Author: Rob Sheffield / Source: Rolling Stone
Rob Sheffield pays tribute to the late Peter Tork, the Monkees’ beloved clown saint.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Peter Tork had the funniest line at the Monkees’ 50th Anniversary Tour show, three years ago: “If you’ve been following us from the beginning, just remember one thing.
Any one thing.” If you were lucky enough to see the Monkees live over the past decade, you know being in the room with Peter Tork was one of the planet’s happiest places to be. He was the funniest Monkee, their Ringo, their truest hippie, always happy to pitch in with a banjo solo or a bit of his dazed flower-child wisdom. This man knew how to rock a black-velvet silver-button tunic. That’s why fans around the world are grieving his death Thursday at 77. As he promised all those years ago in “For Pete’s Sake,” he made the world shine.Before the Monkees, Tork was a folkie on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit, scrounging and passing the hat for tips. When he auditioned for the TV show in 1965, he played the clown, a summer-babe blonde with a simple mind but a heart of gold, on guitar with his bandmates Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and the late Davy Jones. The Monkees were famously assembled by Hollywood producers for kiddie TV — Tork and Nesmith were the musicians, Dolenz and Jones were the actors. But their music turned out to be far more lasting and influential than the show. The Monkees ran just two seasons, but “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Last Train to Clarksville” and “Sunny Girlfriend” and “Star Collector” are forever.
Tork was a crucial reason why. He co-wrote the theme song “For Pete’s Sake,” turning his peace-love-and-understanding plea into a pop classic. He was always their hippie conscience, adding his plucky vocals to “Shades of Grey” and “Your Auntie Grizelda.” “With all due modesty since I had little to do with it, the Monkees’ songbook is one of the better songbooks in pop history,” he told Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene in 2011, correctly. “Certainly in the top five in terms of breadth and depth.”
Tork got hired on the advice of Stephen Stills, who remembered him from…
The post Remembering Peter Tork: The Monkees’ Beloved Clown Saint appeared first on FeedBox.