In Memory of Peter Tork

Peter Tork of the Monkees has left us. In 2009, he had been diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare, slow-growing form of head and neck cancer. He went under successful surgery and radiation therapy, but the cancer returned in 2018 and he died of complications from the disease in his home in Connecticut on February 21^st, 2019, only a week after he turn 77 years old on February 13th. 

A friend of mine phoned me with the sad news so I didn’t have to learn about it from Twitter or the news. Peter Tork will forever have a special place in my heart as he was the only one of the Monkees who agreed to help me when I wrote my Monkees biography twenty years ago.

I’m not old enough to have been born into Monkees-fandom and growing up in Denmark, I didn’t know about them being a TV show as in my country we only knew them as the pop group behind the hits “I’m A Believer” and “Daydream Believer”. Not until 1986 were we finally able to receive British TV stations via cable, and I caught my first glimpse of a Monkees show. I was hooked straight away and became a die-hard fan to the extend, that I wrote a biography about The Monkees entitled “The Monkees – caught in a false image”, which was published in 2001

Originally, I contacted all four Monkees, but only Peter Tork got back to me, so the book ended up being based on interviews I conducted with him back in 1997 and he was brilliant. Warm, witty, intellectual, sarcastic, funny, clever and very, very kind. He even sang to me! I’ll never forget him for this. The book ended up a bit “lopsided” somehow as the views in the book was mostly Peter Tork’s, but in a way I found it fair as the three others had already published their autobiographies and Peter Tork never did. I hope my book does him credit.

I only saw Peter Tork on stage once and that was with the Monkees at their reunion concert on March 19^th, 1997, in Wembley Arena in London, England. It was a wonderful two-hour non-stop concert where Peter Tork stood out in the Monkees song “Your Aunty Grizelda”, in his solo, a cool rocking version of Little Richard’s “Lucille”, and especially in Bach’s toccata in D-minor on piano as it got the biggest applause of the evening. Peter Tork truly was an extremely gifted musician and a brilliant entertainer with a sharp, sophisticated humor and I am so glad that I got to see him live on stage.

Thank you, Peter, for your kindness and for the countless hours of entertainment you gave me, both with the Monkees and your solo projects and thank you for all your wise words that made me think, laugh and know for sure that you made the world a better place. Thank you too for the friendships you made me find. If it wasn’t for the Monkees I would never have found my loyal penfriend through 30+ years and former proofreader Debby as she lives on the other side of the world in Australia! I am forever grateful. My thoughts are with his Peter Tork’s wife, children, family and friends. Rest easy, Peter.

A third, up-to-date edition of the ebook version of “The Monkees – caught in a false image” will be available soon.