We continue to ‘Monkey’ around with another collection of songs.
“Monkey Man” is a song by the Rolling Stones, featured as the eighth track on their 1969 album ‘Let it Bleed’. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote “Monkey Man” as a tribute to Italian pop artist Mario Schifano, whom they met on the set of his movie Umano Non Umano! (Human, Not Human!). Recorded in April 1969, the song’s introduction features distinctive vibraphone, bass, guitar, and piano. Richards plays main riff and slide guitar solo, Jagger provides vocals, producer Jimmy Miller plays tambourine, Nicky Hopkins plays piano, Charlie Watts provides drums, while Bill Wyman plays vibraphone and bass. Wyman’s vibraphone is mixed onto the left channel together with Hopkins’ piano.
“Monkey on My Back” This was the first song Steven Tyler and Joe Perry wrote for the ‘Pump’ album – they composed it in November 1988. This song is about the band’s struggles with addition (or, as Perry puts it, their “adventures in body chemistry”). A “monkey on one’s back” is a term that means a burden, which is how they came to view their drug use. When the band finally sobered up for their 1987 album ‘Permanent Vacation’, they enjoyed a career resurgence, got in great physical shape, and became video stars thanks to MTV.
“Monkey Riches” is a song by Animal Collective from their 2012 album Centipede Hz. Dave ‘Avey Tare’ Portner wonders, “how I even wrote this song, does this not occur to almost everyone?” as he croons about the state of our planet. Josh “Deakin” Dibb told AUX Magazine: “I was really psyched on the lyrical content of it from Dave’s perspective in terms of liability. I guess it’s one of the closest things we have to an environmental song. That’s him struggling with the reality of our environmental footprint. I get really psyched on that side of it. It almost reminds me, energy-wise, like what was cool about the JB’s. And Bob Marley. Not that I think most people would pick up on any sort of message in that regards, but I think that’s sort of cool, that it kind of feels like that to me when playing it.”
“Monkey To The Moon” is a track from The Coral which was originally recorded for the band’s 2005 album ‘The Invisible Invasion’, which was produced by Geoff Barrow and Ade Utley of Portishead. However it wasn’t included on the final released version. Frontman James Skelly wrote on his record label’s website about the song: “We were recording The Invisible Invasion, and this was the first track we did with producers Geoff Barrow and Ade Utley, we went to their studio in Bristol and just knocked this one down and Geoff mixed it, and I think this is the monitor mix. We were so in tune, we all chipped in on the writing, it started out as a kind of Beefheart tune. We usually all arrange a tune but with this one we all wrote it together too, we did it all as one thing. You have to be fully functioning as a unit to be able to work that way. We came up with the title in a taxi somewhere, we were laughing at it, and just wrote a tune around it.”
“(Theme from) The Monkees” is a 1966 pop rock song, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart as the signature tune for the TV series The Monkees. Two versions were recorded – one for their eponymous first album and a second shorter rendition designed to open the television show. Both feature vocals by Micky Dolenz. It is based loosely on the Dave Clark Five song (including finger snap intro) “Catch Us If You Can”. The full-length version was released as a single in several countries including Australia, where it became a hit, reaching No. 8. It also made Billboard Magazine’s “Hits of the World” chart in both Mexico and Japan, reaching the Top 20 in Japan and the Top 10 in Mexico.
