Correct. In the year of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the Monkees vastly outsold The Beatles. It wasn't even close.
Another couple of hits, a trip to India and a well-rehearsed side-shuffle over there and The Monkees would have been the biggest selling band in the history of recorded music. The Beatles would have gone the way of Herman's Hermits and Gary Lewis & The Playboys.
You do know Jimi Hendrix, opened for the Monkees on tour in 1967. Hendrix first was popular in England where he released Are You Experienced in early ‘67. He was pretty much an unknown opening for the Monkees before the album was released in the US. Imagine taking your teenybopper daughter to see the Monkees and out steps this Jimi Hendrix madman pounding out Purple Haze to start the evening.