Results: The Monkees Versus The Sex Pistols: Hear Me Out On This...!

The Monkees were a U.S. band created by television prodicers in 1966 to piggyback on the success of the British bands who invaded North America's pop music consciousness a couple years earlier. The Beatles were especially influential on the development of The Monkees, both as a band and TV show, because of their having conquered both music and movies with A Hard Day's Night and Help!. The directorial style of The Monkees' show was also influenced by the quick cut camera work of the live action adaptation of Batman comics that became a hit in '66. Either as a band and/or sitcom, have you ever enjoyed The Monkees?

Ten years later, English fashion and music impressario Malcolm McLaren put together The Sex Pistols to cross promote, kind of, a Lomdon boutque he co-owned. The band also took advantage of musical and sociopolitical disaffection among British youth that would culminate in that their nation's mid-'70's punk rock explosion. The purposefully provocative band achieved nigh instanteneous notoriety and succes in their homeland but would implode on a U.S. tour in early '78 (reforming for a reunion tour, on which I saw them, in the mid-'90's). Were youi ever one to have enjoyed The Sex Pistols?

Though dissimilar in many ways, The Monkees and The Sex P:istols share key commonalities. Each band made a movie (the former's Head, the latter's The Great Rock "N Roll Swindle), and have some punkiness about them. Though portrayed as clean-cut, happy go lucky young men in their show, The Monkees recorded at least one song so punk, "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" (the flipside of their "I'm a Belever" single), that it merited notice by author Mike Markesich in his authoritative book about U.S. '60's garage rock (or '60's punk), Teen Beat Mayherm!, as punk-adjacent. The 'Pistols must have thought so, too, as they recorded it for their movie's soundtrack. Would you ever have thought of The Monkees as at all punk?

Commercial success for both acts' members after their bands broke up has been mixed at best, Monkee Michael Nesmith (he w/ the wooly cap) hit big with The First National Band on 1970's "Joanne"; Davy Jones (the English one), Peter Tork, and Micky Dolenz wouldn't see much chart action until they reformed a Nesmith-free Monkees in 1986 to capitalize on MTV's rebroadcast of their show. 'Pistols' singer Johnny Rotteh (nee' Lydon) would venture into aesthetically challenging post-punk with the long-lived Public Image Ltd. (PIL), but other members' subsequent bands, such as The Professionals and The Rich Kids, remain relative footnotes to their former cohort's fame and infamy. Would you have thought that more former Monkees and Sex Pistols would have had greater success after their previous bands' fame?

Some while ago I read a writer remark that, in so far as their being a manufacted band, The Sex Pistols were The Monkees of English '70's punk rock. Would you agree wth that (derogatorily delivered) assessment?