I had lunch with Ron Jacobs last week, and we were talking about the Chinese Year of the Monkey, which had just begun.

Jacobs was an early disc jockey at KHVH and KPOI radio with Tom Moffatt. He’s retired and lives in Pearl City today but worked in California for many years.

In the mid-1960s Jacobs was program manager at radio station KHJ in Los Angeles. At the time, KHJ was one of the top radio stations in the U.S.

Jacobs told me he had a story about the American musical group the Monkees. The Monkees had a comedy TV show in the 1960s.

Co-creators Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson initially wanted the Dave Clark Five or the Lovin’ Spoonful for the show but were unsuccessful in signing them. So they ran ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

Over 400 actors and musicians auditioned.

Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Michael Nesmith were hired to be in the group and star in the show.

The concept was about an imaginary band that wanted to be like the Beatles but was never as successful, Dolenz explained. Their zany antics would be the content of the TV show, which also would showcase their music.

Schneider and Rafelson hired studio musicians to back up the foursome, whose musical talents were average at best. Songwriters were hired, including Neil Diamond, who wrote “I’m a Believer” for them.

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote their first single, “Last Train to Clarksville.” (Boyce and Hart wrote hits for Paul Revere and the Raiders, Little Anthony, Jay and the Americans, Fats Domino and Chubby Checker.)

“Last Train to Clarksville” debuted in August 1966. It was about a man wanting his girlfriend to meet him “at the station” before he had to go (to fight in the Vietnam War).

As program director at KHJ radio, Jacobs and his promotion manager, Don Berrigan, came up with an idea to promote “The Monkees,” which premiered on television on Sept. 12, 1966.

“Last Train to Clarksville” inspired them. Why not charter a real train, put the Monkees on it with several hundred fans and take it to a town, renamed Clarksville for a day?

KHJ radio station listeners were invited to enter a contest to go on the train ride with the Monkees the day before the TV show premiered. Four hundred teens were selected, Jacobs recalls.

Kailua resident Johnny Williams was on the train. Williams was the midnight-to-6 a.m. deejay at the station at the time and boarded the train with all the station’s other deejays instead of going home to sleep.

“Jacobs was a genius at promotions,” Williams says. “Every detail was taken care of beforehand. He imagined any problem that might crop up in advance and took care of it.”

Southern Pacific provided a train. It had several cars with refreshments, and live bands for dancing in other cars. One car would be a screening room where the Monkees TV pilot would play continuously.

The only problem was there was no city named Clarksville in Southern California. Jacobs told Berrigan to make one up.

Berrigan thought Del Mar, Calif., would work. “It was a small beach town near San Diego, and the city fathers were anxious to be our hosts and to have the privilege of introducing the four Monkees to Southern California,” Berrigan recalls.

Del Mar was persuaded to put up a “Clarksville” sign for the day. “The Monkees got on the train in ‘Clarksville’ and played songs in the caboose all the way back to L.A. A TV crew filmed the whole thing.

The TV show aired the following night and was a hit with teenagers. Demand grew for them to tour. Interestingly, their very first live performance was in Hawaii.

“On Dec. 1, 1966, the Monkees arrived on a United Airlines flight at Honolulu International Airport and were greeted by about 2,500 fans,” promoter Moffatt recalls.

“About 500 of those screaming fans broke through the security fence and rushed towards the band members. Micky, Davy and Mike were already in the limousine when it started to pull away from the oncoming crowd.”

However, Moffatt and Tork were still outside of the vehicle, “so we had to jump onto the back of the moving car and hang on.”

“During the harrowing ride, Peter extended his free right hand to shake and said, ‘Tom Moffatt, I presume.’

“The Monkees performed at the Miss KPOI Pageant on Dec. 3, 1966, at the HIC Arena (now called the Neal Blaisdell Center). It was their first concert … anywhere,” Moffatt says.

“It was well produced and the first time a screen was used in a Blaisdell Arena concert.

“One of the sequences shown had Davy Jones walking on the beach leading a little girl by the hand. I remember the girls at the concert screaming, watching this sequence as Davy sang ‘I Want to Be Free’ live onstage.”

The Monkees TV show ran for two seasons and earned an Emmy for outstanding comedy series in 1967. Their first album, “The Monkees,” spent 13 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard and stayed in the top 100 for 78 weeks.

Their second album — “More of the Monkees” — was No. 1 for 18 weeks and was one of the biggest-selling pop albums of the 1960s, according to Billboard.

The group released several more albums with such hits as “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Daydream Believer.” All told, they sold over 75 million records worldwide.

The Monkees discontinued as a group in 1971 but reunited in 1986 and have toured occasionally ever since.

Schneider and Rafelson went on to produce such critically acclaimed films as “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces,” “The Last Picture Show” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

Schneider and Rafelson had met working on the TV show “The Wackiest Ship in the Army” in 1965. It was based on the real World War II adventures of former Hawaii resident Meredith “Rip” Riddle. I’ll tell that story in a future column.

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.