Heartthrob Davy Jones Hid Disturbing Secrets

Heartthrob Davy Jones Hid Disturbing Secrets

In 1967, Davy Jones vanished from the spotlight, going into hiding for several weeks. And the reason why left fans shocked and disgusted. Davy Jones rose to fame as the lead singer of the bait for TV band The Monkeys. Funny enough, his real passion was horses. Even so, his life was full of enough monkey business to occupy a zoo. David Thomas Jones would rise to fame as the teenage heartthrob lead of the monkeys, but he had very humble beginnings. Born on December 30th, 1945 in Longite, England, he grew up surrounded by three sisters. However, tragedy struck early when his mother succumbed to empisma. He was just 14 years old at the time, but he was already a star in the making. Before he was monkeying around with a band, Jones was causing drama on the small screen. His first acting gig was a one episode appearance on the longrunning British soap opera Coronation Street. On the show, he gained some recognition as the grandson of Ena Sharples and seemed poised for bigger things. Then he changed his mind. After his mother’s passing, Jones forgot all about stardom. Instead, he dreamed of saddles. Perhaps finding solace in the notably empathetic beasts, Jones set his sights on becoming a jockey and signed up to train at the prestigious New Market stables. He wasn’t just horsing around either. While other kids were beating the books and focusing on exams, Jones couldn’t keep his mind off the track.

In a bold move, he dropped out of secondary school to pursue his dream of becoming a jockey. His plans lasted about as long as a gallop before fate put him back on the right path. Jones couldn’t run away from show business even if he wanted to. Jones’s horse jockey trainer, Basil Foster, just so happened to be friends with a casting director. A casting director who was in desperate need of a teenage cast member. I’ve got the kid, Foster told his friend. Despite thinking Jones had a future in horse racing, Foster nudged him back toward the stage and the rest was showbiz history. Foster connected Jones with his casting director friend and not surprisingly, he landed the role of the Artful Dodger in a production of Oliver. Just like that, he was off to the races, or back from the races. Jones’s return to the stage as Artful Dodger was a triumph. Audiences poured into theaters from London’s West End to New York’s Broadway and fell in love with the cheeky little actor. In fact, Jones was so convincing as Artful Dodger that he landed a Tony Award nomination. Fame was, after all, what he really wanted. When the Beatles made their historic US debut on an episode of the Ed Sullivan Show, guess who was also on that bill that night? That’s right, our favorite artful Dodger, Davy Jones. With wide eyes, Jones watched the entire performance from backstage. It changed his life forever. As he watched the Beatles turn the live crowd of young women and girls into a screaming gaggle, Jones had an idea. He wanted some of that action for himself. In his own words, he recalled the momentous night saying, I watched the Beatles from the side of the stage. I saw the girls going crazy, and I said to myself, this is it. I want a piece of that. he would get his piece. All right. The Beatles weren’t the only ones to get their big break on the Ed Sullivan show. Jones, following his own appearance that night, caught the eye of Screen Jams executive Ward Sylvester. Soon enough, Jones was popping up in American TV shows like Ben Casey and The Farmer’s Daughter. But if he wanted a taste of Beetle Mania, he would need a band. So once again, he changed his tune. Before he was monkeying around with the monkeys, Jones had started a successful solo career, swinging off the vine of his solo single, What Are We Going to Do? Jones landed on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 93. It was a respectable introduction for the 19-year-old Brit, but bigger things were coming. In 1966, Jones officially joined the Monkeys, a made for TV band that became a real life musical sensation. From sitcom scripts to screaming fans, Jones found himself living the Beetle Mania dream he’d once envied. Surprisingly, he almost missed his big break. Despite being under contract with Screen Gems, Jones didn’t just get his spot with the Monkeys on a silver platter. Producers Bob Rafflesen and Bert Schneider still made him audition for the role, ensuring that he met the shows and band’s rigorous standards, and he had some serious competition. Not only did the Beatles inspire Jones to pursue fame in a band, they inspired the show that would make him famous.

The Monkeykey’s producers later admitted that they felt inspired by the Beatles hit film A Hard Day’s Night in coming up with the concept for their show, but their original idea did not include Jones. The Monkeys producers originally wanted to cast an existing band for their show. Their band of choice was called Love and Spoonful, a Manhattanbased group with little traction. When that fell through, however, they pivoted to auditions and focused on Jones. They knew immediately that they had a star. But not everyone felt the same. The band’s songwriter, Snuff Garrett, picked Jones to sing lead for the Monkeys early tracks. However, that decision didn’t sit well with the rest of the band, and tensions flared before the episode even aired. To ease the tensions, the producers turfed Garrett. Truthfully, Jones’s talents were better off in the background. According to bandmate Peter Torque, Jones was a much better drummer than he was a frontman. Torque argued that Jones should have been behind the kit during the band’s live shows. But there was one small problem. Emphasis on small. Even though Jones could rock out on the drums, the producers worried about burying him in the back. With a short stature, they feared that no one would see him behind the drum kit. So, they stuck with the decision to put him front and center. It seemed like a recipe for success, but it was more of a disaster. The original pilot episode for The Monkeys, Here Come the Monkeys, aired in 1966, and it flopped harder than a gorilla slipping on a banana peel. The pilot episode scored record low ratings and cast doubt on Jones’s appeal as a frontman. Thankfully, the producers gave it one more shot, and Jones’s career was about to make or break. Thankfully for Jones, the studio didn’t give up hope on the monkeys just yet. They released an edited version of the pilot that featured Jones’s original screen test. This time, they set records in a different way. The pilot got sky-high ratings, turning the burgeoning TV show into an overnight sensation. Unfortunately, Jones didn’t exactly get credit for saving the show. When the Monkeys first hit the airwaves, Jones and his bandmates were barely making peanuts. Despite being the stars of a hit show, they only got $450 per episode. By the second season, their per episode salary had gone up to $750. While that could buy a lot of bananas, it wasn’t exactly big bucks. In fact, Jones barely saw any cash from the show. Despite their on-screen popularity and chart topping record sales, Jones and the gang earned very little from all their monkey merchandise. In fact, beyond their royalties from the music, they earned precisely zilch from the sale of popular monkey merch such as lunchboxes, posters, and more.

But Jones wasn’t letting go that easily. In the late 1970s, Jones and fellow monkey Mickey Dolan’s took Columbia pictures to court. In short, they wanted a cut of the merchandise money they had helped earn. Unfortunately, the payout was laughable, just $10,000 each. After the first season of The Monkeys Wrapped, with his newfound fame at its height, Jones did the unthinkable. He vanished. Without a word from the teenage heartthrob, fans began spinning wild yarns, suggesting that Jones was in mortal danger. The truth, however, was far stranger. In reality, the reason for Jones’s disappearance was something no one could have guessed. Jones, being an American, had received a draft notice, but he wasn’t about to swap his tambourine for a tank. In a bold move, he fasted for 3 weeks so that he would fail the physical. And it worked, but not without a bit of drama. Before Jones failed his physical, the Monkeykey’s producers worried that Uncle Sam would call dibs on their star. So, in a mad rush, they began production on the second season of the show. Assuming that Jones would be overseas, they completed production in record time. But it was all for nothing. While the official story is that Jones starved himself to fail the physical, there is another version of the story that is equally plausible. Allegedly, Jones avoided the draft not because of malnourishment, but because he was the sole financial support for his family, a family that he had started in secret. In December 1967, with Monkey Mania reaching epic proportions, Jones slipped away and secretly married Dixie Linda Haynes. The Loveirds lived quietly until their daughter Talia was born in October 1968. Only then did fans find out, and they weren’t exactly thrilled. As a teenage heartthrob and frontman for the beloved boy band, part of Jones’s appeal was his bachelorhood. So, when fans found out about his marriage, they weren’t exactly thrilled. Even so, Jones was undeterred. I kept my marriage a secret, he explained. because I believe stars should be allowed a private life. Still, the backlash contributed to the end of the marriage by 1975. Back in the 60s, with Monkey Mania surging across the airwaves and TV screens of the nation, there was only room in the spotlight for one David Davy Jones. So, when a rising star named David Jones wanted his shot at stardom, he had to change his name to David Bowie. Jones’s cultural impact didn’t end there. As the frontman of the monkeys, Jones became such a sensation that he paved the path to stardom for other aspiring actors and musicians. His shaggy haircut and boyish charm were so iconic that Star Trek producers reportedly cast Walter Kanig as Czechov just to mimic Jones’s look and attract younger viewers.

His wild success was however coming to an end. After their show wrapped in 1968, The Monkeys didn’t just climb up a tree and swing for their tails. They starred in a wild satirical film called Head, co-written by none other than Jack Nicholson. The psychedelic romp was as weird as it sounds, but it was a huge hit with audiences. However, it would come at a great cost for Jones. When the monkeys learned that their producers wouldn’t give them credit or creative control for Head, they weren’t having it. Jones, Dolan’s, and Nesmith staged a one-day walk out, leaving poor Peter Torque to show up to an empty set. The protest created an irreparable rift in the band. After their brief strike, the boys returned to work with one condition. The studio had to up their percentage share of the film’s profits. While they got the raise, the walkout left lasting tension with the producers and ultimately severed their working relationship. Without the producers that put them together, it was only a matter of time before they fell apart. By 1970, the Monkeys had officially disbanded. Torque and Nzmouth bailed first, leaving Jones and Dolan to record one final sugary sweet album called Changes. However, Jones knew that something had changed and distanced himself from the Bubblegum Pop album. Reflecting on changes, Jones didn’t mince words. In the liner notes of the 1994 re-release, he confessed that he and Dolan’s had essentially been duped into recording what he called an Andy Kim album under the Monkeykey’s name. It wouldn’t be the last time a studio threw a banana peel in his path. Hoping to go solo, Jones signed with Bell Records in 1971, but the contract tied his hands. He had no say over the songs or his producer, and the result was a string of uninspired records that even his most ardent fans struggled to love. Still, he had something everyone wanted. Despite his floundering solo career, Jones managed to have his moments. His second solo album featured the wistful track Rainy Jane, which climbed all the way to number 52 on the Billboard charts. It wasn’t exactly the heights he had climbed with the Monkeys, but it was a start, or possibly a premature end.

Despite his fame and talent, Jones floundered in his post monkey years. Music historian Glenn A. Baker summed it up best. For an artist as versatile and confident as Davy Jones, the relative failure of his post monkeys activities is puzzling. For all his confident predictions to the press about his future plans, Davey fell into a directionalist heap when left to his own devices. Little did anyone know, he would find his way back to the top no matter what. When the studio lights faded, Jones returned to his roots, the theater. In 1977, he reunited with Mickey Dolan’s in a musical production of The Point in London, where he starred as Oblio. While the West End didn’t offer him the same audiences as TV, the spotlight shone just as brightly. Back on the stage where it all began, Jones rekindled his passion for performing, and it showed. His chemistry with Dolan’s in the point was so bananas that the producers expanded the show’s comedic elements just for them. They even added two songs, one sung by Jones himself to make the most of their monkeys. Turns out the world was still bananas for them. Even years after it ended, The Monkeys was such a hit that producers planned a revival in 1979. But by that time, the production costs had ballooned and the producers had to scrap the reboot. Instead, Jones returned to another one of his early successes, Oliver. He reprised the role of Artful Dodger one last time and dazzled audiences. But the Monkeys weren’t done yet. When MTV aired a Marathon of the Monkeys in 1986, it introduced Jones and his bandmates to a whole new generation and sparked a wave of nostalgia for their adult fans. Suddenly, teenage girls from the 60s, now full-grown women, and their daughters were screaming for Jones all over again. Monkey Mania was officially back. The wave of renewed fame swept Jones, Dolan’s, and Torque into a reunion tour that ran from 1986 to 1989. As they celebrated their 20th anniversary, Monkeys fans couldn’t get enough of their classic hits or the cheeky antics that made the band beloved in the first place. Jones, however, might have had enough. Jones had found a life for himself after the success of the Monkeys, and he seemed reluctant to give it up. So when the band released their comeback single, that was then, this is now, Jones didn’t feature in it. Nevertheless, he didn’t disappoint fans, joining his band for the album Pul It. But when the record didn’t exactly cannonball onto the charts, Jones went back to his true passion. Though show business paid the bills, Jones never let go of his first love, horses. Throughout his singing and acting career, he held an amateur jockeyy’s license and raced professionally. In 1996, he even won his first race riding dickpast.

He still had one life goal left unchecked. However, maintaining a personal life had always been a priority for Jones. So, when he married his second wife, Anita Pollinger, in 1981, he vowed to make it work. Together, the couple had two daughters and their marriage galloped along for 15 years. Unfortunately, it ended during the Monkeykey’s 30th anniversary reunion tour. But Jones hadn’t given up hope on finding married Bliss quite yet. Jones took another trot down the aisle in 2009, marrying Jessica Pekco. But just 2 years later, the couple seemed to be on the rocks when PCO filed for divorce. However, just one month later, she withdrew the divorce application and the couple remained together until Jones’s passing. Still, there seemed to be some bad blood between them. When Jones wrote his final will, he wasn’t yet married to Pashco and naturally didn’t include her. However, when he passed, this became an issue. His eldest daughter took over the execution of his will, successfully petitioning the court to seal the will and protect Jones’s financial legacy and artistic rights, perhaps from Pashco herself. On February 29th, 2012, Jones was doing what he loved most, tending to his 14 horses. He rode his favorite one around the track and chatted cheerfully with ranch hands. It was a peaceful morning and exactly how Jones would have wanted to spend his final moments. Even if he didn’t know they were his last. Just after 8:00 in the morning, after spending time with his horses, Jones was found unconscious in his car, he had suffered a heart attack. Despite paramedics efforts, the curtain closed on his life at a hospital in Steuart, Florida. He was 66. Though the surviving monkeys didn’t attend Jones’s private funeral to protect his family’s privacy, they honored him in their own way. They arranged for a public memorial service in New York where fellow bandmates Peter Torque and Mickey Dolan performed some of their greatest hits close to the Broadway stages that he had loved so dearly. The venue was filled with fans, friends, and colleagues, all gathered to celebrate the vibrant life and legacy of the charismatic frontman. Davy Jones, the charming heartthrob of the monkeys, captivated millions with his boyish smile and British charm. From teen idol to enduring pop culture icon, he brought joy through music, television, and stage. His legacy lives on in the timeless songs and memories he helped create. If you enjoyed this Factate video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more incredible stories. Want to say in who we cover next? Join our membership program through the link in the description for exclusive perks. Your support means everything to us. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you on the next