SHOWTIME
Monkee
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BY JON LEWIS
BUSINESS
ED HEFFELFINGER TEAMS UP WITH FORMER MONKEE MICHAEL NESMITH
THE BEATLES’ triumphant appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” already had young Ed Heffelfinger primed for a life in rock ‘n’ roll, even though a guitar just didn’t fit right in his hands. When The Monkees took network TV by storm a few years later, Heffelfinger had his true calling: the combination of music and video. “I was the perfect demographic for ‘The Monkees’ when they appeared,” the former Redding resident says, referring back to the TV show that aired from 1966 to 1968. Michael Nesmith, the wool capwearing guitarist in the made-for-TV band, was his favorite. Heffelfinger, a newly minted teenager at the time, became an avid reader of “Tiger Beat” magazine, bought some love beads and even started sporting a wool cap like his TV hero. Little did Heffelfinger know that, some 50 years later, he’d be working side-by-side with Nesmith and producing his latest record. Both performer and producer followed winding roads that culminated in the November 2019 release of “Cosmic Partners – The McCabe’s Tapes” on the London-based 7A Records label. The 17 tracks come from a serendipitous recording of a 1973 concert at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica that features Nesmith and his longtime pedal steel player, Red Rhodes. Heffelfinger, 67, never lost his childhood enthusiasm for music and video. At the ripe old age of 12, he had a radio show at Nova High School in Redding and by the time he turned 16 he was at the helm of fledgling public TV station KIXE’s first local production, “Experiment in Entertainment.” Heffelfinger recalls one program featured the Redding group Uncle Robert’s Magic Zap Juice Band, which counted among its members Rob Swendiman and Steve Gunner (who went on to play with Creedence Clearwater Revisited). Heffelfinger’s family moved from Redding after his sophomore year at Shasta High School and Heffelfinger graduated from Folsom High School near Sacramento before enlisting in the Army, where he did some more TV work. The American Film Institute in Hollywood was4 continued on page 56 MARCH 2020
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