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Continued interview ...
How did "That Was Then, This Is Now" end up being recorded by the Monkees?
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Micky Dolenz asked me about this recently - how it was that my song ended up getting to them. I told him that it was just luck. He said,
"You know, luck is where preparation and opportunity meet."
 * It is true. It wasn’t as if I just woke up one day and wrote a song. I had been on the road since I was sixteen, seventeen working hard, playing five or six nights a week when nobody else was playing originals. It was all cover bands where I was - and basically starving. So we did put in our time sleeping seven guys in one
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Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz & Vance Brescia with
million selling record "That Was Then, This is Now"
- August 1987 |
hotel room. Any of you young bands would know the drill about that. So finally it paid off. I had a group back then called the Mosquitos and Arista Records was semi interested in us and then I guess ultimately they passed, but they liked one of the songs on my EP called “That Was Then, This Is Now, ” in fact it was Clive Davis who heard it, and they picked it to be the Monkees comeback single.
So it was really, really, really the stars aligned. Read more here: The Monkees 20th Anniversary Reunion Tour. Watch a video of the August 1987 event in the photo: Vance Brescia with Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz.
When Micky Dolenz is on the bill with Herman's Hermits I often join him on stage for the song. In 2009 I was in the band that backed Micky on the Teen Idols Tour and sometimes I fill in on bass with Micky's band.  |
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page 4 |
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| *Audio clip from August 18, 2007 interview by Mason Ramsey www.rockandrollheaven.net |
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