Notwithstanding that this horrible news is worst for his family and friends, it is yet another nail in the coffin that was my youth. He, possibly more than any other musician from the Sixties, will remain eternally young in my mind. Even though the Monkees' TV show is now pretty dated, I will always remember it with great fondness, never missing a show. The Monkees' legacy also remains untarnished despite their lack of song-writing input in the early days. They may not have written those early singles but without their special brand of pop sensibility those songs would have lacked a great deal. The nett result was half a dozen of the greatest ever pop songs and that's no mean endowment. For me, the Monkees are in a select, and rather small, band of Sixties artists who reside in a pantheon of greats - never to be exised or toppled.
A sad day but a good time to re-visit their catalogue and remember a time when pop was melodic, fun and innocent.
