Why do rock bands break up? The new Peter Jackson documentary series "The Beatles: Get Back," about the late stage of the Beatles' career, touches on some of the reasons bands succumb: personality conflicts, jealousies, diverging personal lives, artistic differences, money and personal vices — shorthand for drugs and alcohol. (The exception seems to be the indefatigable Rolling Stones.) The Dec. 10 death of Mike Nesmith brought back to mind the breakup story of the Monkees, the circumstances of which were unique.

Technically speaking, the Monkees were not a rock band, but four photogenic young men — Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones — selected to play a fictional struggling rock band for a television show modeled on "A Hard Day's Night."

A prodigiously talented team worked with them on the concept. The creators won two Emmys for the show and were later involved in Academy Award-winning movies in the 1970s and '80s. The music director, Don Kirshner, known as "The Man With the Golden Ear" for his uncanny ability to select hit songs, selected songwriters including, among others, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, John Stewart and Paul Williams. Their backup musicians were the legendary Wrecking Crew, the great session players who have never received their due for all they contributed to rock and pop music. (Watch the 2008 documentary "The Wrecking Crew" to get an idea of their influence.)

The timing for the group's debut in 1966 was just right. The younger siblings of the kids who watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964 — "teeny-boppers" in the argot of the time — had disposable income. They made the television show and the Monkees' music a cultural phenomenon. With the talent backing them, besides the two Emmys, the Monkees sold more records than the Beatles in 1967 — the year of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

But if 1967 was just the right year for the Monkees, 1968 was the wrong one. The country's mood turned grimmer in the wake of Vietnam and deteriorating race relations. It was the year of the Tet offensive, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the violence of the Chicago Democratic Convention. The sell-by date of the Monkees' infectious optimism had passed.

Their young, hip friends were in the music industry — the Laurel Canyon crowd — but the Monkees resided in the older, stodgier television industry. Among the struggling musicians in the canyon, there was unspoken jealousy toward the television stars, which, combined with the condescension of the new rock bible Rolling Stone magazine, made them pariahs. They were lambasted for not playing their own music, despite the fact they were hardly alone. The Wrecking Crew backed up prestigious groups including the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and Simon and Garfunkel.

One of the Monkees' strengths was their lighthearted approach. Nesmith cut that off when he said, "There comes a time when you have to draw the line as a man. We're being passed off as something we aren't. We all play instruments, but we didn't on any of our records." Things spiraled downhill rapidly when Kirshner was subsequently dismissed. (He found it easier to work with cartoon characters, creating the Archies, a completely fictional band that recorded "Sugar, Sugar," the No. 1 song of 1969, and later hosting a groundbreaking late-night television rock show.)

Stung by the criticism they did not play their own instruments, the Monkees assumed creative control. Despite being decent musicians (Nesmith played the most famous Monkees guitar riff, the opening to the Carole King-penned "Pleasant Valley Sunday"), their commercial appeal vanished. Starring in their own ill-fated, drug-fueled movie, "Head," turned off their remaining fans. From there, it was the oldies circuit and reunion tours, albeit armed with songs that sold 75 million copies.

For years, Nesmith's attitude toward the Monkees bordered on contempt. In the show's final episodes, he barely goes through the motions. He bought out his contract and declined to be part of the Monkees' 20th anniversary tour. The "band" that made him internationally famous received only a brief mention in his autobiography.

Eventually, though, the Monkees magic was infectious: Nesmith reversed course to perform with the surviving Monkees (Jones died in 2012 and Tork in 2019) to ecstatic crowds: aging baby boomers, as well as young people discovering the Monkees for the first time. After Nesmith's death, Dolenz, the last survivor, discussed Nesmith's Damascene conversion with Rolling Stone.

"You'd have to ask him why he wanted to come back, but he talked about it a little on this last tour. He maybe had a new appreciation, a fresh appreciation for the whole thing. He told me many times that doing the television show was quite bewildering, as it would be to anybody, to walk in cold to that kind of environment. But over the years, he absolutely grew to appreciate the Monkees. … I'd never tour as the Monkees by myself. We were concerned enough just going out as just Mike and I. That's why we called it 'The Monkees Present: The Mike and Mickey Show.'"

Serious treatment, even by Rolling Stone, for the band that briefly outsold the Beatles. You might say the Monkees broke up because they started taking themselves too seriously and believing their own news clippings — but only the bad ones.

Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician. This article was first published by the Chicago Tribune.