R.I.P. Boyce and Hart

September 29 was the birthday of Tommy Boyce (Sidney Thomas Boyce, 1939-1994); and we lost Bobby Hart (Robert Harshman, 1939-2025) about three weeks ago, so I thought this would be a good time for a little fan letter. The songwriters were fixtures of the L.A. music scene throughout the sixties, best known for being the lodestone in The Monkees hitmaking machine, though they did write hits for other acts, including a few which they performed themselves.

On his own Boyce wrote a song for Fats Domino called “Be My Guest” which went to #8 in 1959, and co-wrote “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” with Curtis Lee in 1961 (#7). As a team with Hart, he began to break through circa 1964, writing minor hits for the likes of Chubby Checker, Jay and the Americans, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Leaves, and others. In 1965, they wrote the theme music for the soap opera Days of Our Lives. They then struck up a deal with Don Kirshner and Colgems to write tunes for The Monkees. Nearly 30 of their songs wound up on Monkees records and the accompanying TV show, including many of their best known hits, such as the show’s theme song, “Last Train to Clarksville”, “I Wanna Be Free”, “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone”, “She”, and “Valleri”.

At the same time, Boyce and Hart had some success as an act themselves. Their biggest hit was the bouncy “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight” (#8, 1967). They also made the top 40 with “Out and About” (1967), and “Alice Long” (1968), which was backed with “P.O. Box 9847”, which was also recorded by The Monkees. Boyce and Hart and their songs made memorable (even legendary) guest appearances on I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Flying Nun, The Joey Bishop Show, et al. and the 1968 movie Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. Their tunes were used in two of Dean Martin‘s Matt Helm movies Murderer’s Row (1966) and The Ambushers (1967), and the tv movie Three’s a Crowd (1969).

This straddling of both the music business and that of film and television made Boyce and Hart unusual for the time, though it’s probable that the connection with Kirshner and The Monkees and the duo’s sheer old-fashioned ethic of commerciality hurt them in the long run, as the sixties became the seventies. Boyce and Hart were definitely connected to youth culture, but they were also sort of “establishment”. For example, they were involved in Bobby Kennedy’s Presidential campaign, and the movement to lower the voting age to 18. They wrote jingles for Coca Cola. They were not the sorts who got booked for Woodstock, say. (Peter Tork had taken the stage at Monterey Pop, but by 1969, “authenticity” was paramount). I really love their tunes, but I definitely associate Boyce and Hart with garage rock and bubble gum. It might have served them well later in the ’70s when glam was the thing, but by that time they were exploring other sounds, and even pursuing solo projects.

In the mid ’70s, Boyce and Hart teamed up with The Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones, as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce, and Hart, an attempt to make a supergroup along the lines of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I recall seeing them on American Bandstand, of which I was an avid and loyal viewer, at that time, though no hit singles resulted from that incarnation.

Boyce then moved to the U.K. and produced artists like Iggy Pop and Meat Loaf, for a time, eventually returning to the States and settling in Memphis, then in Nashville. Depression and health problems bedeviled him during his last years. Sadly, he committee suicide by gunshot in 1994. Hart soldiered on in L.A. for another three decades, passing away earlier this month at the age of 86.