Sixty years old next year, the bizarre anti-career path of Michael Nesmith continues to shine. Try this for starters: sensitive, none too successful 1960s singer-songwriter sort answers newspaper ad and joins the original manufactured boyband - hello The Monkees.
After wresting control of their musical output from manager Don Kirchner, Nesmith - the one with the ubiquitous green woolly hat, for those fans of classic TV shows - comes into his own as a creative force.
Quitting the band in 1969, Papa Nez (as he shall come to be known) decides to relocate to Nashville, cutting a series of acclaimed albums with his First National Band and Second National Band, in the process pretty much taking Gram Parsons' blueprints for what came to be known as country rock and single-handedly rewriting them on long-playing masterpieces such as Loose Salute, Magnetic South and Tantamount To Treason. The Eagles owe him everything. Along the way, his song Different Drum became a massive hit for The Stone Poneys (with Linda Rondstat on lead vocals) - recently it polled in Mojo Magazine's 100 Greatest Songs Of All Time.
By the late 1970s, he'd formed his own Pacific Arts label, scored an unexpected UK Top 40 hit with eight minute-plus epic Rio, and continued to expand his musical palette in increasingly bizarre directions - culminating so far in a 1994 Grammy Award nomination for Best New Age Recording for a bizarre, multi-disc concept album, The Garden.
A growing interest in the visual arts saw Nesmith win acclaim and awards for his seminal Elephant Parts movie, an inspired blend of loosely linked music clips and comedy sketches that spun off into a Nez-hosted TV show, providing the inspiration for what was soon to become MTV - to the point that the man is now officially cited as its "creator".
The financial rewards might have been meagre at the time, but when your mother - one Bette C. Graham, future table quiz members take note - invented liquid paper and bequeathed you a considerable fortune, you don't have to depend upon desperate Monkees reunions for a few quid. So the past two decades have seen Millionaire Mike finance (among numerous endeavours) Alex Cox's classic cult movie Repo Man, establish his burgeoning multi-media think-tank Videoranch, publish a suitably quirky debut novel, The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora - and finally reunite with Peter, Davy and Mickey for an underwhelming 30th anniversary tour.
Did we mention his work as chair of The Gihon Foundation (named for the river mentioned in the Old Testament), a philanthropic organisation established by his mother in 1978 to take ideas and develop them for the public good? Phew! All hail Papa Nez - the forgotten renaissance man of rock.
For further information: www.videoranch.com