The Monkees hit the top of the charts with their debut single, which was secretly written as a protest of the Vietnam War. The songwriting team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote many songs for the Monkees. Hart recalls: "We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in Northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarksdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarksdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn't know it at the time; there is an Air Force base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee, which would have fit the bill fine for the story line. We couldn't be too direct with The Monkees. We couldn't really make a protest song out of it. We kind of snuck it in."
The guitar sound of 'Last Train to Clarksville' was heavily influenced by the Beatles' 'Paperback Writer', just as the Monkees television show was inspired by their film 'A Hard Day's Night'. Even the "Oh, No No No"s were a deliberate response to the Fab Four's famous "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah"s. Session musicians played on the song, which was recorded before the members of the band had even been selected, with lead vocal by Micky Dolenz recorded later.
The Monkees took a lot of heat from other musicians for not playing on their songs. Drummer Micky Dolenz says: "I think there was a lot of resentment in the recording industry that we’d come out of nowhere, left field, and sort of just shot right to the top without having to kind of go through the ropes. The music industry back then was pretty crooked, and some people say even to this day. And I didn’t know at the time anything about the business end of it, but all of the sudden, the radio stations, the rack jobbers, the distributors, all these people that had a lot of power at that time. All of the sudden, they had to start playing the Monkees songs; they had to start racking them, they had to start distributing them. They had no choice. It was just so huge because of the television show. And that’s the first time anything like that had ever happened. And I think that probably created a lot of resentment."
Take the last train to Clarksville,
And I'll meet you at the station.
You can be be there by four thirty,
'Cause I made your reservation.
Don't be slow, oh, no, no, no!
Oh, no, no, no!
'Cause I'm leavin' in the morning
And I must see you again
We'll have one more night together
'Til the morning brings my train.
And I must go, oh, no, no, no!
Oh, no, no, no!
And I don't know if I'm ever coming home.
Take the last train to Clarksville.
I'll be waiting at the station.
We'll have time for coffee flavored kisses
And a bit of conversation.
Oh... Oh, no, no, no!
Oh, no, no, no!
Take the last train to Clarksville,
Now I must hang up the phone.
I can't hear you in this noisy
Railroad station all alone.
I'm feelin' low. Oh, no, no, no!
Oh, no, no, no!
And I don't know if I'm ever coming home.
Take the last train to Clarksville,
Take the last train to Clarksville
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