Top Five Monkees Songs: Peter Tork

I wanted to write some more about Peter Tork, and what better way to do so than through a Top Five Songs post?  While I imagine I’ll probably get around to the other three Monkees sooner or later, today is all about Peter.  No easy task for a first crack at this, since the songs on the show don’t feature him nearly as much as his bandmates.  But, after some totally-necessary online research, I’ve familiarized myself with some lesser-known tracks and am now prepared to do a Peter Tork Top Five.

 “Your Auntie Grizelda” – Might as well start with the classic – this was Peter’s one signature song from the TV show.  Released on the band’s second album, it’s something of a novelty number, an odd little rock piece with a good beat and just a hint of nonsense.  Although Peter’s singing is a little dubious here, he makes up for it by bringing lots of energy and gusto to the proceedings.  In the end, it’s a relentlessly fun song that served as a slightly kooky background for a number of amusing Monkee romps.

Best moment:  I like the higher parts that come in near the end of each verse, a la, “I know she’s having a fit. / She doesn’t like me a bit…”  Again, there’s so much energy here that’s just kind of infectious.  I also admittedly love the interlude of random noises in the middle – it makes me smile to imagine Peter recording that part.

“Tear the Top Right Off My Head” – I’ve liked this Peter-penned song since I heard him singing the first verse/chorus acoustically with Micky in the middle of a Monkees episode – not as a performance, just their two characters hanging around singing together.  It was never given a full performance on the show and it wasn’t on any of the band’s studio albums, but I’ve found a couple full versions of it online that were released on Missing Links albums of their lesser-known songs (this one, with Peter on lead vocals, is my favorite.)  It’s a simple tune with a catchy beat and a nice atmosphere.  I just really love the whole feel of it – definitely my favorite of the songs he wrote for the group over the years.

Best moment:  A couple here.  First of all, I really like the chorus itself, the way the guitar goes into high-gear as it kicks off and just the romantic recklessness of that notion, “You tear the top right off my head, / You blow my mind.”  I also like the line in the last verse, “Touch my lips with your fingertips” – there’s something lovely in that.

“(I Prithee) Do Not Ask for Love” – I discovered through the bonus tracks on the albums available through Amazon Prime that both Davy and Micky have recorded this song, but I was introduced first to Peter’s version, performed as part of the truly-insane 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee TV special from 1969.  It’s far and away my favorite part of that special, quiet and stripped-down amid a lot of whacked-out stuff going on.  I dig the sitar in the background, and while now, having heard Davy and Micky’s versions, I can admit Peter doesn’t sing it as well as either of them, I like his gentle, spare rendition of the song.

Best moment:  Probably the chorus, the rolling beat of it that Peter rides like a wave until it breaks with, “Thou workest in me / Slavery…”  There’s something very earnest in his vocals that I like, and it feels fitting to the number.

“Come On In” – I’ve taken an impromptu crash course in Peter Tork’s songs over the last couple weeks, and for my money, this is the one with the best singing.  Also from a Missing Links Album, it’s a mellow, moody song that’s really well-suited to Peter’s voice, and he sounds great on it.  It’s good proof that he wasn’t a bad singer, he just fit into a particular style/range – when the song is a good fit for me, it really works, as it does here.  Lovely and just a little plaintive.

Best moment:  I like every time the tempo increase comes in, the way Peter’s vocals just sort of climb along with that build-up until it settles back down again.  Good rhythm, and it makes the song a lot more dynamic and interesting.

“Wasn’t Born to Follow” – Okay, so some of my favorite Monkees songs are the ones Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote (I love “Sometime in the Morning” so much.)  This one is an interesting case.  Apparently, Goffin and King wrote it for the Monkees back in 1968, but it wasn’t finished at the time, and so the song wound up being recorded by a number of other artists before finally returning to the Monkees in 2016, when it was performed by Peter on their album Good Times!  This lilting folk number is another that’s well-suited for Peter’s style, and I like hearing how different his voice sounds since the ‘60s.  I like the “lone wanderer” air about it, a little wistful but not ultimately sad.

Best moment:  That slower line at the end of each verse is so pretty, especially the first verse.  I’ll include a couple lines before it just to get the full effect of the lyrics, but this part:  “The trees have leaves of prisms / That break the light up into colors / That no one knows the names of…”  Peter is in such fine voice, and he sounds especially lovely on these lines at the ends of the verses.

The Monkees (1966-1968)

Like many others, I was saddened to hear about Peter Tork’s passing last week.  Other than the basics (“I’m a Believer,” “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”), I didn’t have much exposure to the Monkees at their prime until I was in college, so I didn’t have the more typical experience of people who grew up with them as kids (either back in the ‘60s or later in reruns.)  As such, it’s maybe weird that I enjoyed them as much as I did, but I found their thoroughly silly, weird show to be very charming and their music to be catchy and cool.  They helped me decompress from homework stress plenty of times, and I still enjoy watching the odd episode now and again.

The premise is simple:  a rock band, made up of four “long-haired weirdos” living in a cluttered beach house, go on all manner of misadventures.  Episodes range from more usual fare – one (or more) of the guys trying to woo a particular girl, the band schemes to get a record deal – to off-the-wall – the guys are kidnapped by pirates, the CIA recruits the band to catch Russian spies – to downright bizarre – whatever on earth is going on in their final episode.  At the center of it all are the endearing Davy (the romantic,) Micky (the goof,) Mike (the voice of reason,) and Peter (the “dummy.”)

This post is going to be a little all-over-the-place, and I want to talk more particularly about Peter later, but I’ll just get started and see where I wind up.  First off, I kind of love that their TV show is so weird and wild.  There are definite kids’-show antics, like goofy schemes involving the guys wearing disguises and faux-spooky romps with monsters.  There are also fun fantasy cutaways, surprisingly-sly bits of fourth-wall-breaking humor every now and then, unexpected serious/touching moments, and individual scenes where one or more of the guys are for-sure high as a kite.  I enjoy little touches like a pair of one-shot characters being named George and Lenny, I enjoy how the more clean-cut mod look goes out the window between seasons with Micky’s curly fro and Peter’s love beads, and I can honestly say that every episode makes me smile.  Also, deep questions – where does a rock band get that much dynamite?

And obviously, there’s the music too.  Swept up in nostalgia after Peter’s death, I discovered that much of their music is available on Amazon Prime (three of their studio albums and a greatest-hits compilation,) and listening to it since the weekend has reminded me how good their stuff is.  “Prefab” or not, you can’t deny how listenable so many of these songs are.  There are the usual suspects, like “Mary, Mary,” “Daydream Believer,” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” but I also want to shout out a few of my personal favorites:  “Sometime in the Morning,” “You Just May Be the One,” and “She Hangs Out.”  In the years since I became a low-key fan, I’ve read a little about how Mike Nesmith in particular had a part in the creation of the modern music video, and the music sequences on the show were an early predecessor of that.  Whether filmed performances, montage “Monkee romps,” or a combination thereof, these musical interludes were a great way to further the synergy between TV show and actual band.

Really, just how the group came about is interesting to me, the fact that it was intentionally designed and built by a studio.  I’m sure that was really tough for the four band members/actors to navigate, as the show brought with it enormous fame but the lingering attitude that they were manufactured, not “real” in the way that most bands were.  In years since, we’ve become more used to prefabricated music sensations, like the boy bands of the ‘90s/’00s and contests like American Idol or The Voice.  But the stigma around that type of success is still with us – boys bands continue to get tons of scorn, and we’ve seen how many American Idol winners aren’t fully taken seriously unless they’re able to distance themselves from their American Idol image.

For the Monkees, though, the way they were manufactured actually made room for them to be a really interesting group because they were all so different.  Under ordinary circumstances, what would be the chances of Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith ending up in the same band?  Their styles and their sounds were all different, but because they’d been picked out by some studio suits who brought them all together, the result was one band whose sensibilities could be really eclectic.  Something I really like about the albums available on Amazon Prime is that most of them are remastered and include a lot of bonus tracks, and so I’ve come across a handful of songs with different versions sung by multiple Monkees.  It’s cool how the same song has a completely different feel when sung by, say, Mike versus Micky.  It’s not just the vocals that change – the whole feel is different.  And yet, it’s all the Monkees.  I like that.

As I said, I can’t finish this post without talking about Peter Tork.  When it comes down to it, Mike is probably my favorite, but Peter is a very close second.  On the show, I like how Peter’s “dimness” is often interchangeable with his sweet innocence.  There’s the classic “The Devil and Peter Tork,” in which the other three band together to save Peter after he accidentally winds up selling his soul to the devil in exchange for playing the harp.  I like how indulgently the other Monkees sigh, “No, Peter,” when he does something clueless, and I love this one quick bit in a random episode where each of the guys is shown imagining a beautiful woman on their arm, but in Peter’s case, he’s just hugging an enormous stuffed tiger – bless him.  Although he never sings nearly as much as the other guys, I still like seeing the ways his talent as an instrumentalist and songwriter comes through.  Like Davy Jones before him, even though so many years have past, I think many of us still have this preserved image of Peter as a young musician in the ‘60s.  As such, it’s hard to think that he’s gone, and we’ll all miss him.

I also want to mention what was probably my actual first exposure to the Monkees:  their guest appearances on Boy Meets World, most memorably, the season 3 episode with the Matthews parents’ 20^th anniversary.  While Peter and Micky had both popped up before on separate episodes (as Topanga’s dad and Alan’s buddy, respectively,) this episode brought both of them back, along with Davy as a former friend/hanger-on from an old backpacking trip through Europe.  Naturally, it culminates in them saving the anniversary party with an impromptu performance of Alan and Amy’s song, “My Girl.”  I remember how much I enjoyed the episode as a kid without knowing the significance of the actors in it, and it was a lot of fun to go back and see it again after being introduced to the Monkees proper.  Good times.

Warnings

Some don’t-try-this-at-home stuff, occasional veiled drug references, and an unfortunate amount of racial insensitivity (including way too many white people playing Asians and Latinx people in one-off episodes.)