So what if this made-for-TV band didn't write their biggest hits (in fact, 2011 inductee Neil Diamond wrote the Monkees' 1996 hit, "I'm a Believer"). The "Pre-Fab Four" aren't important for their musical impact, though many of their tunes still sound fresh and original today. The Monkees were, however, one of the first groups for whom television was just as important as vinyl. Like it or not, the group's focus on TV made it a kind of a precursor to the MTV era, underscoring the power of video to market music. Synergy!
In 2007, Monkee Peter Tork told the New York Post that the group had been blackballed by the Hall of Fame, saying, "Jann [Wenner, Rolling Stone publisher and Hall of Fame co-founder] seems to have taken it harder [that the Monkees didn't always play their own instruments or write their own songs] than everyone else, and now, 40 years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else does it. Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and 1968 is supposed to serve in 2007."
