page_title: Peter Tork
section_title: Monkees
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Tork / Monkees
caption_attribution_description: Action photo of the Monkees from a full page ad for their third record album. From left: Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork.
context_page_description: Peter Halsten Thorkelson, known professionally as Peter Tork, was an American musician, composer, and actor who was best known as the keyboardist and bass guitarist of the Monkees.
  Tork grew up in Connecticut and in the mid-1960s as part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City where he befriended musician Stephen Stills. After moving to Los Angeles with Stills, he was recruited for the musical television sitcom The Monkees. The success of the show made him a teen idol from 1966 to 1968. He would later record his debut solo album, Stranger Things Have Happened, in 1994, touring with his blues band Shoe Suede Blues.
context_section_description: Tork's band the Monkees were a pop band of the mid-1960s created for a television sitcom. Tork was the oldest member of the group. Stills had auditioned but was turned down because the show's producers felt his hair and teeth were not photogenic. When Stills was asked if he knew of someone with a similar "open, Nordic look", Stills recommended Tork. 
  Tork was a proficient musician before he joined the Monkees. Though other members of the group were not allowed to play their instruments on their first two albums, he played what he described as "third chair guitar" on Michael Nesmith's song "Papa Gene's Blues" on their first album. He subsequently played keyboard, bass guitar, banjo, harpsichord, and other instruments on the band's recordings. He co-wrote, along with Joey Richards, the closing theme song of the second season of The Monkees, "For Pete's Sake". On the show, he was relegated to acting as the "lovable dummy", a persona he had developed as a folk singer in Greenwich Village.
  The DVD release of the first season of the show contains commentary from various band members. In it, Nesmith states that Tork was better at playing guitar than bass. Tork commented that Davy Jones was a good drummer, and had the live performance lineups been based solely on playing ability, it should have been him on guitar, Nesmith on bass, and Jones on drums, with Micky Dolenz taking the fronting role (instead of Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, and Dolenz on drums). Jones filled in briefly for Tork on bass when he played keyboard.
  Recording and producing as a group was Tork's main interest, and he hoped that the four members would continue working together as a band on future recordings. However, the four did not have enough in common regarding their musical interests. In his commentary for the DVD release of the second season of the show, Tork said that Dolenz was "incapable of repeating a triumph". Dolenz felt that once he had accomplished something and became a success at it, there was no artistic sense in repeating a formula.
  In 1967, free from Don Kirshner's restrictions, Tork contributed instrumental flourishes, such as the piano introduction to "Daydream Believer" and the banjo part on "You Told Me", as well as exploring occasional songwriting with the likes of "For Pete's Sake" and "Lady's Baby".
  Tork was close to his maternal grandmother, Catherine McGuire Straus, staying with her sometimes during his Greenwich Village days and after he became a Monkee. "Grams" was one of his most ardent supporters and managed his fan club, often writing personal letters to members and visiting music stores to make sure they carried Monkees records.
  Six albums were produced with the original Monkees lineup, four of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. This success was supplemented by two years of the television program, a series of successful concert tours across America and abroad, and a trippy psychedelic movie, Head, which is considered by some to have been ahead of its time. However, tensions, both musical and personal, were increasing within the group. The band finished a Far East tour in December 1968 (where Tork's copy of Naked Lunch was confiscated by Australian Customs) and then filmed an NBC television special, 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee, which rehashed many of the ideas from Head.
  No longer getting the group dynamic he wanted,= and pleading "exhaustion" from the grueling schedule, Tork bought out the remaining four years of his contract for $160,000, leaving him with little income. In the DVD commentary for the 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee TV special – originally broadcast April 14, 1969 – Dolenz noted that Nesmith gave Tork a gold watch as a going-away present, with the engraving "From the guys down at work." Jones noted at the time that "Peter's soul left us two and a half years ago. He was a banjo player from Greenwich Village who was made into an actor and finally decided that he didn't want to be a Marx Brother forever. His heart was back in the Village, that's all." Dolenz reflected on Tork's departure, saying, "Three of u
caption: Tork (right) with the Monkees in 1966
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