Micky Dolenz Says ‘The Monkees’ Changed How America Viewed Hippies: ‘Paisley! Long Hair! But We’re Good Guys’
The Monkees were more than just a TV show featuring the titular moptops in their zany adventures and infectious tunes. According to the last surviving member, Micky Dolenz, the show was a cultural watershed moment.
“The Monkees brought long hair into the living room,” says Dolenz in a clip recently shared by The Sessions, a program that educates musicians on understanding the business side of the music industry. In the clip, Dolenz explained how The Monkees, which ran from 1966 to 1968, helped paint the youth of the day in a better light. The show’s stars and Dolenz’s bandmates (Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork) embraced the fashion of the ’60s, which included shaggy locks and hippie fashion.
“Up until then, the only time you saw young men or women [with long hair], they were being arrested on television,” said Dolenz, 80. “All of a sudden, the Monkees come along. Bellbottoms! Paisley! And long hair! But we’re good guys. We’re fun, we’re easy, ‘we just wanna be singing / don’t put anybody down.’”
“And we’re having fun and saving the girl from the bad guys and giving money to the old lady who can’t pay her rent,” said Dolenz. “And it made it okay to have long hair, and bellbottoms and paisley, and you weren’t creating crimes against nature.”
Though The Monkees ended after its second season in 1968, it continued to play in reruns throughout the early 1970s, and again in the 1980s when it aired on MTV and Nickelodeon. The revived interest prompted Dolenz, Tork and Jones to reunite and tour, with Nesmith making sporadic appearances (while mainly staying absent due to his other commitments at the time).
Jones died from a fatal heart attack at age 66 in 2012. Tork succumbed to cancer in 2019 at age 77. Nesmith died from heart failure at age 78 in 2021.
Where Are They Now? Music Legends
July/August 2025
They rocked and rolled us, they shredded, they head-slammed and they crooned, but what happened to them and where are they now?
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