Hey Hey It’s Davy Jones: A Conversation with Davy Jones Part 2

Verne and I walked into the busy hotel restaurant early Sunday morning.  I was very sleep deprived, having spent much of the night before researching the career of former teen idol and Monkee Davy Jones to prepare myself for our interview with him.  The night before seemed like a whirlwind dream – a misty water coloured memory of Verne and I in Davy Jones’ trailer, some rapid paced conversation and hasty interview arrangements.  I am also not entirely sure that everybody present was wearing pants.  Entering the hotel restaurant where mid morning diners feasted on a rather expensive brunch buffet,   we quickly spotted Davy Jones and Aviva Malloney sitting together at a nearby table.  They recognized us and waved and we approached the table and sat down.  Davy Jones was clearly in a far different mood than the night before.  He was quieter, calmer, and more intense.  The waitress quickly poured some coffee and the four of us had a quiet conversation as a nearby Estebanesque guitarist played “Here Comes the Sun” nearby.  Davy softly sang along.  “It must have taken George Harrison an hour to write that tune,” he commented.  This brought it all home to me.  We weren’t just sitting with a man who knew who George Harrison was, we were sitting with a man who had actually known George Harrison!  This was a guy who had actually spent some time with George Harrison, not to mention the rest of the fab four; it only added to the surreal nature of the morning.  After a while Aviva left the three of us and Davy lead us to another end of the restaurant away from the rest of the patrons so we could have our talk.  Now, truth be told, I don’t think Davy Jones was very interested in answering questions but that didn’t mean he wasn’t interested in talking to us.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  Davy Jones had a lot to say and what resulted was a much more candid and intense visit than I could have ever imagined.  I really have never had a moment like this with a celebrity before.  Davy told us all his philosophies on life, religion, sex, fatherhood, politics, political correctness, women, responsibility, entertainment, the definition of the soul, and even laundry.  What you are about to read is the true story of Davy Jones.  How did The Beatles on Sullivan affect him?  When did he first lose his virginity?  How did the Monkees destroy his theatrical career?  What did Sylvester Stallone say to him?  What did Henry Winkler do that annoyed him?  What does he think about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Keanu Reeves, Tom Hanks and Taylor Hicks?  What are Davy’s true feelings about Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, Mickey Dolenz, and the whole Monkees phenomena itself?  Due to the wordiness of Davy’s interview, and to make this interview more reader friendly, I’ll be breaking his stories down into sections with headings so that you can easily navigate through Davy’s thoughts, stories and views as

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PROUDLY PRESENTS

HEY HEY IT’S DAVY JONES:

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVY JONES

(PART 2)

DAVY JONES ON IMAGE

Sam:  Thanks again for talking with us this morning Davy. You did a really great show last night! I think it’s one of the biggest crowds I’ve seen in this city and I gotta tell you, the audience just ate your show up! How do you manage to keep your popularity over all these decades?

Davy Jones:  Well, when I am traveling or when I go out I try to set a good example. I try to dress so that I look at least half decent. Y’know, I hate to go into airports and there are guys wearing tank tops and cut offs and you got to actually sit next to them and they’re flossing their teeth. Y’know, there are all kinds of people who do things like that and to me it’s not a necessary thing. You go and you just act like a gentleman. Y’know, I was raised by my mum and my three sisters and I got four daughters and I’ve been married twice. I’ve got a lot of females in my life. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of girls in my life that look after me and do things for me and stuff and you’ve got to learn to just forget that lad stuff and become an example. I mean, it’s a stress sometimes. I mean, I didn’t ask to be a role model. It’s just inbred. 

DAVY JONES ON HIS FATHER

My father was the street healer and when I say that is that in England, if there is a problem, and somebody was ill and there was a sickness on the street or someone cut themselves or whatever my father was an ambulance man. The reason I say that is because I remember one time, for instance, is that one of the neighbours died on the toilet and everyone was saying, “Go get Harry!  Go get Harry!  He’ll take care of it.” So my dad was a little guy who had to take this guy off of the toilet, clean him up, put him together and, y’know, that’s a respectful thing. I mean that’s a very extreme time but I saw him do many things. 

DAVY JONES ON RESPONSIBILITY

I do things too for people. I have an experience. Let me tell you really quick…New Years Eve. New Years morning, I’m coming from my friend’s house and I’m driving through the fog at about twenty to six in the morning and the sun is just coming up and there’s fog on the road and I’m driving down the road and where I live in Florida there’s a lot of Mexicans, a lot of Guatemalans. And I’m driving down the road and I see this little Mexican guy and he has got just his pants and his shoes on. No top and he’s dirty and he’s staggering all over the pavement and going into the road and I pass him and I thought, you know something? That guy’s going to get arrested. He’ll be back on the boat and on his way back to Guatemala or wherever so I swing over and I park my car for one second and I had a sweater on and a t-shirt. So I took the sweater off, took the T-shirt off and put the sweater back on and pulled along the side and opened my window up just enough and said, “Hey,” and he said, “I don’t speak no English.”  And I said, “Well, where do you live?”  I’m thinking I’ll be late to feed my horses but I say, “get in” and he’s drunk and I knew that if he had walked another block and a cop car went by that he would be in the wagon. And so it’s New Years morning and I got him to get in the car and he got in and I said, “Where do you go?  Where do you come from?”" and he goes, “I don’t know,” and he’s crying and he’s upset and he’s been drinking too much and he must of woke up in the bushes or whatever. So I said, “Put this on,” and I gave him my t-shirt but it didn’t matter. So I drove him down and I was thinking, “Where am I going to take him?  What am I going to do?”  So there is this gas station owned by three Mexican guys and I pull up in front of the gas station and I say to the one guy, “Do you speak Mexican?” And the guy says, “Hey man, sure we do.”  “Alright!” I say, “Can you talk to this guy?” And he says, “Where do you live?” and the guy in my car says, “Guatemala,” and the other guy says, “No, where do you live in Florida?” And the guy tells him the rest and the gas attendant says, “Hey, it’s okay. He just lives two streets down the road.” So I give on the gas and get him home and he says to me, “Thank you so much,” and he had that down anyway and so I started the New Year with a good feeling, y’know, helping someone who was less fortunate than I was. Well, I’ve never been in that bad of a condition. I’ve been in bad conditions. I remember some New Years mornings when I was like, “Oh god!  Why did I have that last beer?” but we’ve all been there. It’s like, “Give me the bathroom floor so I can put my face on the tile.” But things like that, some of the things I’ve experienced, not because of being a Monkee but because I just fall into these different situations and I don’t just toss them out of my mind and let them go. 

Verne:  Well things happen for a reason. I’m a firm believer of that and I think, again, obviously you’ve got a good heart and you’ve got a good soul and you’re a nice person and I think for things like that people are meant to fall into those situations.

DAVY JONES ON BAD PARENTING

Davy:   Well I was, and I see a lot of stuff going on and I when see someone pulling a kid around in a supermarket and I say, “Excuse me but….” and they say, “Mind your own business,” and then you can’t go too much further than that because it is my business, okay? Stop pulling him along like that and then you’ve got to calm it down a little bit because I’ve done that a number of times when I see people pulling on kids. Y’know, pulling them wherever just because they’re playing on a rope or something wherever, on a barrier at a bank or something. Because it’s the parent who is embarrassed. It’s not what the kid is doing, it’s just that they’re not. I mean, I can’t imagine going in a supermarket as a kid with my mother and getting on the floor and going, “I want some candy.” You think it’s doing that kind of stuff? I can understand that but I’d pick him up and take him right home. Not whack him, because you can’t hit children. It’s not an example you want to set because if they see things like that happen kids go on and do that kind of thing in their later life. It becomes an example of what they have so then they think it’s alright. Y’know, it sticks in your mind. I mean, I’ve got so many things in my mind from over the years and you can see in my book, which you can get on www.daveyjones.net, that it’s like over the kitchen table.  I want everything to be normal when I go out there on stage. 

DAVY JONES ON HIS EARLY DAYS IN SHOW BUSINESS

Under the right conditions the thought in my mind is to try to be consistent. Let it roll along. Just make it as tough as you can for the next act to come on, y’know? My dad always told me to make it harder for the next guy to go on and I’d say, “Yes, Dad.”  He was never pushy; never stagy my parents. I left home when I was fourteen. Obviously I missed out on those normal things; school proms if there is any such thing in England, which there wasn’t. I missed out on all the early dating and that kind of thing.  I was thrown straight into a dressing room on Broadway and on the West End Stage on the, what is it, Magpie Theatre? 

Sam:  The Hummingbird.

Davy:  Oh, sorry. The Hummingbird Theatre. 

DAVY JONES ON SEX AND WOMEN

And I’m meeting these girls in g-strings and topless, walking around and then, y’know, I’ve got three sisters so I’d seen a lot of that stuff so I was a little late in maturing as a young man. I mean I probably didn’t have a sexual encounter until I was about seventeen or eighteen which is pretty normal. That’s pretty normal but I’m pretty consistent with that thing. I mean, if I’m with someone than I’m with them and I’ve never been a very promiscuous person. You couldn’t be in the Monkee days because all the kids were so young and, again, as I say, I don’t want to be the guy who has to set the example but at the same time it’s important that people have some sort of guideline. It’s sort of like when people talk about Bach or Beethoven and all these people, well those were the only guys who had a piano! Y’know, it’s sort of like my belief on religion - how the Bible was there as a reference so people can look at one point of view and have it as something that they can understand and follow so they had some sort of protocol. And then it got to be opening the doors for the ladies and being respectful and then you had the men’s smoke room and you have this where everything is just one big mess and then there just wasn’t that many people anyway. 

DAVY JONES ON RELIGION, HAPPINESS AND THE “SOUL”

And so my view on religion is that I believe very strongly that this is the afterlife. That this is the reward we’ve been given. It couldn’t get any better then this! I mean you’ve got to be joking! I mean this is heaven on Earth if there is any such place. I believe in ears and eyes and mouths and heads and noses and all those things but what is a soul? A soul, we’ve worked out, well we’ve blew the word up so we’re saying that “he’s very soulful, he’s got a great heart.  He’s got a great soul,” whatever. So it’s a word we’ve manufactured to relate a feeling or an emotion. Howard Houston said that “there is more feelings and emotions than there are words to express them.” So change the way you look at things and the things you look at are changed. You got to think from the end because the things you do affect somebody else. I say it’s happiness. There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. You get over it, you make mistakes, you get over it. If I have a problem I take that problem and I put it over there and then I have all this fun and I go play and I have a ball, y’know.  I’ll go swimming and I’ll do this and I’ll do that, I’ll sit down and write something and then I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll go back to that problem and I’m in a different frame of reference. I mean, what’s the problem? It’s very simple; I really believe this is heaven. I mean look at that lake out there. Look at all these people having Sunday brunch. Y’know, everybody is where they want to be and there are a lot of unfortunate people in the world and there are twenty million people who are homeless and who are living in tents, being persecuted but it has always been that way. You talk about the war to end all wars. I mean that was just an idea because they didn’t think it could get any worse than this. I mean, my grandfather was killed in the trenches in 1916 and he was thirty years old and he left four kids and a wife but it was always the labourers that were pushed out on the front lines but there were so many other ways to go but we keep falling into the same trap. I mean what can you do? Life is so precious and you got to live it to the fullest and just be considerate to other people. So do you have any questions for me?

Sam:  I mean, I do but this is just wonderful – listening to your points of view and philosophies on life.

DAVY JONES ON CELEBRITY ADVOCATES

Davy:  Well, I heard something on the TV the other day. It was like a talk show and it was Henry Winkler and he was on this show and it was this new guy on television and all of a sudden he asks, “What would you do if you had three wishes?”  Henry Winkler says, “Well, number one I would get all the boys home from Iraq and number two…” and I’m thinking that I don’t want to hear his politics! I don’t want to hear political views from people in Hollywood!  It’s sort of like Cher or this guy or this girl supporting the presidency of this guy. Y’know, if it makes a difference and people look at that and then all of a sudden you become a celebrity and all of a sudden you become more attractive, you become better looking and you become more articulate and you become all these things that you’re not really; but then again when I think about politics I think it should get off the stage in front of audiences and stuff. When I say you got to change the way you look at things it’s political in a sense. It’s speaking my idea but it’s a place to go which is comforting. So why not be comfortable? But to endorse a presidential or a cabinet going into office, y’know, it’s your point of view and if some people don’t want to listen to you than that’s fine. I don’t want to offend anybody with my views on anything; I just want to share the way I feel. I don’t think there is any problem with that, so anyway. 

DAVY JONES ON BRIAN EPSTEIN AND “OLIVER”

Sam:  So, back to my questions. Well, why don’t we talk about the Monkees for a few minutes?

Davy:  Yup.

Sam:  Now, I know the story that there was an ad in Variety that you guys all answered but one time I heard a story that they already had seen you and had you in mind and that you didn’t have to audition for the Monkees.

Davy:  Well when I did the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, the same night the Beatles appeared, and I saw all this chaos and you got to understand that the Beatles were the first manufactured band. Brian Epstein got rid of the drummer, Pete Best. He brought in Ringo, who’s a dear friend. I like him very much and he’s a real sensible kind of guy. He loves to play. He loves to get out there. He loves show business. He’s not aloof or separate. Anyway, I saw what happened and every night out of “Oliver’s” backstage door there were like twenty kids or when I went to the edge of the stage there was a tremendous applause when I came to take my bow because that was the part. That applause would happen for no matter who played it and in anybody’s eyes they would say that was great. Different Dodgers did different things and they were all appreciated in different ways.  I thought my Dodger was pretty good and I thought my Fagan was even better. It was not as good as Alec Guinness but it was pretty good.

Sam:  When did you do Fagan?

Davy:  I did Fagan in 1989 for the first time at Starlight Theatre in Kansas City and then in the Moonie in St. Louis, and then I went back a couple of years later and did it again and then I did Fagan in Miami and here and there and everywhere but I thought my Fagan was as good as anyone’s.  It was.  I knew it was.  To play a seventy five year old man and the reviews said if you go to see Davy Jones forget it because you’re not going to recognize him. And I did it in soft funny happy way. I did all that fun stuff. Y’know, the Monkees ruined my acting career. People are always looking for this little chirpy chap with stars in his eyes and this little man so maybe when I get to be seventy or sixty maybe I’ll finally get these opportunities but I’ve already gotten one of them. 

DAVY JONES ON HIS ROCK N’ ROLL MEMORABILIA MUSEUM

I bought myself a church in Pennsylvania. It’s a massive church. As big as where we’re sitting right now. Two floors. I’m turning it into a memorabilia museum and children’s theatre. One floor is going to be memorabilia. I’ve collected things from the area and it’s not just going to be Monkee memorabilia. I’ll get a jacket from Roger Daltery or a pair of shoes from Elton John. All I got to do is contact them and tell them what I’m doing. It’s not going to be from any e-bay sale. So put your money where your mouth is. Shut up. Stop complaining. If you haven’t changed it you can’t change it. 

DAVY JONES ON THE PROBLEMS WITH SHOW BUSINESS UNIONS AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

But you know, in the 70′s when we first finished the Monkees you see these young producers coming in because now the studios are being rented out because the unions spoiled the business and now they go to Canada, which is a great place to film, they go to Mexico, because why would you turn yourself inside out with rules. ”Don’t move this. Don’t touch that cable. We need a break now.” That’s not what theatre or movies are about.  It’s about spontaneity. Actors can’t take that break when they get to that point. They want one more take or whatever. That’s why I like the stage or theatre because there’s not one more take. Whatever you say is what you said. It’s just like this!  Live interviews! Once you’ve said it than that’s it. Once you’ve said it don’t say, “Oh, forget I said that.” There’s nothing that I say to you or to anybody else that I don’t want anybody else to not hear. Even if I am hung over from the next night and I’m mad at the world and all of a sudden I come out and I’m a little grumpy old man. So if I’ve said it, I’ve said it and if you want to print it, than print it. Y’know, there’s more good in the world than there is bad. You shift through that clutter to find the heart and soul of the matter – there’s that word again. The soul. If you can find where it comes from than it’s understanding. 

DAVY JONES ON THE MONKEES

When we went out on tour as the Monkees in 1997 as the four of us we sold out Wembley Stadium, Newcastle, Manchester, the NCC Center and the critics said, “same old, same old,” but the audience went wild! They were on their feet by the end of the show. They weren’t thinking about someone’s silly opinion. Some guy came up to me the other day and said, “Hey!  I love the Monkees,” and he was like forty one, and he was like, “I used to watch it all the time when I was a kid every Saturday morning.”  Well, then I knew he was second generation because it was on Monday nights when it was on TV.  He says, “Yeah, you guys were great. Not like the kids these days. They don’t even play their own music! They’re singing to tapes and doing this.” And I was like, “Yeah, right.” I mean there is an audience for everything. Now, back in the 60′s we were knocked for not playing our own music. We were a TV show about a band. Do you understand? We weren’t a friggin’ band! We were a TV show about a band. So it blew up. I think we did about two hundred concerts with just the four of us standing on a stage with the Cowsills just about to go on. Do you know how hard it is to play the bass line of “I’m a Believer”?  It’s like nothing! Well you can sing any song that Neil Diamond ever wrote to “I’m a Believer.” I mean, “Cherry Cherry” was “It’s a Little Bit Me, It’s a Little Bit You.” Well if you go through all those different albums there are so many different songs on that style. We got writers all over. We didn’t want to use just one writer. The reason we got all those great songs from all those great writers was because in the 60′s before the Beatles hit, those writers were writing everything for everybody. It wasn’t singer/songwriter like Gordon Lightfoot or somebody like that. A singer who did his own songs was called a folk singer. Bob Dylan never really hit it off right away, but now he’s out there again and they ask him what he thinks of folk singing and he changed the face of folk singing. He got a little bit more adventurous and he wrote lyrics that were a little bit more risqué and opinionated. 

Sam:  Well, he was the man who told the Beatles that they didn’t actually write anything.

Davy:  That’s right! And so they stopped! They stopped and they stopped singing Johnny B. Goode and they stopped covering Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino so all of a sudden Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson, Neil Sadaka and all these people had no place to put their songs. Hello! Here comes the Monkees.  And then Mike Nesmith took up the cause in the second year and started wanting to write songs for the B side of every single. He made thousands! Lots of money from that. Y’know, the first check I got in 1967 was forty thousand dollars! So what he got as a writer and publisher, I have no idea. Then in the second year we blew it because instead of taking five days to shoot the show we only spent three days and instead they filled it in with all those “Monkee runs” which are now called music videos. But it was all done before – Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vinton, Fabian. They all had these little videos that they showed on the jukebox. They were all filmed with just one camera and then the guy sang and that was sort of an extension of the Monkees. Now imagine if the Marx Brothers put out records? Now that would have been amazing, y’know? They would have had a different sort of career. Now people don’t get it. Even a group like the Marx Brothers wasn’t selling tickets at the box office anymore and they were dropped by the company and they were told to go on the road and develop new material and so they would do five days on the road. Now, when I saw the Beatles, just to get back to your question, when I saw the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan theatre…

DAVY JONES ON THE BEATLES ON SULLIVAN AND LAS VEGAS PERFORMERS

Sam:  What was it like that night?  Crazy?

Davy:  Yeah, because Brian Epstein had put four hundred young kids in that theatre. Well, the next week the audience all looked like traveling salesmen and they were all over fifty.  But on that particular night they had put all those kids in that theatre and they went crazy and the police were out there and it was all staged and the thing was put together for that particular reason. Music needed something new. Music needs something new now. John Lennon said that he didn’t want to be forty and singing in Vegas. Well, now he would change his mind because Elton John is there, Celine Dion is there and the people come to you when you get older.  Unless you have a couple of days in Peterborough or some town similar where you can look at the lake and take a walk and relax and do your laundry. 

DAVY JONES ON LAUNDRY AND THE INFLUENCE OF HIS SISTERS

I mean, every time I pack my clothes up and leave a show I think to myself, “Do you think Elvis did this?” I mean, if you go up to my room right now I got a stack of socks and underwear. I got a stack of other stuff. I’ve been on the road for nine days. I am going to the laundry room in the hotel tonight. I don’t want anyone else touching my shorts. I am doing my own underwear and my own socks, y’know? I don’t want to mix colors, y’know. I want everything to be the way I want it to be and it all goes back to my little system in my little case and if I need to grab a shirt or whatever everything is in order. Many times I’ll be sitting there, like I will be tonight, talking to my sister and I’ll say, “What are you doing?” and she’ll say, “You know what I’m doing.  It’s Sunday night.  I’m doing the ironing,” and I’ll say, “So am I.”  Don’t mess with my shirts. I have to iron my own shirts. My own fresh shirts, because I’ve been doing it my whole life and my mum passed away and my sisters taught me how to do that. They taught me how to cook and taught me how to do my own clothes and taught me how to keep in reasonably good shape and, then again, you can buy five t-shirts for ten dollars but if you buy one t-shirt for forty dollars and look after it will last for a long time. You don’t have to have a stack of stuff. I mean, every time my rule is, well, I just bought a new pair of sneakers because I’m starting to run again. I was always a little bit of a runner but I’ve had problems with my calves and things and so for my ratty old sneakers, instead of keeping them to walk in the mud, I’ll leave them behind. I mean, when you’re traveling or on the road don’t ever take more than you can carry. That’s the golden rule because you might have to leg it on your own sometime. It’s great having a car waiting for you and it’s great having all of this. 

DAVY JONES ON EARLY SUCCESS

But the thing was I saw the Beatles on the Sullivan stage and I thought that that was different. I mean, I thought the ultimate thing was being on “Coronation Street,” and then I thought “Oliver,” and then Broadway, and then the Tony nomination. I mean a Tony nomination! Can you believe it? But then I think that I wanted to be a part of this thing I was seeing!  So I had just been signed by Columbia Pictures for a seven year contract because they had seen me as the Artful Dodger and they signed my up and I went to see a guy named James Frawley who directed some of our stuff. He directed “Butterflies Are Free.” That was one of the things he was doing and some other stuff but the English accent got in the way. I mean, tell that to Enroll Flynn playing an American cavalry officer. So it all depends who you’re talking to, specifically in the movies. Now, there are all sorts of internationals so it doesn’t matter. You got Sean Connery playing a Russian submarine captain. 

Verne:  It’s like Boris Karloff playing an Asian, or Bela Lugosi playing one.

Davy:  There’s another thing – I was offered to do Mrs. Saigon and it was just about the time there was a conflict because Jacqueline Price was playing on Broadway and they asked me to take over to do it and also there was a massive conflict about getting an Oriental….ah, it’s now Asian. Right. It was like, y’know, wherever. I meant Oriental and it’s now Asian. I keep getting confused. I don’t know what to call anyone anymore. I just call them by whatever they are at this point.

Sam:  I believe Asian is the politically correct term.

 DAVY JONES ON THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

Davy:  Okay. Whatever it is. It’s sort of like Bill Maher. He didn’t come up with the term politically correct but he’ll be connected with that term forever. And he happens to be a dick, y’know, but that’s another story. I mean, he was doing guest spots on “Happy Days” back in the 70′s. And so was the leadsinger of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was into acting before that. He’s only an act, now Flea’s a good friend of mine, from the Chilis. I believe him to be a friend.  He respects me and I respect him and what he’s done but the lead singer, y’know, Anthony? Anthony is standing outside of his house in Beverly Hills while it’s burning down because he’s on heroine. He says, “Wow, what a great fire this is.” I know because his former manager is my friend. He was in “Oliver” and his mother and dad were like second parents to me and he quit because he got them a two million dollar deal about five or six years ago to go to Sweden and just put these jeans on for an ad but they were all, “No, no, we don’t want to do that, no,” and so they had a little hiatus for about six years. But then they came back and will they with stand the test of time?  But the Chilis came back. That’s what they did and Anthony was a moderate song writer but he got together with a good producer. It’s like “Fame,” y’know, David Bowie. It was a country and western song when he first started it but he got together with a producer and he changed it and all of a sudden he’s got another hit.