I barely remember this film for many of the reasons cited in this effectively illustrative review. Reading now, I am on my mission to seek it out and live through everything that writer Petra Mayer describes here. I was a prime audience member of the Monkees time on the public stage, both during and after their heyday, including most poignantly, the national and world events attached to their demise. Deep chords struck.
If you’re of my vintage, perhaps you will be too. Read the article, and find the movie to watch. Here’s a link on YouTube that might go away eventually, so check it out if you can in time.
In Head, the Monkees made a play for creative and cultural respect. Did it work? No. Was it a strangely great movie? Heck yeah.
Photo by Moviestore/Shutterstock
I don’t think, as a teenage fangirl, that I realized exactly how bitter, how cynical, how teeth-grittingly furious the Monkees’ 1968 movie Head is. How it starts with — more or less — a suicide: Micky Dolenz running in a panic through a municipal ribbon-cutting ceremony and taking a leap off of a shiny new suspension bridge, tumbling through the air and crashing into the water to the stately chords of “Porpoise Song” while the rest of the band watches in consternation from the railing. How it ends the same way, except this time it’s all four of them jumping. How the Gerry Goffin-penned lyrics that play over both scenes go “a face, a voice/an overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice.”
Scott Hutchinson, singer songwriter, founder of the band, Frightened Rabbit, died earlier this month.
I didn’t know him, nor the band’s music well, so I decided to listen some. I came away feeling a familiar sadness, as I often have, after an artistic soul of uncommon depth leaves this earth all too early, from tragic events, and worst of all, from apparent suicide.
The world is dense with throngs of humanity that deliberately choose paths of danger, conflict, warfare, and high risk behavior. Their deaths hurt people left behind, but those outcomes are part of a calculation they made willingly, knowingly playing the odds.
Then, there are people like Scott Hutchinson, and those like him, who have a calling to create music, art, dance, and deeper voices, to share with the rest of us, while they wrestle inside of themselves to find meaning. They die too soon, and too tragically, of struggle they can never quite calculate.
You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you’re on the street
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight
You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking
And after a while, you can work on points for style
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You’ll get the chance to put the knife in
You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder
You know it’s going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older
And in the end you’ll pack up and fly down south
Hide your head in the sand,
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer
And when you loose control, you’ll reap the harvest you have sown
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone
Dragged down by the stone (stone, stone, stone, stone, stone)
I gotta admit that I’m a little bit confused
Sometimes it seems to me as if I’m just being used
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise
If I don’t stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?
Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone’s expendable and no-one has a real friend
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And everything’s done under the sun
And you believe at heart, everyone’s a killer
Who was born in a house full of pain
Who was trained not to spit in the fan
Who was told what to do by the man
Who was broken by trained personnel
Who was fitted with collar and chain
Who was given a pat on the back
Who was breaking away from the pack
Who was only a stranger at home
Who was ground down in the end
Who was found dead on the phone
Who was dragged down by the stone
I was not of the teen or young adult generation who grew up with the Beatles, but I was solidly attached in adolescence to my evolving musical taste. In the spring of 1963, I officially became a Beatles fan, with the release of the single, I Saw Her Standing There, from the Beatles debut album, Please, Please Me.
I know this will sound nutty, and overstated, but the world changed for me that day. If you were my age, certainly a teenager, or a bit older, and you were a Beatles fan, you will know what I mean. If you were not a Beatles fan, I’m not sure I could actually trust you, but that’s a topic for another day.
In the meantime, from that day on, until the day they stopped recording together in 1970, The Beatles were an emblem of my youth, and a prism through which I viewed much of the world around me. To say that about anything, or anybody, let alone, a musical group, sounds so outlandish. Almost cult-like. But in truth, that’s what they were to millions and millions of fans. Four dudes who riveted most of the planet for the seven or so years after their mother ship arrived.
As the many years have passed, I have forgotten a lot from those days, but every time I spend a few minutes reflecting back, especially on The Beatles, I get a feeling that is too special to even put into words. You really had to be there. You had to live through the phenomenon to have even a clue of what is was, and what it meant.
Ron Howard’s documentary, Eight Days a Week is a must see for any Beatles fan, who wants to feel that time again. There is some excellent rare footage that most people haven’t seen, including live performances that just made me smile the whole way through. If you’re of The Beatles vintage, go and watch this film. Available for rental and purchase on Amazon, Hulu, PBS, and elsewhere. So, so good.
