Head: More of the Monkees

After their spectacular, media-orchestrated rise to fame in 1966, with a top-rated tv show and several #1 hit songs, the Monkees were on top of the world.

 But not for long. They chafed at their "boy band" restrictions; they wanted be known as serious artists, to move beyond teeny-bopper love songs,  to tackle serious issues. They wanted to be free. Their handlers disapproved.

In the spring of 1968, they wrote and produced a movie, Head.  It premiered with great anticipation; fans thought that it would be a comedic documentary, like the Beatles' Hard Day's Night.

It wasn't.

You say we're manufactured -- to that we all agree.
So make your choice and we'll rejoice in never being free!

It consists of a series of sketches, most about the difference between reality and the manufactured plotlines of their tv series: Davy becomes a boxer; Micky is lost in the desert; they visit a haunted house and the Old West.  They constantly disrupt the stories, changing their lines, dropping character, or just saying "We don't want to do this anymore" and walking off the set.

But every set leads to a new story.

They think they have escaped, and settle down to throw a birthday party for Mike.  But he starts yelling that this is not his apartment, these are actors, not his real friends, it's all a fake.

They escape from a box only to find themselves in a bigger box.

They try to commit suicide, only to find that that, too, isn't real; there is no escape.

The constraint of modern life, the inability to ever be free, is a common thread in 1960s media, and resonated strongly for gay kids growing up in a constant drone of "What girl do you like?  What girl do you like?  What girl do you like?"

We've seen it in Easy Rider and Alice's Restaurant, in the Tripods series of dystopian mind-control novels, in Richard Schaal trapped in The Cube; in Number 6 trapped in The Village, even in the Castaways trapped on Gilligan's Island.

Still, this version is worth a look for:
1. The clever "box inside a box" concept
2. The frequent beefcake.  You see more of Micky and Davy than ever before, constant shirtless and semi-nude scenes, and all of the guys gets close-ups of their very, very tight pants.
3. The homoerotic buddy bonding that shines through, in spite of the frequent girl-kissing.  These guys are into guys.

In a way, Head represented the suicide of the group.  Teen fans hated it, and the psychedelic generation stayed away.  Their tv series was cancelled, and their songs stopped charting.

But, 50 years later, the memory remains.

Head is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Davy Jones and the Monkees

One of my first crushes was on Davy Jones, singer for the pre-fab boy band The Monkees.  In fact, the first album I ever bought (or rather, asked Mom and Dad for) was  The Monkees (1966), because it showed Davy Jones seated in the foreground, dirty from working outdoors, with Peter Tork's arm around him.  I figured they were boyfriends.

Some of the tracks were gender-explicit, with lots of “girls” and “babes," but many were not, including the famous “Last Train to Clarksville", written by the famous duo Boyce and Hart: the singer, talking on the telephone, asks a loved one for a final rendezvous in a train station before he goes away forever.

Quite a change from the girl-crazy Beatles and Herman's Hermits.

More of the Monkees (1967) again had an evocative cover, with the boys in blue shirts and tight jeans gazing down suggestively at the camera. But every track was about desperate longing for some girl or another, with a single exception. In “Laugh,” which didn’t chart as a single, Davy Jones suggests that those boys who are interested in boys should transform their "secret" into humor:

Laugh, when you're keepin' a secret
And it seems to be known by the rest of the world.
Laugh, when you go to a party
And you can't tell the boys from the girls.

The tv series (1966-68, then on Saturday morning 1968-70) seemed to concur. The nonsensical plots, filled with blackout gags, self-referential humor, and spoofs of every movie cliché from superheroes to Westerns, were surprisingly gay-friendly.  And shirtless shots were quite common.

Although Micky Dolenz was ostensibly the leader of the group, Davy Jones, only 5’3”, with dark eyes and a sensual pout, quickly became the standout star. He was prominently displayed on every album cover, and almost every episode required him to wear a swimsuit or revealing prizefighter’s trunks, or get his clothes ripped off by fans, or otherwise display his slight but firm physique. 

Unfortunately, he also got the most girl-chasing plotlines. Of 58 episodes, Davy went ape over a girl in six, Peter Tork in two, Micky in only one, and Mike Nesmith not at all.  

Micky is the one that I figured liked boys, not girls.  My evidence: the voice-over introduction to “Monkees on the Wheel” (December 1967) notes that Las Vegas is the

Pleasure capital of the world, where each man seeks the things he loves most. [Shot of Peter following a girl.]
The things he loves most. [Shot of Mike following a girl.]
The things he loves most.[Shot of Davy following a girl.]

And then the story begins. Why is Micky omitted? Because the joke has run its course, or because girls are not the things he loves most?

Also, in “Monkees Mind their Manors” (February 1968), the group travels to England. At the airport, the boys realize that the customs agent is being portrayed by Jack Williams, the show’s prop master, but Williams protests that he is actually a famous singer.  Then he sings the Dean Martin standby “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”, and Micky, overcome with passion, leaps into his arms.

Many minor characters were gay-vague, such as the flamboyant Sir Twiggly Toppin Middle Bottom (Bernard Fox) and beach movie star Frankie Catalina (Bobby Sherman), who hates the beach and is “allergic to girls” (i.e., gay). 

And the Monkees themselves obviously preferred buddy-bonding over girl-chasing.  I couldn't wait to see their constant caressing of faces, hands, and chests, their cuddling together, their panicked hugging in moments of danger.  Regardless of what the actors thought they were conveying, for gay kids they produced a powerful evocation of same-sex love.    

See also my review of Head, the Monkees' swan song.