Rivers Cuomo, Ben Gibbard, Noel Gallagher, Andy Partridge Write Songs For New Monkees Album

Rivers Cuomo, Ben Gibbard, Noel Gallagher, Andy Partridge Write Songs For New Monkees Album

Davy Jones, the singer for the ’60s psych-pop boy band the Monkees, died in 2012, but it looks like some version of the band intends to soldier forward. On Amazon, there’s a listing for a new Monkees album called Good Times, slated to come out 6/10 on Rhino. There’s no further information on it, but according to the fan site Monkees Concerts, the Amazon listing briefly included some unconfirmed details about what might be the first new Monkees album in 20 years.

According to that original Amazon listing, the album will include songwriting contributions from some of our most prominent power-pop minds, including Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, XTC’s Andy Partridge, and Rogue Wave’s Zach Rogue. It also looks like former Fountains Of Wayne frontman Adam Schlesinger will produce the album and contribute some songwriting, and band members Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith will contribute songs.

That same listing says that the band will go back to vintage unfinished recordings, finishing some of them up. There’s an old Davy Jones vocal for “Love To Love,” written by Neil Diamond, which will see the light of day, and the group will also use an old demo from Harry Nilsson, for the song “Good Times.” They’ll use Nilsson’s old guide vocal to turn the song into a duet between Nilsson and his friend Micky Dolenz. In short: The group is doing everything possible to turn a new 2016 Monkees album into an intriguing proposition.

UPDATE: There has been some social-media evidence that all this is indeed happening. For instance, there’s a tweet from the Monkees themselves:

And this, from Partridge:

Also, Schlesinger has been photographed backstage recently with Dolenz and Tork. And both Weezer and Death Cab have done Monkees covers, if that counts for anything. All the relevant info is here.

UPDATE 2: A new Monkees album has officially been announced in celebration of the television series’ 50th anniversary, as Rolling Stone reports. It’s called Good Times! and, in addition to Cuomo, Gibbard, Rogue, and Partridge, it will also feature a new song written by Noel Gallagher. The album will be released on 6/10, though producer Schlesinger and crew are still working on songs.

more from News