It's interesting when these things are seized on and commercialised. It can produce something fun: the Monkees' were responsible for bringing some great pop music to the world, and the TV show was not only hilarious as a kid, but when you look at it now really rather anarchic and occasionally pretty subversive too (see for example the very first episode, when Peter steals towels from the hotel linen closet, and the think bubble over his head says "Everybody does it!").
My favourite was always an episode where they are chased by, I think, Dracula and Frankenstein, and one of them says "Scary!" and one of the others turns to the camera and says: "But what's really scary is that you can't say *beep* on television!"
It did cause a lot of tension, yes. Peter and Mike were musicians turned actors, while Davy and Mickey both came from an acting background (Davy had a role for a while in television soap opera Coronation Street), albeit with a significant level of musical theatre. They did develop over time - Mickey became a very skilled drummer, actually. Later on the Monkees themselves both wrote and played more - if memory serves, it was the third album on which, according to Mickey, they played "every f**king note".
Yup, I remember that. And making the same record I seem to recall that they had what is commonly noted as "artistic differences" with the people behind them because they wanted to push the envelope in terms of music and the producers weren't really too keen on that.
BTW, wasn't Peter a folk singer?