Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, and I’m afraid it’s time for a goodbye again. – Billy Joel, Say Goodbye to Hollywood
In this life, no sooner do you finish saying goodbye to one person when another leaves too.
As I was writing my thoughts about Olympia Snow’s departure from the US Senate, I heard the news that former Monkee, Davy Jones, had passed. He was most famous, of course, in that way, as a Monkee, the heart-throb member of a TV-network-built poppy rock band that occupied its very own weekly show.
He’d also appeared on Broadway and on the English stage and the BBC. Irony of ironies, because the Monkees were a deliberate attempt to cash in on the Beatles’ American success, Jones appeared with the Oliver cast on the Ed Sullivan show the same night the Beatles appeared.
Here is a short video of the Monkees playing one of their many hits, Daydream Believer. After the end of the Monkees experiment (1971), Jones went back to stage and tried film, coming to rest in nostalgic 1960s musical revues.
To his legion of devoted fans, Jones will forever be the adorable British mop-top boy who played with Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz, not the middle aged man who did Florida dinner theater.
Rest in peace, Davy.
Speaking Plainly 