Heart’s Nancy Wilson Teaches You How to Play the Notoriously Difficult Opening to “Crazy On You”

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 11th, 2022

You can slide up, pull off and ham­mer like a beast, but be fore­warned. It’s unlike­ly you’ll be able to keep pace with Heart’s Nan­cy Wil­son, as she demon­strates how to play the intro­duc­tion to 1975’s “Crazy On You,” one of the great­est — and trick­i­est — open­ing gui­tar solos in rock his­to­ry.

“I real­ly want­ed peo­ple to know right up front what I could do,” Wil­son revealed in a 1999 inter­view with Acoustic Gui­tar:

It was the same thing as sit­ting in the Band­wag­on music store and play­ing (Paul Simon’s) Anji. It was like, “Check me out, I know some stuff.”

As hard rock­ing female musi­cians in the 70s and 80s, Wil­son and her bandmate/sister, lead vocal­ist- and song­writer, Ann found them­selves hav­ing to prove them­selves con­stant­ly.

As Ann recent­ly explained to The Guardian: 

Back then, espe­cial­ly in the 70s, there was no fil­ter on how women were sex­u­al­ized – hyper-sex­u­al­ized – in order to sell their images. Now at least it looks like women have con­trol over their own fil­ters. Back then, they didn’t. It was just like: “Hey, here’s a sexy chick. We know how we can sell her.”

Let’s all observe Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month by insist­ing that every bone­head who ever dis­missed these pio­neer­ing women as a ‘chick band’ pay close atten­tion to Nancy’s intri­cate “hybrid pick­ing”.

“Crazy On You” finds her pick­ing a rhythm on the A‑string while using her bare fin­gers to pull off notes on the B and G strings.

And by her own admis­sion, she tends nev­er to play it the same way twice (“which makes it real easy, right?”)

While we’re at it, how about we cel­e­brate Heart’s 50th anniver­sary by intro­duc­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to “Crazy On You”?

The times have changed in sig­nif­i­cant ways, but the emo­tions that inspired the song will strike close to home for many young peo­ple, as per Ann’s descrip­tion on the Pro­fes­sor of Rock’s YouTube chan­nel:

I wrote the words about the state of the world, and the stress effect it was hav­ing on me. Back then, we thought the world was real­ly messed up, right? Because the Viet­nam War was going on and we were choos­ing to, but stay­ing out of our own country…we were home­sick. Crime was ris­ing, gas was expen­sive, gas short­age, all this hor­ri­ble stuff. We had no idea what was going to hap­pen in lat­er years so it seemed to be, at that time, y’know, this is the end of the world. This close to the apoc­a­lypse. It’s very very stress­ful when you’re in your 20’s and you don’t see a good future.

If you’re com­mit­ted to learn­ing Nan­cy Wilson’s gui­tar intro to “Crazy On You,” we rec­om­mend Shut­up & Play’s video tuto­r­i­al and tabs.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

John May­er Teach­es Gui­tarists How to Play the Blues in a 45-Minute Mas­ter­class

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer Demon­strates the Cor­rect & Offi­cial Way to Play “Kick Out the Jams” on the Gui­tar

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a Very Nervous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talking Heads Performing Live in NYC (1976)

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 7th, 2022

“This is a per­son who is pro­found­ly uncom­fort­able address­ing an audi­ence and yet puts him­self in that posi­tion,” David Byrne told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­son in 2019, as they watched some of the above footage of his 23-year-old self fronting a live Talk­ing Heads’ per­for­mance back in 1976.

Every­thing was pret­ty new back in that Bicen­ten­ni­al year.

Talk­ing Heads had formed the year before, when Byrne and drum­mer Chris Frantz, who’d been band­mates at the Rhode Island Col­lege of Design, moved to New York City with Frantz’s girl­friend, bassist Tina Wey­mouth.

The venue host­ing this live per­for­mance, New York City’s leg­endary exper­i­men­tal art space, The Kitchen, was slight­ly less wet behind the ears, hav­ing opened its doors in 1971. (Some 30 years lat­er, elder states­man Byrne was the guest of hon­or at its annu­al spring gala.)

How­ev­er you define it — New Wave, no wave, post-punk art pop — the band’s sound was also fresh, though Byrne sug­gests, in the inter­view with Ander­son, there was noth­ing new about his youth­ful cock­i­ness:

…like a lot of bands, artists, every­thing else, any peri­od real­ly, you tend to think that, um, the per­va­sive stuff around you is crap and you and your friends are…we’re doing the real stuff. 

And opti­misti­cal­ly, one might think, since we’re doing the real stuff and it has real soul and pas­sion, and it’s of its moment, it rep­re­sents its moment, and so immod­est­ly, you think, “Of course! Things are just going to fall into your lap because you’re doing some­thing that has some truth to it. Uh…that cer­tain­ly doesn’t always hap­pen.

It hap­pened com­par­a­tive­ly quick­ly for Talk­ing Heads.

Sev­er­al of the songs they per­formed as a trio that March night at the Kitchen made it onto Talk­ing Heads: 77, the debut stu­dio album record­ed bare­ly a year lat­er, by which time a fourth mem­ber, Jer­ry Har­ri­son, had joined on key­boards and gui­tar.

Of par­tic­u­lar note above is Psy­cho Killer, which earned the band both noto­ri­ety, owing to the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing of 1976 and 1977’s Son of Sam mur­ders, and their first Bill­board Hot 100 spot.

“This song was writ­ten a long time ago,” the young Byrne stut­ters into the micro­phone at the Kitchen, then apol­o­gizes for fid­dling with his clothes and equip­ment.

(“It’s all good!” Frantz calls out encour­ag­ing­ly from behind his drum kit.)

Accord­ing to the lin­er notes of Once in a Life­time: The Best of Talk­ing Heads, Byrne began work on the song in col­lege:

When I start­ed writ­ing this (I got help lat­er), I imag­ined Alice Coop­er doing a Randy New­man-type bal­lad. Both the Jok­er and Han­ni­bal Lecter were much more fas­ci­nat­ing than the good guys. Every­body sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.

Fans may note a dis­par­i­ty in the lyrics between this per­for­mance and record­ed ver­sions of the song. Here, the sec­ond verse goes:

Lis­ten to me, now I’ve passed the test

I think I’m cute, I think I’m the best

Skirt tight, don’t like that style

Don’t crit­i­cize what I know is worth­while

Psy­cho Killer stayed on the shelf for David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia, the Broad­way show recent­ly filmed by Spike Lee. But it gave a far more pol­ished Byrne an excel­lent open­er for Talk­ing Heads’ 1984 con­cert film, Stop Mak­ing Sense.

The uncom­fort­able young front­man dressed like a “pro­le­tari­at every­man,” who the Kitchen’s press release described as “a cross between Ralph Nad­er, Lou Reed, and Tony Perkins.” And he has since man­aged to acquire some impres­sive per­for­mance chops over the course of a still flour­ish­ing career.

This is your chance to catch him at that awk­ward age when, as Byrne told Kirk Ander­son, he per­formed “because he had to”:

There was this means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that was being a per­former and writ­ing songs and singing them (that) was a way of, kind of being present to oth­er peo­ple — not just girls, but oth­er peo­ple in gen­er­al.

Setlist for The Kitchen, March 13, 1976:

00:00 — Introduction/soundcheck

02:13 — The Girls Want To Be With the Girls (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food in 1978)

06:05 — Psy­cho Killer (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77 in 1977, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

The lyrics of the 2nd verse of Psy­cho Killer is dif­fer­ent from the record­ed ver­sion!

10:55 — I Feel It In My Heart (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

15:28 — I Wish You Would­n’t Say That (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77)

18:15 — Infor­ma­tion about the record­ing

19:00 — Stay Hun­gry (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food)

24:35 — I Want To Live (Fea­tured on com­pi­la­tions such as Sand in the Vase­line, 1992 and Bonus Rar­i­ties & Out­takes, 2006)

29:48 — Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77)

32:55 — No Com­pas­sion (assumed, video ends before song starts)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ukrainians Playing Violin in Bunkers as Russians Bomb Them from the Sky

in Current Affairs, Music | March 6th, 2022

Vladimir Putin can bomb Ukraine. But he can’t destroy the human spir­it.…

If you would like to sup­port Ukraini­ans in des­per­ate need, vis­it this page to find aid orga­ni­za­tions doing good work on the ground.

For any Russ­ian cit­i­zens vis­it­ing our site, you can see the atroc­i­ties being com­mit­ted by your leader here, here, here, here, here and here. Also find advice on get­ting around Russ­ian cen­sor­ship of media here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pianist Plays “What a Won­der­ful World” for Ukrain­ian Refugees at Lviv Sta­tion

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

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How Aladdin Sane Became the Most Expensive Album Cover Ever — and David Bowie’s Defining Image

in Art, History, Music, Photography | March 1st, 2022

If you search for David Bowie on Spo­ti­fy, a famil­iar icon pops up: the man him­self, eyes closed, made up with a death­ly-look­ing pal­lor and a red-and-blue light­ing bolt across his face. This is the pho­to on the front of Bowie’s sixth album, 1973’s Aladdin Sane. “Per­haps more icon­ic than the music inside,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Trash The­o­ry video essay above, “it stands as the Mona Lisa of album cov­ers.” It was also, at the time of pro­duc­tion, the most cost­ly album cov­er of all time: this was at the behest of Bowie’s man­ag­er Tony Defries, who sus­pect­ed that spar­ing no expense on the image would moti­vate RCA, his label, to spare no expense pro­mot­ing the album itself.

One might call this a bold move for an artist like Bowie, who had only just made it big. In the ear­ly years of his career he’d racked up fail­ure after fail­ure: with 1971’s Hunky Dory, a kind of dec­la­ra­tion of com­mit­ment to musi­cal and artis­tic “changes,” he had a suc­cès d’es­time, but not until the fol­low­ing year did he become a bona fide star.

The vehi­cle for that trans­for­ma­tion was the album The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, which intro­duced the lis­ten­ing pub­lic to its title char­ac­ter, an androg­y­nous rock­er from out­er space. Through­out his sub­se­quent year and a half of tour­ing Bowie took the stage in full Zig­gy glam regalia, inhab­it­ing the char­ac­ter so ful­ly that he even­tu­al­ly began to ques­tion his own san­i­ty.

Though young British audi­ences could­n’t get enough of Zig­gy and the Spi­ders, reac­tions across the Unit­ed States were rather less enthu­si­as­tic. There, says the Trash The­o­ry nar­ra­tor, “they were not the type of British rock that rock radio played: hard-hit­ting, riff-heavy behe­moths like Led Zep­pelin or the Rolling Stones. But this indif­fer­ence was shap­ing what Bowie want­ed to do next.” His expe­ri­ence of Amer­i­ca inspired a new, hard­er-edged per­sona, Aladdin Sane. Zig­gy Star­dust “was a vision of the best a rock star could be, an inspi­ra­tional fig­ure, while Aladdin was more about fame’s dark­er under­bel­ly, fil­tered through imag­ined Amer­i­cana and futur­is­tic nos­tal­gia” — and the char­ac­ter need­ed a look to match.

Shot by Bri­an Duffy, described in the San Fran­cis­co Art Exchange vide0 above as “a very eccen­tric and incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­ph­er,” the Aladdin Sane cov­er was print­ed with a sev­en-col­or sys­tem unprece­dent­ed in the medi­um. (Up to that point, four-col­or had been the stan­dard.) Accord­ing to Trash The­o­ry, Bowie described make­up artist Pierre Laroche’s light­ning bolt “as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of schiz­o­phre­nia, and more specif­i­cal­ly, his split feel­ings about his 1972 Amer­i­can tour.” (The shape came from the logo on a Nation­al Pana­son­ic rice cook­er in Duffy’s stu­dio.) Though the result has become, in the words of cura­tor Vic­to­ria Broack­es, “prob­a­bly the most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol in rock and roll,” Bowie nev­er actu­al­ly assumed this look onstage; ahead of him, there still lay four more decades of changes to go through.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Space Odd­i­ty,” “Heroes,” “Life on Mars” & More

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recre­ate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cob­bler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear the Uncensored Original Version of “Hurricane,” Bob Dylan’s Protest Song About Jailed Boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (1976)

in History, Music | February 28th, 2022

Through­out his six-decade-long career, Bob Dylan has tak­en up quite a few caus­es in his songs. In the 1960s he was espe­cial­ly giv­en to musi­cal accu­sa­tions of mis­car­riages of jus­tice like “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which he record­ed less than two months after the assas­si­na­tion of Medgar Evers. But he kept it up even in the 70s, as demon­strat­ed by his 1976 album Desire. “Here comes the sto­ry of the Hur­ri­cane,” he sings on its open­ing track, “the man the author­i­ties came to blame for some­thing that he nev­er done: put in a prison cell, but one time he could have been the cham­pi­on of the world.”

This “Hur­ri­cane” is, of course, for­mer star box­er Rubin Carter, who’d been con­vict­ed for a triple mur­der at a Pater­son, New Jer­sey bar a decade ear­li­er. Today, many know the sto­ry of the Hur­ri­cane from the epony­mous Den­zel Wash­ing­ton-star­ring Hol­ly­wood biopic. By the time that film came out in 1999, Carter had long since been exon­er­at­ed and made a free man, but when Dylan sang of his hav­ing been “false­ly tried,” and “obvi­ous­ly framed,” the man was still serv­ing a dou­ble life sen­tence. It was Carter’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy The Six­teenth Round, writ­ten in prison, that inspired the lit­er­ar­i­ly-mind­ed Dylan to cham­pi­on his release.

Writ­ten with song­writer-psy­chol­o­gist Jacques Levy, Dylan’s col­lab­o­ra­tor through­out Desire, “Hur­ri­cane” still today sounds as if it pulls no punch­es, deliv­er­ing a host of can-he-say-that moments in its sev­en min­utes. But in truth, says Far Our Mag­a­zine, “Dylan’s ini­tial vision for the track had been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent before the lawyers at Colum­bia Records began paw­ing over the lyrics. While many of Dylan’s claims of racial injus­tice are there in plain sight, the men in suits were more con­cerned with the lyrics imply­ing that Alfred Bel­lo and Arthur Dex­ter Bradley (the two lead wit­ness­es of the orig­i­nal case) as hav­ing ‘robbed the bod­ies’ ” of Carter and acquain­tance John Artis’ alleged vic­tims. Giv­en that they had­n’t been accused of steal­ing from any corpses, Colum­bia feared that the impli­ca­tion would draw a law­suit.

Dylan had pre­vi­ous­ly exhib­it­ed a dev­il-may-care atti­tude about such mat­ters in his protest songs: “I should have sued him and put him in jail,” grum­bled an aged William Zantzinger, the real-life attack­er in Dylan’s “The Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll.” But this time Dylan acqui­esced to the lawyers. Return­ing to the stu­dio with mem­bers of his Rolling Thun­der Revue, he laid down a new ver­sion of “Hur­ri­cane,” cen­sored but musi­cal­ly even hard­er-hit­ting (below), that did make it onto Desire. In the video at the top of the post, you can hear the orig­i­nal, which is longer, slow­er, and more raw in every sense. In the event, the expur­gat­ed “Hur­ri­cane” still got Dylan sued, but by a dif­fer­ent wit­ness: Patri­cia Valen­tine, who lived above the bar where the killings occurred and insist­ed that she did not, in fact, see “the bar­tender in a pool of blood.” Even a future Nobel Prize win­ner, it seems, isn’t safe to take a bit of poet­ic license.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Bob Dylan Per­form “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” His Damn­ing Song About the Mur­der of Medgar Evers, at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton

“Tan­gled Up in Blue”: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

Bob Dylan Releas­es a Cryp­tic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: Hear a “Mur­der Most Foul”

Bob Dylan Goes Punk on Late Night with David Let­ter­man, Play­ing “Jok­er­man” with the Lati­no Punk Band, the Plugz (1984)

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Pop Songs with Nar­ra­tive: Pret­ty Much Pop (#69) Dis­cuss­es Tunes Rang­ing from Bob Dylan’s “Hur­ri­cane” to “The Pina Cola­da Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Paula Cole Discusses Songwriting: Stream the Nakedly Examined Music Interview Online

in Music, Podcasts | February 24th, 2022

This week’s Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­cast fea­tures the Gram­my-win­ning singer-song­writer Paula Cole. After back­ing Peter Gabriel in the ear­ly 90s on his Secret World tour, she had major hits with “I Don’t Want to Wait” (lat­er the theme song of Daw­son’s Creek) and “Where Have All the Cow­boys Gone.” She has released ten stu­dio albums since 1994.

On this pod­cast, you’ll hear four full songs with dis­cus­sions of their details: “Blues in Gray” from Rev­o­lu­tion (2019), “Father” from 7 (2015), and “Hush, Hush, Hush” from This Fire (1996), plus “Steal Away/Hidden in Plain Sight” from Amer­i­can Quilt (2021). Intro: “I Don’t Want to Wait,” also from This Fire. For more, see paulacole.com.

After her hit-mak­ing, her style took a rather sharp turn with the 1999 Amen album; here’s “I Believe in Love,” a dis­co tune from that. Her Rev­o­lu­tion album has some much more direct­ly polit­i­cal songs like its title track. She’s done some jazz and folk cov­ers with her recent Amer­i­can Quilt and Bal­lads album, like this tune. Here she is live in 1998 and a more recent stripped-down appear­ance. She can still sing “I Don’t Want to Wait” with pret­ty much the same tone, and in fact the ver­sion used to intro­duce the pod­cast is the artist’s re-record­ing, not the orig­i­nal.

Pho­to by Ebru Yildiz. Inter­view edit­ing by Tyler His­lop of Pix­el­box Media.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, and Phi­los­o­phy vs. Improv. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

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David Byrne Answers the Internet’s Burning Questions About David Byrne

in Music | February 22nd, 2022

Is David Byrne the same as he ever was? Where is David Byrne’s big suit? Did David Byrne design bike racks? Above, David Byrne answers burn­ing (or, per­haps bet­ter said, Byrne-ing) ques­tions about him­self. This video comes from the WIRED Auto­com­plete Inter­view series, where famous peo­ple answer the inter­net’s most searched ques­tions about them­selves. Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Byrne’s Unusu­al Forms of Visu­al Art: Bike Racks, Cor­po­rate Signs & Pow­er­point Pre­sen­ta­tions

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne Launch­es the “Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful” Web Site: A Com­pendi­um of News Meant to Remind Us That the World Isn’t Actu­al­ly Falling Apart

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How the 1968 Psychedelic Film Head Destroyed the Monkees & Became a Cult Classic

in Music | February 21st, 2022

The 1960s moved very fast. The Bea­t­les start­ed 1963 as four fresh­ly scrubbed mop­tops from Liv­er­pool. By 1968 they were hairy hip­pies dab­bling in drugs and mys­ti­cism. (And writ­ing some of the best music of all time, don’t get me wrong!). Then there were the Mon­kees. Cre­at­ed by Bob Rafel­son and Bert Schnei­der in 1966 as a lov­ing homage to the Bea­t­les 1964–65 Richard Lester films, it too quick­ly changed. By 1968, the show and the band had run its course. There was already no cul­tur­al space for four lov­able…any­things. And while many ele­ments killed the opti­mism and rad­i­cal hope of the 1960s–Vietnam, bad acid, Man­son, Alta­mont–hats off to Head, the cult movie that anni­hi­lat­ed The Mon­kees as a band, the band movie as a con­cept, and the con­cept of light enter­tain­ment as being on the side of the view­er. Obscen­i­ty, who real­ly cares? asked Dylan a few years before. Pro­pa­gan­da, all is pho­ny. That’s Head.

What’s inter­est­ing about the Head sto­ry is try­ing to fig­ure out the moti­va­tions of sev­er­al of the play­ers. The Mon­kees them­selves were tired of being seen as an ersatz band, although by all accounts they were. Rafel­son and com­pa­ny audi­tioned young actors and musi­cians and assem­bled the top four into the band/TV show. Most of the songs were writ­ten by Tin Pan Alley stal­warts like Neil Dia­mond or Car­ole King, or up and com­ing artists like Har­ry Nils­son. By being a fake band for two sea­sons of their show, how­ev­er, the Mon­kees had turned into a real band. But what they were turn­ing into was not the Mon­kees that the teens loved. Who had the appetite for destruc­tion first? The mon­ster? Or the mad sci­en­tists?

Hav­ing con­quered tele­vi­sion and the radio—-the Mon­kees had kept the Bea­t­les and the Stones out of the Num­ber One posi­tion in 1966-—Rafelson sought to con­quer film, and by doing so, offer up a mea cul­pa of sorts: yes, this group was a pre­fab­ri­ca­tion. Yes, we’re going to tear it all down. Inspired by exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ers like Stan Brakhage and Ken­neth Anger, Rafel­son, the band, and up-and-com­ing actor Jack Nichol­son decamped in ear­ly 1968 to a resort motel in Ojai, CA. There they smoked a lot of weed, and record­ed hours of con­ver­sa­tions. Nichol­son and Rafel­son lat­er dosed LSD and fash­ioned the tapes into a script.

Head is con­struct­ed in vignettes, jump­ing thru gen­res like a per­son with an itchy remote con­trol fin­ger. Vin­tage movie clips and crass com­mer­cials inter­rupt the action. The television—-which both sold hap­py pro­pa­gan­da along­side har­row­ing clips from Viet­nam to Amer­i­cans every night—-is not to be trust­ed.

“The band is con­stant­ly being chased, attacked, torn apart, caged, sucked up in a giant vac­u­um and impris­oned in a big black box that reap­pears through­out the movie,” crit­ic Petra May­er wrote in 2018, look­ing back at the cult film. “They can’t escape — not with phi­los­o­phy, not with force. They nev­er escape.”

A year ear­li­er the Bea­t­les had real­ized their own trap, and escaped thru the pos­i­tive mag­ic of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. In 1968, the Mon­kees didn’t get the lux­u­ry. Self-aware­ness and self-destruc­tion con­tin­ues as an occa­sion­al career move by unhap­py pop artists-—Pink Floyd, Prince, Garth Brooks, David Bowie-—but the Mon­kees destroyed them­selves first, and most spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Head cost $750,000 to make, and made $16,000 back.

“Most of our fans could­n’t get in because there was an age restric­tion and the intel­li­gentsia would­n’t go to see it any­way because they hat­ed the Mon­kees,” said Dolenz. Rafel­son and Nichol­son made out okay. They would go on to Easy Rid­er and estab­lish their film careers. The Mon­kees? Not as much.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the one Mon­kee who spoke well of the film’s cult lega­cy was their most crit­i­cal mem­ber, Michael Nesmith.

“It has a life that comes from lit­er­a­ture,” he told inter­view­er Doug Gor­don. “It has a life that comes from fic­tion. It has a life that comes from fan­ta­sy and the deep troves of mak­ing up sto­ries and nar­ra­tive. But it was telling a nar­ra­tive, but the nar­ra­tive that it was telling was very, very dif­fer­ent than the one the tele­vi­sion show was.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Mon­kees Played Togeth­er Dur­ing Their 1960s Hey­day: It’s a Psy­che­del­ic Freak­out

How a Fake Car­toon Band Made “Sug­ar Sug­ar” the Biggest Sell­ing Hit Sin­gle of 1969

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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