The Monkees 1968 movie masterpiece is all in the “Head”

I’d like to talk about a very strange and long time forgotten time capsule of a movie from 1968 called “Head”. Starring and co-written by the made for TV rock group the Monkees, it was their goodbye, their only feature film, their inside look into their phenomenon, and it was the greatest piece of art they ever produced.

The Monkees, (Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones) gathered in a hotel room in Ojai, California for a week or so with their producer Bob Rafelson and a newcomer on the scene named Jack Nicholson, (Yes, him! Ol’ eyebrows himself!) and talked into a tape recorder while high and thusly came up with the script. This is not a method usually known for coming up with sterling material, and honestly I didn’t like the film much even as a Monkees fan at age 14 or so. At that time it was very rare, something forgotten and only known by fans of the group. I managed to notice and rent it one day at a video rental shop… yeah remember those!?

I didn’t like what I saw. I probably expected a 90 minute version of their TV show, filled with goofy slapstick humor, quick and clever editing and visual gags. This was not that. The movie is a bizarre set of vignettes which leaps from one landscape to another, seemingly with no form or intent. I would say that at that time I did not ‘get it’. It didn’t make any sense to me and so had no meaning. I really hated it and found it just kind of an annoying watch.

Fortunately I saw the film a few more times years later, and I started to see great meaning and symbolism in it, as well as a sly and piercing dark-humor to the piece. Sometime after release it was thought that the movie may have been the producers way of killing-off the whole Monkees project they had started for TV just over 2 years ago. I mean what kind of pop-idol movie has ever or would ever start and end by showing the group collectively commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge?? As I say, there was an element of darkness to the movie along with a certain wit and cynicism. It partly was about the death of this particular pop culture phenomenon… who 2 years ago had debuted with their television show on NBC to huge success in ratings and also in record sales of the tunes folks were hearing on the show. The group eventually fought for and won the right to have more control of the musical part of their act, including the right to play instruments themselves on their own records, contribute original songs and produce sessions. The charge, mostly led by guitarist and excellent singer/songwriter Michael Nesmith, led to them being able to do these things and control their music more, but record sales eventually started to drop and then NBC cancelled their show after 2 now-iconic seasons.

So, it was time for them to jump to the big screen and make a movie right? They had visions of it being a further bridge to artistic respect with their contemporaries and fans, but when it was released in ’68 it failed to attract any attention from either their fan base or the hip, in the know crowd. It was too bizarre and un-Monkees-like to teenage fans, and the rest just didn’t want to see a movie starring the Monkees by that point. It was pulled from theaters rather quickly, buried and forgotten about for a long time.

The movie eventually became a cult, underground hit however, and has continued to gain respect steadily over time. It has become a favorite of mine that I still enjoy watching to this day. It is not something you want to pull out everyday and see but it is definitely worth seeing and repeated viewings add a lot of insight and appreciation.

The film conducts a sharp self-examination of the Monkees pre-fabricated beginnings and trappings and is circular in form- everything comes colliding back to exactly how it was at the beginning. At that time ‘plastic’ was a word being used to describe music groups which one felt were phony, hollow artistically and generally no good, and at one point in “Head”‘s swirling kaleidoscope of landscapes the four guys are shown to be plastic dummies on stage at a concert, and are ripped apart limb from limb by charging, screaming fans! There is another scene later in the movie where Mike Nesmith opens a closet to find a plastic dummy of Micky falling out right in his face after which Mike looks at the crew behind the camera and says “Oh you think we’re plastic now, just wait til I show ’em how we do it!” There is a cynicism about it, some fleeting funny moments reminiscent of their TV show, some spooky psychadelia and at least one genuinely touching sequence while the song “As We Go Along” (Written by Carole King and Toni Stern) is played. By the way this is an excellent song, one of my favorites by any artist of any time and a vastly underrated tune in my opinion. Sitting back and listening to this on headphones is highly recommended!

A brutally self-effacing and image destroying chant titled “Ditty Diego” (credited to Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson) is performed by all four members of the group near the beginning of the movie, and the tone is set right then and there for subversion and an ‘all cards on the table’ tour of Monkeemania. Look at these lyrics:

Hey, hey, we are the Monkees
You know we love to please
A manufactured image
With no philosophies

We hope you like our story
Although there isn’t one
That is to say, there’s many
That way there is more fun

You told us you like action
And games of many kinds
You like to dance, we like to sing
So let’s all lose our minds

We know it doesn’t matter
’cause what you came to see
Is what we’d love to give you
And give it one, two, three

But it may come three, two, one, two
Or jump from nine to five
And when you see the end in sight
The beginning may arrive

For those who look for meanings
In form as they do fact
We might tell you one thing
But we’d only take it back

Not back like in a box, back
Not back like in a race
Not back so we can keep it
But back in time and space

You say we’re manufactured
To that we all agree
So make your choice and we’ll rejoice
In never being free!

Hey, hey, we are the Monkees
We’ve said it all before
The money’s in, we’re made of tin
We’re here to give you more!

The money’s in, we’re made of tin

We’re here to give you…. (Blood curdling scream from a teenage girl..)

This is capped off by a shot of a Viet Cong man being summarily shot in the head and falling dead…… and this movie was rated G folks! Strange and bizarre to say the least… and no one was expecting anything like this from the Monkees; and that fact was of course partly why no one saw it back then either!

Now we’re at the point where I want to talk about the black box. If you’ve seen the film, you know what that is, but if you haven’t, I suggest you stop reading here, go watch it and then return! (At the time of this writing the complete film is available to watch on You Tube.)

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Ok, so repeatedly through the movie the Monkees keep encountering this big, black box. Usually they end up trapped in it through one method or another, and it continues to be a strange source of consternation to them throughout. The meaning of this object and the scenes inside it is never expressly given in the movie, but at the end, when the boys jump off the bridge and kill themselves once again, they are shown to still be trapped inside this box, and subsequently hauled off by a tractor while actor Victor Mature trails behind sitting in a chair, smoking and laughing. What the box represents to me, is the Monkees’ image, and how they could never escape it even if they wanted to. Even when they ‘kill themselves’ (like this movie accomplished somewhat for their popular career) they are STILL trapped inside the black box. The movie definitely acknowledges and comments on the Monkees fabricated image and how different parts of society reacted to it. This is explored in several different scenes in different ways, and when the black box shows up maybe halfway through, the boys are just starting to see then that perhaps there is no way out, perhaps they are trapped for good. And, if this is indeed the meaning of the box (although I realize many have interpretations and none are necessarily right or wrong), then this scenario has been proved true through time in the 4 Monkees’ own lives! No matter what they ever did again, they would always be remembered mostly for this project they did for about three years in the late 1960’s. They would never as long they lived ‘escape’ their Monkees fame and image, and of course I’m not saying they always wanted to, but they were mightily hungry for some artistic respect back at that time. The Beatles had done “Sgt. Pepper”, and newer, heavier groups like the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were now on the scene and the Monkees wanted in on this new era of rock’ n roll brilliance, invention, respect and freedom.

Of course as things mellowed over the years and time went on, eventually no one cared (or knew) anymore about their made-for-TV beginnings and the group was able to have a massively successful 20th anniversary reunion in ’86/’87 and, as well as other projects here and there, a major critical and commercial hit album in 2016 for their 50th anniversary titled “Good Times!”

Another musical standout among the six original songs in “Head” is the movie starter/ender “The Porpoise Song”, a psychadelic mesmerizer written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, along with the Nesmith-penned Bo Diddley-style rocker “Circle Sky”, which the Monkees are shown playing live on stage handling all instrumental duties themselves, which all 4 had now learned to do. The made for television pop group that wasn’t even *allowed* to play on their own records in the beginning… had become an actual band. That, by the way, is the true and larger story of the whole Monkees thing, but that is for another post.. ( :