MovieChat Forums > Daydream Believers: The Monkees' Story (2000) Discussion > Headquarters

Headquarters

posted 10 years ago by james_age
2 replies | jump to latest

I realize they wanted to tell the arc of The Monkees, but to make Headquarters seem like a complete failure was simply a lie. The album was #1, then bumped to #2 (by Sgt. Peppers) where it stood for many weeks and went double platinum. And without the help & notoriety of a single!

And what's worse was the complete omission of what's widely regarded as their best album; Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

I actually thought the actors did a pretty good job with their looks and mannerisms. And I am glad they included a couple of live concert songs. Although I think they should've used the proposed single "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" rather than "All of Your Toys" for the song in which they finally gained control.

I wonder what could've been with a bigger budget.

[–] jdchisholm 10 years ago

I know what you mean, the movie made it look like Headquarters bombed. I think they were actually happy with the outcomes of the Headquarters album. I do think though that Headquarters sold 3 million copies. The timing wasn't the greatest I guess, becuase Headquarters was released when the Sargent Pepper's album came out.

[–] hka-3 9 years ago

I noticed a lot of things in this movie were in Davy's autobiography, Daydream Belivin', just skewed a bit for dramatic purposes or time constraints. Sometimes the movie combined events or visual details.

On page 164 Davy talked about the relative success of Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., but the former sold half as many copies as their first album and the latter sold one million.

"...from a strictly business viewpoint there was justification for some concern in the executive ranks."

"Company heads were now claiming that giving us artistic freedom had been a big financial blunder..."

You would think that The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees reaching number three on the charts would've been a good thing, but it's all relative since it was only half a million copies sold (also on page 164). "The Monkees were almost recording has-beens" as Davy (probably sarcastically) wrote.

The end was near since executives were pushing The Monkees to come up with something "commercial," but the group wanted more integrity than that. There's no guarantee something commercial would've been any more successful at that point. As the movie touched on, The Monkees were a fad that was fading for the younger generation and probably for a variety of reasons beyond the control of the group or executives. Not a lot of artists successfully transitioned from the '60s to the '70s, anyway. Ones who did usually had to reinvent themselves.

Mag, Darling, you're being a bore.