Chapter 11: Happy Together (September 1968 - February 1969)

25 September 1968

The lineup for the New Yardbirds, 1968. Not pictured: Keith Relf and Jim McCarty.

Recording was about to commence for the Yardbirds' sixth album. Fittingly enough, the six members - Jimmy Page, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, and newbies Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John "Bonzo" Bonham - went into the studio to record the new material that Page and the newbies had performed during the Scandinavian tour, which they were known as the New Yardbirds.

JIM McCARTY: "Alongside the new material Jimmy, Rob and the Johns wrote up, Keith and I came out with a couple of tracks we couldn't include on Dazed and Confused." (1992)

The leftover tracks by McCarty and Relf were the psychedelic "Avron Knows" and the mostly instrumental "Spanish Blood" in which McCarty provided spoken verses. They were re-worked to fit the newer songs such as "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "How Many More Times".

Recording for the album took a combined total of 36 hours spanning over a few weeks, and that included the final mixing due to the very low cost of £1,782 (the equivalent to $2,317, $16,719 in today's money) paid for by Page and manager Peter Grant. Much of the album had been recorded live with the overdubs added in later.

Jimmy Page with Jeff Beck during the latter's time as a Yardbird, 1966.

JIMMY PAGE: "Coming up with an album title wasn't easy. We'd just signed up with Atlantic Records after our contract with Epic had ended, but our first album for Atlantic had no name. I then came across a picture of the Hindenburg disaster and recalled a saying from Keith Moon a few years back." (2009)

Back in 1966, Jimmy Page had recorded with Who members John Entwistle and Keith Moon as well as pianist Nicky Hopkins and former Yardbirds member Jeff Beck for an instrumental that became "Beck's Bolero", later to end up on Beck's debut solo album Truth. The outcome was so satisfying that there was even the possibility of forming a full time group and an album to go along with it.

KEITH MOON: "Yeah, it'll go down like a lead zeppelin." (to Jimmy Page, 1966)

Remembering this quote, Page opted for the title Going Down Like a Lead Zeppelin for the next album, another landmark in the Yardbirds' history.

10 January 1969

The Yardbirds - Going Down Like a Lead Zeppelin

Released: 10 January 1969

Recorded: September - October 1968

Producer: Jimmy Page

Track listing[1]

Side A

Good Times Bad Times/Communication Breakdown
I Can't Quit You Baby
Heartbreaker
Avron Knows
Baby Come On Home

Side B

Spanish Blood
You Shook Me
Moby Dick
How Many More Times

The Yardbirds' sixth album, Going Down Like a Lead Zeppelin, was advertised as being "the only way to fly" in selected music papers. When it first came out, it had received poor reviews from critics; Rolling Stone unfavorably compared it to the works of the Jeff Beck Group, formed at the start of 1967 following Beck's departure. Page's production and writing skills were also criticized, as well as the minimal involvement from founding members Relf and McCarty.

But was it all that bad? In a review from Melody Maker, Chris Welch wrote that "Jimmy Page triumphs - [Going Down Like a] Lead Zeppelin is a gas!" Felix Dennis of Oz and Robert Christgau of The Village Voice were also fairly positive.

For all the mixed reception the album got from critics, it was still a commercial success, reaching #7 in the United States and #6 in the United Kingdom, marking the first time the Yardbirds had reached the Top 10 on either side of the Atlantic. Going Down Like a Lead Zeppelin would become influential towards heavy metal music, not dissimilar to the Beatles' self-titled album from two months previous.

November 1968
Although it looked as though the Yardbirds were destined to continue, the Monkees were slowly beginning to disintegrate.

Theatrical poster for Head, released November 1968.

MICKY DOLENZ: "Although The Birds, The Bees [& The Monkees] had done fairly well by our standards, band morality was sort of low. Peter seemed to get the worst of it. All of us were going different directions by that point." (1997)

That February, The Monkees television show had been cancelled. This seemed to be a blessing for Micky, Peter, Michael and Davy since it meant that they could spend more time in the studio. However, they performed less as a band and more as a series of parallel solo careers, each member having his own set of backing session musicians. Around that time, they had featured in Head, a meandering, nonsensical, and full-blown psychedelic full-length movie without a coherent plot. Co-written by future star Jack Nicholson, the intent of the movie was to destroy the mythos of the Monkees, potentially ending their career for good.

DAVY JONES: "[Bob] Rafelson and [Bert] Schneider seemed to have lost it when they made Head. When it flopped against a budget that was less than a million, they severed all ties with us altogether. Not that we were bothered." (1975)

As time went by, Head would develop a cult following for its style and humor, and Michael Nesmith would even admit that it was a crowning achievement for the Monkees.

Peter Tork, 1968.

What wasn't a crowning achievement, however, would be the television special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, to air on the National Broadcasting Company in April the following year. Ironically enough, the Monkees played second-string roles compared to the guest stars. It was on the first day of filming that Peter Tork had decided that he was finished with the Monkees.

PETER TORK: "I was just unhappy at that point. I wasn't feeling creatively inspired. I felt like I was barely part of the group. I'd had enough. If they wanted to carry on with that ridiculous battle of the bands as the press was calling it, I wished them the best." (1987)

MICHAEL NESMITH: "By the time Peter had left us, we were planning for another double album like The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, with each member occupying his own side. As it turned out, however, that album had sort of dried up my well of material, and I wouldn't have much contributions until we got to Listen to the Band[2]. Micky and Davy had enough to fill their own sides, but Peter barely had any material of his own. It was very much two Monkees per side in the end, with Micky and Davy as the main acts and Peter and I being the intermission acts of sorts." (2009)

February 14, 1969

The Monkees - The Monkees Present Micky, Peter, Michael & Davy

Released: February 14, 1969

Recorded: December 9, 1967 - January 10, 1969

Producer: The Monkees, Gerry Goffin, Eddie Hoh, Felton Jarvis, Keith Allison, Bill Chadwick, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Neil Sedaka, Carole Bayer Sager, Bones Howe

Track listing[3]

Side A: Micky and Peter

Porpoise Song
Can You Dig It?
As We Go Along
Just a Game
Shorty Blackwell
Mommy and Daddy
Seeger's Theme
(I Prithee) Do Not Ask for Love

Side B: Michael and Davy

Circle Sky

Don't Wait for Me
While I Cry
Daddy's Song
Don't Listen to Linda
Me Without You
You and I
The Girl I Left Behind Me
A Man Without a Dream

The sessions that ultimately produced The Monkees Present Micky, Peter, Michael & Davy had stretched far back to December 1967, during the sessions for The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, all the way to January 1969, two months after Tork's departure. The album consisted of a whopping seventeen songs with only two contributions from Tork, three from Nesmith, and six each from Dolenz and Jones. It only reached #32 in the United States and failed to chart in the United Kingdom.

A non-album single, "Tear Drop City", had origins tracing back to October 1966 during the sessions of the band's second album, More of the Monkees. Its B-side, "A Man Without a Dream", actually came from the album. "Tear Drop City" only reached #56 in America whilst doing a somewhat better #44 in the United Kingdom.

Overall, with Peter Tork's departure and The Monkees Present... failing to reach the Top 10, there were questions as to whether or not the Monkees' reputation could be salvaged or that they needed to be put out of their misery. It was undisputed, however, that in this battle of the bands against the Who, the Rolling Stones and several other bands, the Monkees might be the one of the first horses to drop out of the race.

Footnotes

1. All tracks are taken from Led Zeppelin, excluding "Heartbreaker" and "Moby Dick" from Led Zeppelin II, "Avron Knows" and "Spanish Blood" from Yardbirds '68, and the outtake "Baby Come On Home" from Coda. The track listing is based upon a live performance Led Zeppelin did on October 10, 1968; "Good Times Bad Times" and "Communication Breakdown" are even cross-faded together to form a medley, per the live performance.
2. OTL's The Monkees Present.
3. Tracks are mostly sourced from Head and the 2011 reissue of Instant Replay. "Mommy and "Daddy" is taken from OTL's The Monkees Present, and "Seeger's Theme" is from Missing Links Volume Two.

Author's Comments

Not a whole lot for me to talk about, really. The Monkees still split up at the start of the 1970s per OTL, and as for the Yardbirds' 70s output? It's pretty much Led Zeppelin in all but the name so they won't be talked about very much. There will, however, be changes to the output from Led Zeppelin II to Physical Graffiti, which I'll cover not only during Phase One, but Phase Two as well.