Davy Jones, Made-for-TV Lead Singer of the Monkees, Dies at 66

February 29, 2012, 7:18 PM EST By Bloomberg

Laurence Arnold

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Davy Jones, the accidental pop-music star who gave voice to songs such as “I’m a Believer’’ and “Pleasant Valley Sunday’’ as lead singer of the made-for- television band the Monkees, has died. He was 66.

Jones died today of a heart attack in Indiantown, Florida, where he lived, according to the Associated Press, citing Helen Kensick, his publicist.

The British-born Jones started his career on stage, then signed with Columbia Pictures/Screen Gems Television, which became his route to pop music.

The Monkees, the band, began as “The Monkees,’’ the TV show, which ran on NBC from 1966 to 1968 and followed the misadventures of a fictional musical quartet of Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith. The fast-paced hijinks were inspired by “A Hard Day’s Night,’’ the 1964 mock- documentary about, and starring, the Beatles.

The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll calls the Monkees “the first, and arguably the best, of the prefabricated 60s and 70s pop groups’’ manufactured by TV executives to capitalize on the frenzy known as Beatlemania. The Partridge Family was another such group of made-for-TV musicians.

Small of stature and gentle in demeanor, he became a family-friendly heartthrob to a generation of girls in the 1960s and 1970s. Jones may have made his biggest television splash on an episode of “The Brady Bunch’’ in which he appears as Marcia Brady’s dream prom date come true.

‘Kiss the Girls’

Jones enjoyed a career in music long after his television show ended. In an interview published in January in the Republican newspaper of Springfield, Massachusetts, publicizing a free concert he would be giving at the Mohegan Sun Casino Wolf Den, he said he would have been happy to remain a Monkee.

“I just wanted to be in the show, fall in love twice in each episode and kiss the girls,’’ he said. “I had no ambition to be Steven Spielberg or Cecil B. DeMille.’’

According to the article, Jones said he was happily married to his third wife, Jessica Pacheco, and was trying “to be very positive today in my life.’’

“I have a beautiful wife, four great daughters, and several grandchildren, and I’m close to them all,” he told the newspaper.

David Jones was born on Dec. 30, 1945, in Manchester, England. According to a biography on the website of his manager, New York-based Roger Paul Inc., Jones began entertaining at age 11 on the ITV soap opera “Coronation Street.’’

Encouraged to try the London stage, he portrayed the Artful Dodger in “Oliver!,’’ a West End production of the Charles Dickens tale “Oliver Twist.’’ At 16, he originated that role on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award.

--With assistance from Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles. Editors: Steven Gittelson, Charles W. Stevens

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Arnold in Washington at larnold4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Charles W. Stevens at cstevens@bloomberg.net

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