Valleri - First Recorded Version; 2006 Remaster

The songwriting team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote this in 1966. The pair met in 1959 and moved to New York to write songs. They had their first nibble on the charts with a minor hit for Chubby Checker called "Lazy Elsie Molly" in 1964, but had their greatest success as the musical masterminds of The Monkees - they wrote the theme song to their famous TV show and became the group's producers after attempts with Mickie Most, Snuff Garrett and Carole King didn't work out. "Last Train To Clarksville," which was The Monkees first hit, was a Boyce/Hart composition.

This was written and first recorded in the summer of 1966, as songs were being cranked out for The Monkees TV series, set to debut in September. Don Kirshner was the musical supervisor of the show, and he needed two songs for every weekly episode. He particularly wanted songs with girls' names, and Boyce and Hart delivered "Valleri."

Boyce had been working on a song for The Monkees when Kirshner called with his request for "a great girl-name song." Boyce took the call and said they had one, which was a lie. He and Hart quickly put pieces of the song together based on what Boyce had written, and they drove to Kirshner's house to play it. "Valleri" was the name of a girl Hart pined for in high school, and it became the title of the song when they were shouting girls' names back and forth on their drive. They sang their "song" to Kirshner (some accounts have this in his living room, while other lore has him standing in his bathrobe in the front door), and Kirshner felt that if the song were finished, it would be a huge hit; so he sent them back home to add verses and polish it up. They finished the first verse later in the day and booked studio time for the next afternoon, where they recorded the instrumental tracks - The Monkees did not play on their own records at this time. The Monkees added their vocals the next day, by which time Boyce and Hart had finished the lyrics.