Micky Dolenz Meets a “New Monkee”

How did that feel for you as a longtime Monkees fans when the [original] Monkees came out publicly against the New Monkees?

It hurt, a; and b, I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but Micky was in Detroit during the auto show [in January 1987], and my friend who is a DJ in Detroit was announcing him at the auto show, and I was like, ‘Mark dude, get me up front in the line.’ This was after we were chosen and there was press and all this, so I said, ‘I just wanna talk to Micky, man,’ so I went there, my hair’s down, I’m wearing like my Greek sailor hat, and I figured, ‘I look so not Dino from the New Monkees, no one’s gonna know anything,’ right? I waited in line, my friend got me a little further up to the head of the line, and I stood in front of Micky. I’m at the table, the table is on a stage, so my back is to the people who are waiting, and he goes, ‘Who should I make this out to?’ And I said, ‘Dino,’ and he looks up at me, and I swear to God, I remember this like it was yesterday, he looks at me and I go, ‘Yeah, I’m one of the new guys — hey, can we talk?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah why don’t you wait down here, my assistant will get a space and we’ll chat,’ and then one girl yells (in shrill voice), ‘It’s Dino!’ And then all of a sudden everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, look: it’s Dino,’ and then I started freaking, like, ‘Oh fuck, my cover’s blown,’ cause that’s not at all what I wanted; I wanted to talk to him. And he and I, we walked down these big hallways and we went into a room and it was just me and Micky, and I was just making my case: ‘It’s like, look man, there’s no way we can replace you; you were my heroes, like you and Lou Costello. We wouldn’t do that,’ and he actually started going through the whole, ‘It’s like, you can’t have New Monkees,’ and this was his analogy: he said, ‘It’s like taking pointy ears and putting them on somebody and having them be the new Dr Spock,’ and deep down I was gonna go, ‘It’s Mister Spock,’ but I bit my tongue and I didn’t say anything, and I said, ‘No, really, it kind of isn’t that way because I’m not being Micky, I can’t be Micky,’ and then he ripped into Blauner a little bit, who was a person that, I still talk to Steve; he’s like my father figure, he is regardless of what any Monkee may feel, he’s a really sweet man, and again, he said, ‘Steve doesn’t know anything, he wasn’t around and blah blah blah,’ and I’m thinking, No hold on, Blauner is the guy who gave the green light to Rafelson and Schneider. They’re all tight friends, right? So now, it was Blauner that green lit it, it was Blauner that said ‘Yeah let’s go, let’s do it,’ so yeah, maybe he wasn’t there after it was gone, but you can hardly say he had nothing to do with it. Anyway that’s neither here nor there. I came out of that meeting kind of feeling like, OK, he doesn’t wanna hear anything about it, and now I didn’t know that there was legal battles over the name and they wanted to go out and tour and blah blah blah, and I didn’t see why it couldn’t be a familia, like something where it can grow like Star Trek, but I don’t know.

via New Monkees.