‘As We Go Along’: The forgotten 1968 gem that proves The Monkees were way more than a TV band
By the time the age of the confessional, painfully authentic singer-songwriter had taken hold at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the ‘70s, it was all too easy to point to the movement as a reaction against the choreographed corporatisation of rock in the form of unserious pop acts like The Monkees.
Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz were presumably the antithesis of the “real artists” emerging during that period; people like Neil Young, Harry Nilsson, and Carole King, or, from a cinematic perspective, a singular performer like Jack Nicholson.
This makes it all the more amusing to imagine how the hepcats of the Nixon era wrapped their brains around The Monkees’ famously bonkers and psychedelic foray into film, 1968’s Head, and its equally unusual soundtrack.
Released in December of ‘68, at the end of a year that saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the eventual landslide victory of Richard Nixon as the incoming US President, Head was a daring satire not so much of the terrifying political landscape, but of the weird cultural transition occurring simultaneously – the shift that had turned The Monkees from cute and cuddly Beatle rip-offs in the mid 1960s to soulless pariahs by the end of their TV show in ‘68.
In truth, The Monkees themselves were more eager than anyone else to kill off their former selves and take part in something more meaningful. And, as it turned out, they had some very talented friends willing to help them do that – including the aforementioned Young, Nilsson, King, and Nicholson.
Along with co-writing the script for Head, Jack Nicholson also helped organise the soundtrack, splicing in quotes from the film and ambient tunes along with a collection of surprisingly great new pop songs, including the criminally under-appreciated psych single ‘Porpoise Song’.
No track on the Head soundtrack has received more after-the-fact love, however, than the beautiful ballad ‘As We Go Along’, written by Carole King and Toni Stern. Featuring a lovely, vulnerable lead vocal by Micky Dolenz, this track feels like a cousin of the Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Expecting to Fly’, and in fact, it includes one of that band’s young stalwarts, Neil Young, on guitar, alongside another notable fella by the name of Ry Cooder.
“Open your eyes, get up off your chair,” Dolenz sings in the chorus, wooing a hippie lass to get out in nature with him. “There’s so much to do in the sunlight / Give up your secrets and let down your hair / And sit with me here by the firelight.”
Yes, none of the Monkees actually play instruments on ‘As We Go Along’, but they were showing their evolution on this record in a lot of other ways. Along with the new songs written by King and Harry Nilsson on Head, there are a couple of odd gems penned by Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith, featuring some of their own guitar work, as well.
By leaving certain songs like ‘As We Go Along’ mostly to the pros, though, The Monkees helped legitimise their sound as something that could, perhaps, fit into the counterculture. No matter what the public view of them was at the moment, their own peers – including highly respected, “legit” musicians – were willing to back The Monkees up and help them forge a new path.
Head was a victim of bad timing when it arrived in ‘68, deemed either too weird or, maybe by comparison to the Beatles’ recent films like Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, not weird enough. Fortunately, as Jack Nicholson’s profile increased in the years that followed, and more people were inclined to revisit the film and soundtrack out of curiosity, its status has grown, with ‘As We Go Along’ gradually getting more of its rightful credit as one of the better tracks in The Monkees catalog, and one of the secret classics in Carole King’s songbook.
