For Pete’s Sake: Remembering Peter Tork
Peter Tork was a lot of people’s favorite Monkee, and it’s easy to see why.
Most of us were first introduced to him in 1966, his affable portrayal as “the dumb one,” a slightly dim bassist who was doing his best to fit in with his overexcited bandmates. Peter’s affable nature on the show as was instantly charming to anyone watching.
It’s worth noting that playing “dumb” is really quite difficult. You need a lot of timing (which Peter, the actor, had in spades) and an understanding of the human condition that Peter possessed behind his doofy on-camera persona, his good looks, and his beautiful eyes. Peter spent a lot of his childhood in bed with illnesses, which led to him the guitar and songwriting. Maybe this is what also led to the soft and philosophical interior concealed within his impish public identity.
A significant amount of Peter’s deepness was revealed in his many interviews over the years, where he was shown to be a philosophical thinker, with an insatiable curiosity about the world. Peter was clearly on a quest to find himself, and we were all along for the ride.
In an interview with The Morning Call in 2012, Tork said:
“The Monkees were unique to television… Young adults always had senior adult to guide them through life — the vagaries of romance, and honesty and teach them life lessons, all with a little laugh on the side. … Not The Monkees.”
While Tork was talking about the Monkees as a group, he was definitely referring to himself as well. What Tork didn’t realize is that he guided us all towards deeper explorations of our place in the world through his own journey he was so gracious to share with us.
This made Peter Tork a study in contrasts. When the Monkees project was assembled, he was hired for one reason and ended up filling another. He was shocked that he wasn’t needed to play on sessions for their debut album (but actually did contribute guitar work to some Nesmith-produced sessions) and was feeling out of place.
For the first two Monkees albums, producers didn’t know what to do with Tork. This resulted in some strange choices, like giving him lead vocals on “Your Auntie Grizelda” from their sophomore effort, More of the Monkees. Although this number has always had a lot of charm, especially live, Tork resplendent with a Backstreet Boys-style head mic making his Baby Boomer female audience swoon, these were not his strengths.
Luckily, the Monkees found exactly what they needed in Tork as they became a more self-contained recording unit. This is evidenced on Peter’s blazing harpsichord solo on the first song that the band played all their own instruments for: the Mike Nesmith-penned “The Girl I Knew Somewhere.”
A short time later, on the Monkee’s third outing, Headquarters, Peter Tork’s banjo sings, and his piano lines are impactful and moving, especially on “Shades of Gray,” where he also gives the most measured, subtle, and beautiful vocal delivery of his Monkees career.
And then there’s “For Pete’s Sake,” the generational anthem that he penned with his friend Joey Richards, a favorite of producer Bob Rafelson and used in the closing credits for the second season of The Monkees TV show. In it, Tork writes “Love is understanding/don’t you know that this is true/love is understanding/it’s in everything we do,” which is a better summation of the aspirations of the Summer of Love generation more than many other more lofty songs of the era.
What followed was a brief creative tear on Monkees recordings for Tork, including but not limited to his deftly executed piano lines in “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” and his psychedelic bangers he penned for 1968’s full-length Monkees film Head: “Do I Have to Do This All Over Again (Long Title)” and “Can You Dig It.” Peter Tork had proved that he filled a place in The Monkees more than just being “the dumb one.”
Most importantly, at least personally for me, is Peter Tork’s piano line for the Monkees classic “Daydream Believer.” There is no way this hit would be as fondly remembered as it is without Tork’s contributions.
I remember the first time I saw the Monkees. It was at The Beacon Theater in New York on June 16, 2011. I was in the process of discovering the joys of Sixties bubblegum music and was only scratching the surface when it came to what the Monkees had to offer. None of my friends would go with me to the show (this was before I found my Monkees people), and there I was sitting there, in the balcony solo, unaware that my life was about to go through a significant change.
As much as I liked the rest of the show — Davy, Micky and Peter’s affable stage-personas, their entertaining behind-the-scenes stories and their musicianship — there was a tangible shift when Peter Tork sat solo at the piano and showed us his opening piano line for “Daydream Believer.” Davy Jones then joined on vocals, and Tork transitioned to guitar.
Suddenly, the 3000-person theater felt very intimate. There was a palpable closeness to Davy and Peter as we heard them play through the song, and we all started to sing along. It was that moment that I came to the personal realization that the Monkees were more than a TV show or nostalgia band. They had transcended everything they were put together to be to become something deep-rooted in our culture and our lives. My love of the Monkees never abated after that, nor do I expect it to.
And now, like Davy Jones before him, Peter Tork is gone. The likes of him we will never see again. He was musically brilliant, a deep thinker, and a vivacious performer. Although he was hired to be the dumb one, the joke was actually on us. He ended up being the smart one.
In an interview with Mental Floss from 2014, Peter said: “Everybody makes the world better; some when they come in, some when they go out.” It’s obvious to me the type of person Peter Halsten Thorkleson was. Now that he’s gone, when I close my eyes, I can hear his beautiful banjo solos fill the air of a theater and see him dance his “Auntie Grizelda” jig, and I can only smile.
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Guy Smiley