Remembering When The Monkees Delivered Their Last Album With Just Two Members in 1970

It’s rare that an act gets to go out just the way they always imagined. At the end of a significant run together, a band often is so beset by baggage that their final release can seem a distant echo of them at their best.

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In the case of The Monkees, the final album of their initial run together wasn’t much of a band release at all. Only two of their members remained to eke out the 1970 LP Changes.

Coming to a ‘Head’

The Monkees were put in the perfect position to succeed in their early days. Surrounded by top songwriters and excellent studio musicians, they also benefited from having the massive marketing push generated by starring in a weekly television show.

But that setup almost guaranteed that any musician with artistic ambition stuck within it would eventually start to gripe. The Monkees did exactly that. They pushed to play their own instruments on the records and write their own songs. Management pushed back. That dynamic inevitably leads to conflicts.

Their grand attempt at artistic freedom, the experimental 1968 movie Head, and the forward-thinking music they created for the soundtrack, flopped with moviegoers and listeners. After that, the band couldn’t go back to the carefree pop days. They began to chafe at their restrictions.

Then There Were Two

Peter Tork was the first to leave the “Prefab Four”. He bought out the contract that he signed when first chosen for the band. Michael Nesmith, perhaps the staunchest of the band members in terms of his insistence on them doing their own work, followed Tork out the door to focus on the country-rock hybrid he’d been developing.

That left only Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones in the fold. If they had complete freedom, they might have gone their own way as well at that time. But The Monkees were still obligated to deliver one more album, which meant that Dolenz and Jones soldiered on for the 1970 LP Changes.

The album title undersold what a transformation this was. After years of fighting for artistic independence, Jones and Dolenz focused on singing only, leaving session men to handle all the instrumental duties. In addition, the search for songwriting autonomy was abandoned, as Dolenz’s “Midnight Train” was the only song of a dozen on the record with a Monkee getting writing credit.

A Half-Hearted Farewell

In large part, Changes belonged to the writing team of Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, with longtime Monkees collaborators Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart adding their production expertise. Jones and Dolenz were rarely even in the studio together, contributing their singing parts alone before going on their way.

Changes comes off sounding like an attempt to get The Monkees back to their lightweight pop glory. But it felt half-hearted. The album didn’t make much of a blip on listeners. Lead single “Oh My My” missed the Top 40.

Not long after the album was released, Davy Jones announced his departure from the band, essentially ending the group in the process. The Monkees would revive in the 80s, at which point Changes was nothing but a forgotten curio.

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