has died at the age of 78. the quartet rose to fame with a string of hit songs and starred in their own popular tv sitcom. in a statement to us media, michael nesmith's family said he: "...passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes." earlier, i spoke to david browne who's a senior writer at rolling stone magazine. i asked how influential and significant he thought michael nesmith was on the 60s pop music scene. you know, he was very influential in terms of, he was, i guess you could call him the serious monkee. the monkees were seen as a disposable pop group, in a way, but nesmith was one of the guys in the band who wrote a lot of his own songs, he was the kind of quality control guy in that group. so that was a really important role in that band at the time. you say quality control and one of the serious guys, he was also a bit of a tour de force regarding the creative control, right? right, they did not