I was on the internet when I first heard that Davy Jones died. I immediately emailed one of my friends and asked if he had heard this news. His response perfectly summed up mine: “No; that’s terrible!”
Davy Jones died on February 29, 2012 of a heart attack at age 66…pretty young by today’s standards. Now you might be thinking how silly it is to be affected by the death of a celebrity I never met. But I have to admit it did affect me. Weatherman Al Roker summed it up in his response to the news: “A little bit of my youth just died.”
It was more than a little bit for me. I have played guitar for 46 years, and The Monkees are the reason why. My Dad had tried to get me interested in guitar by playing Chet Atkins records. While I eventually became a big Chet Atkins fan, my initial response was to lay my Dad’s archtop guitar on my lap and beat on it like a bongo drum. (Dad wasn’t encouraged.)
Then one Monday evening Dad came into my room with the TV section of the newspaper and said, “Dave, there’s a new show on I think you might like. Looks like it might be funny.” He changed the channel on the little black & white TV I had in my room (in those days there really wasn’t anything inappropriate to see on TV), and I spent the next thirty minutes watching The Monkees for the first time. I was ten years old.
When I saw Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith playing and singing on the screen, something inside me flared to life. I thought, “I want to do that!” Meaning, I wanted to play guitar in a band. I liked Davy because he had my name, but I especially liked Mike because he played the guitar. Something about that tall Texan with his Gretsch guitar, Vox amplifier and sock hat with a double row of buttons on the front made me yell: “Hey, Dad! I wanna take guitar lessons!” (And I still have my sock hat. It’s in a box in my Dad’s attic. My Mom made it for me.)
So I started taking guitar lessons that summer. In six weeks I had two instructors. (The first one just didn’t show up one week. I think I drove him to despair.) It wasn’t until the second guy quit trying to teach me Mary had a Little Lamb and showed me how to play a boogie shuffle that I said, “Now you’re talkin’!” After six weeks we moved and I had to quit lessons. Then I started “playing by ear”, just like my Dad (and as Dad says, “That’s sure hard on your ears!”).
I still remember how excited I was when I learned the introduction to Last Train to Clarksville right off the record. I ran to show Dad. (I realized some years ago that he’s the real reason I play guitar. Even to this day, every time I learn something new, I can’t wait to play it for my Dad.)
That same year—1966—I started learning to play guitar and got my first guitar for Christmas. And that was the beginning of me spending hundreds of hours listening to and learning the music off of records. And for the first two years, they were all Monkees records.
Now I know The Monkees aren’t Mozart. Mozart didn’t play guitar, so I didn’t care about him. But it was happy, catchy pop music… it was Good Clean Fun (also the title to a Monkees song). It was a few years before I encountered any references to drugs or sex or immoral living in music, and then it wasn’t in anything recorded by The Monkees. To me, in those days, there were two kinds of music: the music you sang in church in worship, and the music you sang for fun. And both kinds were good. There was nothing dark or wrong in music for me in those days.
But the same year I started playing guitar, I also became a believer in Jesus Christ. At ten years old, I became a guitar player and a Christian (yes, you can be both). For my next birthday, I received a record player (mono…that stereo thing wasn’t going to last), the first two Monkees albums…and my first Bible. And so began, without my knowing it, a spiritual battle with me at the center.
As much as I loved music, it didn’t take long before I started branching out from The Monkees, especially on the recommendations of friends. And that’s when I first began to hear music with a dark side, music with foul language, music that talked about drugs and drinking and way more than holding hands and walking on the beach. It was seductive, and for far too long I let my faith in Christ and my Christian commitment take a back seat to the music. Hey, I was playing guitar, in a band! This was what I’d always wanted! But I let it take me into paths that very nearly ruined my life.
There are still an incredible amount of good things in this fallen world, gifts from God that He has every intention for us to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). But the good in this world can too often be tainted and twisted by evil, and we ignore that truth to our own peril.
The grace of God led me to repent of the path I was on before I went too far into the far country (Luke 15:13). And I still love music, probably more than ever. But I learned the hard way not to worship the gift while forgetting the Giver. A guitar makes a fine hobby, but a poor idol.
And all of that came back to me when I heard that Davy Jones died. Davy & the rest of The Monkees, and the music they sang represented a wonderful time of innocence and joy in my life. I ended that time with my own sinful choices; and in any event, the passing of time steals away our youth. So for all those reasons I was sad about Davy dying. I even cried.
My Mom always called me Davy. She was the only one, until I met a guy named Roy in a music store. He’d always greet me with “Hello, Davy! What can we do for you today?” He sold me the guitar that I still play in church every Sunday. That was thirty years ago.
A couple of years ago Roy had a stroke while at work in that same music store. After a stay in the hospital he ended up in a nursing home, a shadow of his former self. He was only a few years older than me.
I took that guitar he sold me all those years ago and played and sang for him in the nursing home. I sang him some old Beatles tunes, and some hymns, & I told him about Jesus. Roy has since died. Except for my wife, occasionally, nobody calls me “Davy” now.
I don’t really have any idea about Davy Jones’ spiritual life. I don’t know how it was with Roy’s soul, either.
But I do know I’ll see my Mom again. And I’m looking forward to hearing her call me Davy again.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Pastor David