THE MONKEES - PISCES, AQUARIUS, CAPRICORN & JONES LTD @ 55

Released 55 years ago today, on November 6th, 1967, The Monkees fourth studio album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd, would be their forth consecutive number one charting LP in less than two years, though it would also be the last album from the group to hit that height. Both commercially and creatively, it was the high water mark for the band.

After their successful corporate revolution, where they broke free of the iron grip of music director Don Kirshner, their third LP, Headquarters, was a triumphant statement of independence. The band deliberately set about to create the album with no one else in the studio with them save for producer Chip Douglas, who also assisted on bass so that Peter could focus on keyboards and other instruments. Because the group were between seasons of their TV series, they had the luxury of time to dedicate to that album, but the pressure of producing a weekly series came to bare on the next.

It wasn’t so much the mechanics of the first two LPs which were the problem. It was the complete lack of input and creative control that drove the revolt within the group’s ranks. So, when it came time to start work on a fourth LP, struggling against the time constraints of filming, the group recognized the value of the songwriting team they had at their disposal, as well as the expert session musicians who made up the so-called “Wrecking Crew” of loosely affiliated LA players. They’d managed to get some great results on Headquarters, at least insofar as offering up themselves as a credible garage band, and were still going to do a lot of playing themselves, but it would be foolish not to leverage these resources and to be able to produce more sophisticated music for the next album, and that’s exactly what they did.

In fact, they'd never return to the self-contained approach again until their 1996 reunion LP, Justus. Given the individual group member's wildly divergent musical ambitions, it actually made more sense to work somewhat separately and then stitch each member's contributions together for the final product. It was a double edged sword which could offer diversity, but also inconsistency, but for this particular effort, it all came together into a very coherent whole.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd would turn out to be one of the group’s most mature and ambitious albums, both musically and thematically. The subject matter covered by the songs includes: allusions to drug trafficking (Salesman), materialism at the expense of happiness (The Door Into Summer), the superficial affections of groupies (Cuddly Toy, Star Collector), the malaise of suburban banality (Pleasant Valley Sunday) and the LA riots (Daily Nightly). Beneath the bubblegum pop sheen, they were subverting their audience with a variety of more critical and cynical messages, a tactic which would belie their image as a squeaky clean boy band for children.

Technically, the album was one of the first to feature the use of the MOOG modular synthesizer, played on Daily Nightly by Micky and on Star Collector by Paul Beaver. The instrument had been acquired by Micky from the first lot of 20 ever sold. Only The Doors’ Strange Days LP, released in September, predates the use of the synth within the pop/rock domain. The Monkees would soon be followed by The Rolling Stones (Their Satanic Majesties Request in December) and The Byrds (The Notorious Byrd Brothers in January - 1968).

The album is loaded with some of the band’s most significant songs and offers up one of the most consistent listening experiences of their catalogue. It leaps from strength to strength with songs like Love Is Only Sleeping & Pleasant Valley Sunday. Michael Nesmith gets a surprising number of lead vocals in the set as well, which works to add diversity to the songs. Also of note is the group’s last number one single, Daydream Believer, which was recorded during these sessions and intended for the LP, but not issued on LP until The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968). Love Is Only Sleeping was originally going to be the first single, but it got swapped with Daydream Believer, so the LP track listings were changed to remove the latter and insert the former.

In recent years, it has been reissued in a number of vastly expanded deluxe editions featuring numerous alternate mixes, outtakes and demos. Next to the HEAD soundtrack and film, it is unsurpassed in terms of its artistic merits within the group’s canon of work. A remarkably “adult” work from a “fake” band for kids.