1942–2021 · American songwriter, guitarist and Monkee
Michael Nesmith was born in Houston in 1942 and died in Carmel Valley, California, in 2021. He wrote “Different Drum” in 1964, before the Monkees existed, and later said the words had nothing to do with his own life — he was newly married with a pregnant wife. He pitched it to the television show’s producers, who turned it down as not a Monkees tune — no account dates that rejection, so it cannot be ordered against his 1965 hand-off of the song to John Herald. He performed a deliberately terrible comic version on the episode “Too Many Girls” in December 1966. He did not record it properly himself until 1972, on And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’.