rollingstone.com
Rolling Stone
Andy Greene
December 10, 2021 12:15PM ET
Michael Nesmith, Monkees Singer-Songwriter, Dead at 78
“With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement
Mike Nesmith, circa 1967.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Monkees singer and guitarist Michael Nesmith, a pop visionary who penned many of the group’s most enduring songs before laying the groundwork for country-rock with the First National Band in the early Seventies, died Friday from natural causes. He was 78.
“With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement. “We ask that you respect our privacy at this time and we thank you for the love and light that all of you have shown him and us.”
Nesmith was known as the Monkee in the green wool hat with the thick Texas drawl, and the writer of songs like “Mary, Mary,” “Circle Sky,” “Listen to the Band,” and “The Girl I Knew Somewhere.” But he raged behind the scenes that the group didn’t have creative control of their albums, and in 1967 led the successful rebellion against record producer Don Kirshner. The group would subsequently release Headquarters and other albums they created largely on their own.
In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Nesmith explained why he was so adamant that the Monkees write and record their own material despite the huge success they were enjoying at the time. “We were kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us,” he said. “It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us – sort of “what’s the big deal – why wont you let us play the songs we are singing?”
When the Monkees dissolved in the late Sixties, he formed the First National Band. And despite recording three classic country rock albums, escaping the shadow of the Monkees proved nearly impossible. The group broke up shortly before the Eagles hit big with “Take It Easy.”
“I was heartbroken beyond speech,” Nesmith told Rolling Stone in 2018. “I couldn’t even utter the words ‘the Eagles’ and I loved Hotel California and I love the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, all that stuff. That was right in my wheelhouse and I was agonized, Van Gogh–agonized, not to compare myself to him, but I wanted to cut something off because I was like, ‘Why is this happening?’ The Eagles now have the biggest selling album of all time and mine is sitting in the closet of a closed record company?”
Nesmith spent the rest of the Seventies recording under-the-radar solo albums. But in 1980, he inherited a substantial fortune when his mother, Liquid Paper inventor Bette Nesmith Graham, died. He invested the money in many business ventures, along with movies like Repo Man and Tapeheads. But music remained close to his heart, and he reunited with the Monkees in 2012 for a series of reunion tours and the 2016 LP Good Times! They went on a farewell tour this year, and played their final show November 14th at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.
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