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Davy Jones talks a mile a minute. The former teen idol (who will likely forever be known as "the British one" from TV's The Monkees) is sitting poolside at a Las Vegas hotel, waiting for a ride to sunny San Diego, where he's appearing at a state fair.
Over the course of a fast-paced phone conversation, he manages to expound on his obsession with racehorses, his feelings for his former bandmates, his early days as an actor, his disdain for rock 'n' roll overdoses and the fact that Axl Rose totally stole his dance moves.
All of this in 10 minutes, tops.
Jones, who appears tonight at Club Regent Casino, took part in a recent Monkees reunion (along with castmates Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork) but says he's not exactly pushing for another kick at the can.
"It's good," he says of his relationship with the others. "It's just that we're not going to tour together. I've got a year of appointments ahead of me .... and these guys are more interested in playing their songs and being recognized as real musicians."
The Monkees, as we all know by now, was a pre-fabricated pop band, created by record and TV executives hungry to cash in on the Beatlemania that was sweeping the 1960s.
Unlike his bandmates, however, Jones is quick to downplay The Monkees' contribution to the musical landscape, predicting instead they'll be remembered as the Three Stooges or the Bowery Boys of their era.
"We had some great songwriters -- Carole King and Neil Sedaka and people like that," he acknowledges. "But unlike any other group from the 1960s, be it The Guess Who or The Grass Roots, we had a TV show, so it immediately became about some kind of image."
He also downplays his status as a former sex symbol ("I used to be a heartthrob, now I'm a coronary," he jokes), but he's not willing to give up credit for the slithering, hip-shimmy dance he popularized in his Daydream Believer days -- the same dance Axl Rose later co-opted for his Guns 'N Roses stage schtick.
"I was watching videos with my kids about 20 years ago, and one of my daughters said, 'Dad, why are you dancing like Axl Rose?' " he says.
"I was like, 'Are you kidding me? Did your mother tell you to say that?' "
Though he rarely pauses to allow questions to be asked of him, Jones also never sounds bitter about not achieving the same respectability his bandmates are evidently still seeking.
In fact, it's company he probably wouldn't want to keep, anyway.
"I don't have a lot of respect for people like Jimi Hendrix, or Kurt Cobain, or Janis Joplin or Elvis Presley, because they all killed themselves in one way or another," he says. "Although I often wonder what they'd be doing now if they were still alive. Would they be these crumbling lookalikes of the same people, greeting people at the entrance of Caesar's Palace?"
Speaking for himself, Jones says he'd rather spend time with his four daughters, race his horses or -- how convenient! -- soak up the sun near a pool in Las Vegas.
"This is heaven on Earth, this is the gift we were all after," he laughs. "And if not, I left all my money to myself anyway!"
Tickets for tonight's show cost $37.45 at Ticketmaster.