Review: The Monkees at Liverpool Echo Arena

 

 

HEY! HEY! They’re the Monkees!

Or, at least, three of them are, as original member Mike Nesmith (the slightly glum one with the woolly hat) chose not to join this 45th anniversary reunion tour by the original American boyband created in the image of our own Beatles.

Last night’s gig at the Echo arena was in fact the first time the band had played the home town of their 1960s rivals.

It may be sacrilegious for a Liverpudlian to admit this, but until I was well into my teens I always preferred the Monkees to the real Fab Four.

 

It was almost entirely to do with the Monkees’ TV show, a 30-minute knockabout mix of music, slapstick comedy and 60s Californian hipness that was itself a virtual copy of the Beatles’ films A Hard Day’s Night and Help!

John Lennon himself called them ‘The Marx Brothers of rock’, which we’ll assume was a compliment.

You can’t imagine him saying anything like that about a current boy band – Take That could be called the Marks and Spencers of rock, perhaps, but that’s about as far as you’d go.

They may all be nearing their 70s now – as Davy Jones said: “I used to be a heart-throb, now I’m a coronary” – but there was no shortage of energy in their near two-and-a-half hour set last night. There can’t be many bands embarking on 45th anniversary tours who are prepared to be a bit subversive with their back catalogue, and the Monkees made us wait till the end for hits like Daydream Believer and Pleasant Valley Sunday, filling the rest of the show with some of their less well-known, but no less good, album tracks like Words, For Pete’s Sake, Circle Sky, She, Porpoise Song and Auntie Grizelda.

Showing a refreshing lack of vanity, they chose to perform against a screen showing clips from their TV show – they may be older now but the energy and enthusiasm they put into the show meant the comparison was not an unkind one.

Micky can still hit the (very) high notes, Peter is still the loveable clown, like a psychedelic Stan Laurel, and Davy still has the ladies swooning despite the years.

via Review: The Monkees at Liverpool Echo Arena – In The Mix Today – News – Liverpool Echo.