A 50th anniversary album celebration that is not Sgt. Pepper

A lot has been made in the media about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” LP.

The album entered the American chart on June 24, 1967, became another No. 1 album for the Fab Four, but it also became the touch point for the so-called “Summer of Love,” and while doing that, redefined rock and rock albums forever.

Nothing was the same on the rock landscape after “Sgt. Pepper” came out, and its release cemented the Beatles as the spokesmen of the younger generation.

But what of the album that it supplanted as the top LP in the U.S.? Interestingly, just a year earlier, the act that put out this LP declared “we’re the younger generation” themselves, and with this particular collection, they were making their own, albeit lesser,  statement about who they were and who they wanted to be.

On June 10, the top recording act in the world based on combined album and single sales released their own opus, “Headquarters,” and at least for the teenybopper crowd, nothing was the same in that part of the music spectrum ever again, either.

That act–the Monkees–had burst on the scene less than a year earlier, with a new type of TV series, and released recordings that were pegged to those who were a little too young to get where the Beatles were coming from, yet had plenty of money to spend. The Monkees were created seemingly in a Hollywood test tube as a safer antidote to what the Beatles had become.

The story has become somewhat legendary in the annals of rock and roll and Hollywood/corporate infiltration, and it propelled relative unknowns Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and the one known quantity–Broadway actor David Jones–to not only stardom, but into the inner circle of the gods they were created from.

Both Dolenz and Nesmith were in the presence of the Beatles as they were creating “Sgt. Pepper,” and both realized right then and there that once this LP came out, the waters had changed for good.

But back to “Headquarters.” This LP was the Monkees’ own statement on who they were and who they wanted to be, and like the previous two LPs in their canon, this one also rose to the top of the album chart pretty effortlessly.

Spurred on by the weekly TV series portraying them as four pretty much down-and-out musicians, living in a beachfront home that they could seemingly barely afford, their music sold by repetition on the TV series, and younger kids were buying up this music in droves.

Yet, early on, on their first two LPs and on their early singles, the foursome generally only sung on their records, with only some of their own instrumentation added in.

To make a long story short–and here is a classic longhair vs. Hollywood machine tale–the foursome was able to remove their musical puppetmaster, Don Kirshner, and take control of their own music and destinies, and “Headquarters” was the result.

And 50 years later, the LP remains as the Monkees’ truest statement of their own success, an album that they basically hand crafted themselves–on both vocals and instruments and in some cases, in the songwriting–with a little help from their own friends.

Leading off with Nesmith’s “You Told Me,” the Monkees tell their fans that yes, they can play their own instruments, and yes, they can continue to make music that will hit the bull’s eye with their fans.

Continuing with some other pleasant pop-rock–“I’ll Spend My Life With You: and “Forget That Girl”–the album then shows the fun the quartet had making this recording, demonstrated with a sound snippet, “Band 6.”

A strong track, “You Just May Be the One” follows, and then one of the foursome’s best tunes “Shades of Gray” follows. “I Can’t Get Her Off My Mind,” a relative throwaway that the Monkees make into a pleasant enough ditty, ends side one.

Side two begins with the Monkees’ statement about who they are and who they want to be, “For Pete’s Sake.” Peter Tork’s tune–which was the end-theme of the show’s second season and sung by Dolenz–makes the statement right then and there that the Monkees were a real band, both singing and playing their own instruments.

The cautionary tale “Mr. Webster” follows, and then another great Nesmith tune, “Sunny Girlfriend” puts the listener in the right, triply without the drugs, mood. Another sound snippet, “Zilch” comes next, and another pleasant two or so minutes of froth, “Early Morning Blues and Greens,” comes next.

Closing the LP is another Monkees milestone, “Randy Scouse Git.” Written by Dolenz, the song both celebrates the Beatles as “the four kings of EMI” and the ascendance of the so-called “Pre-Fab Four” to the top of the rock echelon. It was a major hit song around the world–the first Monkees’ penned tune to reach the top or near the top of the singles charts in many countries–with its title changed to “Alternate Title” so as not to offend anyone with the British slang title, a knock that few in the U.S. were aware of.

The album–produced by so-called “Douglas Farthing Hatelid” who was actually better known as Chip Douglas, hits the mark completely, and does what it is supposed to do, legitimize the Monkees as a real rock act, as if their legions of fans actually cared about such stuff to begin with.

And like “Sgt. Pepper,” to add to the coolness of the whole thing, no tracks were released as actual singles in the U.S. So, like “Sgt. Pepper” after it, to get what was being said, you had to listen to the LP in its entirety.

No, “Headquarters” cannot compare to the sheer magnitude of “Sgt. Pepper,” but it stands on its own as a testament to believing in what was right, and its own 50th anniversary, as the predecessor No. 1 album to the Beatles’ opus, should not be dismissed.

In their own way, they actually were the voice of the real young generation at the time, and yes, they did have something to say.