Bobby Hart, co-wrote 'Last Train to Clarksville' and other hits for the
Monkees, dead at 86
[September 15, 2025]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Songwriter Bobby Hart, a key part of the Monkees'
multimedia empire who teamed with Tommy Boyce on such hits as “Last
Train to Clarksville” and “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone,” has died. He
was 86.
Hart died at his home in Los Angeles, according to his friend and
co-author, Glenn Ballantyne. He had been in poor health since breaking
his hip last year.
Boyce and Hart were a prolific and successful duo in the mid-1960s,
especially for the Monkees, the made-for-television group promoted by
Don Kirshner. They wrote the Monkees' theme song, with its opening shot,
"Here we come, walkin' down the street," and enduring chant, "Hey, hey,
we're the Monkees," and their first No. 1 hit, “Last Train to
Clarksville.” The Monkees' eponymous, million-selling debut album
included six songs from Boyce and Hart, who also served as producers and
used their own backing musicians, the Candy Store Prophets, as session
players.
"I always credit them not only with writing many of our biggest hits,
but, as producers, being instrumental in creating the unique Monkee
sound we all know and love," the Monkees' Micky Dolenz wrote in a
foreword to Hart's memoir, "Psychedelic Bubblegum," published in 2015.
As Boyce and Hart grew in fame and the Monkees took more control of
their work, they pursued their own careers, releasing the albums "Test
Patterns" and "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonite" and appearing on such
sitcoms as "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Bewitched." They also were
politically active. They campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy when he ran
for president in 1968 and wrote the brassy "L.U.V. (Let Us Vote)" in
support of the 26th Amendment, which in 1971 lowered the voting age from
21 to 18. Their other songs included the Monkees' melancholy "I Wanna Be
Free" and the theme to the daytime soap opera "Days of Our Lives."
They were covered by everyone from Dean Martin ("Little Lovely One") to
the Sex Pistols ("I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone").
In the 1970s and '80s, Hart managed several hits with other
collaborators and even contributed material to another TV act, the
Partridge Family. He worked with Austin Roberts on "Over You," an
Oscar-nominated ballad performed by Betty Buckley in "Tender Mercies,"
and with Dick Eastman on "My Secret (Didja Gitit Yet?)" for New Edition.
He and Bryce toured with Dolenz and fellow Monkee Davy Jones in the
'70s, put out the album "Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart" and received
renewed attention when the Monkees enjoyed a comeback in the 1980s.
Boyce, who died in 1994, and Hart were the subjects of a 2014
documentary "The Guys Who Wrote 'Em." Hart was married twice, most
recently to singer Mary Ann Hart, and had two children from his first
marriage.
[to top of second column]
|
This July 6, 1967 file photo shows the musical group, The Monkees,
from left, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith, David Jones, and Micky Dolenz
at a news conference at the Warwick Hotel in New York. (AP Photo/Ray
Howard, file)
 He was a minister's son, born Robert
Luke Harshman in Phoenix, Arizona. In his memoir, he remembered
himself as a shy kid with a "strong desire to distinguish" himself,
as he wrote in "Psychedelic Bubblegum." Music was the answer. By
high school, he had learned piano, guitar and the Hammond B-3 organ.
He also started his own amateur radio station, eventually adding a
console, turntables and microphones. After graduating from high
school and serving in the Army reserves, he settled in Los Angeles
in the late 1950s, hoping first to become a disc jockey, but soon
working as a songwriter and session musician. His name shortened to
Bobby Hart, he toured as a member of Teddy Randazzo and the
Dazzlers, and with Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein wrote "Hurt So Bad,"
a hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials later covered by Linda
Ronstadt.
He also befriended Boyce, a singer and songwriter from
Charlottesville, Virginia, with a "very unusual personality,
spontaneous and extroverted, yet very cool at the same time." Boyce
and Hart helped write the top 10 hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" for
Jay and the Americans and were a strong enough combination that
Kirshner recruited them for his Screen Gems songwriting factory:
They were assigned to the Monkees. Asked to come up with songs for a
quartet openly modeled on the Beatles, they devised a twangy guitar
line similar to the one for the "Paperback Writer" and wrote "Last
Train to Clarksville," a chart topper in 1966 based in part on
Hart's mishearing of the Beatles hit (he thought Paul McCartney was
singing “take the last train” near the end; McCartney was singing
“paperback writer”).
When Kirshner suggested a song with a girl's name in the title, they
turned out "Valleri" and reached the top 5. For the show's theme
song, a stroll outside was enough.
"Boyce began strumming his guitar and I joined in by snapping my
fingers & making noises with my mouth that simulated an open &
closed hi-hat cymbal," Hart wrote in his memoir. "We had created the
perfect recipe for inspiration and started singing about just what
we were doing: 'Walkin' down the street.'"
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
