WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Monkees singer Davy Jones was remembered in a small private Florida funeral as a laid-back daydreamer who brought fans into a world blissfully free of worries.
The service was held behind locked doors Wednesday at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Indiantown, close to Jones' home.
The Rev. Frank O'Loughlin, who presided over the service, said several of Jones' own songs were played, including "I'll Love You Forever" and "Written in My Heart." In his own remarks to mourners, the priest compared the singer to the diminutive hero of "Lord of the Rings," saying the author J.R.R. Tolkien portrayed a world not unlike the one Jones offered fans.
"He wrote about a quiet, gentle, contented people," O'Loughlin said in his sermon, a copy of which he shared with The Associated Press. "A people for whom life was bright, neighbors friends, daydream believers with an absolute absence of burden who took themselves lightly - lighter than air. Wasn't that what David conveyed to the world, a blissful lightness of being?"
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