In 1967, The Monkees were already one of the biggest acts in America, but one of their most adventurous recordings sounded very different from hits like “I’m a Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville.”
“Daily Nightly,” written by Michael Nesmith for the group’s fourth album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., ventured deep into the psychedelic sounds that were sweeping rock music. And 22-year-old Micky Dolenz, a former child star who had gotten his start on the 1950s TV series Circus Boy, helped make a little rock history along the way.
Dolenz sang lead on “Daily Nightly,” but he also played the Moog synthesizer heard throughout the recording, making the track one of the earliest rock recordings to use the revolutionary electronic instrument.
The strange, spacey sounds weren’t coming from some anonymous studio musician, either. Dolenz had become an early adopter of the technology, purchasing one of the first commercially sold modular Moog synthesizers.
His fascination with the instrument came at the perfect time for “Daily Nightly.”
Nesmith had written the song in response to the Sunset Strip curfew riots of late 1966, when young people clashed with authorities over new restrictions aimed at the clubs and nightlife along the famous Los Angeles strip. Rather than write a straightforward protest song, Nesmith cloaked the events in impressionistic lyrics.
The Moog gave that already unusual song an appropriately otherworldly atmosphere.
According to The A.V. Club, Dolenz had recently purchased the instrument when The Monkees recorded “Daily Nightly,” helping Nesmith move away from the country-influenced sound associated with many of his compositions and into something decidedly more psychedelic.
Related: Last Surviving Monkees Member Reveals Heartbreaking Thing He Misses Most About Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones & Peter Tork
Dolenz was hardly new to show business when The Monkees came along. He had starred as Corky on Circus Boy beginning in 1956, performing under the name Mickey Braddock. A decade later, he was cast as the drummer on NBC’s The Monkees, despite having to learn the instrument for the job.
He quickly became one of the group’s most recognizable voices, singing lead on “Last Train to Clarksville,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “I’m a Believer.”
But “Daily Nightly” showed another side of Dolenz and of The Monkees themselves.
The song was featured during the second season of The Monkees, and a black-and-white performance sequence showed Dolenz miming his Moog performance. The track remained a deeper cut for decades, however, and Dolenz said during a 12-stop memorial tour after Davy Jones’ death in 2012 that The Monkees never performed the song live until that tour.
By then, the bizarre electronic instrument Dolenz had experimented with in 1967 no longer sounded quite so alien.
Synthesizers had become part of the fabric of popular music. But on “Daily Nightly,” listeners were hearing rock musicians explore that strange new sonic territory almost from the beginning.
Related: Micky Dolenz Mourns the Loss of ‘Rare Songwriter’ Who ‘Showed Up’ For Davy Jones
