"I did study, absolutely. But I was already a musician. You had to be able to sing and play to get through the audition process. I was a guitar player - still am. My first instrument was a Spanish guitar. My father had gotten me interested in that, doing Segovia and Villa-Lobos and all that. That morphed into folk music, the Kingston Trio and Bob Dylan, and then into rock 'n' roll. I was in bands, playing covers.
"For The Monkees, they said they were casting me as the drummer, and I said, 'Fine. Where do I start?' Because I was a musician and could read music, I wasn't starting from square one. After the pilot was sold and we knew we had a show, we knew we'd be going on the road, so I had a period of time to learn. But yeah, I am a quick study."
