“You know, when I first got into the rock & roll business, I could barely even play the changes to this song on my, on my guitar. But now I’m very proficient at it, I can play the guitar, I can strum it rhythmically, I can sing along with my guitar as I strum. I can strum, sing, dance, I can make merry fun all over the stage.” — Frank Zappa, “We’re Only in It for the Money.”
It’s been said that the first truly manufactured rock ‘n roll group was the Monkees in 1966, when a bunch of network executives got together and hand-picked four young lads for a TV comedy show about a struggling band, not unlike the Beatles. Not only was the show a hit, with 12-year-old girls as the target audience, but also their first single record, “Last Train to Clarksville’ rose to No. 1 on the charts and for a little more than a year the Monkees were big stars.
Th
eir stars f
aded almost as quickly, and by late 1968 they were absent from the charts and the TV sets.
The saga was sad because at first they couldn’t even play their instruments, just as Zappa indicated. But they weren’t the first such charlatans created in the quest for quick and easy money, nor the last.
Considered for your approval:
- Ricky Nelson, who used the TV sitcom “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet” to promote his songs. Granted, he could sing and play guitar.
- Shelley Fabares and Paul Peterson, both of whom used “The Donna Reed Show” to get their songs on the top 40 charts. Fabares’ “Johnny Angel” reached No. 1.
- Johnny Crawford, who played Chuck Connors’ son on “The Rifleman,” and you owe it to yourself to listen to the lyrics of “Your Nose Is Gonna Grow.”
- Patty Duke, who tested the music waters with “Don’t Just Stand There” in 1965, with a boost from the TV show bearing her name.
- Lorne Greene, who used his popularity as Ben Cartwright on “Bonanza” to hit No. 1 in 1963 with “Ringo.” At least he spared us his singing and only spoke it.
- Richard Chamberlain, star of “Dr. Kildare,” sang the show’s theme song, “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight.”
- George Maharis, one-time teen heart throb on “Route 66,” tried his luck with “Teach Me Tonight.”
- Perhaps the worst example of all, The Archies took off from their cartoon show with a studio band to do the No. 1 hit song “Sugar Sugar” in 1969. Has anyone ever seen the band?
- David Cassidy and Shirley Jones, mother and son on the Partridge Family and in real life, made No. 1 with “I Think I Love You” in 1970.
I deliberately 
omitted hosts, singers and musicians from variety shows, such as Perry Como, Lawrence Welk and Andy Williams because their jobs indeed were making music on TV, and some of it carried over to the music charts for ‘mo money.
In the 1980s and 1990s, studio executives stepped up the practice of choosing members of a musical group, thereby manufacturing such ensembles as The Back Street Boys and In Sync. About all they really needed was to be cute and good dancers.
During my childhood, I was told often about how bands such as The Beatles, The Four Seasons, The Doobie Brothers, The Drifters and The Jefferson Airplane formed as young lads in their teens, played in a lot of back alley dives and starved a lot before finally catching a big break to claw their way to stardom.
In other words, they paid their dues. They weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths or catapulted by their TV fame like those mentioned above. And they were musicians.
PHOTOS: Shelly Fabares Richard Chamberlain
Patty Duke Rick Nelson
David Cassidy Johnny Crawford
The Monkees are about as real as a fake band can get. After the success of the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, Hollywood decided to create a television series about a fictional mop-topped foursome whose similarities would have given a later generation of lawyers night sweats. They hired four actors/musicians — Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork — with varying degrees of musical skill and experience. Instruments on the television set were unplugged and the songs re-recorded later in a music studio. As the show progressed, the Monkees began writing their own songs, which the television studio wouldn’t let them record. Mike Nesmith, who regarded himself a musician first and an actor second, pushed especially hard to make his fake band real, and the producers eventually relented. By the band’s third album the musicians were actually playing and singing much of their own music (with the frequent aid of session musicians). With six albums by the original line-up, a television show that lasted two seasons, a feature length movie and songs still played on the radio today, it’s hard to tell where the actors ended and the real band began.