The Monkees was a mid-Sixties TV series – and, for that matter, a band – created specifically for television, and just as specifically to ride the coattails of, and ape, The Beatles. (Ape? Monkees? See what I did there?) At first, the four Monkees cast for the NBC musical sitcom only sang on their records, with studio musicians playing the instruments and, at first, with other composers writing the music and lyrics. But even before The Monkees premiered on TV in the fa