Life was looking good for Davy Jones that day early in this new century.

The lovable Artful Dodger of the Monkees, in his mid-50s then, was on the phone from his horse farm in Eastern Pennsylvania, 60 miles northwest of Harrisburg, speaking with enthusiasm about the future.

“I’m proudest that I’m still here and not sitting around being famous like they do at the awards’ shows. Everybody strokes each other,” he said cheerfully.

He made it clear he wanted to remain active. “I have all kinds of plans,” he said, chuckling.

Jones was working on new music and had a new autobiography, “Daydream Believin’ ’’ he informed. And he had acquired a small church near his Pennsylvania property and wanted to turn it into a rock’n’roll memorabilia museum.

He had a new studio there where he and others could record and rehearse, he said, as well as facilities to house musicians working on projects.

This charming Briton, who had trained early on to be a jockey, also wanted to develop a horse and rider fitness center on his property too.

Such are the hopes and dreams when the days ahead, even with five and a half decades under your belt, seem limitless and full of promise.

Flash forward to a few short weeks ago and the stunning news that, for those of us of a certain age, a part of our youth had been taken from us. Davy Jones, perhaps the happiest of the Monkees, had been claimed by a fatal heart attack at 66.

“He was about as heartfelt a man as anyone I have ever met in my life” bandmate Peter Tork told USA Today in a reflection. “Not everyone was able to see the range and depth of his heart.”

Some later found solace in learning that he had just spent a pleasant weekend with his family and was with his beloved horses when he passed.

“We have fun. The people have fun,” he explained that day on the phone. After all these years, the entertaining came easy, he added.

The Monkees brought a lot of people together, Jones said. “People will drive 10 hours to see us. It’s a very big crossover audience. They say they all grew up with the music.”

When he went places, people recognized him as Davy Jones. “It’s an instant door opener, as if I’ve been talking to them for the last 35 years,” he explained.

He described the The Monkees as "total alter egos." “Professionally it worked beautifully. We were all there doing our bit because of who we were,” he said.

It was 1986 when MTV re-broadcast “The Monkees” television series. It served as the catalyst for Monkeemania all over again. Member Micky Dolenz recalled those ’86 tours as “like having a birthday party thrown for you every night. We could do no wrong.”

Jones, who originated the role of the Artful Dodger in David Merrick’s production of “Oliver!” in London’s West End, which led him to Broadway and a Tony award nomination, said he always loved the element of surprise in live theater. “And by pioneering innovative television techniques, we were able to capture that energy and excitement in the television series,” he said.

“We just laughed our butts off the whole time. It was so funny. We had such a great time doing the show and being together,” he recalled. “There was a camaraderie. It was like being brothers. It was us against them.”

The Monkees gave America a chance to relax and laugh, he suggested. “It’s not that the Beatles didn’t do it. We were accessible every week on television. We have people telling us, ‘Thanks for helping us grow up’ or that we introduced them to music.”

The Monkees were born when television producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson (who later directed the film “Five Easy Pieces”) placed an ad in an issue of The Hollywood Reporter in 1965 seeking ‘‘four insane boys, ages 17 to 21” to play musicians in a weekly television series.

Of more than 400 responses, Dolenz, Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were selected. Undergoing voice training and, outfitted in paisley and Nehru jackets, they were introduced the next year as The Monkees.

Their albums frequently outsold those of the Beatles and Rolling Stones. “Our music was written by great songwriters. We were lucky to get these songs from these people’’ Jones said. Those songwriters included Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Boyce and Hart, Neil Diamond, John Stewart and others.

“At the time, artists were used to getting one hit off an album. All of a sudden we were getting three and four. It touched something in people they could relate to. It was a very humbling thing and a continuation of that ‘Father Knows Best’ (feeling) and that homey family stuff.”

They were said to have outsold both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined in 1967.

They had four number one albums on the charts within two years, and nine of their singles went Top 20 in two years.

By 1996, they had sold more than 65 million records worldwide. Jimi Hendrix once was their opening act.

They well may have been television's first video band. “We were part of a whole evolving of the media, not just music, not just TV, but media in general, all the stuff,” he explained.

Jones was on the Ed Sullivan Show with the cast of "Oliver" the night the Beatles were introduced to America. “It was amazing,” he recalls. “The Beatles enriched my life with their music and conversation and the times I spent with them. They were happy memories.”

...not unlike the ones that Davy Jones gave a lot of us.