But the music czar was completely unimpressed with the boys’ abilities as musicians and songwriters. Kirshner had the good instinct to recognize the vocal talents of Dolenz and Jones, both of whom were chosen to sing lead on the band’s monster hits.
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The Monkees had varying degrees of performing talent: Davy Jones was a Tony nominated Broadway actor Micky Dolenz, a TV child star Peter Tork, a Greenwich Village folk club player and Mike Nesmith, a country-folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Don called upon songwriters such as hit-maker Carole King (“Pleasant Valley Sunday”), the up-and-coming Neil Diamond (“I’m a Believer”), and an embryonic writing duo, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (“Last Train to Clarksville”) to churn out infectious pop hits. When producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider came up with the concept for The Monkees, a prime time TV show about the hijinks of a Beatles-like rock band, they hired Kirshner as musical supervisor, charged with supplying songs for the group. The show debuted in 1973 and ended in 1983, when MTV came along with its slick, lip-synched video productions, marking an end to the networks’ live concert shows.īut long before Don became known to rock fans with his eponymous Rock Concert, he was already a well established mover and shaker in the industry – a music publisher, rock music producer, talent manager, and songwriter. Unlike Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special and other competing late-night rock shows, Don’s program was ahead of its time – recorded in stereophonic sound and simulcast over FM stereo radio stations and early cable TV.
King, The New York Dolls, George Harrison, Marc Bolan, The Faces, and hundreds more. We could tolerate 20 seconds of listening to his teleprompter-scripted introductions, because we knew what came next: riveting performances by the likes of The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Allman Brothers, Alice Cooper, The Sex Pistols, Ike and Tina Turner, The Ramones, Prince, The Police, Sly Stone, B.B. “I’m Don Kirshner, and welcome to Rock Concert,” he deadpanned in his unmistakable Bronx accent. For many of us growing up in the 1970s, pre-car and pre-cash, the closest we came to attending an actual rock concert was staying up late to hear this pathologically unhip music impresario kick off 90 minutes of authentic live-on-tape rock performances. His name was Don Kirshner, and he brought the top rock acts of the day into my living room with his syndicated late-night TV show. Between the ages of 13 and 20, yer usually date-less blogger spent many a Saturday night with an impassive middle-aged man sporting plastered hair, leisure suits, open neck shirts, gold chains and the occasional sweater vest.
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