The FBI kept a file on the Monkees, and now the beloved California pop band’s last surviving member wants to know why.
On Tuesday, Micky Dolenz filed a lawsuit requesting that the FBI release all files and documents ipertaining to the popular 1960s band.
According to legal documents filed through Dolenz’s attorney, Mark S. Zaid, the suit is “designed to obtain any records the FBI created and/or possesses on the Monkees as well as its individual members.”
In 2011, the FBI released a heavily redacted file on the band. The document, which included notes from an FBI informant who attended a show during the Monkees’ 1967 tour, claims “subliminal messages were depicted on the screen” and were of a “political nature” related to the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement.
“These messages and pictures were flashes of riots in Berkeley, anti-U.S. messages on the war in Vietnam, racial riots in Selma, Alabama, and similar messages which had received unfavorable response from the audience,” the FBI report said.
Dolenz’s new lawsuit says he and his fellow bandmates “both in their own right and as a group, were known to have associated with other musicians and individuals whose activities were monitored and/or investigated by the FBI to include, but not limited to: John Winston Lennon (and the three other Beatles as well) and Jimi Hendrix.”
The suit alleges that Dolenz submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FBI in June of this year, only to receive no response after his request was assigned a reference number.
As a result of having “exhausted all necessary required administrative remedies,” Dolenz now wants the FBI “to disclose non-exempt copies of the requested records in their entirety and make copies promptly available” to him.
Dolenz, 77, was a founding member of the Monkees, alongside his bandmates Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones. The group formed in 1966 for a TV series of the same name and racked up numerous hits including “I’m a Believer,” “Daydream Believer” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday.”
