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The Monkees - Alternate Title (alias Randy Scouse Git)
UK 45, July 1, 1967, No. 2; not released on 45 in the US. Also on Headquarters, May 1967
For a decade, 1967 was regarded as a watershed – the year pop went rock. After 1977 and punk rock’s revolt against whimsy and bombast and songs that broke the three-minute barrier, the year began to cede its crown to the distinctly crisper, sharper 1966.
Cynics point to the triumph of Engelbert Humperdinck over the vast acres of Flower Power hype; his Release Me, There Goes My Everything and The Last Waltz were the three best-selling singles in Britain that year. Never mind that Jim Reeves’ Distant Drums, Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In The Night and Herb Alpert’s Spanish Flea dominated 1966.
Often overlooked in this debate is the enormous popularity of The Monkees throughout 1967. This was the year when four young men from a television series about a fictional pop group broke out of the screen and into mass consciousness thanks to a support system comprising hit records, hysteria-inducing concerts and mountains of memorabilia. The success of I’m A Believer (No. 1), Last Train To Clarkesville (23), A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You (3), Alternate Title (2), Pleasant Valley Sunday (11) and Daydream Believer (5) made The Monkees the best selling singles group of the year in Britain. Only The Beach Boys pipped them in the album ratings.
One of those aforementioned song titles catches the eye – Alternate Title. It only came about because the British wing of RCA – the Radio Corporation of America – decided to censor the original title, Randy Scouse Git. But strangely enough, the label seemingly had no problem with one of the least likely lines – repeated loudly during the song – ever sung by a major pop act: “Why don’t you hate who I hate / Kill who I kill to be free?”.
It sounds like something Charles Manson might have written in his thwarted bid to become a rock star eminence between 1967 and 1969. (And, no, Manson didn’t audition for The Monkees as legend has it. He was in prison at the time.) More awkwardly, the maniacal song with the slapdash title and the murderous intent showed up in July ’67 just as pop’s Summer Of Love was blossoming nicely.
When I’m A Believer spent four weeks at No. 1, during January and February 1967, I was approaching my eighth birthday. Naturally, I acquired a copy from somewhere. The Monkees TV show had started broadcasting at tea-time on New Year’s Eve, 1966. Last year’s toy Batmobile had been cast aside by millions of kids and replaced by the Monkeemobile. Bubblegum sales rose thanks to the Monkees cards that were tucked inside the pack.
Alas, funds at home didn’t stretch to me owning a toy Monkeemobile. (Though I did have a replica of Avenger Mrs Peel’s Lotus Elan.) Or The Monkees’ follow-up single, Last Train To Clarkesville. By the time of Alternate Title, released on July 1, 1967, I can’t even remember raving about the song much, certainly not in the way I went for other hits that month – Arthur Conley’s irrepressible Sweet Soul Music, The Pink Floyd’s kid-friendly See Emily Play, Scott McKenzie’s flower power singalong San Francisco.
Alternate Title wasn’t anything like those. Nor was it woozily mysterious like The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations or The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever. From its portentous kettledrum intro to the cacophonous finale mash-up of verse and chorus sung simultaneously, Alternate Title was the archetypal ‘pop group freaks out’ hit. It wasn’t overtly psychedelic, nor was it without hooks. Mickey (now Micky) Dolenz’s scat singing during the mid-song breakout, for example, was a gift to playground crooners and whistling workmen alike. And the verses were instantly memorable. Most distinctive of all, the song emerged with a heartwarming love story as its soft centre. Gossip columnists fell over themselves once they’d discovered the identity of the girl who inspired the opening line: “She’s a wonderful lady and she’s mine, all mine.”
Dolenz, who wrote and sang the song (he’d also sung the Monkees’ two previous hits), had met the “wonderful lady” immortalised in the song in February 1967 while in London to pick up a presentation disc for I’m A Believer on BBC-TV’s weekly chart show, Top Of The Pops.
The show’s smiling “Pop Maid”, as her BBC contract put it, was Samantha Juste, born Sandra Slater in May 1944. It was her job to cue up discs on a turntable while the artists went through the motions of a genuine performance. To TOTP viewers and readers of the pop press, the glamorous DJ was known simply as Samantha. As a mark of her popularity, in November 1966 she’d even released a single, No One Needs My Love Today.
Dolenz later recounted the first sighting of the tall, long-haired assistant: “I saw her sitting in the canteen drinking tea,” he said. “I didn’t know that she was a model or that she had anything to do with the show.” Later, he saw her spinning the discs for host Jimmy Savile. Dolenz pounced, invited her to the Bag O’Nails for dinner before the pair went dancing.
Meeting Samantha changed Micky’s life. But she wasn’t the first good luck charm he encountered upon landing at Heathrow Airport on February 6. Almost immediately, he and fellow traveller Monkees guitarist Mike Nesmith hooked up with Paul McCartney and other Beatles – later cited in the song as “the four kings of EMI”.
With his new “Fab Four” pals, Dolenz sampled London’s club life at the Scotch Of St James, the Speakeasy and the inevitable Bag O’Nails, a heady itinerary that probably contributed to what he later called the lyric’s “stream of consciousness thing”, which he began while staying at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair – before relocating to Samantha’s flat. On February 9, Dolenz was photographed with McCartney’s dog Martha; the following day, Mike Nesmith was present for The Beatles’ A Day In The Life recording session at Abbey Road. That was probably when John Lennon told him that The Monkees were “the greatest comic talents since the Marx Brothers”.
Also in town that February was Monkees’ singer Davy Jones, putting in some solo TV appearances, and Dolenz’s fellow California dreamer Mama Cass from The Mamas & The Papas. She too made it into the new song as “the girl in the yellow dress”.
The original title that would upset RCA so much came from popular TV series Till Death Us Do Part. “Randy Scouse Git” was the catchphrase for the series’ resident bigot Alf Garnett as he addressed his ‘layabout’ son-in-law Mike, played by Anthony Booth. Booth’s real-life daughter Cherie would much later marry future British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The whirlwind romance with Samantha, “the being known as Wonder Girl” in the song, was rudely interrupted when Dolenz returned home to Los Angeles. The Monkees had multiple commitments, including urgent work on a third album, Headquarters. “It’s not easy trying to tell her / That I shortly have to leave,” Micky lamented as he tried to finish the song.
On March 2, Dolenz was in RCA Victor’s Studio B in Hollywood leading the band, without Davy, through Randy Scouse Git. It was their most ambitious recording yet, evidence that the group were desperate to lose their manufactured image for something closer to wilfully malfunctioning.
The Randy Scouse Git sessions resumed on March 4 and 8 for vocals and overdubs. Dolenz, who’d been playing drums on the new material, spotted a kettledrum in the studio and used it to great effect on the intro, chorus and fade. With Samantha halfway round the globe, his dramatic playing evoked lovesick smoke signals blowing across the ocean. Meanwhile, the song’s comfrontational choruses are yelled out like lyric gunfire; and the final act is a simultaneous delivery of both verse and chorus in the closest thing to cacophony the pop charts ever got. To add further incongruity, everything is set to an intermingling of ragtime piano and rustic guitar twangs. It worked perfectly. But not according to RCA in the States, which chose not to release it on 45. In Britain, the single was released on July 1, 1967 and had hit No. 2 by mid-month.
By the time Alternate Title hit Top Of The Pops, Samantha Juste had already left behind her ‘Disc Girl’ career and relocated to the States to join Micky. One of her first outings there was to accompany him (with the Monkee dressed in American Indian garb) to the gathering of the new tribes at the Monterey Pop Festival in June. Now, in July, The Monkees were touring Britain and unable to fit TOTP into their schedule. Instead, a promotional film was broadcast, including news footage of the group arriving in London on June 29 for a press conference. Under the glare of press lights, and the watchful eye of the Metropolitan Police, this fast-cut black-and-white footage complements the manic energy of the single. Back in Los Angeles, the Monkees filmed a full colour mimed performance of the song at the Fred Niles Studios in Chicago on August 2, 1967.
In concert that year, particularly during the long summer UK/US tour, The Monkees would introduce Randy Scouse Git as a song “so far out that not even Micky knows what it means”. They’d then supplement it with the occasional grunt of “Freak out!” or “Psycho-delic!”. Despite the song’s unconventional style, it would play out to the usual chants and screams from the audience.
Micky re-recorded Randy Scouse Git in a slower moving style for his 2012 album Remember, and again in 2016 for a three-track single, both times giving it back its original title. Others too have bravely tackled one of pop’s more idiosyncratic hits, including Carter USM and Bad Manners.
As for Ms Juste, the song’s object of desire, in July 1968 she became Mrs Samantha Dolenz. However, with Micky running wild with the Hollywood Vampires, the informal, Los Angeles-based rock’n’roll drinking club that boasted Alice Cooper and John Lennon among its members, by 1975 the pair had divorced. Samantha retained custody of their daughter, Ami Dolenz, born in 1969.
After spending much of her life working in fashion and accessories, the “wonderful lady” immortalised in an especially creative moment of ’60s pop died of a stroke in February 2014.
Micky Dolenz, now the last surviving Monkee, continues to play and record. His latest releases include cover sets comprised of songs by R.E.M. and his esteemed ex-colleague Mike Nesmith.
The Monkees-Randy Scouse Git