According to Stereogum, the last surviving bandmember of The Monkees, Micky Dolenz, has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau Of Investigation in order to gain access to a file on the band. Dolenz had previously filed Freedom Of Information act request form which had not been fulfilled. Dolenz’s attorney Mark S. Zaid is now suing the organization to attain the full document in addition to any further files related to his late fellow bandmembers.
A version of the file was first released back in 2011, however, much of the information on it had been heavily redacted. Within the file, an unnamed FBI informant details what was displayed onscreen during a 1967 Monkees concert including “subliminal messages” that were categorized as “left wing intervention of a political nature.” The items in question were photos of racial justice protests in Selma, Alabama and anti-war opinions on the Vietnam War which allegedly “had unfavorable response from the audience.”
Zaid explained in a statement to Rolling Stone that “The Monkees reflected, especially in their later years with projects like Head, a counterculture from what institutional authority was at the time,” He continued, adding, “And [J. Edgar] Hoover’s FBI, in the Sixties in particular, was infamous for monitoring the counterculture, whether they committed unlawful actions or not.”
As previously stated, Dolenz is the last remaining living member of The Monkees. Back in 2012, Davy Jones passed away due to heart attack at the age of 66. In 2019, Peter Tork lost his life after a long battle with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare from of cancer, at the age of 77. Last year, Michael Nesmith died due to heart failure at the age of 78.
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