Last Train to Clarksville might lead to a successful single, which it did. To help ensure that, he decided to include a distinctive guitar riff and wrote in the "Oh No-No-No, Oh No-No-No" lyrics as a response to The Beatles' famous "Yeah Yeah Yeah". Although LA's "Wrecking Crew" provided the instrumental backing for many of the early Monkees' songs, Boyce and Hart's band Candy Store Prophets did the session work for this song. The lead guitar part was written and played by Hollywood session musician Louie Shelton who would eventually become a mainstay on Monkees recordings. "Zadnji voz za Čačak" (trans. "Last train to
Last Train to Clarksville "And I don't know if I'm ever coming home", was an indirect reference about a soldier leaving for the Vietnam War. It has often been presumed that the song refers to Clarksville, Tennessee, which is near Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the 101st Airborne Division, which was then serving in Vietnam. However, according to songwriter Bobby Hart, that was not the case. Instead, according to Hart, "We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called