Headquarters (1967)

Headquarters is the third studio album by the American pop rock band The Monkees, released on May 22, 1967, by Colgems Records. It was the first Monkees album on which the four band members played instruments and wrote much of the material themselves, following a struggle for creative control over their music with supervisor Don Kirshner. After winning the right to produce their own recordings, the group recorded Headquarters with producer Chip Douglas, and largely dispensed with session musicians. The album was a commercial success: it became the Monkees' third consecutive Billboard 200 number-one album in the United States, selling over two million copies within the first two months of release (earning a double platinum certification). It also reached No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart. Headquarters has since been included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Background

While the original concept of their third album was to follow the same format and production of the first two albums, after the release of More of the Monkees (1967), the group, particularly Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, was becoming increasingly frustrated by the limited creative input they were allowed by Don Kirshner, and continued to fight for more creative control and independence from him. Kirshner had already begun supervising recording sessions with studio musicians for their third album, with Davy Jones recording vocal tracks for some of the songs, while the group took it upon themselves, independent of Kirshner, to record two songs featuring them both singing and playing ("All of Your Toys" and "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"), as a means of proving to him that they were capable of providing their own musical accompaniment on future albums. Kirshner was adamant that their music should continue to be recorded under the previous albums' recording style, and was desperate to have the group provide further vocal tracks to the pre-recorded songs before their upcoming planned vacations in order to continue their previous chart-topping successes by having the new single displace the current number one song, "I'm a Believer", thereby having the group hold number one and number two positions.

As upcoming talks with Kirshner about their concerns continued to be delayed, the group, citing exhaustion from their grueling TV, touring and recording schedule, were unwilling to postpone the vacations and took advantage of the situation by threatening to quit the show, and subsequently the band, unless their demands were met. Micky Dolenz offered a last-minute compromise: the group would agree to sing on Kirshner's tracks in exchange for his allowing one of their previously recorded group performance tracks to serve as the B-side. While it seemed that Kirshner would agree, tensions soon came to a head when he released the third single (in Canada), with the Jones' tracks on both sides ("A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" and an early version of "She Hangs Out"), without the approval of record executives, the show's producers or the group, completely ignoring their request. This led to Kirshner's dismissal from the Monkees project, with the group finally being given full creative control of their next album. The single was withdrawn from Canada and pulled from scheduled release in the US. Since "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" was already announced as the next single, it was retained as the A-side and "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" as the B-side (a publishing error prevented "All of Your Toys" from being used), replacing "She Hangs Out". The remaining Kirshner-supervised tracks that had already been finished were discarded, while the group was finally given the creative freedom and input they requested and soon began recording their third album, free of the restrictions previously imposed by Kirshner.

Releases

The album was released on May 22, 1967, and charted at No. 1 in the U.S., only to be replaced the following week by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; it then began a run of 11 consecutive weeks at the No. 2 position as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Headquarters became the two top-selling records during the "Summer of Love" period.

The album was issued on the compact disc format for the first time by Arista Records in 1989, remixed from the multi-tracks, then later from the original stereo master tape in 1995, with several bonus tracks on Rhino Entertainment. In 2000, Rhino, through its Rhino Handmade division, issued The Headquarters Sessions, a three-disc box set of outtakes from the session as well as the album's original monophonic mix presented in an alternate running order that had been rejected before the album's official release.