor Don Kirshner (with Nesmith punching a hole in a wall to make a point with Kirshner and attorney Herb Moelis) and took control of their records and song choices, but they worked as a four-man group on only one album, 1967's Headquarters. The band never overcame the credibility problems they faced when word spread that they had not played on their first records; Nesmith instigated this when he called the band's first non-studio press conference and called More of The Monkees "probably the worst record in the history of the world". However, their singles and albums continued to sell well, until the disastrous release of Head.

  Nesmith's last contractual Monkees commitment was a commercial for Kool-Aid and Nerf balls, in April 1970 (fittingly, the spot ends with Nesmith frowning and saying, "Enerf's enerf!"). With the band's fortunes continuing to fall, Nesmith asked to be released from his contract, and had to pay a default: "I had three years left... at $150,000 a year," which he had to pay back. He continued to feel the financial bite for years afterwards, until his inheritance from his mother's Liquid Paper fortune in 1980 eased those concerns. In a 1980 interview with Playboy he said of that time, "I had to start telling little tales to the tax man while they were putting tags on the furniture." While Nesmith had continued to produce his compositions with the Monkees, he withheld many of the songs from the final Monkees albums, only to release them on his post-Monkees solo records.

  Return to the Monkees[edit]

  Nesmith playing with The Monkees at the Chicago Theater, 2012
  Nesmith did not participate in the Monkees' 20th anniversary reunion. However, he did appear during an encore with the other three members at the Greek Theatre on September 7, 1986. In a 1987 interview for Nick Rocks, Nesmith stated, "When Peter called up and said 'we're going to go out, do you want to go?' I was booked. But, if you get to L.A ... I'll play."[12]

  "The question I am most often asked is 'how does it feel to be up with the guys after all this time?' Well, it's a mixture of feelings and all of them are good. But the one that comes to mind is the feeling of profound gratitude."
  Michael Nesmith, speaking about being part of The Monkees at the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star award in 1989.
  Nesmith appeared again in 1989 with Dolenz, Tork, and Jones when the Monkees received a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star.

  In 1995, Nesmith was again reunited with the Monkees to record their studio album (and first to feature all four since Head), titled Justus, released in 1996. He also wrote and directed a Monkees television special entitled Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees. To support the reunion, Nesmith, Jones, Dolenz, and Tork briefly toured the UK in 1997. The UK tour was the last appearance of all four Monkees performing together.

  In 2012, 2013, and 2014, after Jones's death, Nesmith reunited with Dolenz and Tork to perform concerts throughout the United States. Backed with a 7-piece band that included Nesmith's son, Christian,[13] the trio performed 27 songs from The Monkees discography ("Daydream Believer" was sung by the audience and played by the band).[14] When asked why he had decided to return to the Monkees, Nesmith stated, "I never really left. It is a part of my youth that is always active in my thoughts and part of my overall work as an artist. It stays in a special place."[15] Despite not touring with Dolenz and Tork for The Monkees' 50th anniversary reunion in 2016, Nesmith contributed vocally and instrumentally to the Monkees album Good Times!. Nesmith additionally contributed a song, "I Know What I Know" and was reportedly "thrilled" at the outcome of the album.[16]

  Solo career[edit]
  As he prepared for his exit from The Monkees in 1970, Nesmith was approached by John Ware of The Corvettes, a band that featured Nesmith's friend John London, who played on some of the earliest pre-Monkees Nesmith 45s as well as numerous Monkees sessions, and had 45s produced by Nesmith for the Dot label in 1969. Ware wanted Nesmith to put together a band. Nesmith said he would be interested only if noted pedal steel player Orville "Red" Rhodes was part of the project; Nesmith's musical partnership with Rhodes continued until Rhodes's death in 1995. The new band was christened Michael Nesmith and the First National Band and went on to record three albums for RCA Records in 1970.

  Nesmith has been considered one of the pioneers of country rock.[17] He also had moderate commercial success with the First National Band. Their second single, "Joanne," hit No. 21 on the Billboard chart and No. 17 on Cashbox, with the follow-up "Silver Moon" making No. 42 Billboard and No. 28 Cashbox. Two more singles charted ("Nevada Fighter" made No. 70 Billboard/No. 73 Cashbox, and "Propinquity" reached No. 95 Cashbox), and the first two LPs charted in the lower regions of the Billboard album chart. No clear answer has ever been given for the band's breakup.

  Nesmith followed up with The Second National Band, a band that, besides Nesmith, consisted of Michael Cohen (keyboards and Moog), Johnny Meeks (bass), jazzer Jack Ranelli (drums), and Orville Rhodes (pedal steel), as well as an appearance by singer, musician, and songwriter José Feliciano on congas. The album, Tantamount to Treason Vol. 1, was a commercial and critical disaster. Nesmith then recorded And the Hits Just Keep on Comin', featuring only him on guitar and Red Rhodes on pedal steel.

  Nesmith became more heavily involved in producing, working on Iain Matthews's album Valley Hi and Bert Jansch's L.A. Turnaround. Nesmith was given a label of his own, Countryside, through Elektra Records, as Elektra's Jac Holzman was a fan of Nesmith. It featured a number of artists produced by Nesmith, including Garland Frady and Red Rhodes. The staff band at Countryside also helped Nesmith on his next, and last, RCA album, Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash. Countryside folded when David Geffen replaced Holzman, as Countryside was unnecessary in Geffen's eyes.

  In the mid-1970s, Nesmith briefly collaborated as a songwriter with Linda Hargrove, resulting in the tune "I've Never Loved Anyone More", a hit for Lynn Anderson and recorded by many others, as well as the songs "Winonah" and "If You Will Walk With Me," both of which were recorded by Hargrove. Of these songs, only "Winonah" was recorded by Nesmith himself. During this same period, Nesmith started his multimedia company Pacific Arts, which initially put out audio records, 8-tracks, and cassettes, followed in 1981 with "video records." Nesmith recorded a number of LPs for his label, and had a moderate worldwide hit in 1977 with his song "Rio," the single taken from the album From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing. In 1983, Nesmith produced the music video for the Lionel Richie single "All Night Long". In 1987, he produced the music video for the Michael Jackson single "The Way You Make Me Feel".

  PopClips and MTV, Elephant Parts and Television Parts[edit]
  Further information: PopClips
  During this time, Nesmith created a video-clip for "Rio" which helped spur Nesmith's creation of a television program called PopClips for the Nickelodeon cable network. In 1980, PopClips was sold to the Time Warner/Amex consortium. Time Warner/Amex developed PopClips into the MTV network.

  Nesmith won the first-ever Grammy Award given for (Long-form) Music-Video in 1982, for his hour-long Elephant Parts and also had a short-lived series on NBC inspired by the video called Michael Nesmith in Television Parts. Television Parts included many other artists who were unknown at the time but went on to become major stars in their own right. Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Whoopi Goldberg, and Arsenio Hall all became well-known artists after their appearances on Nesmith's show. The concept of the show was to have comics render their stand-up routines into short comedy films much like the ones in Elephant Parts. Nesmith assembled writers Jack Handey, William Martin, John Levenstein, and Michael Kaplan, along with directors William Dear (who had directed Elephant Parts) and Alan Myerson, as well as producer Ward Sylvester to create the show. The half-hour show ran for eight episodes in the summer of 1985 on NBC Thursday nights in prime time.

  Pacific Arts and legal dispute[edit]
  Further information: Pacific Arts Corporation
  Michael Nesmith formed the Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. in 1974 to manage and develop media projects. Pacific Arts Video became a pioneer in the home video market, producing and distributing a wide variety of videotaped programs, although the company eventually ceased operations after an acrimonious contract dispute with PBS over home video licensing rights and payments for several series, including Ken Burns' The Civil War. The dispute escalated into a lawsuit that went to jury trial in Federal Court in Los Angeles. On February 3, 1999, a jury awarded Nesmith and his company Pacific Arts $48.875 million in compensatory and punitive damages, prompting his widely quoted comment, "It's like finding your grandmother stealing your stereo. You're happy to get your stereo back, but it's sad to find out your grandmother is a thief." PBS appealed the ruling, but the appeal never reached court and a settlement was reached, with the amount paid to Pacific Arts and Nesmith kept confidential.

  Nesmith's current Pacific Arts project is Videoranch 3D, a virtual environment on the internet that hosts live performances at various virtual venues inside the Ranch. He performed live inside Videoranch 3D on May 25, 2009.

  Movies and books[edit]
  Nesmith was the executive producer for the films Repo Man, Tapeheads, and Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, as well as his own solo recording and film projects.

  In 1998, Nesmith published his first novel, The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora. It was developed originally as an online project and was later published as a hard cover book by St Martin's Press. Nesmith's second novel The America Gene was released in July 2009 as an online download from Videoranch.com.

  Recent history[edit]
  In the early 1980s, Nesmith teamed up with satirist P.J. O'Rourke to ride his vehicle Timerider in the annual Baja 1000 off-road race. This is chronicled in O'Rourke's 2009 book Driving Like Crazy.

  During the 1990s, Nesmith, as Trustee and President of the Gihon foundation, hosted the Council on Ideas, a gathering of intellectuals from different fields who were asked to identify the most important issues of their day and publish the result. The Gihon ceased the program in 2000 and started a new Program for the Performing Arts. Nesmith also spent a decade as a board of trustees member, nominating member and vice-chair of the American Film Institute.

  In 1992, Nesmith undertook a concert tour of North America to promote the CD release of his RCA solo albums (although he included the song "Rio", from the album From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing). The concert tour ended at the Britt Festival in Oregon. A video and CD, both entitled Live at the Britt Festival were released capturing the 1992 concert.[18]

  Michael Nesmith performing with Chris Scruggs in April 2013
  Nesmith continues to record and release his own music. His last album, Rays, was released in 2006. In 2011, Nesmith returned to producing, working with blues singer/guitarist Carolyn Wonderland. Nesmith produced Wonderland's version of Robert Johnson's "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" on her album Peace Meal. Wonderland married writer-comedian A. Whitney Brown on March 4, 2011, in a ceremony officiated by Nesmith.

  In 2012, Nesmith briefly toured Europe prior to re-joining The Monkees for their tours of the United States.[19] Intermixing the Monkees concerts, Nesmith also launched solo tours of the U.S. Unlike his 1992 U.S. tour, which predominantly featured music from his RCA recordings, Nesmith stated his 2013 tour featured songs that he considers "thematic, chronological and most often requested by fans". Chris Scruggs, grandson of Earl Scruggs, replaced the late Red Rhodes on the steel guitar. The tour was captured on a forthcoming live album, Movies Of The Mind.

  In 2014, he guest-starred in Season 4, Episode 9 of the IFC comedy series "Portlandia" in the fictitious role of the father of the Mayor of Portland, Oregon.

  Other appearances[edit]
  Nesmith had a cameo appearance as a taxi driver in the Whoopi Goldberg film Burglar.

  Nesmith had cameo appearances in his own films including Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (Race Official), Repo Man (Rabbi), and Tapeheads (Water Man).

  In a promotional video to support Pacific Arts's video release of Tapeheads, Nesmith was introduced with a voice-over making fun of his Monkees persona. The narration teases Nesmith, who approaches the camera to speak, poking fun at his "missing hat."

  An opportunistic lookalike from the U.S. cashed in on his similarity to Nesmith by appearing on talk shows and doing interviews in Australia during the 1980s. The scam was successful, the lookalike being far enough from America to avoid detection as a fraud (which was more likely in the U.S., where the real Nesmith had made many media and show-business acquaintances). An entertaining interviewee, the impersonator's charade was not discovered until after he had vanished from the public eye. The imposter, Barry Faulkner, who had pulled various fraudulent scams for 40 years, was finally apprehended and sent to jail in 2009.[20][21]

  Discography[edit]
  Further information: Michael Nesmith discography
  Filmography[edit]
  Television[edit]
  Year Title Role Notes
  1966–1968 The Monkees Himself Credited as Monkees persona "Mike"
  1985 Television Parts Host One-series spin-off from Elephant Parts
  1997 Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees Himself -
  2014 Portlandia Father of the Mayor Season 4, episode 9
  Films[edit]
  Year Title Role Notes
  1968 Head Himself Credited as Monkees persona "Mike"
  1982 Timerider: The Adventures of Lyle Swann Race Official uncredited
  1984 Repo Man Rabbi credited
  1987 Burglar Cabbie uncredited
  1988 Tapeheads Water Man uncredited
  Home video[edit]
  Year Title Role Notes
  1981 Rio and Cruisin' Performer/Producer Music videos
  1981 Elephant Parts Various characters/Producer Released on DVD 1998 and again in 2003
  1985 The Television Parts Home Companion Various characters/Producer Compilation from television series
  1986 Dr. Duck's Super-Secret All-Purpose Sauce Various characters/Producer Music and comedy segments
  1989 Nezmusic Performer/Producer Music videos
  1991 Live at the Britt Festival Performer/Producer Concert from 1991 concert
  2008 Pacific Arts Performer/Producer Music videos on DVD
  Books[edit]
  (n.b. books proper – not including The Prison and The Garden)
  The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora (1998)
  The America Gene (2009)
  Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff (2017)
  Audio books[edit]
  The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora (2004) (with Nesmith reading the story)
  Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff (2017) (narrated by Nesmith)
  References[edit]
  Jump up ^ "Past Winners Search". The GRAMMYs.
  Jump up ^ Texas Birth Index 1903–97 showing : "Robert Michael Nesmith, born December 30, 1942, Harris County, father Warren Audrey Nesmith, mother Bette Clair McMurray.
  Jump up ^ "Bette Nesmith Graham: Liquid Paper Inventor". Women-inventors.com. Retrieved April 3, 2012.
  Jump up ^ The Monkees: Mike Nesmith biography from Rhino Records
  Jump up ^ National Enquirer, February 26, 2010
  Jump up ^ Sandoval, Andrew. Music Box Liner Notes: The True Story of "The Monkees", Rhino Records, 2001
  Jump up ^ Harvey Kubernik, Scott Calamar, Diltz, Henry, Lou Adler, Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon (Sterling Publishing, 2009), ISBN 978-1-4027-6589-6, p. 95. Excerpts available at Google Books.
  Jump up ^ Joel Whitburn, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, p. 330 (5th ed. 1992).
  Jump up ^ "Michael Nesmith - Country Rock - Rock/Pop - Music - www.real.com". Uk.real.com. Retrieved May 14, 2010.
  Jump up ^ The Mirror (UK), March 5, 2011
  Jump up ^ The custom-made guitar was frequently cited at that time as being worth $5,000 (the equivalent of over $30,000 in 2008 dollars), which was undoubtedly inflated for publicity purposes.
  Jump up ^ Nick Rocks, January 1987 Profile of Michael Nesmith
  Jump up ^ Dickinson, Chrissie, "A fresh and electric look back from 3 Monkees", Chicago Tribune, November 17, 2012
  Jump up ^ "VVN Music: Set List: Monkees Open Reunion Tour @ Escondido, CA". Vintagevinylnews.com. 2012-11-10. Retrieved 2014-04-11.
  Jump up ^ Green, Andy, "Q&A: Michael Nesmith on His Surprising Return to the Monkees", Rolling Stones Magazine, August 8, 2012
  Jump up ^ "The Monkees' Michael Nesmith 'Thrilled' With New Album". ABC News. May 27, 2016.
  Jump up ^ Liner notes from the CD Hillbilly Fever, Volume 5 released by Rhino Entertainment in 1995.
  Jump up ^ "AllMusic". AllMusic.
  Jump up ^ Lewis, Randy, "Michael Nesmith to launch first U.S. solo tour in 21 years", LA Times, February 23, 2013
  Jump up ^ "Master imposter finally goes to jail". gulfnews. Retrieved March 1, 2012.
  Jump up ^ John, Katelyn (March 20, 2009). "No sentence discount for master conman Barry John Faulkner". News.com.au. Retrieved May 14, 2010.
  External links[edit]
  Wikimedia Commons has media related to Michael Nesmith.
  Wikiquote has quotations related to: Michael Nesmith
  Videoranch, a Michael Nesmith company
  Michael Nesmith on IMDb
  Gilbert Gottfried's podcast interview May 2015
  Article in Wired magazine about Michael Nesmith and the Council on Ideas
  Michael Nesmith biography
  (Unofficial) Michael Nesmith home page
  SWINDLE Magazine interview
  Michael Nesmith interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969)
  Michael Nesmith: Overcoming The Monkees at NPR.com
  Nesmith at Allmusic.com
  Michael Nesmith interview 2013
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  MUSIC
  Monkees' Michael Nesmith spins 'an autobiographical riff' in 'Infinite Tuesday'

  By RANDY LEWIS
  APR 07, 2017 | 04:45 PM

  Monkees' Michael Nesmith spins 'an autobiographical riff' in 'Infinite Tuesday'
  Musician Michael Nesmith has written "Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff" on his life as a member of the Monkees, a pioneer of country-rock music and music videos, as well as film producer and novelist. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

  The signs were there pretty early on, had anyone been paying attention, that the young Texas kid who eventually would be dubbed "the smart Monkee" was, well, traveling to the beat of his own drummer.
  "When I was 14, I applied for a job at the music store … and I was refused," Michael Nesmith writes in "Infinite Tuesday," a new reflection on his life suitably subtitled "An Autobiographical Riff." "Obviously I was too young, but I just started working there anyway, on my own.

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  "I came in one day, hung around, saw a broom leaning in a corner, grabbed it and started sweeping up and organizing the storeroom. There was just enough of a bureaucracy that no one knew whether I had been hired or who I worked for or what I was actually doing there. I came in the next day, and the next, and they all got used to me."
  See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour » »
  That incident, which sounds like the blueprint for the classic "Seinfeld" episode in which Kramer reported every day to a job for which he'd never been hired, is fairly indicative of the way Nesmith has moved through life for 74 years.
  In his memoir, which Random House will publish April 18, he writes of inventing his own high school schedule, attending those classes that interested him, skipping those that didn't. "My self-designed school day consisted of three lunch periods, three choir periods, two speech and drama periods and a homeroom," he writes.
  The same free-spirited mind-set prompted him, at 20, to leave the Dallas home of ihis single mom — Bette, who would go on to invent Liquid Paper and amass a fortune — for the bright lights of Hollywood.
  "I was in flight," Nesmith explains now between bites of a chicken sandwich at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from the Burbank hotel where is he camped out during a quick trip to L.A. from his longtime home in Monterey.
  The Monkees circa 1968: Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork.
  The Monkees circa 1968: Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork. (Henry Diltz / Rhino Records)

  "When you do that, you think, 'I'll head to a beach in Mexico — or Africa, or the South Pacific — and live off coconuts and whatever rum you can bargain.' But those are fanciful. When you are really out there in full-scale flight, you think about the weather, and where you might know somebody and Hollywood is where it's at.
  "At least," he adds, "at 20 years old that sounds like the truth, and you hope it is the truth."
  After several years as a starving artist — some of which he spent emceeing weekly hootenanny sessions at the Troubadour in West Hollywood — he was cast in "The Monkees," a television show created and co-produced by Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson in response to Beatlemania and the success of "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" (Rafelson parlayed his "Monkees" success into a film career that included the 1970 counterculture classic "Five Easy Pieces.")
  But Nesmith was a maverick not a teen idol, emerging in the mid- to late-'60s as a pioneer of country-rock music and later as a visionary whose early blends of music and video earned him the first Grammy Award ever bestowed on a music video.
  In 1974, that same innovative mind-set fueled the launch of his own Pacific Arts record company as an alternative to the major label system and most recently led to "Infinite Tuesday," a lively and unconventional reflection on his life. He's scheduled for an April 27 question-answer session with moderator D.A. Wallach as part of the "Live Talks L.A." series at the Moss Theatre in Santa Monica.
  The book's title — for which he quickly credits his publisher — references a single-panel comic by Paul Crum first published in 1937 in the British magazine Punch, which appealed to his absurdist sense of humor: Two hippos stand side by side in a pond, nearly submerged, and one says to the other, "I keep thinking it's Tuesday."
  The Monkees, shown during a 1996 30th anniversary reunion tour: Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones.
  The Monkees, shown during a 1996 30th anniversary reunion tour: Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones. (Bob Carey / Los Angeles Times)

  "The cartoon was a window into a playground where other people thought as we did," Nesmith writes in the first chapter of the book, which ping-pongs from decade to decade, subject to subject in a manner not unlike Bob Dylan's autobiographical "Chronicles, Vol. 1." "It showed me that someone else shared my sense of humor and my sense of absurdity."
  The book, Nesmith explains in the soft, slightly sandpaper-edged voice that's been a signature of his vocals, is "anachronistic in a way, because I certainly didn't plan on saying 'And then I wrote, and then I did this, and then I learned, and then I found out…' That was never part of it.
  "What was a part of it, what I said in the preface, is [the approach of Federico Fellini's 1973 film] 'Amarcord.' I'm looking back over these events that I can't quite remember, so I fill in the gaps, like we all do," he says. "It's not a lack of memory, it's just the way we all go into our past. And putting that together in the context of a life lived."
  Not surprisingly, the book reads like the chronicle of a relentless seeker rather than the diary of a celebrity, although Nesmith certainly doesn't ignore the professional and social collaborations he's had with "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" author Douglas Adams, members of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, actor Jack Nicholson and numerous others.
  In one chapter, he tells of heading off one evening in the 1960s to the Palomino country music tavern in North Hollywood just as the Monkees had become household names. He'd befriended Nicholson, yet to achieve stardom, through their mutual friend Peter Fonda, and invited him along to catch one of Nesmith's heroes, Jerry Lee Lewis.
  "At one point, Jerry Lee began to introduce me from the stage, having no idea who I was or what I looked like," Nesmith writes. "He had been told only that 'one of the Monkees' was in the audience. Jerry Lee started the intro, looking directly at Jack, finally pointing at him with a flourish and saying to the crowd, 'Ladies and gentlemen, one of the Monkees! Please stand up and take a bow.' …Nicholson's light was shining so bright even then, even when he was unknown, that Lewis pegged him for a standout."
  Just a single chapter of the book is devoted to his years with the Monkees, even though the TV show’s relatively brief two-season run made him a bona fide pop star and provided lifetime recognition for him and the guys with whom he once monkeyed around: Davy Jones, who died in 2012, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork.
  His experience in "The Monkees" brought fame beyond his wildest boyhood dreams but was accompanied by a plethora of challenges, one of which he shorthands in the book as "Celebrity Psychosis," an affliction that causes the sufferer to inflate his own importance beyond all reason.
  For years after that he distanced himself from the show, and his former band mates, but over time reached a sense of acceptance about what he'd been part of.
  "To watch the internal dynamics of the Monkees persist — that is to say, what was good about it — was gratifying," he says. "But it's not the topic of the book."
  After joining Dolenz and Tork on a 50th anniversary Monkees tour last year, Nesmith indicated he's hung up his wool knit Monkees cap for good, leaving Dolenz and Tork as a duo to keep serving up such effervescent pop hits as "Last Train to Clarksville," "Pleasant Valley Sunday," "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" and "Daydream Believer" by the group once derided as "the Prefab Four."
  Nesmith provided some of the teen pop group's most literate songs, from the Dylan-esque wordplay of "Tapioca Tundra" to the heart-on-sleeve bittersweet romantic parting in "Some of Shelley's Blues" (the latter covered both by Ronstadt and her band, the Stone Poneys, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band).
  And though many might reasonably assumethat Nesmith's primary influences were Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie or even Cole Porter, this is not the case.
  "I'm definitely a child of Bo Diddley," he says. "There were these simple sudden truths in the way he wrote that turned into riffs … that were underpinned with his primitive basic rhythmic foundation [in a way] that taught me a lot about how to communicate with a song."
  Not coincidentally, Nesmith's book has generated a companion Rhino Records compilation CD, "Infinite Tuesday: Autobiographical Riffs — The Music."
  Numerous facets of his long recording career are represented in 14 tracks, from Monkees songs "Papa Gene's Blues" and "Listen to the Band" to material that blurred the line separating country and rock in the 1960s: "Different Drum," and his early '70s solo hits "Joanne" and "Silver Moon" up through "Rio," a 1977 single that put him on the track to creating music videos for a new generation.
  Among the many varied career turns he touches on in the book is the idea he cooked up in the late 1970s for a show he called "Pop Clips," consisting of 30 minutes' worth of videos created for various pop songs. There was no outlet for such a thing at the time, but Nesmith was directed to meet with executives at Warner Bros., who were looking for new ideas to program video channels; "Pop Clips" became a template that helped lay the foundation for what would become MTV.
  Nesmith, however, had already moved on, producing pet film projects such as "Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann," an absurdist 1982 time-travel movie directed by his friend, Bill Dear, and director Alex Cox's acclaimed indie film "Repo Man" in 1984.
  Those were financed in part by money left him by his mother, a former secretary who decades earlier had invented Liquid Paper, a company she sold in 1979 for nearly $50 million.
  Nesmith also used his inheritance to fund the Gihon Foundation, which supports free live performances, on stage and online, of music, theater works and dance by emerging and established artists, and which Nesmith still oversees.
  Although "Infinite Tuesday" is Nesmith's first formal foray into long-form nonfiction, he has also written and published two novels: "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora" in 1998 and "The American Gene" in 2009.
  "I've never really been happy as a performer," he says. "I didn't mind a little bit of movie stuff and TV stuff — that was OK because there was a certain interior quality to it, even though you were in the middle of a bunch of people.
  "I think I'm really cut out for the writer's life," he says, sounding not a little surprised at this late-in-life realization. "I like the long hours of solitude and thought. It's really my cup of tea."
  randy.lewis@latimes.com
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  Monkees Star Mike Nesmith Reveals All on Drugs, a Near-Crippling Illness, and Jack Nicholson 'Bromance' in New Memoir
  BY JORDAN RUNTAGH•@JORDANRUNTAGH

  POSTED ON APRIL 14, 2017 AT 6:45PM EST

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  MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
  Michael Nesmith has done far more than just Monkee around. Famed as one-quarter of the legendary television/music/live performance project in the late 1960s, Nesmith shared highlights of his unusual life in a new memoir, Infinite Tuesday. In it, he talks of his high-flying days in the Monkees, personal and financial struggles following their dissolution, and the shocking mysterious illness that nearly left him paralyzed.

  MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
  The Monkees were designed as television’s answer to the Beatles, and their instant success soon brought them into upper echelon of fame alongside the real Fab Four. Nesmith stuck up a friendship with John Lennon, staying at his house in the London suburb of Weybridge, and even attending sessions for the Beatles’ landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

  He also hung out other music legends, including Johnny Cash and Jimi Hendrix, but his real kinship was with a struggling actor by the name of Jack Nicholson.

  “I met Jack through Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the producers of The Monkees,” he writes. “We became friends and steady companions right away. Jack was still bombing around the streets of LA in his yellow VW convertible looking for work as an actor-writer-director, and he was good company.”

  ARTHUR SCHATZ/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
  The pair quickly became inseparable. “When Jack came on the scene of The Monkees’ TV production, he was not yet famous and was one of the few people I met who seemed self-aware and grounded. At the same time his demeanor and sense of humor was exceptional and like catnip for me. I thought he was the coolest guy, and since this was long before the term bromance entered the US lexicon, some people in my crowd of friends thought my fascination with him was beyond the pale.”

  Nicholson would co-write the band’s 1968 feature film, Head, which inadvertently served as the band’s undoing. Produced amid a haze of drugs, the rambling non sequitur storyline alienated their teenybopper fanbase and infuriated critics. It was a massive commercial failure, and the Monkees disintegrated soon after.

  “[After] the end of the TV show and the unsuccessful release of Head, I was left to fly on my own, and things of the most mundane type took horrifying turns,” he writes of this troubling time. “The IRS, which I had ignored for several years, showed up with a huge bill for unpaid taxes and started seizing property.” The government would ultimately leave him “essentially penniless.”

  But it would get worse. Songs he recorded with his new group failed to sell, his decade-long marriage to college sweetheart Phyllis imploded, and he “ran off” with the wife of a close friend. He sunk what little money he had into constructing a country music studio for a record company, but the plans ultimately yielded nothing.

  “I found myself in free-fall,” he writes. “Every seam in the sack of my life started to split and all the contents started leaking out. My affair with my friend’s wife became even more horrible to me, but I didn’t know how to retreat….I had no opportunities as an actor, a player, a singer, a songwriter, or a producer.”

  PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
  Nesmith spent most of the ’70s trying to piece together his post-Monkees life by following a series of gurus and experimenting with the psychedelic, LSD. “Once I took it I could see how different life looked,” he says of the experience. He tripped only a handful of times (“Enough to get a good feel for the drug.”) describing the sensation as “pleasant” but ultimately unfulfilling. “The message was, ‘You don’t need drugs to reach this space,'” he admits.

  He would ultimately find renewed purpose by drawing on his Monkees past and filming an imaginative promotional video for his 1979 song, “Rio.” Intrigued by this new “music video” concept, he set about laying the groundwork for the network that would become MTV.

  FROM COINAGE: Here Are the 7 Most Expensive Music Videos of All Time

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  His mother, the inventor of Liquid Paper (a.k.a. white out) left Nesmith a multi-million dollar inheritance upon her death in 1980, putting an end to any money worries. Still, the loss devastated him, and the sudden wealth left him confused. Nesmith described the windfall as “like a cross between a tsunami and a Category 5 hurricane” and recalls phone calls from friends offering an awkward mix of condolences and congratulations.

  He would spend the next few decades exploring the nascent home video market, writing two novels, and producing films, including the sci-fi comedy Repo Man. But Nesmith endured more tragedy in 2007 when an unidentified illness left him unable to walk. “I was essentially helpless, a captive in my home,” he says. Visits to a variety of specialists were not helpful, in his eyes: “Each doctor I went to had diagnoses that were variations of the same story. While they did not think it was fatal in the near term, because they didn’t really know what it was, they thought it might be incurable.”

  He began to embrace the Christian Science faith, which he had been exposed to since his youth and it appeared to succeed where modern medicine had failed. “I spent hours daily in painless study and prayer and contemplation. Slowly I saw some normalcy return, and as I got my movement back in my hand, I was able to get up and move around.”

  FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY
  While something a miracle, Nesmith takes a fairly level-headed approach to the recovery. “I felt confident it wasn’t supernatural in any sense, just natural good taking care of her own, replacing the beliefs of a mortal with the facts and forces of the supremely natural world.”

  Infinite Tuesday is on sale April 18.

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• Rolling Stone - http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-michael-nesmith-remembers-davy-jones-20120308

  Exclusive: Michael Nesmith Remembers Davy Jones
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  Exclusive: Michael Nesmith Remembers Davy Jones
  'For me David was The Monkees. They were his band. We were his side men.'

  Michael Nesmith performs in Marfa, Texas. Courtesy of Michael Nesmith
  By Andy Greene
  March 8, 2012
  More News
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  Michael Nesmith (best known as the Monkee in the green wool hat) has largely stayed out of the limelight since the group split over forty years ago, though he released a series of acclaimed country-rock albums in the early 1970s and helped lay the groundwork for MTV in the early 1980s. His mother invented Liquid Paper, and left him the bulk of her massive fortune – giving him little incentive to join the Monkees on their many reunion tours. In 1996, however, he shocked fans by reuniting with the band for the album Justus and a brief European tour the next year. That was the last time he spent any real time with Davy Jones, but the singer's death brought back a flood of memories and he agreed to speak with Rolling Stone through e-mail.

  What's your first memory of meeting Davy?
  I think, not certainly, that I met him on the stage where we were doing the screen tests. He seemed confident and part of the proceedings, charming, outgoing.

  It's clear the producers cast each of you for different reasons. Why do you think they selected Davy? What did he bring to the group that was unique?
  I think David was the first one selected and they built the show around him. English (all the rage), attractive, and a very accomplished singer and dancer, right off the Broadway stage from a hit musical. None of the other three of us had any of those chops.

  Is there one anecdote that stands out in your mind that personifies Monkee-mania at its peak?
  It was nonstop from the moment the show aired, so there was a constant hyper-interest in the group of us – the meter was maxxed and stayed that way for a couple of years. Once in Cleveland we strayed from our bodyguards into the plaza where a train station, or some public transport hub, was letting out thousands of fans for the concert we were on the way to give. They spotted David and the chase was on. We were like the rabbit – fleeing in blind panic. We saw a police car and jumped in the back seat, blip, blip, blip, blip, – squashed together shoulder to shoulder in our concert duds, and slammed the door just as the tsunami of pink arms closed over the car's windows. We were relieved. The cops were freaked out. They drove us to the station and our guys picked us up and we did the show. But it was like that when the four of us were together, Davy in front – pandemonium. One missed step and we were running.

  Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story tends to go that you (and to a slightly lesser extent Peter) got frustrated pretty early on with your lack of control over the Monkees music. Davy had a Broadway background and was pretty used to following orders. Did he share your frustrations at first? If not, explain how his views evolved to the point that he was eager to join your battle against Kirshner and the label.
  You are not completely wrong, but "frustrated" is the wrong word. We were confused, especially me. But all of us shared the desire to play the songs we were singing. Everyone was accomplished – the notion I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and wont stop – but it was not true. Peter was a more accomplished player than I by an order of magnitude, Micky and Davy played and sang and danced and understood music. Micky had learned to play drums, and we were quite capable of playing the type of songs that were selected for the show. We were also kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us. It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us – sort of "what's the big deal – why wont you let us play the songs we are singing?" This confusion of course betrayed an ignorance of the powers that were and the struggle that was going on for control between the show's producers in Hollywood and the New York-based publishing company owned by Screen Gems. The producers backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did without the explicit support of the show's producers.

  Some have described the movie Head as "career suicide." How did you feel about it at the time? Did you have concerns that it would alienate and confuse a huge segment of your audience? Looking back, was it a mistake?
  Looking back it was inevitable. Don't forget that by the time Head came out the Monkees were a pariah. There was no confusion about this. We were on the cosine of the line of approbation, from acceptance to rejection – the cause for this is another discussion not for here – and it was basically over. Head was a swan song. We wrote it with Jack and Bob – another story not for here – and we liked it. It was an authentic representation of a phenomenon we were a part of that was winding down. It was very far from suicide – even though it may have looked like that. There were some people in power, and not a few critics, who thought there was another decision that could have been made. But I believe the movie was an inevitability – there was no other movie to be made that would not have been ghastly under the circumstances.

  In your estimation, why did the Monkees burn out so quickly? The whole thing ended after little more than two years.
  That is a long discussion – and I can only offer one perspective of a complex pattern of events. The most I care to generalize at this point is to say there was a type of sibling suppression that was taking place unseen. The older sibling followed the Beatles and Stones and the sophistication of a burgeoning new world order – the younger siblings were still playing on the floor watching television. The older siblings sang and danced and shouted and pointed to a direction they assumed the Monkees were not part of and pushed the younger sibling into silence. The Monkees went into that closet. This is all retrospect, of course – important to focus on the premise that "no one thought the Monkees up." The Monkees happened – the effect of a cause still unseen, and dare I say it, still at work and still overlooked as it applies to present day.

  Do you think Davy enjoyed the experience of being a Monkee more than you did? If so, why?
  I can only speculate. For me David was The Monkees. They were his band. We were his side men. He was the focal point of the romance, the lovely boy, innocent and approachable. Micky was his Bob Hope. In those two – like Hope and Crosby – was the heartbeat of the show.

  The incident in which you punched a hole in a wall during a fight with Kirshner has been told so many times over the years it almost feels apocryphal. At the very least, the notion you were fighting about "Sugar Sugar" seems to have been debunked. What's your memory of that incident? Did Davy ever convey a feeling to you were rocking the boat too much after scenes like that?
  David continually admonished me to calm down and do what I was told. From day one. His advice to me was to approach the show like a job, do my best, and shut up, take the money, and go home. Micky the same. I had no idea what they were talking about at the time, or why. The hole in the wall had nothing to do with "Sugar Sugar." It was the release of an angry reaction to a personal affront. The stories that circulate are as you say – apocryphal.

  Do you have a favorite Davy Jones-sung Monkees song? If so, what makes it your favorite?
  "Daydream Believer." The sensibility of the song is [composer] John Stewart at his best, IMHO – it has a beautiful undercurrent of melancholy with a delightful frosting, no taste of bitterness. David's cheery vocal leads us all in a great refrain of living on love alone.

  What's your fondest memory of your time with Davy?
  He told great jokes. Very nicely developed sense of the absurd – Pythonesque – actually, Beyond the Fringe – but you get my point. We would rush to each other anytime we heard a new joke and tell it to each other and laugh like crazy. David had a wonderful laugh, infectious. He would double up, crouching over his knees, and laugh till he ran out of breath. Whether he told the joke or not. We both did.

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• Pitchfork - https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1331-michael-nesmith-the-closest-the-monkees-ever-got-to-cool/

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  Michael Nesmith: The Closest The Monkees Ever Got to Cool
  Nesmith circa 1967 (photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)Nesmith circa 1967 (photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
  THE PITCH

  by Sean Nelson
  ROCK
  OCTOBER 19 2016
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  The promotional image for the Monkees’ 50th anniversary tour is exactly what casual observers of the group’s nostalgia-circuit phase would expect: vibrant pastel colors and smiling cartoon faces frame the promise of “Good Times!” guaranteed by the familiar guitar-shaped band logo. But, like pretty much every point of intersection between pop music and old age, the 50th anniversary of the Monkees is shot through with pathos if you know where to look.

  The smiling cartoon faces on the poster belong to Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, the only two Monkees participating in the tour. Davy Jones died of a heart attack in 2012. And though Michael Nesmith has been performing with the group regularly since then, he only agreed to perform at a handful of dates on the golden anniversary tour, culminating in what he declared would be his final performance with the Monkees, held September 16 at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. This news was disappointing but not surprising to Monkees devotees, who are accustomed to Nesmith being an infrequent, if not entirely reluctant, participant in the ongoing resurrection of the project.

  MTV started showing reruns of the series in 1986, hastening an of out-of-nowhere pop-culture comeback. The show, and the band, were a perfect match for the network at that precise moment, when its initial radio-for-the-eyes presentation started to give way to a more anarchic and ironic visual style that proved more influential than any of the individual bands it promoted. Influential enough, in fact, to revive the career of the then-largely forgotten show/band/concept.

  Dolenz, Tork, and Jones dived right back into being full-time Monkees, staging reunion tours, and creating new albums, singles, and videos. (Dolenz and Jones had never entirely stopped being at least part-time Monkees, appearing together throughout the ’70s.) Nesmith always limited his participation to the odd drop-in—a two-song guest appearance at the Greek Theatre here, a short UK tour to promote a one-time-only new album there. In the post MTV-years, as the series became a cable rerun evergreen, work remained steady for the trio configuration, though the sheds and theaters they started off playing became state fairs and casinos in reasonably short order. But when Nesmith came in from the cold to write and play on the band’s 30th anniversary reunion LP, Justus, the quartet played Wembley. “I’ve seen the Monkees show and I think it’s very professional and very good,” he told me in a 1996 interview to talk up that record. "But when all four of us get together on the same stage, there’s an order of magnitude shift.”

  Whether that shift is detectable to the casual fan, I could not say. But in the world of Monkees adepts, Nesmith’s participation is a big fucking deal. In the same proportions that the Monkees are equivalent to a “real band,” Nesmith’s coyness is roughly similar to when Neil Young deigns to play a few gigs with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, or when Brian Wilson shows up for a Beach Boys tour. Nesmith is the lone figure in the group that even its detractors will admit is cool—the quality that has always eluded the Monkees, no matter how acceptable they have become among music snobs.

  So what made Nesmith stand apart from his three fellow cast/bandmates? How did he manage not to allow the two years he spent on a low-rated kids TV show about a fake rock band define the 48 years that followed? How, in short, did Michael Nesmith become the one Monkee it was acceptable to dig?

  Partly, it’s because he has led an artist’s life. His pedigree as a film and video producer (including Repo Man, Tapeheads, and the influential—though damaged by age—1981 “video album” Elephant Parts), novelist, and solo recording artist is long and eccentric, but full of fascinating work. The cynical line on Nesmith’s refusal to be a full-blown Monkee anymore is that unlike his confreres, he never needed the money, because his mother invented Liquid Paper and he inherited her fortune. (Whether or not that’s true, he also had more songwriting credits on Monkees albums than all the others combined, so the royalties from the 75 million records they sold couldn’t have hurt.) Still, Nesmith has never seemed like the kind of guy to let money interfere with his creative impulses.

  His musical influence pushed Monkees records towards substance, heaviness, weirdness—their very bandness. The songs he wrote and sang introduced elements of country (“Sweet Young Thing,” “What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round,” “Listen to the Band”), garage rock (“Mary, Mary”), acid rock (“Circle Sky”), and psychedelia (“Daily Nightly”) into a preteen pop context where vacuous material like “Sugar, Sugar” would have been preferred. That’s not an exaggeration: Monkees music producer and bubblegum kingmaker Don Kirshner was fired after repeated clashes with Nesmith over issues of integrity and control, and dove right into working with the Archies, because cartoons never want creative input.

  After the show ended in 1968, Nesmith’s Monkees output grew weirder (as did the band’s—see: Head). He recorded ornate, almost perversely experimental numbers like “Tapioca Tundra,” “Writing Wrongs,” and “Calico Girlfriend” under the well-funded but increasingly uncommercial Monkees brand name. In 1968, while the band was still technically a going concern, he holed up for a very expensive weekend recording session with the best players in L.A. to make his first solo album, The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, an instrumental collection of Sousa-esque orchestral arrangements of Monkees numbers he’d written.

  But no matter how far afield his inspiration might have wandered, Nesmith’s musical cornerstone was always the intersection of country and rock. During his pre-Monkees days, he had been the regular MC at the Troubadour’s Monday night hootenannies, a famously fertile songwriting laboratory where the folk revival began its descent into Southern California country rock. Having brought that sound to the Monkees from their first LP onward, Nesmith doubled down on its hard twang, strong groove, and vaguely mystical lyrics on several solo albums after the group ended. But in the early ’70s, it was as impossible for him not to be an ex-Monkee as it was for the credible country rock establishment to extend itself to one. It would be decades before discerning music culture became elastic enough to go digging for the wealth of songs and albums he made during that period.

  Nesmith’s undeniable country rock bona fides have always been a point of pride among his ardent defenders—sometimes to the point of hyperbole. “In terms of the country rock hybrid sound, Nesmith—clearly—was a visionary of the form,” wrote Dangerous Minds’ Richard Metzger. “He can be credited as much as ANYONE—including the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, even CSNY—with inventing the sound.” Whether a form with so many forbears can even be said to have been “invented” at all, it’s undeniable that Nesmith was years ahead of the curve of that sound becoming fashionable in the more credible hands of the artists Metzger names, and another former TV star, Rick Nelson. Nor is it out of the question that Nesmith’s country-rock contributions helped soften the ground for the subsequent coolness of Laurel Canyon country, as kids reared on Monkees LPs and TV episodes grew into more discerning teenagers.

  To say Nesmith’s star power resides in pop subversions, however, is to ignore something more fundamental about his appeal. In the ecstatically goofy frame of the Monkees TV show, while Dolenz clowned, Jones mooned, and Tork dummied up, Nesmith was the clear leading man, with impeccably dry comic timing and a gentle drawl that set him apart not only from his co-stars, but from anyone else you were likely to find on network television. The representation of Southern men on TV between 1966 and 1968 mostly consisted of cornpone dipshits on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres,” and “Gomer Pyle USMC,” with family-friendly entertainers like Andy Griffith and Roger Miller thrown in for good measure. Nesmith’s cool, witty, moral, unmistakably Texan persona offered a sweet inversion of conventional masculinity on the small screen. I’ll stop shy of calling him a great actor, but check out the speeches he makes in “Monkee Mayor,” “The Devil and Peter Tork,” and the Christmas episode, to name a few. Within the patently plastic confines of the show, he seems irreducibly real—the voice of reason. You trust him, even in the midst of all that artifice.

  Speaking of sincerity in the midst of artifice, Nesmith’s final concert as a Monkee last month was a master class. Dolenz, Tork, and the backing band ran down an airtight, 32-song set list—primarily the hits (with textbook banter thrown in), but some surprising deep cuts too. Nesmith only came out for the songs he sang lead on—11 in all—and to add rhythm guitar to a couple of songs from the recent album that gives the tour its name, Good Times! He’d play one or two of his numbers—the polite string band shuffle of “Papa Gene’s Blues,” the unlikely source of a RUN-DMC sample (“Mary, Mary”), the gnarly anti-Vietnam thrasher “Circle Sky,” the all-time showstopper “Listen to the Band”—and then step off with a sprightly smile and a wave.

  Not one of these songs is anything less than a pop gem. But something about the occasion—the knowledge that it was meant to be the last time, or maybe (and there’s no delicate way to say this) the dramatic contrast between the images of the young TV pop star on the video screen and the 73-year-old man bounding on and off stage—made every one of his songs into an ugly-face tearjerker for roughly 90 percent of that audience. His solo number was almost too much to bear.

  In its original iteration on the 1968 LP The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees, “Tapioca Tundra” was—as its title suggests—a jazzy, psychedelic oddity. Alone with his Gretsch 12-string, Nesmith told the story of writing the song after the very first Monkees live show in 1967, when he first encountered the audience’s role in the group’s phenomenon. “There was another presence up there with us,” he explained before playing. Stripped to its Western swing essentials, “Tundra” became a haunted cowboy plaint in the tradition of Hank Snow, but with Nesmith’s trademark elliptical lyrics. “And softly as I walk away in freshly tattered shoes,” he sang, voice weathered but still unmistakably his, “it cannot be a part of me, for now it’s part of you.”

  It was such a good exit line, you almost didn’t want them to come back on for the one-two-three finale of “Daydream Believer,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” and “I’m a Believer.” But of course they did, and Nesmith stayed up there with them, enthusiastically playing the Monkees’ three biggest hits as tears rolled down the smiling faces of 2,700 people singing along to every word.

  The 50th anniversary tour is still rolling along for a few more dates, without Nesmith. It’s well produced and adroitly performed entertainment, awash in nostalgic fun. Yes, it’s square. Yes, it’s corny. And yes, it’s Boomer City, USA. But to truly get the Monkees—and Nesmith in particular—is forever to feel the sting of being underestimated by strangers, so it’s nice to commune every so often.

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  Michael Nesmith in 1988.Henry Diltz
  Nobody’s Monkee: Michael Nesmith on Repo Man, Corporate Pressure and Creative Control
  JAMIE LAUGHLIN | SEPTEMBER 30, 2016 | 4:00AM
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  Michael Nesmith and I are chatting on the phone, and I’m being greedy with his time. But what you realize when reviewing the former Dallasite’s career is how influential his efforts have been to the oozy creative goop of subculture. From those hook-heavy Monkees tunes, to his work in music videos, television and films like Tapeheads and Repo Man, Nesmith’s mischievous nature and artful drive helped take unlikely projects in new directions.

  He’ll be back in Dallas on Saturday, Oct. 1, to accept the Ernie Kovacs award from Dallas Video Fest at The Kessler. That’s also where you can catch a repertory screening of his 1988 film Tapeheads. But right now, I want to know why he took a chance on director Alex Cox, how he transitioned from music to film and if his mother’s Dallas-based Liquid Paper empire was responsible for one of punk’s best cinematic soundtracks.

  He obliges, because regardless of how long Nesmith has lived in California, there’s still a strong pour of Southern gentleman in him.

  In the mid-'70s, Nesmith’s career started really getting interesting — and that time he was driving it.

  A decade had passed since he’d walked away from the Monkees, a role he “tumbled backwards into and had to drag [himself] out of.” He spent the time that followed exploring his talents and interests, carving out an artful life that belonged entirely to him.

  While he was making a promotional clip for his single “Rio,” he accidentally wandered into new territory. By laying video over the music track, he wound up with something unexpected.

  “We hadn’t seen anything like it,” says Nesmith. “The narrative driver of the image flipped over from the picture to the sound. They became dance partners, but they reversed roles. Much to our surprise the images all made sense.”

  He’d made a music video, or at least that’s what we call it now.

  Back in ’76, neither the label Island Records or Nesmith himself knew exactly how to explain the thing, but people flipped for it. Nesmith was hooked. And soon he started making more of 'em. Within a few years he’d be awarded the first-ever Music Video Grammy for his visual album, Elephant Parts.

  Around that time is when everything cracked open: Nesmith began working in television, paving the way for an MTV generation. He got the Liquid Paper inheritance. The world of film was there to explore — he just needed the right project.

  In his book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, director Alex Cox talks about Repo Man and how it almost didn’t happen. Cox sent out 200 scripts, each with a four-page comic strip he’d drawn to establish a visual tone, and this teaser paragraph:

  "Repo Man is an action adventure comedy about an 18-year-old 'punk' hoodwinked into working for a seedy repossession company, and thrust headlong into an intrigue involving flying saucer cultists, fast cars, exotic women, ruthless intelligence agents and a wayward nuclear scientist…"

  Of the 200 sent out, Cox, who was barely out of UCLA, got 199 rejections, the exception being the one publicity kit that landed in Nesmith’s hands. That one made a connection: It was special.

  Nesmith in 2012
  Nesmith in 2012By Docob5 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
  After meeting the team, Nesmith didn’t just help a little, he signed on as executive producer.

  “I just fell crazy in love with these guys. I thought they were so smart and they were funny and they were way off the meter. Way off the side,” Nesmith recalls. “And Alex was particularly inspiring to me; he was very edgy and very in-your-face. He’s a big guy, he was about 6-foot-4, and thin as a rail, and I thought, ‘This guy is going to be able to do this: I’m going to have to figure out how to enable him in the way that can get the most of the film.’”

  So he went all in. And if you think about it, Nesmith gifted Cox the career-starting experience that he never had. He let the filmmaker keep it weird with full creative control. He let the punk soundtrack take over, even if it didn’t align with his own musical tastes. And rather than letting finances cloud their path, Nesmith hustled and sold the thing to Universal. He even used his Liquid Paper inheritance to cover the upfront expense — all for an unknown filmmaker holding a senior thesis script.

  It was a gamble that paid off, financially and creatively, for all involved.

  “Repo Man was sort of my beginning of learning how to do a movie and the ending of my learning how to do a movie,” says Nesmith. He’d go on to make a couple more — like the irreverent music video homage film Tapeheads, which screens Saturday at The Kessler, post-award ceremony. But Nesmith wasn’t cut out to deal with the industry full-time. He has a poet’s disposition, and being on the business end of film left him “in tatters.”

  “It’s a tight-wire across the Grand Canyon every time you walk it,” he says, reflecting back on those Hollywood days. “If I was in Truffaut’s France I might still be making films — but I wasn’t, and I’m not."

  Nesmith just tackled another milestone, a book called Infinite Tuesday that looks at the generational shift from counter culture to cyber culture. Random House has its release scheduled for 2017. And because he’s Michael Nesmith, he’s also planning to explore its subject matter across multiple formats, including a musical solo project and a full-fledged documentary.

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  And if all that weren’t enough, he just played one final reunion gig with the Monkees, saying farewell nearly 50 years after the show’s original air date.

  “It was the chance to step off that boat in a real genteel and non-injurious way and just say, ‘Sayonara!’ And leave it in the hands of the audience who created it.”

  With so many doors opening and closing, you have to wonder what Nesmith will do next and if he’s ever going to slow down. “You’ll have to ask me again in another year,” he jokes. Until then, we’ll just try and keep up with him Saturday night, as he orbits back through the city he once called home.

  Spend an evening with Michael Nesmith on Saturday, Oct. 1, at The Kessler (1230 W. Davis St.). Doors are at 7 p.m. The event starts at 8 p.m., with the film to follow. Awards tickets start at $25. The screening is $10. Visit videofest.org.

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  Michael Nesmith (center, foreground) with the other members of The Monkees — Davy Jones (left), Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork (right) — in the late 1960s.
  Henry Diltz/Courtesy of the artist
  In the mid-1960s, Michael Nesmith was writing songs and working the Los Angeles club scene when someone showed him an ad: A new TV show was looking for people to audition. He did — and the next thing he knew, he was a Monkee.

  But Nesmith's career has extended well beyond the as-seen-on-TV band. In his new memoir, Infinite Tuesday, he recalls forming his own group, creating one of the first music videos, writing novels and becoming friends with the likes of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. At one point, during the summer of 1967, Hendrix even opened for The Monkees on tour — but it didn't last long.

  "We were playing to 10 and 12,000 14-year-old girls," Nesmith recalls. "And so when [Hendrix] walked on stage, it was an absolute anomaly. When he started playing 'Foxy Lady,' they were saying, 'We want Davy, we want Davy!' He could really only take a little bit of that, and after about eight or 10 concerts he finally walked off the stage and said, 'Look, I can't do this anymore.'"

  Infinite Tuesday
  Infinite Tuesday
  An Autobiographical Riff
  by Michael Nesmith

  Hardcover, 306 pages purchase

  Perhaps even stranger than the touring combination of Hendrix and The Monkees was the story of how that bill came to be.

  "We'd all gone out to dinner one time, John [Lennon] was late," Nesmith says. "He came in at a point and he said, 'Sorry I'm late, but I was in a club and I heard this guy and I recorded it. You just have to listen to this.' And he pulled out a little tape recorder, put it on the table and played 'Foxy Lady,' that Jimi was playing live at that club.

  "And the table went silent, we were speechless. So when I got back to the hotel I said, 'Strangest thing happened, John came with this tape of Jimi Hendrix,' and Micky [Dolenz] said, 'Oh, I saw him at a club and I asked him if he'll come and open for us!' Thus begins one of the great pop ironies of our time."

  Listen to more of Nesmith's conversation with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro, including the story of how his mother invented correction fluid — yes, Liquid Paper — at the audio link.

  Web intern Jake Witz contributed to this story.

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Print Marked Items
Nesmith, Michael. Infinite Tuesday: An
Autobiographical Riff
James Collins
Library Journal.
142.4 (Mar. 1, 2017): p84.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
Nesmith, Michael. Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff. Crown. Apr. 2017. 320p. photos. ISBN
9781101907504. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781101907528. MUSIC
Mike Nesmith, best known as a member of the Monkees, has also been involved in music videos, film, virtual reality
technology, and writing. In his memoir, which he describes as an "autobiographical riff," he highlights a fascinating
and varied career and life in assorted forms of the arts and technology. Nesmith describes his youth and his musical
beginnings and influences, moving on to the daze of celebrity with the Monkees during the Sixties. The narrative
continues with his solo musician years in the Seventies, friendships with people ranging from actor Jack Nicholson to
author Douglas Adams, and his pioneering work with music videos, film, and video producing, and later with virtual
reality--with an emphasis on the business aspects as he sought to bring these forms to a wider public. This book also
describes a spiritual journey as Nesmith explores different forms of religion and philosophy over the decades,
eventually finding involvement within an intellectual foundation. VERDICT Those seeking a detailed portrait of the
Monkees will have to look elsewhere, and sometimes Nesmith's narrative becomes somewhat discursive; however, he
is a gifted writer who has entertainingly documented his renaissance life.--James Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp.
P.L., NJ
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Collins, James. "Nesmith, Michael. Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff." Library Journal, 1 Mar. 2017, p. 84+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483702134&it=r&asid=1b31e3a8490cad4c2c8363c35d5ea033.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
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Nesmith, Michael: INFINITE TUESDAY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Nesmith, Michael INFINITE TUESDAY Crown Archetype (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 4, 18 ISBN: 978-1-101-90750-4
This selectively revealing, insightful memoir casts the cerebral Monkee as a spiritual seeker and self-deprecating
visionary.Popular culture has barely revealed the tip of the iceberg that is Nesmith. The author has a droll, ironic sense
of humor, which has helped him connect with like-minded spirits and which readers should find engaging. He's also an
eccentric who describes the aftermath of Monkeedom as "the detritus of a collective dream we were all waking from,
each in our own room, and each afflicted with our own case of Celebrity Psychosis informing us about the furniture in
that room." This "Celebrity Psychosis" ultimately figures more heavily in the book than the Monkees do, a demon that
haunted him for decades after that 1960s fluke of fame. As much as he resented those who treated him as a puppet or a
"pariah...pummeled by opprobrium and ridicule and reviled among my peers," he eventually came to consider his
Monkees experience "a gift, an odd gift to be sure but with a deep message for me that I am still parsing and for which
I am never less than thankful." As for the rest of his fascinating life, Nesmith was raised in Dallas by a single mother, a
devout Christian Scientist who became wealthy as the inventor of Liquid Paper. If he didn't invent country rock, he was
there at the beginning, and he did invent the music video and had the vision for what would become MTV. More
recently, the author has been involved with virtual reality and received a patent "for the embedding of real time video
into a virtual environment." Along the way, he was influenced by both hippie mystics and a Christian Science teacher,
and he bonded with Jack Nicholson, Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, and John Lennon. Nesmith doesn't even bother
to mention that Linda Ronstadt enjoyed her breakout hit with his "Different Drum" or that the Monkees have
experienced a series of comeback reunions (with and without him). A book--and a life--unlike any other in rock.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Nesmith, Michael: INFINITE TUESDAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921865&it=r&asid=7c19411f60e809a89bd4f61ec623fa0f.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480921865
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Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff
Publishers Weekly.
264.5 (Jan. 30, 2017): p190.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff
Michael Nesmith. Crown Archetype, $28
(352p) ISBN 978-1-101-90750-4
Nesmith may be most remembered for his role as the stoic guitarist in the Monkees, but his brilliant, candid, and
humorous new autobiographical musings give readers a much clearer picture of his originality and inventiveness. In a
breezy, conversational tone, he invites readers to join him as he looks back over his life to see how he's come to this
point. Nesmith doesn't move chronologically through his life; instead, he riffs, letting one topic lead into another,
building layer on layer of a life in music, television, and movies. He riffs on his deep friendships with Douglas Adams
(from whom he gets the title of the book), Jack Nicholson, and Johnny Cash, among others. He tells his side of the
now-well-known contentious backstory of the Monkees and the roles that the musicians played on the set of the
television show, and the ways that his ceaseless creative drive led him to form his first post-Monkees band, the First
National Band. Later Nesmith shot a video for his song "Rio" and tried to convince others, over 10 years before MTV
came along, that there should be a broadcast outlet for music videos. Eventually, Nesmith started up Videoranch, where
he developed a technique for hosting live shows and streaming them in the virtual world. Nesmith's entertaining
memoir reveals his creative genius, his canny ability never to take himself too seriously, and his restless questions
about the value of spirituality. (Apr.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff." Publishers Weekly, 30 Jan. 2017, p. 190+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480195222&it=r&asid=6505c8084f79c700a624e1451454cfa4.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480195222
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THE LONG SANDY HAIR OF NEFTOON
ZAMORA
Publishers Weekly.
245.38 (Sept. 21, 1998): p72.
COPYRIGHT 1998 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Michael Nesmith. St. Martin's, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 0-312-19296-7 Hey, hey, he's a Monkee, but is he a writer?
Readers will wonder as Nesmith turns his talents to fiction with a polemical New Age novel about a mysterious beauty
who enchants wherever she goes. When Nez first hears a tape of Neftoon Zamora at a friend's house in New Orleans,
he becomes so enchanted with the bluesy sound that he follows it to its source in New Mexico. There he encounters the
many legends surrounding Zamora--whom some see as a man and others as a woman--as well as Neffie, a captivating
girl whom he initially mistakes for Zamora but who is in reality (or one reality) part of an elaborate scam. Pursuing his
fantastic quest, Nez becomes increasingly enthralled by Neffie and by her Utopian hometown, an ancient Anasazi city,
self-sufficient and hidden from the world in the side of a canyon. Unfortunately, Nesmith's pedestrian observations and
gee-whiz tone undermine his wacky premise, which he plays out at a YA level of sophistication. In addition, the book
sometimes devolves into opinions held toge ther only loosely by the artifice of plot. Nez pontificates digressively on
everything from "how regimented and bureaucratic names are" to the blatant commercialism of the how-to-succeed
industry. Will Nesmith the writer match the success of Nesmith the Monkee? Even readers who agree with his
opinions--e.g., that poets should be more important than football players; that the Net can be a dangerous thing--are
unlikely to find themselves whistling "I'm a believer." (Nov.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"THE LONG SANDY HAIR OF NEFTOON ZAMORA." Publishers Weekly, 21 Sept. 1998, p. 72. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA21164474&it=r&asid=13434da8bd47caeacb49ed2181e5b8a1.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
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The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora
Kathleen Hughes
Booklist.
95.6 (Nov. 15, 1998): p568.
COPYRIGHT 1998 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text: 
Nesmith, Michael. The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora. Nov. 1998. 256p. St. Martin's, $24.95 (0-312-19296-7).
This first novel by former Monkee rock group member Michael Nesmith tells the rather complicated story of a
musician called Nez who embarks on a far-fetched, obsessive road trip to find the owner of a voice he has heard
singing on a tape of old Mississippi Delta blues music. His trip takes him from Mississippi to the New Mexico desert,
and along the way he encounters several strange characters and finds out that the person he is seeking is called Neftoon
Zamora. Weary of the conflicting yarns he has been hearing along the way, Nez stops in a lonely diner in an unmapped
town, where he finally meets (and falls in love with) the impossibly beautiful Neftoon. In this tale, though, nothing is
as it seems and nobody is who they say they are; and although Nesmith's writing can be quite beautiful, the surreal and
imaginative events that he asks us to follow, especially those involving mystical villages, Indian high priestesses, and
Martians, may be just a bit too far-out for many readers.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hughes, Kathleen. "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora." Booklist, 15 Nov. 1998, p. 568. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA55054254&it=r&asid=499a86cf16b15504a6f49e12601e40cd.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A55054254
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The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora
Nancy Pearl
Library Journal.
123.17 (Oct. 15, 1998): p100.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
Nesmith, Michael. The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora.
St. Martin's. Nov. 1998. c.256p. ISBN 0-312-19296-7. $24.95. F
In this rambling and largely incoherent first novel, narrator Nez is on a quest to track down blues singer Neftoon
Zamora. Everyone he meets tells him a different story--Neftoon is a woman or a man; an Indian, a mulatto, or a
Martian; alive or dead; real or imagined. In a small New Mexico town, a beautiful woman informs him that she is, in
fact, Neftoon Zamora. Then things get really weird. Nez falls from a cliff, is magically healed, and travels with Neffie
(as he lovingly calls her) in an effort to understand the mysteries of life and love. Their journeys involve an American
Indian woman called Kweethu, a vanished con man named Oggie Rootliff, and millionaire child pornographer
Armando Hotchkiss. Nez loses Nellie in an ATF raid; although he is never to be reunited with her, he manages to find
his car in the magical town where it all started. Whew. For unfathomable reasons, Nesmith (a former member of The
Monkees) throws in words like aposiopesis and mansuetude. A good novel to skip.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Pearl, Nancy. "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora." Library Journal, 15 Oct. 1998, p. 100. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA21267586&it=r&asid=c34f867b17a5e6ecfa40de85cbd4aeec.
Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A21267586

Collins, James. "Nesmith, Michael. Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff." Library Journal, 1 Mar. 2017, p. 84+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483702134&it=r. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. "Nesmith, Michael: INFINITE TUESDAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921865&it=r. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. "Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff." Publishers Weekly, 30 Jan. 2017, p. 190+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480195222&it=r. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. "THE LONG SANDY HAIR OF NEFTOON ZAMORA." Publishers Weekly, 21 Sept. 1998, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA21164474&it=r. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. Hughes, Kathleen. "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora." Booklist, 15 Nov. 1998, p. 568. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA55054254&it=r. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. Pearl, Nancy. "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora." Library Journal, 15 Oct. 1998, p. 100. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA21267586&it=r. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.

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