I'm a Believer: My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness - Softcover

Mark Bego is the author of over 40 best-selling books on rock and rool and show business, including two New York Times Best Sellers, a Los Angeles Times Best Seller, and a Chicago Tribune Best SEller, three million-sellers, and two half-million selling titles. With over 10 million books in print, he is acknowledged as the best-selling biographer in the rock and pop music field. His biographies have included Madonna (0815410514), Cher: If You Believe (0815411537) and Bette Midler (081541232).

A good-natured, superficial show-biz bio by the drummer of The Monkees, written with veteran rock-'n'-roll chronicler Bego (Aretha Franklin, 1989, etc.). From the start, Dolenz rode life like the Last Train to Larksville. In the 50's, as a ``hyperactive boy's boy,'' he snared the title role in the smash sitcom Circus Boy. A decade later came the Monkees, four zany young lads--from Hollywood, not Liverpool- -who answered the British rock invasion with their own American TV series. Producer (and future film director) Bob Rafelson knew what he was doing: The Monkees zoomed up the Nielsen ratings, and the group's early releases, penned by Neil Diamond (``I'm a Believer'') and other great songwriters, bumped the Beatles off the top of the charts. Why the clamor? Because, says Dolenz, The Monkees was the first TV show ``to depict young people on their own'': It was ``My Three Sons without Fred MacMurray.'' The show also gave birth to a new method of record promotion, through national TV rather than local radio--the first glimmer of the MTV revolution. For Dolenz, the series led to a magic sleigh ride: smoking hashish with Paul McCartney; starring in Head, a movie scripted by Jack Nicholson; bedding every starlet in sight. When the group split up, Dolenz hit the rocks--divorce, depression--but, more recently, spearheaded the Monkees' ``incredibly successful'' reunion (the top-grossing tour of 1986); he now works as a British TV director. Monkeyshines, nothing more, but it makes you want to hear those tunes again. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.