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My New Monkee Journey
Alright, so the New Monkees turned out to be a real bomb. That's a fact, but it was also an
interesting roller coaster ride for me and I was in a unique position to
see it unfold from its early development.
I guess I'll start with
when I first met Marty Ross back in Milwaukee
in 1983. I was playing in a local Milwaukee band and Marty's band The Wigs
had come over to the apartment I was living in with 2 other band members
and manager to solicit our bass player, Scott Krueger to join up with them
to record an album out in Denver, Colorado. Needless to say Scott
took their offer and landed in LA with The Wigs after the recording. I was
also itching to head out to LA and moved out there myself in 1984. Scott
was living with The Wigs drummer and one night during the first week after getting into town I
went over to visit him. Scott took me over to Marty's apartment
before we all went out to the Cat & Fiddle Pub for drinks. Right before we
leave though Marty's phone rings and it's his employer wondering if he is
ever going to come back into work. He explained he wasn't and he had
enough but that he knew of someone that is looking for a job as he pointed
to me. So before we went out we swung by Studio Instrument
Rentals (S.I.R.) so I could meet the manager for a quick interview! Got
the job on the spot and started later that week. That solved the job problem and
being a musician it was a neat job delivering musical equipment to famous
recording studios and stars homes! I started hanging with Marty and The
Wigs and going to their gigs. The Wigs were getting some label interest
and also ended up doing the soundtrack and performing in a movie called "My
Chauffeur" with Howard Hessman and
Debbie Foreman.
Shortly after "My Chauffeur"
Marty gets an audition for the New Monkees. My initial reaction was you've
got to be kidding! Was this a joke, New Monkees? It didn't take long
though to get caught up in the excitement though. Marty had passed the first wave
of auditions and it was starting to look like he had a good shot at
landing a part in it. Next thing I know Marty is a New Monkee! Right off
the bat he goes off on Columbia's jet to do TV interviews in New York and
the excitement really starts buzzing. Warner Bros. Records signed the band
to an album deal, and a big press conference was held at the Hard Rock
Cafe in New York City. It looked to me that Columbia Pictures was
obviously throwing some money into this and I was becoming a believer that
this show might work.
The New Monkees started
rehearsing at S.I.R. where I still worked and I dropped in on them and
finally got to meet the other 3 guys. I hit it off with them and found
them to be a fun group of people to be with. As things further developed
in the pre-production of the show I was invited to a party at the home of
the shows line producer. Pretty cool, show biz parties already!
One of the producers took me aside and asked me if I would like to work on
the show! I was beside myself, of course I'll work on the show!
Production was already underway at
Valencia Independent Studios and the sets were in the process of being
built. I started out as a production assistant running simple office
errands and assisting in getting things ready for filming. Equipment
endorsements were being set up and for some reason Willie Wilcox from
Todd Rundgren's band was
helping out. So one day I go over to pick up Willie and we head out to
start collecting some gear. Here I am driving with Todd Rundgren's drummer
and working on a TV show, and thinking this is pretty damn cool.
 Once
filming began the hours got grueling. Call times were generally 6:30AM and
the day would end around 9PM on a good day and ran 6 days a week. That of
course gave me plenty of time to learn the ropes of film production but it left no time for a life outside the
job. The crew really does become your family in a sense in a production
such as this. Partly because I already knew the New Monkees I ended
up eventually being designated as a 2nd assistant director and part of
that job was to wrangle talent. It got to be a bit like being a bounty
hunter trying to track these guys down and then dragging their butts to
the set under protest. It was actually a weird position to be in since I
was their friend but I also had a job to do and it could put a strain on
that friendship. One of the big surprise perks was being asked to be the
keyboard player in the videos! They had all these obvious keyboard parts in their songs and there was no one playing the keyboards, so the
producers thought they'd cover their bases and put someone on keyboards. I fit the bill being a musician who was
already working on the show and was also tight with the New Monkees
themselves. I still didn't get cut any slack from my other duties when I
was in front of the camera but hey, I was the 5th New Monkee. When
the need arose I also stepped in to play other bit parts on the show. One
day I was a Marty clone in "All My Marty's" and the next I put on a
"Larry" wig to play Larry in a video after he walked off the set. One
never knew what each new day would hold while working for the New Monkees!
 After the first show aired
and the ratings came in we knew we were in trouble. Warner Bros. was doing
little to promote the album since they most likely figured the show would
drive the sales. Meanwhile the producers were most likely hoping the album
would help sell the show. Of course everyone hoped for some divine
intervention but that didn't happen as you well know. Work continued
as usual though since 13 shows were going to be filmed regardless of the
ratings. The New Monkees even did an appearance on the "Solid Gold" show.
Near the end of the 13th episode however the line producer, Marlon Staggs
called everyone together to break the news that the show was not going to
be picked up. The announcement still held an element of surprise to a lot
of the crew and a few tears were shed. Even I had to ask myself what the
hell I was going to do now. I didn't give much thought to the temporary
nature of the business and was caught unprepared. Fortunately
I got to stay on afterwards to wrap things up and was the last one to go.
I had the pleasure of selling off the office furniture, disconnecting the
phones and driving truck loads of props to the dump. Sure wish I had a
garage or storage unit as I would have kept a lot of that stuff but it all
had to go. One of the last tasks I remember was delivering the shows
master tapes to a shed in the backyard of Steve Blauner's house. ...Hey,
Hey I was a 5th New Monkee.
Thanks Steve, Marlon,
Chuck, Mr. Wild, Jeanne, Marty, Dino, Larry, Jared and the rest of the crew!
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