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.
