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Davy Jones, a Brady for life
25 years later, Jones was still heavily associated with The Brady Bunch.
Davy Jones has had a really interesting career trajectory, one that put artistry and commercial success in direct conflict. He rose to fame as a part of The Monkees, a fantastic pop group with some fantastic songs. But, The Monkees was a TV show depicting a fictional band, and it was all put together by television producers. So, as a collection of TV characters, The Monkees were a corporate entity. But, as a band of people, The Monkees chased legitimacy and put out some very catchy tunes.
The Monkees was canceled in 1968. Three years later, Jones reappeared on the small screen with his first TV appearance after his show got axed. He triumphantly returned on The Brady Bunch, where he played himself. High-schooler Marcia is the president of the Davy Jones Fan Club and hastily promises the singer can perform at the school's dance. Hilarity and chaos ensue, until, predictably, the Brady kids wrangle their favorite singer into performing at the prom. It's a fan-favorite episode that showed Jones had legs as a performer beyond The Monkees.
Fast forward 25 years, and that episode of The Brady Bunch was still one of the things most closely associated with Davy Jones. He'd spent the interim years at odds with his legacy, both chasing and ducking his reputation and his past. But in 1994, Jones was on the road with "Real Live Brady Bunch," a tour that lovingly recreated some of the sitcom's most iconic scenes.
"A few times, I said, 'You have a choice, you can be an actor or you can be a star.' And for the past few weeks, I've been a celebrity on the road with 'Brady Bunch,' being Davy Jones from The Monkees," said Jones. "But I'm not following the Monkeemobile around car shows, and I'm not opening supermarkets yet."
The tour allowed Jones the financial freedom to pursue further artistic endeavors, such as novel writing. He'd recently retreated into the backwoods of Suffolk, England, where he spent a year and a half in an antique cottage. There, he wrote and recovered from a recent divorce. The remote cottage allowed him the chance to build up his energy to get back on the road. As he aged, that time off became more critical to Jones' success.
"I'm a 48-year-old guy. I'm getting a couple of gray hairs. I've probably got more lines on my face than Union Station, but I'm still found attractive by Monkee fans and Brady Bunch fans," said Jones.
"I have fun with what I do, and I'm not having to retain any particular image. Yeah, I'm still the dream, the guy with stars in his eyes."
33 Comments
But, I find this episode distasteful, an embarrassment to Jones, and I cringe when I hear the saccharine "Girl."
I am a curmudgeon.
The two are not mutually exclusive: you can be both, if both should accrue to an actor via the public's desire to see that actor. But if the actor had the choice between one or the other, which would he or she prefer to be? That's the real heart of it.
Do celebrities (using that term loosely) still appear at Supermarket openings? Do Supermarkets even open today???
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