Remem­ber­ing Yel­low Sub­ma­rine and Head at 50

Fifty years ago, two psy­che­del­ic comedic fan­tasias pre­miered. Both were head­lined by super­star pop groups, and nei­ther bore any cre­ative cred­it to those cen­tral musi­cians. The open­ing cred­its of Yel­low Sub­ma­rine list the film as star­ring Sgt Pep­pers [sic] Lone­ly Hearts Club Band, a savvy eli­sion of the fact that these ani­mat­ed Bea­t­les were voiced by imper­son­ators. The cred­its of Head, mean­while, list the Mon­kees as per­form­ers in a film which requires them to sub­ject them­selves to bru­tal exco­ri­a­tion – a bit­ter pill giv­en that while they par­tic­i­pat­ed in brain­storm­ing, they were denied input and cred­it on the screenplay.

For the Bea­t­les, it was a per­fect sit­u­a­tion: offer a few songs, then allow oth­er artists to pro­vide new con­tent to sat­is­fy fans and buy more time to record the White Album. For the Mon­kees, the deal was mixed: audi­ences abhorred the film, doom­ing the Mon­kees brand, while the few who did embrace its rad­i­cal ener­gy focused their admi­ra­tion on the pro­duc­ers cred­it­ed with the vision.

But how do these two films com­pare when viewed today? And which has proved a bet­ter long-term invest­ment for the cen­tral uncred­it­ed artists? To find those answers, we’ll have to start with a deep dive below the waves, where we’ll find a sea of green…

Black screen, white let­ters: ​‘Once upon a time…’

A solemn nar­ra­tor reads these words, and then psy­che­del­ic clouds over­take them as the nar­ra­tor amends, ​“Or maybe twice.” This is a fairy tale. But not the kind you’ve seen before.

As mod­ern myths go, Yel­low Submarine’s foun­da­tion is sol­id. The premise – idyl­lic Pep­per­land is attacked by the vicious Blue Mean­ies, and only those love­able Liv­er­pudlians can save the day – is essen­tial­ly Sev­en Samu­rai on acid, and the design of fig­ures like the fuzzy, jack­boot­ed Blue Mean­ies and their cack­ling Dread­ful Fly­ing Glove is unique­ly bizarre while pos­sess­ing the heft of time­less icons.

Yet despite sat­is­fy­ing struc­ture and aes­thet­ics, the film is often unin­volv­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the form­less odyssey that com­pris­es the mid­dle third. It seems spite­ful to crit­i­cise a car­toon fan­ta­sy for lack­ing nar­ra­tive propul­sion, but it’s not the plot­less­ness so much as the lethar­gy. The actors por­tray­ing the Bea­t­les speak with a sleepy dis­af­fect­ed­ness that bears lit­tle resem­blance to the buoy­an­cy that made the band so beloved. Yel­low Sub­ma­rine often feels like a film pro­ject­ed at half speed, with char­ac­ters wan­der­ing around mum­bling word­play, punc­tu­at­ed by dead air.

Com­plaints are ren­dered irrel­e­vant, though, when­ev­er a song begins. When a third of the run­time is spent lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est music in pop his­to­ry while bask­ing in head-spin­ning ani­ma­tion, and the bal­ance is beau­ti­ful­ly designed and often clever, it’s hard to muster complaint.

It’s tempt­ing to won­der if fans expect­ing a Bea­t­les movie got their money’s worth. With a sto­ry assem­bled from the band’s iconog­ra­phy as a clothes­line onto which songs can be hung with min­i­mal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, it’s a pre­cur­sor to juke­box musi­cals. When the real Fab Four appear for a dis­con­nect­ed live-action epi­logue, there’s a sense of pan­der­ing, like heads of state pop­ping in to jus­ti­fy the price of a palace tour.

But with the band hav­ing ceased tour­ing two years ear­li­er, oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence Bea­t­les music in com­mu­nal set­tings were rare, and this, along with crit­i­cal admi­ra­tion, spelled box office suc­cess. Beat­le­ma­nia was free to flour­ish joy­ful­ly for a few months as the band toiled on the alien­at­ing White Album. ​“Good enough for Yel­low Sub­ma­rine,” they report­ed­ly joked of any song that turned out below expec­ta­tions, before turn­ing back to cre­at­ing avant-garde anti-music like Rev­o­lu­tion 9.

There’s a com­mon response to strange art: What were they smoking?

Head is a film with a clear answer. As leg­end has it, the con­cepts were brain­stormed with the aid of pounds of mar­i­jua­na, and the screen­play writ­ten while gob­bling LSD. The result is pos­si­bly the shag­gi­est film ever made, nev­er exact­ly bor­ing but cer­tain­ly exhaust­ing. Devoid of the slight­est con­ces­sion to nar­ra­tive, Head feels like an episode of Sat­ur­day Night Live if the sketch­es had no begin­nings or endings.

As onscreen pres­ences, the Mon­kees are immense­ly charm­ing – as they should be, giv­en the band was cre­at­ed by New Hol­ly­wood mav­er­ick Bob Rafel­son in a delib­er­ate attempt to ape (as it were) A Hard Day’s Night. Though they would fight to cre­ate their own music, the Mon­kees were actors first, and nev­er ful­ly shook their rep­u­ta­tion as phoneys. That rep­u­ta­tion is exact­ly what the film seeks to exploit, dis­man­tling their appeal ear­ly and often. An open­ing num­ber sees them aggres­sive­ly shout­ing, “[we’re] a man­u­fac­tured image with no philoso­phies;” lat­er, a wait­ress sneers at Micky Dolenz, ​“You still pay­ing trib­ute to Ringo Starr?”

It would be one thing if the Mon­kees were fic­tion­al. But in keep­ing with the Bea­t­les homage, their onscreen per­sonas were pitched as stylised ver­sions of their off­screen selves. Thus, a joke at the expense of Dolenz’s per­sona is a joke at the expense of Dolenz him­self. This might be in good fun if the Mon­kees had been allowed a cre­ative hand. But Rafel­son, look­ing to estab­lish him­self as a sig­nif­i­cant auteur, let them nowhere near the screenplay.

Along­side the some­what exploita­tive use of men who’d grant­ed their like­ness as props in a satire of con­sumerism, Rafel­son pep­pers the film with aggres­sive­ly ​“seri­ous” choic­es like cut­aways to doc­u­men­tary footage of vio­lence on Viet­namese cit­i­zens that are mis­guid­ed and not near­ly as tren­chant as they like­ly sound­ed under psy­chotrop­ic influence.

The film func­tions less as a musi­cal than as a vari­ety show with occa­sion­al per­for­mances, but the songs are show­stop­pers, and indi­cate the Mon­kees could have been poised to break out as musi­cians had the film suc­ceed­ed. But Rafel­son can’t have expect­ed a hit when most pay­ing cus­tomers for this exper­i­men­tal freak­out would have been ado­les­cent girls. One sens­es Head might have been a delib­er­ate sab­o­tage by Rafel­son, det­o­nat­ing a fran­chise that was a cred­i­bil­i­ty vac­u­um so as to cre­ate an avant-garde call­ing card and move on to Easy Rider.

The Mon­kees tried to forge ahead with­out Rafel­son, but they soon closed up shop. Giv­en Rafelson’s ambi­tions, it’s hard to imag­ine a world where the Mon­kees brand last­ed much longer, but a more con­ven­tion­al film and a less acri­mo­nious part­ing with their cre­ator could have bought them enough time to escape the nov­el­ty-act rep­u­ta­tion that still lingers around their lega­cy. But that sce­nario will have to be lim­it­ed to the day­dream believ­ers of the world.

Yel­low Sub­ma­rine is remem­bered fond­ly today, although to what extent it enhanced the Bea­t­les lega­cy is up for debate. Head, mean­while, became an essen­tial link in the chain of New Hol­ly­wood, one of the 20^th century’s most sig­nif­i­cant artis­tic move­ments. It mer­its seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, not to men­tion a spot in the hal­lowed Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion. That inter­est may be large­ly extra­tex­tu­al, but the Mon­kees can be said to have starred in a gen­uine­ly impor­tant work. That’s a lot more than most Bea­t­les knock­offs can say, and a decent part­ing gift for this phase of their careers.

In one of Head’s musi­cal breaks, Peter Tork repeat­ed­ly sings, ​“Do I have to do this all over again?” There’s a hint of weari­ness in his voice, one that belongs to him alone. The Mon­kees may not have writ­ten their dia­logue, but the songs, at least, Rafel­son couldn’t claim.

The Bea­t­les closed up shop the same year that The Mon­kees did. ​“It’s all too much for me to take,” George Har­ri­son (the real one) sings in Yel­low Sub­ma­rine sound­track. Tork wouldn’t have to, and Har­ri­son wouldn’t have to much longer. With one band forged in the like­ness of the oth­er before quick­ly becom­ing a study in con­trasts, it’s pleas­ing to find such syn­chronic­i­ties in their two films released vir­tu­al­ly simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, even as they would land in such dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent places in history.

Yel­low Sub­ma­rine screens at Green Man Fes­ti­val on Fri­day 17 August fol­low­ing a nation­wide the­atri­cal re-release on Sun­day 8 July. For more info vis­it yellowsubmarine.film