Song of the Day 9/1: The Monkees, “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”

Mickey Dolenz is the last surviving Monkee, and he’s not Monkeeing around. He has sued the FBI to gain access to its file on the Monkees.

Yes, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, demonstrating the perfect combination of paranoia and cluelessness that led to the Great Folk Music Scare, kept a file on the Pre-Fab Four as part of its surveillance of The Underground. We know this because the FBI released a few pages of that file a decade ago. One document, however, was redacted in its entirety. As this article explains, that’s probably just to protect the identity of whoever filed the reports, which seem to consist of monitoring the band’s on-stage remarks about the Vietnam war. But Dolenz, now 77, understandably wants to know more.

People remember Davy Jones as the band’s lead singer, but Dolenz sang lead on nearly as many songs as Jones. Like other singing drummers — Levon Helm and Don Henley come to mind — Dolenz couldn’t front the band from behind a drum kit, but his voice was better suited than Jones’ to tunes like this Tommy Boyce-Bobby Hart rocker. The B-side to “I’m a Believer,” it charted on its own, reaching No. 20 on the Hot 100 in 1966.

The Monkees’ version was the hit, but it was not the original. The song was released six months earlier as an album track by Paul Revere and the Raiders.

The song’s simplicity and attitude have long made it a favorite of punk bands, starting all the way back with the Sex Pistols.