“She” The Monkees (1967)
To be perfectly honest, when I pictured myself in a rock band, it was entirely based on the tv show about a fictional band called “The Monkees”. Like the Monkees, my band would all live in a big house, we’d play music and have wacky adventures together. The Monkees were great friends and very funny.
The trouble was, in real life, I was a shy loner who listened obsessively to music, but didn’t have any friends. We had moved to St. Louis, Missouri and I was more withdrawn and shy than ever at my new school. I almost never talked and when I did, I affected a British accent which comically served to brand me even more of a weirdo.
You know who had friends? My little sister Caroline – so I stole all her friends for my band. In my mind we had to be like the Monkees. There were Rusty and Julie (funny and wild like Mickey), Stephanie (the cute one like Davy), my sister (the dumb one like Peter) and me (serious like Mike). In 1975, I talked them into being a band we called the Welders.
We were aged 13 – 15, all smart honor roll students, very funny and we all wore glasses. We didn’t own any instruments, much less play them. Was this even going to work?
COMING UP...the sound that influenced The Welders
What an episode of The Monkees here