In the future, when they talk about performers who did it all the way to the end, they may talk about, who died Friday of heart failure at 78. When he enthusiastically pushed to do a Monkees farewell tour this fall with his longtime compatriot Micky Dolenz, he probably had little idea that the end was so close at hand, but certainly he and others knew that the window was closing on how long he had to put himself out in front of fans for any extended trek.
As a solo artist, he had played to his biggest crowd at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in 2019, and he was going from highlight to highlight, as far as performing. And the Monkees’ “Good Times” album — few other artists of his generation were having that kind of success … and critical success, finally, for the Monkees, where they had been lambasted for decades; they were finally accepted. He died knowing that they were beloved, and he finally embraced what they meant to so many other people.
Mike Nesmith of The Monkees appears at press conference at Warwick Hotel in New York on July 6, 1967.He had serious heart issues and he had quadruple bypass surgery three years ago. We were on tour in 2018, and because of his Christian Scientist beliefs, he wasn’t going to see a doctor regularly, but I insisted he see a doctor several times.
So his death is a shock in that sense, because the tour work was really helping him. But, you know, we couldn’t be on tour perpetually. We had to end at some point, you know? I was aware that he was quite ill the last several days, and I knew that he was going to be passing. But it’s only been this past week. It wasn’t a situation where I was aware that he was going to die during the tour or anything like that. We would not have gone through with what we did if we had felt that way.
I think there’s a lot of his career that people missed — his innovations, and things that I picked up on just doing research over the years. He did the show “Pop Clips,” which ultimately became MTV, and sold the concept to Warner Communications, and that was one of his successes. He then became a producer of music videos, and produced music videos for Lionel Richie and all these other people. Had a television series on NBC, “Elephant Parts.” Ran a thriving home-video thing.
He was a very intimidating person, and most people were incredibly intimidated by him because he would be quite quiet and not communicative. So I had to learn to just go directly and speak to him in a very direct fashion, which is why we got a lot done together. But many other people were put off immediately, and he could cut people to the quick quite easily with a few sharp words. I mean, he was never a physical person; it was always verbal. He was a master of vocabulary.
TheMonkees RIP Nez
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