Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 87

Record label: RCA/Colgems

Produced: Douglas Farthing Hatlelid aka Chip Douglas

Recorded: RCA Victor Studios, Hollywood; February–April 1967

Released: May 22, 1967

Chart peaks: 1 (UK) 2 (US)

Personnel: Mike Nesmith (g, ps, o, v); Davy Jones (pc, v); Micky Dolenz (d, g, v); Peter Tork (k, 12-string guitar, b, banjo, v); Vince DaRosa (French horn); Fred Seykora (c); Chip Douglas (b)

Track listing: You Told Me; I’ll Spend My Life With You; Forget That Girl; Band 6; You Just May Be The One; Shades Of Gray; I Can’t Get Her Off My Mind; For Pete’s Sake; Mr Webster; Sunny Girlfriend; Zilch; No Time; Early Morning Blues And Greens; Randy Scouse Git (S/UK – released as Alternate Title)

Running time: 28.56

Current CD: Rhino boxed set collection draws together 84 tracks of outtakes, alternate versions and mono versions of the album tracks.

Further listening: The Monkees (1966); More Of The Monkees (1967); Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones (1967)

Further reading: www.monkees.net/

Download: iTunes

The success of The Monkees, whose origins dated back to a September 1965 Variety ad for four ‘spirited’ boys, had surpassed their corporate creators’ dreams. While their public image was of a self-contained group, record mogul Don Kirshner, who chose their songs and oversaw their records, made no effort to hide his role in their fame. In January 1967, when their second album, More Of The Monkees, hit the stores, the group was on tour. As Peter Tork later recalled: ‘In Cleveland, we went across the street and bought the first copy of our record that we’d seen. The back liner notes were Don Kirshner congratulating all his boys for the wonderful work they’d done, and, oh, yes, this record is by The Monkees.’

Thus began a rebellion by the prefab four which climaxed in a legendary run-in with Kirshner at a Beverly Hills hotel, where Michael Nesmith reportedly put his fist through a wall. Nesmith proceeded to spill to TV Guide, ‘The music on our records has nothing to do with us. It’s totally dishonest, tell the world we’re synthetic, because, dammit, we are!’ At the insistence of the TV show producers, Kirshner relaxed control and the group chose its own producer, Turtles bassist Chip Douglas. As the group-penned liner notes to Headquarters explained: ‘We aren’t the only musicians on this album, but the occasional extra bass or horn player played under our direction, so that this is all ours.’

Headquarters is indeed the work of a self-contained group, sounding closer to a garage band than the polished combos that cut The Monkees’ previous records. The group’s exhilaration at being let loose is obvious. The prevailing influence is folk-rock – it was rumoured for years that The Byrds played on the sparkling You Just May Be The One. Yet the album’s most notorious track is, stylistically, all but uncategorisable.

The Monkees’ US label, Colgems, didn’t deem any of Headquarters worthy of single release, but UK label RCA heard a song it thought perfect for the British market: Dolenz’s absurdist rant Randy Scouse Git. (Dolenz had picked up the title watching ’Til Death Do Us Part while romancing British wife Samantha.) There was, however, the small problem of the title. An RCA rep wrote to The Monkees’ US office, ‘You are no doubt aware that many English expressions have a totally different meaning in America and vice versa, and in this case it is a question of the versa being vice. To give you a perfectly straightforward translation of the title, you are referring to someone as being an “oversexed illegitimate son of a prostitute from Liverpool”.’ Hence The Monkees’ second-biggest UK hit was known as Alternate Title.