Bobby Hart, an essential figure in the Monkees’ multimedia empire who collaborated with Tommy Boyce on hits like “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone,” has passed away. He was 86.

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

Hart died at his home in Los Angeles, as reported by his friend and co-author Glenn Ballantyne. He had been in poor health since breaking his hip last year.

Boyce and Hart were a prolific songwriting duo in the mid-1960s, particularly for the Monkees, the television group promoted by Don Kirshner. They wrote the Monkees’ theme song, featuring the iconic opening line, “Here we come, walkin’ down the street,” and their first No. 1 hit, “Last Train to Clarksville.” The Monkees’ debut album included six songs from Boyce and Hart, who also produced and utilized their own backing musicians, the Candy Store Prophets.

“I always credit them not only with writing many of our biggest hits but also, as producers, being instrumental in creating the unique Monkee sound we all know and love,” stated the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz in a foreword to Hart’s memoir, Psychedelic Bubblegum, published in 2015.

As Boyce and Hart gained fame and the Monkees took more control over their work, they pursued their own careers, releasing albums like Test Patterns and I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite, while also appearing on sitcoms such as I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. They were politically active as well, campaigning for Robert F. Kennedy during his presidential run in 1968 and writing “L.U.V. (Let Us Vote)” in support of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971. Their other notable songs included the Monkees’ poignant “I Wanna Be Free” and the theme for the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives.

Their work was covered by artists ranging from Dean Martin (“Little Lovely One”) to the Sex Pistols (“I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”).

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Hart achieved several hits with different collaborators and even contributed material to another television act, the Partridge Family. He worked with Austin Roberts on “Over You,” an Oscar-nominated ballad performed by Betty Buckley in “Tender Mercies,” and collaborated with Dick Eastman on “My Secret (Didja Gitit Yet?)” for New Edition. He toured with Dolenz and fellow Monkee Davy Jones in the ‘70s, released the album Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart, and saw renewed attention when the Monkees made a comeback in the 1980s.

Boyce passed away in 1994, and he and Hart were featured in a 2014 documentary titled The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em. Hart was married twice, most recently to singer Mary Ann Hart, and had two children from his first marriage.

Born Robert Luke Harshman in Phoenix, Arizona, he was a minister’s son. In his memoir, he described himself as a shy child with a “strong desire to distinguish” himself. Music became his outlet. By high school, he had learned piano, guitar, and the Hammond B-3 organ. He also started his own amateur radio station, eventually adding a console, turntables, and microphones. After graduating high school and serving in the Army reserves, he moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s with aspirations of becoming a disc jockey but soon transitioned into songwriting and session work. Adopting the name Bobby Hart, he toured with Teddy Randazzo and the Dazzlers while co-writing “Hurt So Bad,” which became a hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials and was later covered by Linda Ronstadt.

Hart also formed a friendship with Boyce, a singer-songwriter from Charlottesville, Virginia known for his spontaneous yet cool personality. Together they penned the top ten hit “Come a Little Bit Closer” for Jay and the Americans. Their strong partnership led Kirshner to recruit them for his Screen Gems songwriting factory where they were assigned to write for the Monkees. Tasked with creating songs for a quartet modeled after The Beatles, they crafted “Last Train to Clarksville,” which topped charts in 1966. When Kirshner requested a song featuring a girl’s name in the title, they produced “Valleri,” which also reached the top five.

The show’s theme song was inspired by simple outdoor strolls.

“Boyce began strumming his guitar while I joined in by snapping my fingers & making noises that mimicked an open & closed hi-hat cymbal,” Hart recounted in his memoir. “We had created the perfect recipe for inspiration and started singing about just what we were doing: ‘Walkin’ down the street.’”