Friday, February 22, 2019
By JOHN ROGERS
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES
Peter Tork, a talented singer-songwriter and instrumentalist whose musical skills were often overshadowed by his role as the goofy, lovable bass guitarist in the made-for-television rock band The Monkees, has died at age 77.
Tork’s son Ivan Iannoli told The Associated Press his father died Thursday morning at the family home in Connecticut of complications from adinoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer of the salivary glands. He had battled the disease since 2009.
“Peter’s energy, intelligence, silliness, and curiosity were traits that for decades brought laughter and enjoyment to millions, including those of us closest to him,” his son said in a statement. “Those traits also equipped him well to take on cancer, a condition he met like everything else in his life, with unwavering humor and courage.”
Tork, who was often hailed by the other Monkees as the band’s best musician, had studied music since childhood. He was accomplished on guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, banjo and other instruments. Michael Nesmith, the Monkees’ lead guitarist, said Tork was the better of the two. Tork said he played bass because none of the others wanted to.
He had been playing in small clubs in Los Angeles when a friend and fellow musician, Steven Stills, told him TV casting directors were looking for “four insane boys” to play members of a struggling rock band.
Stills, a member of the legendary rock bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, reportedly told Tork he’d auditioned and was rejected because his teeth were ugly. He thought the handsome Tork might fare better.
When the show debuted in September 1966 Tork and fellow band members Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and David Jones became overnight teen idols.
Nesmith was the serious Monkee, Jones was the cute one and Dolenz the zany one.
Tork said he adopted his “dummy” persona from the way he’d get audiences at Greenwich Village folk clubs to engage with him in the early 1960s.
During its two-year run the show would win an Emmy for outstanding comedy series and the group itself would land seven songs in Billboard’s Top 10. Three, “I’m a Believer,” ‘’Daydream Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville,” would reach No. 1.