The artifice of the Monkees didn’t just bother critics and music purists. It bothered the boys themselves, leading to a showdown with music supervisor Don Kirshner, who had assembled the studio musicians and staff songwriters responsible for much of the first two albums. Kirshner was hired for expediency’s sake: the group had been contracted for 32 episodes, and Kirshner had access to a stable of the best songwriters. The Monkees, who were forbidden from playing the instruments on those early albums, later rejected the puppet roles they’d been assigned in what VH1 referred to as “a high-stakes musical mutiny.” Mike Nesmith threatened to quit, but Kirshner was ultimately fired instead, and the boys were given the autonomy to write and perform nearly everything on their next album, a garage-rock classic called Headquarters.