BY WILL HARRIS
VIRGINIA BEACH — It’s been almost 54 years since Micky Dolenz first took the stage in Virginia Beach – when The Monkees played a show at the Dome on June 13, 1969.
By that point in their career, Peter Tork had left the band, so it was only Dolenz, Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith.
These days, Dolenz is the last Monkee standing – Jones died in 2012, Tork passed away in 2019, and Nesmith departed in 2021 – but Dolenz is doing what he can to keep the group’s legacy alive, which is what brings him to the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, April 4.
Billed as “The Monkees Celebrated by Micky Dolenz,” the set list for the show will lean heavily on the Monkees’ third studio album, Headquarters, while also making time for the hits from other periods in the band’s career.
“Headquarters was very special and important to us because it was the first time that the producers, the record company, and the television studio basically gave us the reins and allowed us to record a whole album by ourselves,” Dolenz told The Independent News during a recent interview.
“And it didn’t come without a kerfuffle – we had sort of a palace revolt led by Mike,” Dolenz said, “but we got the rights to do the album, and I’m very, very proud of it. We played everything, we sang everything …and it did very well. It was on the charts for almost an entire year – 51 weeks – and it went to No. 1.”
The album that knocked Headquarters off the top of the charts? Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
“I mean, if you’re gonna be kicked out of No. 1, I guess it’s okay to be kicked out by the Beatles,” Dolenz said, laughing.
Unlike the two albums that preceded it – 1966’s The Monkees and 1967’s More of the Monkees – there weren’t really any hit singles from Headquarters.
The only real exception is “Randy Scouse Git,” which climbed all the way to No. 2 in the U.K. but was never released as a single in the U.S. That said, even casual fans will recognize tracks like “Shades of Gray” and “For Pete’s Sake” from having been played on the group’s self-titled TV series.
“I’d say ‘Mr. Webster’ is one of my favorites, and … I’ll be doing it on this tour, but I don’t think I’d ever done it before onstage,” Dolenz said. “But it’s such a great song.When I started rehearsing it recently, it reminds me a little bit of [The Beatles’] ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ in the sense that it’s kind of a story song.”
In addition to the Monkees songs Dolenz is already known for singing, he’ll also be doing some of the material sung by his late bandmates. He admits that it’s a little weird doing so now that they’re gone, but it’s not exactly untrod territory for him.
“I started doing solo shows kind of late in my career – it wasn’t until the early to mid-1990s – but when I started putting together a show, I knew that people mainly wanted to hear those Monkees hits, and I had no problem with that, and I still don’t,” Dolenz said. “I sang the majority of the hit singles, but right from the get-go I was doing Nesmith tunes like ‘Sunny Girlfriend’ or ‘The Girl I Knew Somewhere,’ for instance, and then I would do ‘Daydream Believer,’ of course, which Davy sang, and sometimes ‘A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.’ But I always give credit to who originally sang it and, of course, to who wrote it.
“So I’ve been doing that for decades,” Dolenz said. “This time around is really no different.”
Dolenz performs at 8 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, at the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market Street. For information about tickets, visit the Sandler Center website via sandlercenter.org or call the box office at (757) 385-2787.
© 2023 Pungo Publishing Co., LLC