The Monkees (album) scheduled around the work done by Boyce, Hart, and Keller. Famously, the Monkees were not permitted by their management to function as a working band for this album, with the group's contributions limited almost entirely to vocal tracks. Eight of the original LP's twelve tracks feature one lone Monkee singing lead vocal over instrumentation and backing vocals recorded entirely by a group of session musicians which varies from song to song. Other tracks feature multiple Monkees singing over session players; only on the two tracks produced by Michael Nesmith does a Monkee (Peter Tork) get to play an instrument (guitar).
The Monkees it was the antithesis of "The Monkees" television show, intended to comprehensively demolish the group's carefully groomed public image. Rafelson and Nicholson's "Ditty Diego-War Chant" (recited at the start of the film by the group), ruthlessly parodies Boyce and Hart's "Monkees Theme". A sparse advertising campaign (with no mention of the Monkees) hurt any chances of the film doing well, and it played briefly in half-filled movie theaters. In the DVD commentary, Nesmith said that everyone associated with the Monkees "had gone crazy" by this time. They were each using the platform of the Monkees to push their own disparate