Roger Daltrey’s best solo album (is a de facto Who album)

Image used solely to illustrate subject for an album review, and consistent with Fair Use Doctrine

The soundtrack to McVicar, released June 1980, is widely considered Roger’s strongest solo album on account of it being a de facto Who album. Pete and John played on it (despite not being credited as The Who), which provides a very Who-like sound. While this is a very strong contender for the title of Roger’s best work on its own merit, it’s very telling that many people regard it so highly because the other guys are on it. These fans (frequently older guys, in my experience) dismiss Roger’s solo albums where he tried a very different style, as though he owed it to them to only ever make music sounding exactly like Who songs. Artists are allowed to try new things!

McVicar, in which Roger plays the title role, is based on the memoir McVicar by Himself, written by armed robber and prison escapee John McVicar (21 March 1940–6 September 2022). Roger was so fascinated by Mr. McVicar’s account of prison life, he bought the film rights to the book with the intention of acting in it. Many people also consider this Roger’s best film work.

John McVicar began shoplifting and breaking into cars as a teen, and escaped a remand home for juvenile offenders in 1956, aged sixteen. He was sentenced to two years of borstal training (youth detention), and became an armed robber after his release. In 1964 he got in trouble with the law again and was sentenced to two years in prison.

He escaped custody while he and a dozen other guys were on their way back HM Prison Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight after a dubious trial. The other escapees were soon discovered during a massive manhunt, but Mr. McVicar remained undetected and got in touch with gang boss Joey Pyle.

Mr. Pyle drove down to Portsmouth and took him as far as Dorking, where he attempted to evade a police roadblock. Mr. McVicar jumped out of the car and made a run for it before the cops could corner them in a cul-de-sac.

John McVicar (far right) at the Cannes Film Festival with Roger and Adam Faith, May 1980; Copyright Daily Mirror (© Mirrorpix)

Mr. McVicar tried to rob an armoured security van while on the run and was busted by cops. More charges were put on him, and he was sentenced to another fifteen years, on top of the eight he was already serving. He was moved to HM Prison Durham, which he once more escaped.

For two years, he was at large in Blackheath, London, with his girlfriend Shirley Wilshire and their son Russell, who was born in 1965. During this time, he was dubbed Public Enemy Number One by Scotland Yard. When he was finally caught, he was forced to continue his 23-year sentence until being paroled in 1978.

He married Shirley in 1972, but they divorced before he was paroled. Russell followed in his footsteps and became an armed robber and prison escapee himself.

His 1980 memoir, which he also wrote the screenplay for, covers a few months of his time in prison instead of of his entire life up to that point. The first half of the film is set in Durham and focuses on the relationships between inmates and prison officials, his plotting to escape, and his successful break.

The second half depicts him on the run in London, during which he plans to start a new crime-free life in Canada with his family. This plan doesn’t come to fruition, however, as he can’t fund it without more crime. He’s busted by the cops after a so-called friend squeals.

Mr. McVicar returns to prison and has more years pasted onto his sentence. While behind bars, he studies for a bachelor’s degree in sociology and is later released.

The film première was at Rialto Cinema in London’s Leicester Square on 27 August 1980. It was produced by Bill Curbishley (The Who’s manager) and Roy Baird, and was nominated for Best Picture in 1981 at the International Mystery Film Festival of Cattolica.

The soundtrack reached #22 in the U.S., #39 in the U.K., #41 in The Netherlands, #44 in New Zealand, and #87 in Australia. Richard Evans designed the sleeve, and David James did the photography.

Track listing:

“Bitter and Twisted” (written by Steve Swindells)
“Just a Dream Away” (Russ Ballard)
“Escape, Part One” (Jeff Wayne) (instrumental)
“White City Lights” (Billy Nicholls and Jon Lind)
“Free Me” (Russ Ballard) (#39 in the U.K.; #53 in the U.S.; #66 in Australia)
“My Time Is Gonna Come” (Russ Ballard)
“Waiting for a Friend” (Billy Nicholls) (#104 in the U.S.)
“Escape, Part Two” (Jeff Wayne) (instrumental)
“Without Your Love” (Billy Nicholls) (#20 in the U.S.; #55 in the U.K.)
“McVicar” (Billy Nicholls)

I love every single song on this album! It’s the perfect place to start with Roger’s solo work, since it sounds so much like a Who album and is such strong material on its own merits. A classic not to be missed.

A surrealistic silent detective story

For the milestone tenth year, Lea at Silent-ology is hosting the Buster Keaton Blogathon. You can click the image above to go to the full list of participants. This year, my topic is the magical 1924 film Sherlock, Jr. No matter how many times I see it, it always evokes such a surrealistic mood and pulls me right into this world blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

Sherlock, Jr., originally called The Misfit, released 21 April 1924. Buster wanted his leading lady to be Marion Harlan, whom he’d previously worked with on Three Ages, but she took sick and was replaced by Kathryn McGuire, a WAMPAS Baby Star of 1923.

Another change was the co-director. Buster brought on his best friend Roscoe Arbuckle, who was still blacklisted by most of Hollywood and the American public after the scandal of 1921–22. Even after he was acquitted at the third trial and given an unprecedented personal apology from the jury, many people still refused to believe his innocence or support his career. Roscoe had to work under the pseudonym William B. Goodrich and move behind the camera.

Buster was one of the few people who stood by Roscoe through thick and thin. Not only did he remain friends, he also gave Roscoe the chance to work again. Roscoe was deep in debt from his long legal battle, and had lost his home and cars. Many film scholars believe the premise of Sherlock, Jr. is a tribute to Oscar Heinrich, the forensic scientist who helped to clear Roscoe’s good name.

Sadly, after a great beginning, Buster and Roscoe got into a big fight triggered by Buster correcting a mistake, and Buster had to direct the entire film himself. After all the trauma poor Roscoe went through, could he really be blamed for behaving irrationally in its wake? Trauma responses by definition aren’t rational, and anger is one of the most common ones.

Because of the surrealistic storyline and its complicated special effects, Sherlock, Jr. was Buster’s most challenging film to create. It took four months to film and edit, from January to April 1924, twice Buster’s normal production length. Buster later told film historian Kevin Brownlow, “Every cameraman in the business went to see that picture more than once trying to figure out how the hell we did some of that.”

Buster famously did all his own stunts, and often got injured because he refused to use doubles or dummies. During the filming of Sherlock, Jr., he unknowingly broke his neck when he grabbed a water spout while walking on top of a moving train. The back of his neck was bashed against a steel rail on the ground, and Buster blacked out. Filming wrapped early that day, and he had blinding headaches for weeks. Only in 1935 did he discover he’d broken his neck.

A relatively less serious accident happened when Buster’s motorcycle skidded straight-on into two cameras, which knocked over gag man Eddie Cline and tossed Buster onto a car.

The preview in Long Beach didn’t go very well, so Buster re-edited the film to try to make it funnier. The second preview was even worse, so Buster cut the film down to a mere five reels. He refused producer Joseph Schenck’s suggestion to add another thousand feet of film (about eleven minutes).

Sherlock, Jr. earned $448,337 ($8,086,242.84 in 2024), making it Buster’s first real failure in his long, successful career. The New York Times and Photoplay loved it, but other reviews were very negative. A century later, this film is much more highly-regarded by both critics and audiences. In 1991, it was chosen for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

A film projectionist in a small town spends his free time studying how to be a detective. While sweeping up the trash in the theatre, he finds a whole dollar (which went a lot further in 1924!) and feels compelled to return it to the pretty young lady who lost it. He also gives one of his own dollars to an older woman sifting through the pile. When a gruff-looking guy comes up, the Projectionist hands over another dollar without a fight, but the guy gives it back and looks through the pile to find a whole wad of cash.

With his last dollar, he buys a box of chocolates at a nearby shop and phonies up the price to look like $4 to impress his rich love interest. He also gives her a ring when he goes to her house. While they’re very demurely, shyly sitting together in the parlour, the local Sheik (Ward Crane) steals a watch from her father’s coat and pawns it. With the money, he buys the $3 box of chocolates the Projectionist hoped to buy earlier.

The father (Joe Keaton, Buster’s real-life dad) notices his watch missing, and Buster says it’s a good idea to search everyone. The Sheik slips the pawnshop ticket into the Projectionist’s pocket, and when it’s found on his person, the Girl’s father kicks him out of the house in perpetuity. (In a lot of old films, the person who makes an accusation is always believed, and the person accused is judged automatically guilty and not allowed to plead his or her case.)

The Projectionist’s detective book includes the suggestion to shadow his man, which he does. However, he’s quickly waylaid by the abovementioned incident with the water pipe, so he returns to his day job.

The Girl goes to the pawnshop to ask who got the ticket, and the pawnbroker describes the Sheik, who presently passes by. Meanwhile, the Projectionist falls asleep while projecting Hearts and Pearls, a film about the theft of a pearl necklace, which very closely mirrors the real-life situation. His dream self wanders down the aisle, climbs over the organ supplying live music, and tries to jump into the screen.

The first attempt is unsuccessful, but the second attempt succeeds. And here begins a movie within a movie.

He shifts back and forth between a bunch of different scenes before moving into the story of Hearts and Pearls as Sherlock, Jr., the world’s greatest detective. The actors transmogrify into the people involved in the real situation.

The Sheik and his accomplice (Erwin Connelly, the butler) rig one murderous trap after another for Sherlock, Jr., but he outwits them all—an exploding billiard, a chair with long-handled axes above it, poison. The next day, Sherlock, Jr. tracks them and more bad guys down to a shack and is captured.

The Sheik says the man struggling in a wicker cage in the next room is a detective, and that he’ll put Sherlock, Jr. in there next. He also says the Girl is at another shack. Sherlock, Jr. escapes and ends up in a wild chase on a cop’s motorcycle handlebars.

For almost the entire chase, which goes through one wacky situation and close scrape after another, he has no idea the cop fell off and he’s only moving through momentum.

The bike eventually crashes through the shed where the Girl is being held hostage, and she and Sherlock, Jr. have another close escape and wacky car chase.

The Projectionist wakes up to the Girl announcing they discovered the real guilty party and that her father is very sorry for the mistake. He proceeds to copy the actions of the hero in the romantic closing scene of the film he’s still projecting, but the final image of married life with twins might be a bridge too far.

A fun, trippy, surreal, eclectic, strange film romp with The Monkees, Part II (The plot of Head)

The first time I saw Head, on a VHS borrowed from my oldest, dearest friend (who’s also been a second-generation Monkeemaniac since the 1986 revival), I was very confused. For a long time, I’d heard about how bizarre, surreal, avant-garde, and plotless the film was, and now I had reason to agree with those views.

But when I revisited it years later, I found I really liked it and understood it a lot better. By that time, I had listened to the soundtrack album many times, so I was familiar with the story on some level. Unlike many other soundtracks, Head includes a lot of dialogue snippets, like a truncated version of the movie. Prior, the only song I knew was “The Porpoise Song.” I was inspired to finally check out the soundtrack on Spotify (never having found it in a record store) because my friend did a Zumba routine to “Can You Dig It?” for me. All these years later, she’s still just as big of a fan as I am!

Head is one of those films where you need to have no expectations or preconceptions. So many people across the last 55 years have disliked or misunderstood this film because it didn’t live up to what they were expecting. First things first, while there is a plot, it’s rather loose and freewheeling, not the traditional Point A to Point Z with a set beginning, middle, and end, inciting incident, dark moment, and dénouement.

Secondly, this isn’t an 86-minute episode of The Monkees. While it stars the same guys and features their music, Head is much different from the show by design. The Monkees are deliberately deconstructing their image, and the whole plot (as it were) is them trying desperately to get away from that image and live freely.

If you understand those things, and are familiar with the soundtrack, you’ll probably enjoy this film a whole lot more.

The real-life June 1968 dedication ceremony for the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach, California is marred by microphone malfunctions and The Monkees running through to the sound of sirens and horns. In their race to get away from their pursuers, they break through the ribbon for the cutting ceremony. Then Micky jumps into the water, which turns infrared, and mermaids try to revive him.

The next scene is in The Monkees’ groovy beach house, where they’re having a kissing contest with a woman who isn’t very impressed. She thinks they’re all the same. Then lots of mini TV screens start appearing, with various scenes of The Monkees from the film, ending with the infamous shooting of Nguyễn Văn Lém.

We shift to first a concert, then The Monkees leading the crowd in a cheer for war at a football field, then real film footage of the Vietnam War, and then The Monkees serving in the trenches themselves. While Peter is on the battlefield under fire, someone shoots his picture for the front cover of Life, and when he’s in another trench, a football player tackles him.

The boys go from venturing out onto the battlefield to going onstage, where they perform Mike’s song “Circle Sky” to screaming girls, interspersed with film footage of suffering Vietnamese civilians and the shooting of Nguyễn Văn Lém again. After the song, The Monkees make a getaway before their fans descend on the stage and rip apart mannequins of themselves. These crazed fans later appear on a TV flipping through channels.

One of those TV images is Micky staggering bare-chested through the desert, which comes into full-screen. He’s overjoyed to find a Coke machine, but when he sees it’s empty, he begins beating it. Later, a sheik comes through on horseback, followed by a tank. To Micky’s amazement, the tank driver and a huge unit of soldiers all drop their weapons and surrender to him, marching off into the desert. When they’re gone, Micky climbs into the tank and blasts the Coke machine.

Our next scene is Micky in sheik garb at a party with scantily-dressed belly dancers and the other Monkees, and then we’re transported to the Wild West with Micky and Mike. After walking off what turns out to be just a movie set, Mike and Micky walk onto another set where Davy is playing the violin.

While wandering around the set, the boys eventually push their way into a crowded diner. All the patrons leave when they see The Monkees, so they’re left alone with the odd-looking waitress. Peter also turns up in the diner.

We next see Davy boxing, then playing the violin again, then going back to the ring, where Mike and Micky are watching and very angry Davy refuses to lose on purpose, then Mike and Micky getting into the ring themselves and starting a huge brawl that brings cops out, and finally back to the diner, now filled with other patrons.

The story gets progressively stranger and stranger—Peter walking through snowy mountains, Micky in a forest of hanging moss trees, Davy in a garden, Mike on the beach; a montage of billboards; The Monkees touring a factory, being locked in a huge black box to do an ad for dandruff, and getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner; Davy getting separated from the other three in the vacuum and doing a song and dance routine; Davy seeing a huge eye inside a medicine cabinet; Davy stumbling into a horror movie set.

That’s pretty much the gist of the entire rest of the film, one random, wacky scene blending onto another, with lots of strange characters, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, as The Monkees keep having trouble with authority figures and trying desperately to escape their manufactured image. Towards the end, the scenes start appearing in reverse order until finally returning to the chase at the bridge. After all four Monkees jump this time, there’s an unexpected twist closing out the film.

The story might make no sense, but it does live up to the genre-blending promise in the movie poster. It’s also full of late Sixties psychedelic fun. If you love The Monkees and the 1960s, are familiar with unconventional films, and don’t expect a coherent plot, you’ll probably really enjoy Head.

A fun, trippy, surreal, eclectic, strange film romp with The Monkees, Part I (Behind the scenes of Head)

Today I complete another trip around the Sun. I am now the age Tyrone Power lived until, and a year younger than Freddie Mercury lived to.

Head, The Monkees’ one and only film (not counting TV specials), just like many other cult films, has always been one of those films you either love or hate. Even the August 1968 private screening in Los Angeles went over very poorly, compelling producers to edit it down from 110 minutes.

The 86-minute final product premièred in New York on 6 November 1968 and in Hollywood on 20 November, one of the very first films with an MPAA rating. It was rated G, though there’s definitely a lot of content that’s anything but G-rated and kid-friendly! I’d consider it more PG-13 by modern standards.

Ads for Head ran in New York City papers on 1 November 1968, with the G rating. There was also a promo campaign of putting up stickers in random places. Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson were arrested at the New York première for trying to put one of these stickers on a cop’s helmet as he got on his horse.

The original movie poster didn’t display The Monkees at all, but only PR man John Brockman. Trailers called it “the most extraordinary adventure, western, comedy, love story, mystery, drama, musical, documentary satire ever made (And that’s putting it mildly).”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t nearly enough promotion, particularly in light of how The Monkees’ TV show had been cancelled and they could no longer rely on that as an automatic selling point. The release was also delayed on account of the one and only commercial’s use of solarization, an expensive and time-consuming new technique which wholly or partly reverses the image on a negative.

The commercial was the above image, a closeup of John Brockman’s head. Thirty seconds in, he smiled, and HEAD appeared on his forehead. It was a parody of Andy Warhol’s 1964 silent film Blow Job. (Despite the title, there’s zero sexual content, but only a continuous closeup of a man’s face.)

Head flopped at the box office and got mixed critical reviews, for much the same reason as The Four Seasons’ brilliant, criminally underrated 1969 album Genuine Imitation Life Gazette tanked. Their established fans didn’t know what to do with something so radically different, while the new, more sophisticated audience they were trying to appeal to already thought they were uncool and not worth listening to.

The late Sixties also saw a huge tanking in popularity of acts who’d been around for a long time. Public tastes were drastically changing, and anyone associated with the old days of as recently as just a few short years ago were automatically branded uncool by default, even when they made a strong effort to evolve with the changing musical landscape.

The critical and commercial failure of Head accelerated the sharp drop in The Monkees’ popularity, though the soundtrack album got a lot more glowing reviews than the film itself and charted at #24 in Canada, #45 in the U.S., and #53 in Japan.

During the ensuing 55 years, Head has developed a cult following, and has been shown at several film festivals. In 2012, Mike described it as a deliberate swan song, crafted when he and the other three guys knew The Monkees were naturally winding down and had lost so much popularity so quickly.

However, a decade earlier, Mike called Head intentional career murder orchestrated by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who wanted to wash their hands of The Monkees and move on to new projects. Peter also expressed similar sentiments, and Davy thought it never should’ve been made.

Head was released on VHS and laserdisc in 1986 as part of The Monkees’ 20th anniversary and huge second wave of popularity (the year I became a fan). A new VHS and DVD edition came in 1995, and in 2010, Criterion issued it on DVD and Blu-ray as part of a boxed set with other Bob Rafelson films. Then, in 2016, for The  Monkees’ 50th anniversary, Rhino included it on a boxed set with the complete TV series. Deleted scenes were also on the Head disc.

A ninefold shot of antique horror (Three surviving films, six lost films)

Welcome to this year’s celebration of classic silent and early sound horror films with landmark anniversaries! Unfortunately, the Monster template is still permanently retired, and WordPress refuses to allow us to access our own previously-used themes. It just doesn’t feel quite like October without that awesome Halloween template.

Many of the horror films of 1898, which turn 125 this year, are lost. If only film pioneers had understood the historical significance of their work and the importance of film preservation!

The Astronomer’s Dream (La Lune à un Metre, literally The Moon from One Meter Off), directed by great-granddaddy of film Georges Méliès, tells the story of an astronomer (Méliès) who’s hard at work in his laboratory when suddenly Satan appears. He’s quickly vanquished by a caped woman, but then the chalk figure of the Moon on his board starts moving of its own accord and joins up with the drawing of the Earth to form a cartoon figure. Then a giant Moon with an animated face appears and eats his telescope.

Two clowns fall out of the Moon’s mouth and are promptly tossed back in by the astronomer. When he tries to attack the Moon, it moves back to its usual place in the sky. Everything he attempts to use to get rid of the Moon vanishes into thin air. Then it becomes a crescent, and the Moon goddess Selene appears. She flies away when the astronomer tries to embrace her, and the Moon reappears as a huge face.

The astronomer accidentally jumps into its mouth, and his severed body parts are spewed back up. Satan then returns and is vanquished again by the caped woman, who pieces our hero back together. In the end, we find out it was all a dream.

The Cavalier’s Dream, directed by Edwin S. Porter, is widely believed to be the very first U.S. horror film. A cavalier falls asleep at a bare table, and a witch enters and conjures up food. But before he can enjoy the feast, Mephistopheles appears, and the witch turns into a young lady. Then they conjure up an array of spooky figures who dance around him, and he falls asleep in his chair. The cavalier wakes up and realises it was just a dream.

The 1898 version of The Damnation of Faust (Damnation de Faust) was Georges Méliès’s third Faust film. Sadly, his previous two Faust films, Le Cabinet de Mephistopheles and Faust et Marguerite (both 1897), are also lost. His 1903 and 1904 adaptations survive, though the 1904 film is missing some scenes.

The Accursed Cave, also known as The Accursed Cavern and The Cave of the Demons (La Caverne Maudite), is the story of a young woman who happens upon a cave populated by skeletons and spirits of people who died there under mysterious circumstances. This is believed to be the first Méliès film using double exposure for special effects.

Shinin no Sosei (Resurrection of a Corpse) was written by Ejiro Hatta, who also starred in the leading role. It’s the story of a dead man who comes back to life when he falls out of a coffin being carried by two men.

Bake Jizo (Jizo the Spook) was also written by Ejiro Hatta. Sadly, no records of a script, plot, cast, or crew are known to survive, though it’s strongly speculated the film was based on a legend of the jizo statues. A jizo is a statue of a Buddhist boddhisatva which is very beloved in Japan, and believed to be the special guardian of children, particularly the souls of dead children. The word bake (spook, ghost, phantom) seems to imply the jizo in the film is haunted.

Sadly, many early Japanese films were lost in the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the destruction of WWII.

Copyright 663highland, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Photographing a Ghost, a British film directed by George Albert Smith, is considered by some to be the very first film featuring paranormal investigation. Sadly, not only is the film itself believed lost, but also all stills.

All we have is a 1900 review by Edison Films, which describes it as the story of a man trying to photograph a ghost (as the title indicates) who was carried into the room in a trunk by two men. When the photographer opens the trunk, a tall, white phantom looms up. His repeated attempts to take a picture are thwarted, and he finally throws in the towel.

Faust and Mephistopheles, another 1898 film by George Albert Smith, is also lost. Who doesn’t know the basic story of the Faust legend? An old man enters into a pact with the Devil to regain his youth and falls in love with a beautiful young lady, with tragic results.

George Albert Smith, 1864–1959

The Infernal Cake Walk (Le Cake-Walk Infernal) (1903) is this year’s final Méliès entry. It’s a simple story of a cakewalk dance presided over by Satan (played by Méliès), with lots of flames and some disembodied dancing limbs. Méliès also plays one of the dancing demons.