Crap. Mike was so very - and very broadly - talented. He wrote lots of things that had nothing to do with the Monkeys, like Linda Ronstadt’s breakout song,
Different Drum.
He was formally trained, but not stuffy about it. His mother could afford to get him this training because
she was the person who invented White Out correction fluid. One story I heard was that she was too fast a typist when the original IBM Selectric came out, and it couldn’t keep up with her. She was an artist, and used her experience with paints to come up with the correction fluid. And she became quite wealthy from it.
Now how unique is that - a Texas boy gets to learn music because his mother is not only an executive secretary (top of the ladder for women at the time) at a prestigious bank, but an inventor who creates a whole new product and a whole new way to run a business…No wonder Mike was special.
Dammit, now only Mickey is left.