Musician and actor Peter Tork, 77, known for having been members of the "manufactured" rock group The Monkees, has died. He had been suffering from a rare form cancer in recent years.
The Monkees, as we know, were a fictional band for a television series that was modeled on the Beatles and their two feature films A Hard Day's Night and Help! Tork and Michael Nesmith were actual musicians, while Mickey Dolenz and the late Davy Jones were actors. Life imitated art as the group pulled away from having their work done by studio musicians and actually became a full-fledge group.
The band had access to some of the best songwriters in the business, and their work holds up very well some fifty years later.
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A versatile multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Tork mostly played bass and keyboard for the Monkees, in addition to singing lead on tracks including “Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again,” which he wrote for the group’s psychedelic 1968 movie, “Head,” and “Your Auntie Grizelda.”
At age 24, he was also the band’s oldest member when “The Monkees” premiered on NBC in 1966. Not that it mattered: “The emotional age of all of us,” he told the New York Times that year, “is 13.”
Created by producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, “The Monkees” was designed to replicate the success of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” director Richard Lester’s musical comedies about the Beatles.
The band featured Mr. Tork alongside Michael Nesmith, a singer-songwriter who played guitar, and former child actors Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones, who played the drums and sang lead, respectively. Like their British counterparts, the group had a fondness for mischief, resulting in high jinks involving a magical necklace, a monkey’s paw, high-seas pirates and Texas outlaws.
The Monkees lasted just two seasons, but the series and the band had a big cult following.
Tork was married four times and had three children.
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