There was the time they tipped a golf cart at Joe DiMaggio’s charity tournament.
There were the times they hung out with fellow Monkee Micky Dolenz, Harry Nilsson and Alice Cooper in Los Angeles.
There was the time White’s 1971 Chevy Malibu SS ran out of gas by the San Francisco International Airport, so Jones belted a particularly loud rendition of The Beatles’ “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” as the police stopped to help them.
And then there was the time when a fan from Tokyo followed Jones home.
“I’ll never forget, we were at the LAX baggage claim when Davy came up to me and said, ‘Larry, we have a problem,’” White said, recalling two weeklong Monkees tours in the mid-’70s of Japan, a country whose Monkees fans made America’s Beatlemaniacs look apathetic. “There was a 15-year-old girl from Tokyo with a suitcase there. She’d bought a ticket and followed Davy to America.”
White said they secured the fan safe passage home a few days later, after they notified her parents, a feat complicated by the girl’s lack of English. It’s just one of the scores of stories he’s shared with friends, reporters and Jones’ family since the beloved entertainer died Feb. 29 of a heart attack. Jones was 66.
Jones’ last public performance was Feb. 19 at Thackerville’s WinStar World Casino.
“He was my best friend,” said White, who met Jones in 1968. “He had a memory for jokes like anybody. He could’ve been a stand-up comic, and he kind of was.”
In the wake of Jones’ passing, White confirmed what those who’d only listened to Monkees albums or had seen him play Oliver!’s Artful Dodger in a Tony-nominated turn on Broadway could guess.
“[The public’s] image is that he’s a nice, lovable, funny guy and he was,” said White, who lives in Tulsa, where he manages bluegrass duo Desi and Cody. “I miss him a lot.”
