100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #12 The Monkees – Last Train to Clarksville

Released: 1966

Whilst the British were good at inventing and then perfecting formulas, no society in the world was as efficient at turning them into commodities, or as quickly, as America. Probably the best sixties illustration of that premise came with The Monkees, four men in a TV show about a band who eventually became one of the decade’s most successful bands.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then The Monkees were an exhibition in reverence, a concept lifted by the show’s creators Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider chiefly from The Beatles’ film Hard Day’s Night. Of course it needed songs – and in a further ironic twist some of the writing pool contained people needing work following the mop tops rapid annexation of the country’s charts. Indirectly or otherwise revenge may have tasted bittersweet.

Last Train To Clarksville was The Monkees debut single and in form a case of inspiration (Most notably drawn from Paperback Writer) as a waypoint to something just as exciting, if not better. Whilst it’s storytelling was in the classic mould, it resonated with a nation where a lot of goodbyes at train stations were starting to happen, and that undertow helped it escape being just a pop song for star crossed lovers.

The Monkees British tv premiere came on new year’s eve of 1966, the start of a reverse Transatlantic salvo which if it never became a fully fledged counter, demonstrated that nobody packages things better than those who invented selling stuff via the box in the living room corner.