When the Answer Seemed So Clear
Vinyl That Defined Me: Monkees Headquarters
By Steven A. Miller
“When the world and I were young… just yesterday.” — Lyrics from Shades of Gray, by the Monkees
They’ve been called the Pre-Fab Four, the Faux Four, fakes, frauds, the pre-cursors to The Archies and The Partridge Family. They’ve been castigated and denigrated for almost 50 years. Yet, they helped paved the way for music videos, MTV, and crossover artists.
They are best known for their hit singles, “Daydream Believer,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m A Believer,” and the ultimate anthem to suburban malaise in New Jersey, “Pleasant Valley Sunday.”
Their most important album did not produce a chart-topping single, yet for me it had more impact than any other record.
It was The Monkees Headquarters and the record not only changed the perception of the group, it helped change my life.
“Life was such a simple game, a child could play”
When The Monkees television show first debuted on Monday, September 12, 1966, I was a 9 year old overweight, sports-obsessed, second son of a workaholic father and a mentally ill mother who had spent the previous year going in and out of hospitals.
I had watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan two years earlier and developed a love for rock. The passion, though, was being whittled away with each forced-upon piano lesson I took under the unyielding gaze of the elderly, baroque-obsessed Mrs. Goldberg. The sounds of AM radio played through my head as I lurched through every misguided attempt at the Minute Waltz or Hanon practice sheets.
“It was easy then to tell right from wrong…”
They had me the first time I heard the drumbeat that lead into the theme. With Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork romping around in hysterical fashion on the cathode ray screen, the song mesmerized me. Maybe it was the filmed histrionics or it could have been the escape from reality they provided, but I was transported into a musical world that captivated my attention.
As soon as I could, I wrote away and joined the Fan Club. I went to the store and bought Tiger Beat, 16, and Hit Parader magazines because they featured the boys. I went to W.T. Grant’s and bought the singles and rode the 44 Edgar Road bus to Elizabeth and the heaven-sent Vogel’s Record Shop to buy the albums. First, the Monkees and then, More of the Monkees.
I fell prey to Monkees Madness!
“Easy then to tell weak from strong”
As ’66 turned into ’67, our world was rapidly changing. On the macro level, the bodies were piling up in Southeast Asia, the anti-war movement was gaining momentum, and music was morphing into the psychedelic, phantasmagoric, free-form, strange trip for which the era is best remembered.
On my micro level, my soon-to-be 12 year old brother and his friends were taking a Magic Carpet Ride and laughing at my Monkeemania.
— They don’t play their own instruments.
— They’re a comedy act.
— They’re a joke.
Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde was released in May 1966 (the same day as The Beach Boys Pet Sounds) and the groundbreaking sound blasted out of our spindled record player whenever he was around. He was Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again while I hopped on the Last Train to Clarksville. It wouldn’t be until the Monkees split up that I would figuratively join him in Desolation Row and on Yasgur’s Farm.
“When a man should stand and fight or just go along.”
Then came Headquarters. Released in May 1967, the boys wrote some of the songs and played all of the instruments. And, they reflected the times by doing something no one ever expected them to do: they rebelled against the establishment. Mike, Peter, Micky, and Davy overthrew their corporate overlord, the great impresario Don Kirschner, and took charge.
The result was and still is perfection. It gave the listener a taste of every type of music imaginable. There was a protest song (For Pete’s Sake), a drug-influenced song (Sunny Girlfriend), country-influenced songs (You Told Me, You Just May Be the One), a Beatles reference (in Randy Scouse Git, Micky wrote about the “four kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor), corruption and bank fraud (Mr. Webster) and the requisite love songs (I’ll Spend My Life With You, I Can’t Get Her Off of My Mind.)
But, it was the sixth song on the A side that was the disc’s heartbeat sending the lifeblood throughout the record. Written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the lyrics struck a chord that summed up an era and gave insight into everything I had experienced up until then.
I listened to the song over and over and over again. I followed the slow build from the single piano note opening to the odd juxtaposition between a pedal steel guitar and cello, which I have yet to hear in any other piece, through the French horn solo, to the full orchestration into a crescendo, and, finally, back to the French horn. It was a musical roller coaster ride that always left me wanting more.
“But, today there is no day of night.
Today there is no dark or light.
Today there is no black or white…”
Mike, Micky, and Peter (Davy Jones died February 29, 2012) toured together the last two summers and, as videos of their 22 year old selves played behind them, these near 70 year old men sang the songs of their youth and mine.
And, of course, I went.
I, too, was once more drawn to the hot flame of my youth, back to the place where a confused child emerged a little wiser and a bit more ready to deal with the harsh unknowns that lay ahead.
With hindsight and those feelings still embedded in the recesses of my mind, I have come to realize that it wasn’t just the album, nor the music, or even every single word that was written on Headquarters that has had the largest lasting impact on me. It was the title of the sixth song of the A side that has had the most profound effect on me because, in the end, it sums up what life is sometimes about and sometimes is:
“Only Shades of Gray”
Steven A. Miller is the Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies for the Rutgers University Department of Journalism and Media Studies. He is the program’s Internship Coordinator, teaches Broadcast Journalism, Media History, and is a sports and music junkie. Shades of Gray, Words & Music by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil Copyright 1966 by Screen Gems-EMI Music.
This is the third installment of Vinyl That Defined Me. Here are the other two:
Midcentury Modern is about the people and ideas born in the middle of the last century. It’s about growing older in a youth-obsessed culture. It’s a about teasing out the difference between generation and stage of life. (It’s a question of what happened in the world when you got there). It’s a conversation between people of all ages. Support us by recommending this post, sharing it on Facebook and by going to our homepage and clicking follow.
