The Monkees Members of the Monkees, Nesmith in particular, cite the soundtrack album as one of the crowning achievements of the band. Tensions within the group were increasing. Peter Tork, citing exhaustion, quit by buying out the last four years of his Monkees contract at $150,000 per year, equal to about $ per year today. This was shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after completing work on their 1969 NBC television special, "33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee", which rehashed many of the ideas from "Head", only with the Monkees playing a strangely second-string role. In the DVD commentary for
The Monkees would become "The Monkees". Not getting much interest from his usual stable of Brill Building writers, Kirshner assigned Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to the project. The duo contributed four demo recordings for the pilot. One of these recordings was "(Theme From) The Monkees" which helped get the series the green light. When "The Monkees" was picked up as a series, development of the musical side of the project accelerated. Columbia-Screen Gems and RCA Victor entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records primarily to distribute Monkees records. Raybert set up a rehearsal space and rented instruments for the group