After the TV introduction of Rick and Cliff, Treat Her Right changes the film's scale and energy. The song makes it possible to move from a manufactured professional image to the protagonists moving through their world.
Roy Head & The Traits kick off the credits
Treat Her Right is the Roy Head & The Traits recording that accompanies the opening credits of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Released in 1965, it belongs to the crossover between rhythm and blues, soul, and rock that fuels much of the film's musical landscape. Its entrance comes after the black-and-white TV introduction of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, and immediately changes the tone with which we begin to follow them.
The song is not a piece commissioned for the film or a performance by Leonardo DiCaprio. Identifying Roy Head and his group makes it possible to separate the music used by the narrative from the musical performances Rick gives within his fictional career. In the credits, the voice belongs to a preexisting recording that shapes our perception of the characters, even if they do not have to explain their relationship to the song.
The TV opening had established a professional hierarchy: Rick occupies the star position and Cliff explains his role as a stunt double. The music opens up a more physical experience of that relationship. We see them share movements and travel through space, and the song's energy makes the pair come across as a recognizable unit before we know all their tensions. Work, friendship, and habit can be sensed in the way they are together.
The recording date also helps make sense of the choice. A film set in 1969 does not have to use only songs released that year. People listen to older hits and keep tastes that do not reset when the calendar changes. Treat Her Right brings an energy that exists in the protagonists' cultural world, without turning the opening into a chronological showcase of the latest releases.
A rhythm that encourages movement
The song's immediate appeal comes from its rhythmic drive and the brass responding to the voice. The performance maintains a persistence that keeps the listening moving even as the images change position. The music offers a kind of continuity different from spatial continuity: we do not need every shot to belong to the exact same path to feel that the credits maintain a shared direction and speed.
Head's voice combines control and roughness. It can drive a phrase forward and let the instruments answer, creating a sense of exchange. That quality is well suited to introducing two men whose relationship depends on learned coordination. That does not mean the lyrics literally describe Rick and Cliff's friendship. The effect comes largely from the performance and its fit with movement, without needing to translate every word into a narrative equivalent.
The song also does not require the edit to cut mechanically on every musical beat. A shot can linger while the rhythm continues underneath, and that difference helps preserve the naturalness of an action. The viewer gets a steady push without necessarily feeling that the characters are moving like dancers subject to choreography. The music lends them energy, but leaves room for their gestures to seem part of an ordinary day.
That use is related to the presence of soul and funk in Tarantino's cinema, although Treat Her Right must keep its specific identity. The volume of the voice, the instrumental attacks, and the brevity of the phrases create a direct invitation to enter the film. The song works as an opening that is confident in itself, even before the narrative reveals how much fear and uncertainty the lives of its protagonists contain.
A confident entrance before the uncertainty
The initial energy contrasts with what we will soon learn about Rick Dalton. His public image can still command a screen with authority, but a professional conversation will be enough to show his concern about the future. The song had not lied when it presented him with vitality. It had shown a real dimension of his presence, one that can coexist with the fear of being left behind. That coexistence makes the move from the credits to the first extended scenes more complex.
Cliff Booth shares the same physical confidence without exactly sharing Rick's professional position. The music can bring them together as a pair, while the film preserves the differences between the one who is recognized and the one who works to sustain part of that image. The opening establishes their familiarity and allows the inequalities to appear later within a relationship that is already understandable. Before judging their circumstances, we have perceived that they know how to be together.
Choosing such an energetic recording also changes the expectation tied to the historical date. Anyone who knows about the August 1969 murders might expect an opening dominated by foreboding. Instead, the film makes room for the pleasure of movement, music, and everyday life. The historical threat exists for the informed viewer, but it does not occupy the characters' emotional horizon from the very first moment.
Treat Her Right also opens the official soundtrack, where it can be heard apart from the images. That position preserves its function as an opening: the voice and rhythm prepare a listening experience that will later include radio, rock, advertisements, and moments of melancholy. In the film, the song sets an initial disposition to accompany Rick and Cliff. The narrative will be able to make them vulnerable, contradictory, or unsettling because it has first allowed them to enter with an immediate, shared presence.
More context in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood guide.