By early 1967, Micky Dolenz was suddenly one of the most recognizable young faces in pop music. The Monkees had a hit television show, “I’m a Believer” was dominating the charts, and comparisons with The Beatles followed the group almost everywhere. Yet when Micky traveled to England that year, the man he was most nervous about meeting was one of the very musicians everyone kept comparing him to: Paul McCartney.
Micky later admitted that the idea of meeting a Beatle almost frightened him. The Beatles were heroes to The Monkees, and he once joked that meeting one of them would feel almost like meeting God. A publicist nevertheless arranged for Micky to visit Paul at his home in St John’s Wood, turning what might have been a casual introduction into the kind of “Monkee meets Beatle” encounter newspapers loved.
What Micky found inside was nothing like the intimidating superstar he had imagined.
According to his later recollections, the evening was remarkably simple. It was essentially Micky, Paul and Paul’s Old English Sheepdog, Martha, sitting together over dinner. Paul was relaxed enough that Micky’s nervousness quickly disappeared, and the two began talking about music as if they had known each other much longer.
Then Paul told him something Micky had not expected to hear.
Paul said he liked The Monkees’ music. He also told Micky that he had watched their television show and thought it was good. At a time when critics were already dismissing The Monkees as a manufactured answer to The Beatles, hearing that kind of approval directly from Paul meant far more than another favorable review. Micky later remembered it as an enormous compliment.
Paul’s opinion was not merely private politeness, either. Around the same period, he spoke positively about Micky and predicted that The Monkees were not simply a temporary phenomenon. He believed the group would continue growing and would eventually surprise people who underestimated them.
The night became even more extraordinary when Paul invited Micky to visit The Beatles at Abbey Road Studios.
Micky accepted, and soon found himself watching the Beatles work on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He later remembered arriving at the studio expecting something glamorous and chaotic, only to find four musicians working beneath ordinary fluorescent lights. John Lennon looked up and greeted him as “Monkee Man,” a nickname he would continue using afterward.
Micky was present while the Beatles were working on “Good Morning Good Morning,” an experience that stayed with him for decades. Years later, when he recorded his own version of the song, he traced the choice directly back to that extraordinary day at the studio.
The encounter mattered for another reason.
At the time, The Monkees were fighting for greater control over their own recordings. Michael Nesmith was leading that battle back in America while Micky was in England, and the fact that Paul McCartney treated him not as a manufactured television actor but as a fellow musician must have carried particular weight. Micky has said that The Beatles understood what The Monkees actually were: a television show about a band that gradually became a real musical group.
Nearly sixty years later, Micky still remembers that first meeting with remarkable warmth.
The “secret” was never a scandal. It was something perhaps more meaningful: while critics questioned whether The Monkees deserved to be taken seriously, Paul McCartney quietly told Micky Dolenz that he liked what they were doing. And then he opened the door to Abbey Road and let him watch history being made.