Valleri
| "Valleri" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 US single label | ||||
| Single by The Monkees | ||||
| from the album The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees | ||||
| B-side | "Tapioca Tundra" | |||
| Released | 17 February 1968 | |||
| Recorded | 26 & 28 December 1967 United Recorders Hollywood, CA | |||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock[1] | |||
| Length | 2:16 | |||
| Label | Colgems #1019 | |||
| Songwriter(s) | ||||
| Producer(s) | The Monkees | |||
| The Monkees singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"Valleri" is a song written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart for The Monkees, who had a #3 on Billboard Hot 100 hit with it, also spending two weeks at #1 on Cash Box in early 1968.[2] The song also rose to #1 in Canada, and #12 in the UK.
Background
Screen Gems president and music supervisor Don Kirshner asked Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart if they had any "girl's-name" songs to be used in the Monkees television series. After claiming, via telephone, that they had a finished song, Boyce and Hart improvised "Valleri" on their way to Kirshner's office. Kirshner was pleased with their work, and "Valleri" took its place on the Monkees recording schedule, with Boyce and Hart producing the original sessions in August 1966.
The original recording (with instrumental backing by the Candy Store Prophets, plus Wrecking Crew session musician Louie Shelton contributing a flamencoesque guitar solo, consisting of hammer-ons & pull-offs, a style not heard again in popular rock music until the late 70s) was featured in the show's first season in 1967; a staged performance showed Michael Nesmith apparently picking Shelton's guitar solo via cuts between Nesmith with his hands obscured and close-ups of hands playing the solo. While the first version of "Valleri" went unreleased, a few off-air recordings received radio airplay (thanks to DJs taping the audio directly from the video), and later surfaced on bootleg recordings.
16 months later, in December of 1967, the song was rerecorded. According to Bobby Hart, the original 1966 track could not be used because the Musicians Union contracts had already been filed with Boyce and Hart listed as producers. The Monkees, by late 1967, had renegotiated their contracts that included a clause that stated all future recordings would show "Produced by The Monkees" on the label, which meant the song had to be recorded again. Boyce and Hart were approached about coming back to produce a new track. Bobby Hart continues, "Lester Sill (the President of Colgems Records) came back to us and said, 'They want you to recut Valleri. You can't have producers credit, but we want you to go back in and do it again, making it sound as close to the original as possible.'" The recording was produced by Boyce and Hart on December 26, 1967.
When Lester Sill heard the track, he felt it needed something extra, and had a brass section overdubbed on December 28. The remade "Valleri" was released on February 17, 1968. In the United States, the song reached Number Three on the Billboard charts, and Number One in Cash Box. It would be the band's last US top ten hit. (It was also their last single to receive a push from their television series and also the last single to be certified gold. The followup single, "D. W. Washburn", was not featured on the show, and only reached #19 in the pop charts. Later singles fared even worse.)
Other appearances
The original recording of "Valleri" was finally released in January 1990, as part of the Rhino Records collection Missing Links, Volume II, along with several other versions of Monkees tunes used in the TV series.
Of note, 1960s single and LP releases of the second version, as well as subsequent hits packages of the song, feature a fade out ending. The cold ending version (heard in one episode of the television series) was first released on Arista's "Then And Now, The Best Of The Monkees" in 1986. Subsequent hits packages and reissues of the single on their Flashback label also feature the longer version. Early examples of the Flashback single release have the fade out ending.
Live history
When Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork reunited in 1986 to tour as The Monkees, they featured "Valleri" frequently in their song lineup. The song mainly consists of four chords (F♯ Major, E Major, B Major and C♯ Major); a bridge offers a touch of harmonic variety (from F♯ Major to D♯ minor, twice).
Chart performance
Weekly charts
|
Year-end charts
|
See also
References
- ^ "Readers' Poll: The Best Monkees Songs of All Time". Rolling Stone. 7 March 2012. Retrieved 23 July 2016.
- ^ a b [1]
- ^ "flavour of new zealand - search listener". Flavourofnz.co.nz. Retrieved 2016-10-02.
- ^ "South African Rock Lists Website SA Charts 1969 – 1989 Acts (M)". Rock.co.za. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
- ^ http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/rpm/028020-119.01-e.php?brws_s=1&file_num=nlc008388.5867&type=1&interval=24&PHPSESSID=mhe12pta2k83e08udtq66ot062
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (1999). Pop Annual. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. ISBN 0-89820-142-X.
Bibliography
- The Monkees Tale, Eric Lefcowitz (Last Gasp Press) (ISBN 0-86719-338-7)
- Monkeemania! The True Story of the Monkees, Glenn A. Baker, Tom Czarnota & Peter Hogan (St. Martin's Press) (ISBN 0-312-00003-0)
