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.)

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018, PG-13)

*Disclaimer: Okay, so the whole second half of my added disclaimers for the year are basically a requiem for my fandom of Bryan Singer. This is the only Singer film (yes, Dexter Fletcher took over after he was fired, but Singer is still the credited director) that I saw after the TimesUp-era rumors started resurfacing. Even though, as I’ve said, these were far from the first allegations I heard against Singer, I was far more ready to listen to them this time. In light of that, I was uncomfortable with the idea of seeing Bohemian Rhapsody, but I still saw it. If I were doing this again today, I’d hope I would choose not to see the movie.*

 

I debated on seeing this movie, even though spending a couple hours listening to Queen music is my idea of a good time and it looked like Rami Malek was pretty awesome in it.  There was the Bryan Singer of it all – even though he was fired and replaced halfway through filming, he’s still given the director credit – as well as rumblings that the movie downplayed Freddie Mercury’s bisexuality.  As it stands, I wound up splitting the difference and seeing the movie about five weeks in, still contributing to the box office but not the opening numbers.

In England in the 1970s, Farrokh Bulsara finds an in with a band in need of a new lead singer.  Changing his own name (to Freddie Mercury) and the band’s (to Queen,) he meshes his bold ideas with those of his bandmates, and they set out to constantly reinvent their own sound, the radio waves, and the concert-going experience.

We’ll get this out of the way first:  the concert scenes are everything, and it goes without saying that the climactic Live Aid sequence is incredible.  Using Freddie’s real vocals wherever possible was absolutely the right choice – it may feel like a bit of a cheat at first glance, but 1) everyone involved has been very upfront about it, and 2) it’s worlds better than sitting through the movie preoccupied with how much the singing doesn’t sound like Freddie’s.  So yes, that’s not Malek’s voice, but he’s every bit as amazing as you’d expect as Freddie.  His physicality is a force to be reckoned with, and he does a great job balancing Freddie’s audacious showman side with his insecurities and emotional vulnerability.  Malek is electric to watch from start to finish.

The actors playing Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon don’t get nearly as much front-and-center time as Malek, but all three turn in really nice performances as well.  They sell the “Queen is a family of misfits loved by misfits” angle, and I appreciate that, even though Freddie is depicted as the biggest visionary, the other three are still shown making revelatory contributions to iconic songs.  I love the scene where Freddie tries to sell a producer on the outlandish notion of A Night at the Opera and the other three back him up every step of the way. 

My interest lessens a little whenever the movie moves away from the songs into the Behind the Music-y plot of the characters’ (mostly Freddie’s) personal lives.  There’s the sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll stuff, in-fighting as Freddie’s star grows and opportunists move in, and the loneliness of being universally adored but still not feeling known.  Much of this is well-worn territory for musician biopics.  I don’t know enough to say how accurate any of it is, so I’m no help there.  But it does feel rather been-there done-that, even though, again, that’s kind of the name of the game for movies like this.

Now, how about Freddie’s sexuality?  I’d say my earlier fears – that the movie only pays lip service to his attraction to men and ends before addressing HIV – are unfounded.  The movie doesn’t portray Freddie succumbing to AIDS, but I don’t think I would’ve wanted it to.  It’s better framing it as it does, with the knowledge of what’s to come but not giving into it, not yet.  And as for Freddie’s attraction to men, it’s not ignored at all – if anything, the bi erasure leans a bit the other way.  While Freddie does haltingly come out as bi to his wife Mary, she confidently replies, “Freddie, you’re gay,” and every sexual and/or romantic encounter we see after that is with a guy.  It’s certainly within reason for people in Freddie’s life to label him as gay instead of bi (even today, that happens a lot,) but I wish there was more in the film to counter than false notion.  On the flipside, though, we see a greater emphasis on love with Mary and implied sex with men, many of them nameless.  To be fair, we do see evidence of Freddie looking for love and struggling to find it, but the overall effect does make most of his encounters with men feel colder than his relationship with Mary.

In addition to the tremendous Malek and the actors playing the other three bandmates (Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, and Joe Mazzello, none of whom I really know,) the film features some familiar faces.  Mike Myers has an enjoyable cameo, and the always-reliable Tom Hollander has a featured role.  We also get a hat trick of Irish actors from TV:  Aiden Gillen (Littlefinger on Game of Thrones,) Allen Leech (Branson on Downton Abbey,) and Aaron McCusker (Jamie Maguire on the U.K. version of Shameless.)

Warnings

Sexual content, drinking/smoking/drug use, language (including racial slurs,) and strong thematic elements.