Faux rock had four heroes and they were known collectively as the Monkees. A pre-fab Fab Four knockoff, the Monkees were formed as a commercial entity, via cattle call, and Mickey Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones weren’t exactly selected for their musical talent. The group’s peppy TV show made them humongous teen idols and money movers made sure the best songwriters and studio musicians of the day kept them atop the charts. Then the show got cancelled and the hits didn’t keep on coming. The boys had been tired for some time of being marketing tools and wanted to create their own music and identity, something that spoke to the turbulent times. They hoped to prove they weren’t just children’s entertainers selling Coca-Cola but also the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.

Enter director Bob Rafelson and screenwriter Jack Nicholson. Rafelson had cut his teeth directing the Monkees silly show and Nicholson was then still more of a writer than an actor. Both were headed for gigantic careers, but at this point their assignment was to create a surreal, plotless movie full of trippy, musical scenes that would explode and recreate the Monkees, with the lads gleefully making the kind of contributions that heretofore had not been allowed. Head pretty much accomplishes the task at hand, even if the surrealism isn’t of the Buñuel or Jodorowsky calibre.

There is, however, Frank Zappa and a talking cow, fearsome heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston beating the snot out of the elfin Englishman Jones and soda machines (selling Coca-Cola, of course) sitting incongruously in the middle of the desert. The band didn’t last much longer than the Head premiere party, so this prelude to their new identity was actually the main act. Imperfect as it is, the film remains a fascinating oddity, a rare moment when the center of pop culture gleefully ran headlong into the cutting edge.•