Pleasant Valley Sunday

Chip Douglas, producer of the Monkees' music during 1967, also played bass guitar on some of their recordings. (This freed up Peter Tork to play keyboards.) He showed lead guitarist Michael Nesmith the lead riff used throughout the song. Nesmith doubletracked it while Peter Tork and Davy Jones added piano and maraca parts. "Fast" Eddie Hoh, a session musician, played drums. Micky Dolenz sang lead vocals, and was the only member of The Monkees who did not play an instrument on the track.[4]

For an ending, Douglas and engineer Hank Cicalo decided to "keep pushing everything up", adding more and more reverberation and echo until the sound of the music became unrecognizable, before fading out the recording. Separate mono and stereo versions were mixed for single and album records.

The single peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 and was featured in the second season of their television series. The song also appeared on the fourth Monkees album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., in November 1967. While mono copies of the album had the same version heard on the single, stereo copies had a version using a different take of the first verse and an additional backing vocal during the break. (A different stereo mix, more closely replicating the single version, appeared on the 1991 Monkees box set Listen to the Band.)

In February 1986, MTV featured a marathon of episodes of the series titled Pleasant Valley Sunday, which sparked a second wave of Monkeemania. The reunited Dolenz, Tork, and Davy Jones, already on tour, went from playing small venues to playing arenas and stadiums in the following weeks.

The B-side to the single, "Words", was written by Boyce and Hart. On the Pisces album the song is introduced by Tork's brief spoken-word track "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky".

An early demo version of the song with vocals by Carole King was released on her 2012 compilation, The Legendary Demos.[5]

In a 1978 interview with Blitz Magazine, Mike Nesmith jokingly corrected the interviewer who regarded the song as being about suburban America: "I hate to pop your balloon about 'Pleasant Valley Sunday'. That song was actually written about a mental institution."[6][7]

• Micky Dolenz – lead vocal
• Michael Nesmith – electric guitar and harmony vocal
• Peter Tork – electric piano
• Davy Jones – backing vocal, maracas
• Bill Chadwick – acoustic guitar
• Chip Douglas – bass guitar
• "Fast" Eddie Hoh – drums[8]

• Grand Funk Railroad's 1970 song "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)" opens with a guitar intro played by Mark Farner that borrows directly from "Pleasant Valley Sunday's" guitar hook.
• The pop punk band The Mr. T Experience covered the song on their 1986 debut album Everybody's Entitled to Their Own Opinion.
• The Wedding Present covered the song on their 1992 album Hit Parade 1.
• The Christian band Code of Ethics covered the song on their 1995 album Arms Around the World.
• The track "Pleasant Valley Monday" from the 2001 album Puroland by noise artist Merzbow was inspired by this song.
• Mark Mothersbaugh covered the song for a 2002 episode of the TV series Hidden Hills.
• In the 2005 Gilmore Girls season 5 episode "To Live and Let Diorama", the song is heard playing at the music store owned by Sophie Bloom (a character played by Carole King, who co-wrote the song).
• Neal Morse, lead singer of Transatlantic, and former lead singer of Spock's Beard, covered the song on his 2006 album Cover to Cover.
• In the 2008 Family Guy season 6 episode "McStroke", this song plays in the background during a classic hallway chase scene.
• Jazz singer Kurt Elling covered the song on his 2012 album 1619 Broadway – The Brill Building Project.
• The song is performed in Act II of the 2013 jukebox musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

• Lefcowitz, Eric (1985). The Monkees Tale. Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp Press. ISBN 0-86719-338-7.
• Baker, Glenn A.; Czarnota, Tom; Hogan, Peter (1986). Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-00003-0.

• Pleasant Valley Way map
• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics