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Folk musician Peter Tork of Monkees fame dies at 77
NEW YORK, Feb 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Peter Tork, the offbeat folk artist who
found fame with 1960s pop band the Monkees, has died, his team announced
Thursday. He was 77 years old.
“It is with beyond-heavy and broken hearts that we share the devastating
news that our friend, mentor, teacher, and amazing soul, Peter Tork, has
passed from this world,” the team posted on his official Facebook page,
without specifying a cause of death.
The musician in 2009 had been diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a
rare form of cancer that affected his tongue.
“There are no words right now…heart broken over the loss of my Monkee
brother,” tweeted drummer-singer Micky Dolenz, one of the band’s two
surviving members.
A classic teeny-bopper band, the Monkees were the original reality TV
stars, whose four-piece group was first conceived as a show in 1965 that went
on to win two Emmy awards and in 1967 outsell the Beatles and the Rolling
Stones.
Songs like “Daydream Believer,” “I’m a Believer” and “Last Train to
Clarksville” all topped the charts — but the wisecracking foursome drew
criticism by some who considered them a rip-off of the Beatles, who had
rushed onto the American pop culture scene a few years prior.
The band released nine albums between 1966 and 1970, after which they
disbanded, but they have come back together in various combinations over the
years.
“As I write this my tears are awash, and my heart is broken,” wrote band
member Michael Nesmith.
“I can only pray his songs reach the heights that can lift us and that our
childhood lives forever — that special sparkle that was the Monkees.”
Tork, the group’s keyboardist and bass guitarist, crafted a persona as the
Monkees’ lovable “dummy” — but later began to resent the band as his musical
ambitions grew.
Born in Washington on February 13, 1942, Tork took piano lessons and
studied French horn.
Having cut his teeth in the free-wheeling folk scene of New York’s
Greenwich Village, Tork was a multi-instrumentalist who became the first
member to leave the Monkees, feeling restricted artistically.
He struggled to regain a music career in the decades that followed, briefly
serving time for marijuana possession, working as a teacher and a waiter, and
battling with alcoholism before overcoming the addiction in the 1980s.
After MTV began rerunning Monkees episodes, they discovered a resurgence in
the late 1980s, leading to a number of — sometimes partial — reunion tours.
Despite reports of head-butting among members of the group, Tork insisted
on their chemistry.
“I refute any claims that any four guys could’ve done what we did,” he said
in 2013 in an interview with Guitar World. “We couldn’t have chosen each
other. It wouldn’t have flown.”
“But under the circumstances, they got the right guys.”
BSS/AFP/GMR/0822 hrs