RIP Michael Nesmith
Sharon Dougherty grew up in, and continues to live in suburban Philadelphia and has been a music and comedy fan forever, cutting her teeth musically on Bowie, 60’s pop and Philly Soul.
Michael Nesmith, known to his many fans as “the Nez” or “Papa Nez” passed away peacefully at his home on Friday December 10, 2021 at the age of 78.
Most people know his origin as a member of the Monkees, the pre-fab pop group assembled as an answer to the Beatles in the mid 60’s. Mike was a struggling musician from Texas who decided to audition for the show and was just goofy enough, in addition to his musical credentials, to get a role on the show. During his time with the Monkees, he was an outspoken advocate for the group writing, playing and releasing their own music and was instrumental in getting Don Kirschner fired as the music producer for the show. He wrote some great songs, like “Circle Sky” “Papa Gene’s Blues”, “You Just May Be the One”, This Den of Geek article has a great compilation of his work with the group.
From a comedy standpoint, the Monkees were as good as any of the 60’s sitcoms and Mike was as funny as he was musical:
Nesmith was an early originator of a country rock sound, which would evolve into the California sound. He wrote “Different Drum” for Linda Rondstadt and the Stone Ponys. Unfortunately by the time that sound had taken off, his “First National Band” had broken up and left it behind.
Mike’s solo work was not only great sounding, but he was the first artist to focus as much on the visual as the music. His half hour show of videos called “Pop Clips” and his video for “Rio”, (which was the first video to tell a self-contained story) caught the attention of Warner Bros. Media who bought the concept and thus was born MTV. As a result, he is considered the “father”, “architect” or “originator” of MTV. The full story is recounted in the MTV documentary (not currently available online).
“Elephant Parts” was a ground-breaking concept from the Nez the combined comedy sketches with his music videos from 2 of his most famous albums. The full video is not available online or for purchase, but can be watched via this playlist on Youtube. The comedy bits are as great as the music videos. Here is the description from the playlist:
In 1981 Elephant Parts won the first ever Grammy Award given for a music video. Nez called it a video record. Elephant Parts was born out of Nez attempting to find a home for Rio and other music videos — how they could be applied and used. He decided that comedy videos would make good sandwich material. Elephant Parts refers to zooming in on different sections and how that zoom can make it hard to decipher what you’re viewing in relationship to the whole.
Mike was an entertainment entrepreneur, having inherited a fortune from his month who invented Liquid Paper. He produced movies and tv and continued to create music continuously.
In 2013, Ron Bennington sat down with him for an interview where he talked about his full career and going back on the road to play mostly solo work, mixed with some Monkees classics.
Mike had quadruple bypass surgery in 2018 and was understandably limited in his public work. But in 2021, he went back on the road with Mickey Dolenz to do a final Monkees farewell tour. Although he was too weak to play guitar, his voice was as strong as ever and they played their final show on November 14, less than a month before he passed. DJ Gerry from Starlight Music has a great retrospective on his career and the show HERE.
[On a personal note, Mike Nesmith was my first childhood crush and the first music I loved. I’ve followed his career ever since. Although I graduated to Bowie musically, I never stopped loving the Nez and I wanted the world to know about his WHOLE career, and not just remember him as the “wool hat” of the Monkees. It was an honor for me to do the ibang interview/article when he was in the studio before bylines and to write his obituary with love]
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