Music
While the film's music disappointed fans of the band's more traditional pop sound, it features what some critics considered to be some of the best recorded work by The Monkees, including songs contributed by Carole King and Harry Nilsson. Jack Nicholson compiled the soundtrack album, which approximates the flow of the movie and includes large portions of the dialogue. The film's incidental music was composed and conducted by Ken Thorne, who also composed and conducted the incidental music to the Beatles' second film, Help! The most famous song from the film, The Porpoise Song appeared at the film's start and finish and left viewers feeling they were watching something dreamlike: even the editing of the bridge scene and the slow motion was almost meant to feel like a dream. Bright Color filters heighten the visual effect and dreamlike touch of the passages, which include mermaids rescuing member Micky Dolenz in the film's start: it was a psychadelic touch that recalled the visual and musical elements used for the Beatles TV film Magical Mystery Tour and the animated feature film Yellow Submarine, also with the Beatles and directed by George Dunning.
Andrew Sandoval, Rhino Entertainment's archivist who co-produced the company's reissue of the film, commented on the songs in a 1995 article published when the film was first reissued: "It has some of their best songs on it and, as you know, the movie's musical performances are some of the most cohesive moments in the film."
The music of the Monkees often featured rather dark subject matter beneath a superficially bright, happy sound (the song "Last Train to Clarksville", for instance, is actually about a young man who has been drafted, and is trying to arrange one last date with his girlfriend before he ships out, and includes the line "And I don't know if I'm ever coming home"); the music of the film takes the darkness and occasional satirical elements of the Monkees' earlier tunes and makes it far more overt, as in "Ditty Diego-War Chant", or "Daddy's Song," which has Jones singing an upbeat, Broadway-style number about a boy abandoned by his father. (Jones' own father, Harry, died just prior to Head's release.)
The soundtrack includes:
- "Porpoise Song (Theme from Head)" - Gerry Goffin and Carole King
- "Ditty Diego – War Chant" - Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson
- "Circle Sky" - Michael Nesmith
- "Can You Dig It" - Peter Tork
- "As We Go Along" - Carole King and Toni Stern
- "Daddy's Song" - Harry Nilsson
- "Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?" - Peter Tork
- Excerpts from the film, spliced in random order that is not consecutive to the movie itself
Read more about this topic: Head (film)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)