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With The Apollas (Leola Jiles, Ella Jamerson, and Billie Barnum) during the December 1966/January 1967 tour. The trio opened for The Monkees.

"[In 1965] I accompanied this black trio called the [Apollas], on the stand-up string bass.” - Peter Tork, Goldmine, May 1982 “I managed to pull together a job playing double bass for a while for a black female vocal trio called the Apollas. I got to repay the favor later on.” - Peter Tork, Monkeemania (1986) "So I played blues guitar for a girl named Lynne Hughes, and I played stand-up bass for a Supremes-type, three-girl singing group [The Apollas], who wound up opening for the Monkees." - Peter Tork, The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story "We had done a club in Huntington Beach. Peter Tork was the dishwasher there and he played guitar for us when we were there. [...] [When The Monkees were set to tour] Peter and Mike said, 'Well, let's get the Apollas, they're great.'" - Leola Jiles, The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story “At the Losers North, the Apollas were backed by Mike Nesmith on guitar and Peter Tork on bass […]. The Apollas toured with the Monkees, and the two groups worked together extremely well as a team.” - My Soul Concerto: The Story of the Apollas by Opal Louis Nations, 2005 “Throughout the performance of the Monkees, they [The Apollas] stood on the sidelines in costume, grinning enthusiastic approval. All three were ‘overjoyed at being on this show.’ […] ‘Peter used to play the guitar for us,’ [Leola Jiles] said. ‘Mike knew us, too.’ […] Peter and Mike remembered the girls and recommended that they be placed on the show. […] ‘We are having a wonderful time,’ Miss Jiles chimed, as she joined the crowd in giving the Monkees a tremendous hand after another selection. Her fellow singers grinned and applauded too. ‘The fellows are great,’ they said. ‘They are wonderful as people as well as entertainers.’ […] Peter [also] played the banjo and did some folk singing when he performed with the Apollas. ‘He’s still the same old Peter,’ Miss Jiles volunteered.” - Winston Salem Journal, January 15, 1967 “Peter, who has since become a member of a certain rock and roll group going under the title of the Monkees, happened to be playing guitar in a nightclub at Huntington Beach when the Apollas appeared there. According to Leola, Peter as well as the rest of the Monkees are really nice people, and a lasting friendship has resulted between the members of the two groups.” - Contra Costa Times, July 23, 1967 Another opening act, for The Monkees' 1967 summer tour, was also suggested by Peter: Lynne Randell. Some TV footage of The Apollas.

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Peter in 1964 (photo © Andrew Sandoval); in photo 2, the Phoenix Singers (from left to right: Roy Thompson, Arthur Williams and Ned Wright) are pictured at the October 1964 Denver campaign event mentioned below (photo by Steve Fitzgerald for the Messenger & Inquirer).

“One night, I was sitting around the Kettle of Fish, the private hang-out of the folk singers who live in the Village, and Peter came in with a big grin on his face. ‘Bruce,’ he yelled, ‘I got a job, a real job!’ And when he told me how Lance Wakely (one of the best guitarists on the scene then and now) had gotten him a job backing up the Phoenix Singers, I was really happy for Peter — and he, of course, was overjoyed.” - Bruce Farwell, 16’s The Monkees: Here We Are (1967) “We worked with the Phoenix Singers for about seven months, and during the last couple of months there were bad vibrations in the air. Pete loved to clown around on stage and the Phoenix Singers didn’t dig that. Pete also disliked being ordered around or told what to do. These two elements clashed, and the fireworks that resulted were the following: It was in October 1964, and we had just finished an in-person, fund-raising concert for Lyndon B. Johnson in Denver. As I said, the pressure had been building for several months. Two of the Phoenix Singers didn’t want Pete in the group, but my buddy Ned wanted him to stay because he dug him musically. I had mixed feelings at the time. I agreed that musically Pete was excellent, but I felt that he had to cool it a bit on stage because there was a personality conflict between him and the two Phoenix Singers mentioned. […] [W]e got on the plane to New York. It was on the way from Colorado to New York, at 30,000 feet in the air, that the three Phoenix Singers had a meeting, and two against one (for Ned still dug Pete’s musicianship) they voted Tork out of the group. Peter was quiet for the whole flight, and I could tell he was not very happy. I don’t think he cared about the Phoenix Singers that much, but I think he cared about the security that the job had provided and the fun he had been having on the road. I stayed on with the Phoenix Singers for quite a while, and Pete went on to the old routine down in the Village.” - Lance Wakely, 16 Magazine, April 1967 (More about that Denver campaign event here.) “I played bass as an accompanist for a group called James Hendricks and Vanessa.” - Peter Tork, Off the Record with Steve Escobar

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Tork & Farwell in Greenwich Village, early 1960s.

“[Peter] was a funny kind of a guy. He ran around in an old sweat shirt with ‘TORK’ lettered on the back of it and always carried his five-string banjo á la Pete Seeger. He also had what was considered ‘lots of hair’ in those days. […] Peter had a way about him. I mean, he could soften up the toughest audience. If people didn’t like his serious songs, he would play his funny ones. If they didn’t like his funny ones, he would play romantic ones. If they didn’t like his romantic songs, he would sing his ‘provocative’ ones. Usually, the audience was pretty warmed up by then — but just in case it wasn’t, Peter would throw in a spate of funny gags, followed by a series of the most comic faces one could ever see. […] In spite of all his clowning, Peter was a rather serious chap. […] Peter was a loud, powerful singer (I used to call him a romp’em, stomp’em type of singer), while I was a soft ballad singer. He had enormous stage presence and I had very little. He played the banjo, I played the guitar. […] He was restless and intense, while I was calm. He loved to be with a lot of people all of the time, whereas I liked to be completely alone some of the time. And last, but not least, Peter Tork had quite a way with the girls, while I was the shy one. […] [W]e became the unfamous, unknown duo — Tork & Farwell. Where did we work? Where didn’t we work would be more like it. We worked at the Why Not?, The Basement, The Cyclops, The Third Side, The Four Winds, The Samurai, The Dragon’s Den, The Raven, The Id — and all the time we kept adding to our repertoire. […] At that time, most people who hung around the Village were pretty phony. Peter never was. He talked hip, but basically he was a real person with a lot to offer, and he never changed. He was true to his music and he was not going to stay in the Village like a lot of the guys had. One night, when we were working at The Basement, Carol Hunter, a girl I knew, was there. She was an excellent guitarist and a groovy soloist, and kind of a wild, groovy girl. We both liked her as a friend and respected her as an artist. Peter had already sung with her once or twice. ‘Hey,’ he said to me after we did couple of numbers, ‘let’s let Carol sing with us tonight.’ ‘Good idea,’ I agreed. She knew all of our tunes, so we just got up there and wailed them out together. We felt so good about Carol that we asked her to join the group, and we rechristened ourselves Tork & Farwell Plus One. During the time that we worked as a trio, we were still passing the basket, and people wouldn’t donate any more money to Tork & Farwell Plus One than they would to just plain Tork or Farwell alone. So there we were, three people getting the ‘wages’ of one performer. Needless to say, it wasn’t enough to live off of, as none of us had any other income. I was the first one to suggest that we break up. Peter was all against it, but there really wasn’t much he could do. […] He is a great guy and he was like a brother to me. I will never forget him — intense, friendly, frank, very funny and clever with an intelligence that goes beyond book learning, and an understanding that goes beyond the surface. And as for the girls — it’s a cinch that Peter still has a way with them. He’s just doing the same thing he used to do — standing up there, making faces, grinning, jumping up and down, singing and laughing and running all about — only now he is doing it for 20 million people all over America, instead of just for a handful of tourists in Greenwich Village.” - Bruce Farwell, 16’s The Monkees: Here We Are (1967)

Requested: more about Farwell and Hunter. Did some digging and found this:

Carol Hunter — went to Julliard; worked as a session musician with Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Janis Ian and more; recorded a solo album in 1973 (The Next Voice You Hear); passed away in 2018. In an interview for the website Neil Diamond Homepage (2001), Hunter noted, “From the time I was a teenager playing the little clubs in Greenwich Village in New York, I wanted to be part of a musical ensemble rather than a solo artist, and I suppose I was something of a bargain to the artists I worked with, since they got something of a two-for-one with me; guitar player plus background singer. Sometimes it was a little awkward being the only girl in the group, and sometimes the locals mistook this overly dressed-up girl with a lot of makeup hanging around backstage for something other than one of the musicians, which was occasionally hilarious.”

Bruce Farwell — Farwell mentioned in the …Here We Are! article that he “still talk[s] to Peter on the phone and see[s] him when he flies into New York.”

In 2011, Berkshire Fine Arts shared a review for an album (Heart, Heart & Soul): “A s a student at Brown, Bruce Farwell fled campus on the weekends during the early, early, ‘60s to come up to Boston and work the coffeehouse circuit. His nimble fingers and picking style earned him many fans. Dropping out of school he abandoned Boston for Greenwich Village, teamed up for awhile with Peter Tork, sometimes with Carol Hunter, and eventually became a member of The Bitter End Singers. After a hitch with the armed forces, a return to college and decades of work as a psychologist he met and married Renata Decher, with whom he now performs as Gemini.”

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“I like to give someone as many ‘different sheets of music paper’ as I can — behave differently toward him each time I see him. That is the only way someone can know what the real me is like. You can’t know the real me by only talking to me. I believe that you can tell more about people by the way they look walking away from you than you can be what they say. In the highest sense, I think a human life is art, that art includes all expression. The way I play a guitar expresses something and the way I scratch my thigh expresses something. I think my guitar music is good; that is where I haven’t made any compromises. I think it really expresses me.” - Peter Tork, interviewed by Edwin Miller for Seventeen, August 1967

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Q: “How would you describe Peter as a little boy?” Virginia Thorkelson: “Frenetic, charming, inquisitive, destructive, friendly. He took apart a Capehart phonograph at age 2 ½. He always said ‘Hi’ to everyone on the street or bus.” - Tiger Beat, May 1967 “I am told that once — I was too young to remember — I was climbing up on the phonograph and he [Peter’s father] shouted at me just before the lid of the phonograph struck my head. For many years I couldn’t go under anything that had a lid on it without lifting up my arm and holding it there to make sure the lid wouldn’t fall down. I’m frightened by electricity too. We had a scene the other day in which I had to put my finger in a socket after unscrewing a light bulb. Even though I knew the plug was pulled out before I put my finger in — I actually had the plug in my other hand — I had to jab my finger at the socket repeatedly before I could touch it.” - Peter Tork, interviewed by Edwin Miller for Seventeen, August 1967

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Interviewed in Iowa, 1986; footage courtesy of the Monkees Live Almanac.

“So we’re having lunch. What does a Monkee eat. Tomato and onion omelette. With salad. Being a wacky guy I was waiting for Peter Tork to play with his food. You know, gargle with it or wear it as a wig. But, ah, no. He prayed over it. Well, yeah. Peter Tork is a VERY serious man heavily into spirituality and humanity. And he can be a happy-go-lucky, joking, laugh-a-minute fellow. […] So, you’re 44. Is that good? ‘It’s OK. Sure my knees aren’t as wonderful as they used to be. But the other day I pounded down the pavement after a bus, and it felt like I was flying. Like I was eight.‘Um. My back’s going. My hair’s falling out. I don’t have any teeth left. My head fell off last night, which was kind of annoying. I left my spleen on a train last week. Basically, I’m falling to pieces but I feeeel simply wonderful.’ And the conversation got out of hand. Peter Tork started on about interpersonal harmony and how it can spread and grow and work to save the world from nuclear destruction and I started getting the idea that this guy is kind of genuine, sincere, the real thing.” - article by John Elder, Countdown, April 1987

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From Peter Tork’s banjo contribution to the Wonderwall Music soundtrack (featured only in the movie, not on the album). The photo in this video is from that session.

The creation of Wonderwall Music, a series marking the 55th anniversary of the recording sessions - part 5:

“George was working on the musical score he wrote for the movie, “Wonder Wall.” When Peter arrived at the studio George asked him if he would play five-string banjo on one of the cuts. Peter was more than delighted and after a time they put down some beautiful sounds. Peter mentioned to George that he’d like to see the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ film so George made arrangements for Peter to have a private screening at the hotel. Peter really flipped for the Beatles’ fantasy film and watched it through several times. One time he even took color slides while it was being projected on the screen.” - Monkee Spectacular, May 1968

“I remember [Peter Tork] from The Monkees played banjo on a session. Peter was so nervous that his hands were shaking.” - Colin Manley, Beatles Gear (2001)

“I remember George asking me, ‘Why don’t you come back and play banjo on this session [for ‘Wonderwall Music’] I’m producing in December?’” - Peter Tork, Medium, August 3, 2010

Peter Tork: “George invited me to play banjo on Wonderwall. He was working on the soundtrack for Wonderwall, and he invited me to come and play, and I did. You can’t hear it on the album, you can’t hear it on the album, but apparently — and I never have seen the movie.” Q: “But it’s in the film.” PT: “It’s in the film.” Q: “Yeah.” PT: “I think it was Paul’s banjo. Paul had a five-string banjo, which he had strung backwards of course, being left-handed. But it was alright with him if I restrung it. So… and British five-string banjos are different from American. The fifth string, instead of having a tuning peg right in the middle of the neck, it hits a tunnel and the string goes through a tunnel to a fifth string peg at the regular peg head. Very interesting, very weird. But it was okay. Got some music in, that’s all that mattered.” - Breakfast With The Beatles, June 16, 2013

“‘[George] invited me to his house. He played the sitar and said: ‘I’m working on a soundtrack album, I’d love to have you play a little banjo.’” Tork had traveled without his instrument, so Harrison borrowed McCartney’s five-string banjo for the session — ‘which Paul couldn’t play — at least conventionally, because the folk five-string banjo can’t be restrung in reverse order for left-handers, it must be custom made. I played for 45 minutes, George said, “Thanks very much,” and we went our separate ways.’ 
Tork’s breezy contribution didn’t make the record, but it can be heard 15 minutes into the film, after Collins is chided by his mother for spying through the wall. ‘And I did not get paid,’ he laughs. ‘George said: “We’ll figure that out later.” He knew that the honor itself was payment enough!’” - The Guardian, March 23, 2017

“[George] was as kind and as gentle a man as you could imagine.” - Peter Tork, Liverpool Echo, November 28, 2011 (x)

More on two July 1967 meetings between George and Peter here and here.

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“Being young enough to have assessed the experience and reevaluated my whole life on the basis of it, I’ve been able to see that what I once heard called ‘three hots and a cot’ are my only requirements. Give me my meals and a place to put my head at night and I’m okay. That’s all I really need, that and my community, my life with other people. To me isolation is the only sin. Human beings are not meant to live alone. And while I feel that I may have a fairly large place in the public life of the world today, it could be just a dream and a fantasy, and it certainly is not a fitting basis for my decisions. The basis for my decisions is to do what I have to do today, do what’s put in front of me as well as I can, and to learn the lessons of the results.” - Peter Tork, interviewed by Bruce Pollock for When The Music Mattered (1984) “He says he’s never been happier and that life is getting better every day. ‘I have to say that it was good to be out of that,’ he said of the Big Time. ‘There were a lot of drawbacks to that glamorous life. I made too big a leap. I felt unfixed, unrooted. I wanted to get back to the streets where I was more familiar.’ He says he is achieving success again, this time his own way. He talks philosophically of what he calls community life, staying in the mainstream with family and friends. ‘Basically, insanity is isolation, like when you don’t get things your own way, you pack up your marbles and go home,’ said Tork. Such as when he left The Monkees? ‘Yeah.’ ‘Look at Presley,’ he went on. ‘He paid people to tell him what he wanted to hear, I think, and look where it got him — greater isolation, greater dependency on drugs and alcohol, and eventually death. I don’t know how I was spared that. Maybe something was looking out for me.’ […] What was it like at the top, Tork was asked. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he replied. ‘I won’t make as much money as I did, have as much fame as I did, but I can say that in the long haul I’m having longer stretches of happiness than I ever did before. I don’t drug or drink anymore. I have a nice family and I’m growing.’” - The Day, July 10, 1982

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“For me, it never was a case of the bubble bursting. It was much more a case of leaving the bubble through the airlock as it slowly fizzled away. I only see this in retrospect. At the time, I wanted to get out because wanted to be a Beatle-type musician. I wanted to lead my own band. I had no idea how difficult that was at the time. I just wanted to go off and do my own things. Now I wonder about my attitude then. I think it was probably a false attitude. On the other hand, if I’d been wiser, I might have left earlier. There’s no telling. Like I say, I didn’t have any sense of the bubble bursting. I just walked out of it. I mean, I had the bends for awhile coming back into re-entry, but it wasn’t like the bubble bursting in that I didn’t have a sense that one moment everything was flying high and the next moment everything was miserable. Because I myself did not change my sense of contentment. I found — and I have found consistently — that my sense of contentment has virtually nothing to do with my success. I was very content during certain periods with the Monkees. I was very happy at times, and I was miserable at times. I was happy afterwards sometimes, and I was miserable sometimes afterwards. And the history of my life has almost nothing to do, I’m talking about internal history, the history of my happiness — it has almost nothing to do with the history of my worldly success. So I didn’t have any sense of the bubble bursting. It was just my life carrying on, step by step. […] It’s like I said, the business about worldly sucess [sic] and personal life has very little and almost no correspondence whatsoever. And that applies to the people who are your friends. If I sought my friends out because they were famous, you know, I’d be guilty of the same thing that I hate in other people. And I would be hinging my own life to popular success. And, you know, if you hook your life to any material thing, it’s going to take you up, but it’s eventually going to take you down. You have to hook your life to spiritual values, ’cause that’s the only thing that can continue to take you up indefinitely.” - Peter Tork, Creem Presents… The Monkees: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (1987)

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A Monkees trading card, featuring a photo from the filming of the episode “Monkees Blow Their Minds.”

“Tork, now 36, is an avowed socialist and lives in Venice, California. ‘The big bosses just put the Monkees’ name on a lot of our recordings and then showered us with praise when they became a hit. I was called into a mass interview to become a Monkee and was told to cut out any bad habits — like smoking grass. When I wanted to publicly protest America’s involvement in Vietnam I was told to keep quiet. Two of the guys who controlled us were Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who have become bigtime movie people now. I don’t blame any of them. It’s the system. They wanted us to get their fortunes. And I enjoyed the ride. I got to see the world and meet my own idols. But everything is so fast. I got ripped off all the time. We had limos and thousands of fans and teen magazine interviews. But they were all bullshit — they never printed anything but crap. I even got ripped off when I went to buy a house. When the real estate people see a teen idol coming, they know it’s easy money. They jack up the prices. You don’t know anything, so you’re exploited. The whole entertainment business is about fraud. I found that even my idols, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, had to play the merchandising game. They had to become products to make the mark. ‘All this stuff about teen idols and girls is crazy too,’ Tork continued. ‘The girls I wanted wouldn’t touch me, and the fans were caught up in a never-never land and most of them were crazed. I never had as little sex in my life as when I was a big teen hero. The fans were lucky they weren’t killed in the mobs. I noticed one thing: that when the girls actually got close to us they were shy and they wouldn’t say much. Those young girls want their idols up on stage so they can’t touch them and they can release sexual energy. As for being treated like an artist, when we did the Monkees TV show and concerts, everything was impersonal. There weren’t any big dinners or stuff like that. They just told us to come up louder on the second chorus. It’s all a game.’” - New West, January 1, 1979

Q: “How did you manage to keep sane within that madness?” Peter Tork: “I either didn’t notice, I didn’t care, or I didn’t permit it. It was that easy, generally. I only know in retrospect how badly I was ripped off.” Q: “Do you mean financially?” PT: “Largely financially. I let it happen to myself. You know what they say about a fool and his money.” - Goldmine, 1982

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Clip from Reasonably Spontaneous Conversation (with Dennis Tardan), 1979.

“More and more I try to meet anger with love. The world is love. Sooner or later everyone will love everyone else. That is the future. I think people are so hipped up on the point of view, us against them; it’s all a hangover from the days of the left wing or fascism. It’s not the way things are anymore; it’s just us.” - Peter, Tork Seventeen, August 1967 “It’s only fear, lies and bad leadership that keeps us all from loving each other and from seeing each other clearly and purely with the eye of the mind and the love of the heart.” - Peter Tork T, 16 Magazine, December 1968 “There’s this Latin expression and it’s in legal circles, and it means, ‘The thing speaks for itself.’ And the song [‘A Better World,‘ written by Nick Thorkelson], when I first heard the song, the song said to me what I’ve already known all along, but have never been able to express in so — such a pithy way, succinctly. It’s just — there’s more than enough. The subtext is that what’s keeping us from all having enough is fear — call it politics, which is fear. And there is no way to eliminate fear from the human experience. But there are ways to allay that fear to an appreciable extent. And if we know there’s enough, that makes things a little calmer. That makes things a little bit less grabby, because in the material world, it’s a zero sum game. There’s only so much food to go around. If I take too much, you don’t have enough. But if I take enough, you have enough too. And that’s — that will happen if we’re not terrified of each other and the vagaries of life, which of course are not… you can’t stop them, life goes on. It’s weird, people get hit by cars and get brought down by cancer or some other disease, or trip and fall and hit their heads. That kind of thing happens all the time, there’s no stopping it. But if we… the more fear we bring to the situation, the tougher it is on everybody — the fearful and the feared as well. [On society in 2016] Well, I think it’s always three steps forward, two steps back in every endeavor. Maybe it’s 99 steps forward and 98 steps back or something, you know.I don’t want to get too specific on the digits. But there’s always this back and forth and back and forth. But I am hopeful that in the long run, this is all going to settle down. I believe — I believe that fundamentalist hate rhetoric and behaviors of all kinds are a direct outgrowth of that same fear. […] The number of people who are capable of saying, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t have to do that,’ is very low. But it’s growing. That number of people who say, ‘I get it. I get that what we’re talking about is other people operating out of fear. I don’t have to react fearfully.’” - Peter Tork, Zilch Podcast no. 67, 2016

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Photo by Henry Diltz.

“What does [Peter] want to communicate? ‘Love. I don’t mean it to sound corny,’ he said pleadingly. ‘Dogmatism is leaving the scene. Youth is examining all the old-time premises that used to be taken totally for granted — sexual mores, artistic mores. And in Russia, the revolutionary clichés. I think there’s a genuinely democratic society just over the horizon. I hope so. I hope it achieves freedom and peace.’” - The New York Times, October 2, 1966 “The world situation is something in a mess today. I’d like to see it all get straight. It’s working on it now though. I can see it happening. There’s always going to be another challenge the world will always go on. But I’d like to see us solve all our problems like poverty, war, pain and all that. Christianity as it is now practiced by most people who call themselves Christians in this country is pretty shabby. Sometimes the true Christian spirit seems dead. But I can see it coming out of the woodwork now. I think the flower children are an example of the true Christian spirit. That means love and participation.” - Peter Tork, Fave, March 1968 “I won't go nearly so far as to say that everything that came up in the 60's was valid, but as far as I'm concerned, the 60's were to what will come as Greece was to democracy. Remember that in the 60's the political officeholders had lost all touch with the needs of the nation…kind of like the Bush administration now. Back then the voice of the establishment, Life magazine, was discovered to have doctored photos falsely indicating that LSD caused chromosomal damage. That proved what we (then) kids already knew: that those at the top preached fair play and honesty, but had no more need to honor those concepts than what would give them the next dollar without too much trouble. We saw perfectly clearly that we were on our own, that no one in authority cared about us. Now, like any bunch of kids left to their own devices, some, many, went off the rails. Every false step by somebody walking around under the cloak of the liberal hippy 60's was used as a pretext for dissing the entire generation. Those of us who were truly interested in liberty, fraternity and equality, however, knew we were onto something good and real. What had been called democracy was, and to some extent still is, a pretext for wrapping the will of the greedy and aggressive in a mantle of public acquiescence. Now, the business of wresting power away from those who make a specialty of wielding it will be a long and protracted struggle, with a lot of setbacks along the way. The outlines of the new style of governance are only dimly perceivable, and won't become clear for a long time to come. In the meantime, our job is to practice the principles of fairness and service to the extent possible. One thing is clear: there is a much higher joy in service than there is in acquisition of wealth. (Remember that it isn't money that's the root of all evil, it's the love of money.) Hanging together in brother — and sisterhood is so happy-making you want to sing right out loud. Yeah, I feel the same about those ideas as I did then…in case you couldn't tell. heheheh, Peter” - Ask Peter Tork, 2008

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"In other words, if you really love me, you will look for these constructive ways to help. You’ll step in and help some poor underdog or smile at an unpopular kid. You will help somebody with his homework when he’s failing. These things are really acts of love. For every ounce of energy you think you feel in love towards me, practice generating your own love where it seems not to be wanted, even where you think it won’t be accepted. That’s what’s called Christian love." - Peter Tork, Fave, April 1968

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Photo 1 from the Reelin’ In The Years Photo Archive, photographer unnamed; photo 3 by Ken McKay/Shutterstock.

Remembering Michael and Davy on their birthdays.

“The man was unique and a huge, huge talent. We’re not going to replace him. […] [Davy] was such a little heartthrob. I don’t think people knew how bright and talented and gifted he was in all things. I’ve come to believe he was, in his own way, the smartest, most musically talented and best actor among us.” - Peter Tork, Boston Globe, May 16, 2013

“Mike and I have been back and forth with the emails […] I bore him no ill-will. I have a lot of respect and admiration and some affection for Mike. And I’m glad to be back in touch with him.” - Peter Tork, interview with Iain Lee, 2012

Q: “I’m curious about the various reunions that happened over the years. Is it safe to say that you guys were never really friends?” Peter Tork: “Oh, I don’t know. I would say I was pretty good friends with Micky, and there was a lot of love between me and Davy. I have a lot of respect for Mike Nesmith and we’ve structured ways to work together. Things rotate. It’s like having a basketball team. You know, gosh, it’s like having a championship basketball team. They go on the road every so often and do tours, you know, just exhibition tours but fortunately your music skills don’t deteriorate as fast as your basketball skills do, but I wouldn’t know what else to compare it to. We had a chance to go out together and we took it, and we had a great time, and if we were not friends at all we would not have been able to do it. We played tours months and months long: ‘86, ‘87, ‘89, ‘91, ‘92, ‘96, ‘97, 2001, 2002 and 2011, so we couldn’t have been such enemies.” - Phawker, circa 2012; re-published 2019

“[Micky] and Mike and I have a very cordial relationship and share a lot of common topics. We go to lunch together when we’re all in town and have a good time. I love and respect each of these guys in their own way, although the real joys that I shared with Davy were special. At one point we had some good hard connections but as the years rolled on, those things faded away. But I am sorry to see Davy go. He was the one member in the group that I had the strongest human connection with. I still have two guys that I love and respect left from the band, but we share a different dynamic.” - Peter Tork, Review Mag, May 27, 2016

“Well, I’ve never been really close with Michael [Nesmith] for some reason. You know, I have a lot of respect for him and admiration. But somehow we’ve never integrated. We’ve never been warm with each other. We worked together and did pretty well at it really. But Micky on the other hand, I enjoy hugely. We have some very good times together. We laugh a lot. We pay attention to what each other is doing on stage and so there’s communication there. Micky’s always been a lot of fun. Who I miss is Davy of course. Davy is the guy who…I’ve always said I loved, liked and respected [the band members] in different proportions but Davy actually kinda got my heart.” - Peter Tork, Clevescene, March 13, 2017

[thislovintime]

“So many of you are writing letters saying, 'I’m in love with a star. What’ll I do?' Or, 'I love Peter. Please help me!' So, I decided the best person to go to for help would be Peter himself, because, besides getting so many of these letters, he always seems to have a straight-from-the-heart, well-thought-out answer to any problem. In Peter’s Monkee set dressing-room I settled comfortably on the green rug. Peter sat cross-legged on the couch. First of all, I took out one of the many 'Help!' letters and showed it to him. After he read it I asked him just how he felt about being loved like this. He looked at me with his wise, deep but now almost bewildered, eyes and said simply, ‘I think it’s unreal. I don’t believe it.’ From that short, direct answer I thought perhaps that this problem had puzzled him or he just didn’t want to answer it. But Peter dismiss an important problem? Never! He started talking right to all his fans then, through me — and I could tell that this was a problem he’d worried about and considered often — maybe even stayed awake nights looking for an answer. After all, it directly concerns him and all the girls everywhere that he gives happiness to hour after hour, day after day! ‘I think some girls are pretending to feel love for me which is really not love, even though they don’t realize it. They direct their feelings and daydreams toward the image of me they see on the screen or in the magazines. […] ‘[T]hey look at this picture of me which has all the faults removed from it. ‘For instance, you’d never know if I had complexion trouble because it would all be under makeup. You’d never know if I were mean or angry unless you just happened to be in the way of one of my temper tantrums, which sometimes happens to fans. I sometimes lose my temper, like anyone, and if you happen to be in the way of it at the time, you might think, “Oh, what have I done?” You’ve done nothing, I was just being human. […] ‘I’d much rather you just think of me as the kid on the corner who made good. The guy who happens to enjoy being an entertainer, standing on the stage and performing, and who got himself into a little more than he bargained for when the Monkees became famous. […] ‘I’ve grown not to believe in tragedy. I’ve grown to believe that all things work out for the best. Even if you’re in despair, you’re going to discover that there’s more will to live in you than all your despair and you’ll come out of it. The will to live is a will to be cheerful, and to be on top of things. Stay cheerful! ‘In other words, if you really love me, you will look for these constructive ways to help. You’ll step in and help some poor underdog or smile at an unpopular kid. You will help somebody with his homework when he’s failing. These things are really acts of love. For every ounce of energy you think you feel in love towards me, practice generating your own love where it seems not to be wanted, even where you think it won’t be accepted. That’s what’s called Christian love. And it’s better than trying to show your love for me by just helping my career. If you want to buy all my records, that’s cool, because I’m trying to do some nice stuff on the records. But helping my career is not a full-time occupation for anybody. ‘I believe that all is One, that there is only one everything and we call it God, so God is everything.’ With that last, brief, statement, Peter stood up and stretched. It was that time again. He had to go out to the cameras and get back to work with Micky, David and Mike. But he had answered the question so often asked: ‘Please help me… what’ll I do?’ And the more I thought about this last statement, ‘All is One,’ the more I understood what he meant by it. Peter feels that all life is One and that One is Love. Therefore, when you are loving the person near you, you are showing your love for Peter right where you are. You are loving Peter in the very best way possible!” - article by Audrey Hulse, Fave, April 1968

[thislovintime]

“Tork is fond of quoting a favorite saying from [James Lee] Stanley, one of his oldest friends in the music business: ‘Everything I learned, I had to learn twice.’” - Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1992

“[Tork] certainly harbors no regrets [about the post-Monkees years]. ‘Not that it’s all been pleasant by any stretch, but I dearly needed every bump on the road and bump on the head to have what I have now. ‘I wouldn’t want to give up a thing.’” - Courier-Post, August 31, 1995

[thislovintime]

“Don’t buy lies. Don’t believe everything you’re told… especially when growing up. Investigate for yourself and find out the truth on your own terms.” - Peter Tork, Monkee Spectacular No. 14, June 1968 “There’s a lot of mess going down in the world that you, reading this, can do something about. […] [D]o all your own thinking. You won’t accept anyone else’s belief as your own, or any of these images, unless you’ve thought it all out in your own mind. You won’t believe anything you see or hear or read, whether it’s about me or someone else, unless you’ve already got foundations for belief. And, if you ever read in some magazine, ‘Don’t believe it unless you read it in such and such a magazine,’ definitely don’t believe it! In other words, don’t believe anything until you’ve been shown it to be absolutely true for yourself.” - Peter Tork, Fave, April 1968