My First Celebrity Crush is Now My Inspiration: Mike Nesmith of The Monkees

When I was five-years-old, I became obsessed with the band “The Monkees.” My fandom started when my mother went to work on a Saturday and my uncle was babysitting me and my one-year-old brother. My mother was going through her divorce from my father, and to make ends meet, she worked on the weekends as a hospital receptionist. 

That weekend, there was a “Monkees Marathon” on MTV, and I was glued to the television the entire time. From that point on, I was hooked. Friend’s in my 1^st grade class would ask me “Who’s your favorite band?” and I would say, proudly and with enthusiasm, ”The Monkees!” Mind you, this was 1986, when Michael Jackson and Madonna were all the rage. A lot of my classmates didn’t have cable TV, and didn’t know what MTV was. I would come home from school and watch reruns of “The Monkees” on MTV almost every day.

My cousins on my dad’s side, who I would see every other weekend at my grandma’s house, caught on to my “Monkees Madness”, and we would watch the shows and pick out which Monkee was our boyfriend. Mine was Mike Nesmith. He was my first celebrity crush, and I was going to marry him one day.

My mother told me her favorite Monkee was Davy Jones. “I used to love him when I was younger,” she said to me.

“What do you mean when you were younger?” I asked, terribly confused.

She then explained to me that “The Monkees” were popular when she was young, back in the 1960s, and they were much older now, older than her.

I, of course, not even wanting to believe my mom had ever been a kid (it was hard for me to even accept the fact that my mom had a mom, and to spite her, I called her by her name, Cherie, which didn’t last long) refused to believe The Monkees were old. I decided to instead live in my fantasy world where The Monkees were still young and still having swarms of teenage girls chasing after them. And I was going to marry Mike Nesmith when I was older.

One afternoon in December 1986, my mom called me into the living room where she was watching MTV.

“Tracey, get in here! Look, it’s your boyfriend!” she said, excitedly pointing to the TV.

What I saw was not my boyfriend, but an older man with some gray in his hair, dressed like Santa, and riding a small bicycle.

“Mom, that’s not my boyfriend!” I angrily screamed.

“Sweetie, I told you, The Monkees are older now. That is Mike Nesmith!”

“Nooooo! He’s old! That’s not my boyfriend!” I yelled at my mom as I stomped out of the living room, into the hallway, and into my bedroom where I slammed the door. I sat in my bedroom that afternoon and cried, and came to the harsh realization that people get old, and I would never marry Mike Nesmith.

I still watched “The Monkees” on MTV, and for my birthday my mom bought me my first cassette tape, “The Monkees Greatest Hits” and a poster of them, which she hung on my bedroom wall. After about a day, I demanded she take the poster down, because it felt like they were all staring at me, and I was too shy to look at it.

Even as an adult, my love for The Monkees has stayed with me. Every time I hear them on the radio, or watch an episode of theirs, it transports me to a time when I was excited about something, and believed that people don’t get old, and how I was yearning to be the future ‘Mrs. Nesmith.’

I recently thought of The Monkees as I was looking on Pinterest and noticed someone I followed pinned a picture of them to their board. I then started to follow other boards that featured them, and even found boards dedicated to my one and only, Mike Nesmith. Not really following his career and only knowing of him from The Monkees, I started to do some research on Nesmith and his background.

I know from being a Monkees fan that he wrote some of their songs, but I didn’t know the vast catalog of work he had beyond The Monkees. I found out he is one of the creators of what we now know as “Country Rock,” started making music videos in the 1970s, produced movies, and is one of the innovators of MTV. Also, besides being a songwriter, he has written two books, with a third one he wrote most recently, which is a memoir. Of course, being a writer myself, finding this out excites and intrigues me. My ex-future husband and I actually have a lot in common. We also have a Texas connection, him being born in Houston and growing up in Dallas, and me having lived in Houston for a few years and visiting Dallas frequently with my boyfriend to see his family. I have also read some of his interviews, and even scoped out his Instagram, and it seems we both are Texas BBQ and steak and baked potato aficionados.

After watching some of his interviews on YouTube as an older man, I realize he has the same tell-it-like-it-is personality, the same quirky mannerisms, and the same inquisitive mind that he had in the 1960s. I have even more respect and admiration for him now than I did when I was a young girl with a crush.

Thirty years later, I can proudly say I’m still a Monkees fan. And a huge Mike Nesmith fan. But, I don’t want to marry the guy. I now wish I could be as good of a writer as he is one day. He is now an inspiration to me, during this time of my life where I need a little push to follow my dreams and pursue my truth. I needed to hear him say while watching one of his interviews “It’s supposed to be difficult.”

I think five-year-old Tracey was onto something, and although I’ve spent many years trying to avoid writing as a career, I’m now listening to my gut. And she is a five-year-old, with dreams of her own again. And all it took was for me to dig into my past to a moment when life seemed endless, and no one ever got old.