Bobby Hart, Songwriter Behind Monkees Hits & Theme Song, Dies at 86

Bobby Hart, a cardinal portion of the the Monkees’ multimedia empire who teamed with Tommy Boyce connected specified hits arsenic “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone,” has died. He was 86.

Hart died astatine his location successful Los Angeles, according to his person and co-author Glenn Ballantyne. He had been successful mediocre wellness since breaking his hep past year.

Boyce and Hart were a prolific and palmy squad successful the mid-1960s, particularly for the Monkees, the made-for-television radical promoted by Don Kirshner. They wrote the Monkees’ taxable song, with its opening shot, “Here we come, walkin’ down the street,” and its enduring chant, “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees,” and their archetypal No. 1 hit, “Last Train to Clarksville.” The Monkees’ eponymous, million-selling debut medium included six songs from Boyce and Hart, who besides served arsenic producers and utilized their ain backing musicians, the Candy Store Prophets, arsenic league players.

“I ever recognition them not lone with penning galore of our biggest hits, but, arsenic producers, being instrumental successful creating the unsocial Monkee dependable we each cognize and love,” the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz wrote successful a foreword to Hart’s memoir, Psychedelic Bubblegum, published successful 2015.

As Boyce and Hart grew successful fame and the Monkees took much power of their work, they pursued their ain careers, releasing the albums Test Patterns and I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite and appearing connected specified sitcoms arsenic I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. They besides were politically active. They campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy erstwhile helium ran for president successful 1968 and wrote the brassy “L.U.V. (Let Us Vote)” successful enactment of the 26th Amendment, which successful 1971 lowered the voting property from 21 to 18. Their different songs included the Monkees’ melancholy “I Wanna Be Free” and the taxable to the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives.

They were covered by everyone from Dean Martin (“Little Lovely One”) to the Sex Pistols (“I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”).

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Hart managed respective hits with different collaborators and adjacent contributed worldly to different TV act, the Partridge Family. He worked with Austin Roberts connected “Over You,” an Oscar-nominated ballad performed by Betty Buckley successful “Tender Mercies,” and with Dick Eastman connected “My Secret (Didja Gitit Yet?)” for New Edition. He and Bryce toured with Dolenz and chap Monkee Davy Jones successful the ‘70s, enactment retired the medium Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart and received renewed attraction erstwhile the Monkees enjoyed a comeback successful the 1980s.