VALLERI + lyrics THE MONKEES

PlayList • THE MONKEES
Screen Gems president and music supervisor Don Kirshner asked Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart if they had any "girl's-name" songs to be used in the Monkees television series. After claiming that they had a finished song, Boyce and Hart improvised "Valleri" on their way to Kirshner's office. Kirshner was pleased with their work, and "Valleri" was recorded with Boyce and Hart producing the original sessions in August 1966.
The original recording included instrumental backing by the Candy Store Prophets. Wrecking Crew session musician Louie Shelton contributed a flamenco-style guitar solo consisting of hammer-ons and pull-offs. The song was featured in the television show's first season in 1967; a staged performance showed Michael Nesmith apparently picking Shelton's guitar solo via cuts between Nesmith with his hands obscured and close-ups of hands playing the solo. While the first version of "Valleri" went unreleased, a few off-air recordings received radio airplay when some DJs recorded the song from the television and later surfaced on bootleg recordings.
According to Hart, the original 1966 track could not be used because union contracts had already been filed with Boyce and Hart listed as producers, and the Monkees' contracts stipulated that all future recordings would show "Produced by the Monkees" on the label. Boyce and Hart were approached about coming back to produce a new version of the track. Hart said: "[Colgems president] Lester Sill came back to us and said, 'They want you to recut Valleri. You can't have producers credit, but we want you to go back in and do it again, making it sound as close to the original as possible.'" The new recording was produced by Boyce and Hart on December 26, 1967.
When Sill heard the track, he felt it that needed something more, and had a brass section overdubbed on December 28. The remade "Valleri" was released on February 17, 1968. In the United States, the song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Cash Box singles chart. The single would be the band's last American top-10 hit, their last to receive a push from their television series and their last to be certified gold. The follow-up single, "D. W. Washburn," was not featured on the show, and only reached #19 on the pop charts.
The song consists mainly of four chords (F♯ major, E major, A major and C♯ major), and the bridge introduces some harmonic variety (from F♯ major to D♯ minor, twice).

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This version may have been recorded at the end of 1967, but released as a single in early 1968 b/w Tapioca Tundra. The first version was recorded during the More of The Monkees sessions in 1966 and was first shown in the Captain Crocodile episode which premiered on February 20, 1967 and was shown again in the Monkees at the Movies episode, which premiered April 17, 1967. However that version didn’t appear on any album until January 1990 when Missing Links Volume 2 was released. This version was recorded for The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees and released as the A-side to Tapioca Tundra. This version was also featured in the episode The Monkees Blow Their Minds which premiered on March 11, 1968 and was the second to last episode of the series that aired. Although that episode was filmed early in the second season, it didn’t premiere until towards the end of the show.