Peter Tork of The Monkees has died at the age of 77, following a nine-year battle with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare form of tongue cancer.

Tork’s Thursday death in eastern Connecticut was confirmed by family members and was announced in a post on his Facebook page. It reads: “It is with beyond-heavy and broken hearts that we share the devastating news that our friend, mentor, teacher, and amazing soul, Peter Tork, has passed from this world.”

A native of Washington, D.C., Peter Halsten Thorkelson was born Feb. 13, 1942. He shortened his name after becoming a musician and spent time in the early 1960s on the New York folk-music scene.

A multi-instrumentalist and singer, Tork was one of the four original members of the made-for-TV-band The Monkees. The group largely shot the 1966 pilot for its Emmy Award-winning music-comedy TV series, “The Monkees,” at the Hotel del Coronado and in Del Mar.


“We stayed at the Hotel del Coronado,” Tork recalled in a 2012 Union-Tribune interview. “It took us 10 days to shoot the pilot and then we only shot 20 minutes. Boy, what a learning curve that was! Nobody knew what we were doing. It was hard, hard, hard ...

“When ‘The Monkees’ (series) was being shown, it was the only show ever comprised of all young people, with no adult figure, no manager or adviser, or kindly old grandpa or ‘Aunt Mary,’ who dispensed pearls of wisdom. None of that.

“The (adult-free) concept was a masterstroke on the part of the producers of the show. It shouldn’t have been subversive, but it was, relative to the times.”

Fueled by 11 Top 40 singles between 1966 and 1968, The Monkees sold more albums than The Beatles and the Rolling Stones — combined — in 1967. By 1970, The Monkees were history, although a number of reunions would follow in subsequent decades.


In 2012, Tork, Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz launched a Monkees’ reunion tour at California Center for the Arts, Escondido, following the death of the band’s singer and only English member, Davy Jones.

Tork worked for decades as a solo artist and band leader, but — like the other Monkees — never matched his success with the band on his own. “Relax Your Mind,” his most recent album, which he made as the leader of a blues band, was released last year.

Tork was not on board when Nesmith and Dolenz launched their 2018 “The Monkees Present: The Mike & Micky Show,” which included a San Diego show at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay.

But Tork was proud of his legacy with The Monkees, as he made clear in his 2012 Union-Tribune interview.


“Certainly, there’s nothing to compare us to,” he said at the time. “The Beatles made their own money, but we weren’t The Beatles. We were cast as the members of a (TV) show and got paid as actors and got record (sales) money, too. We got record royalties and it was substantial money. …

“It’s not like we got together (as a struggling band) and all lived on mattresses, like the Rolling Stones, in a grubby place. And how many other bands did the same thing (and struggled) and made nothing? ...

“Our legacy as being the one TV show that had no senior (authority) figures — and what that stood for socially — is, substantively, what I’m proudest of.”

Tork was married four times. His survivors include his brother, Nick; sister, Anne; fourth wife, Pamela Grapes; daughters Hallie and Erica; and son, Ivan.


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george.varga@sduniontribune.com