“I threw a party for John Lennon one night, and he sat there at the Moog for four hours making flying saucer sounds”: They set the boyband template, but also introduced the world to the synth

Monkees.

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The Monkees occupy a curious place in the history of pop. They are in equal parts derided for setting the mold for the artificial boyband thanks to their manufactured, television-based origins, while in other quarters they're celebrated for seizing control of their own narrative, and writing some genuinely life-affirming pop classics.