Peter Tork died Thursday at 77. He was a guitarist, keyboardist and bassist for the Monkees. And he was a native of Mansfield, Connecticut.
Long before he pounded the keys on “Daydream Believer,” Peter Tork went by the name Peter Halsten Thorkelson. His father was an economics professor at the University of Connecticut.
Tork went to E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, where he played French horn and guitar. He was part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s. That’s where musician Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield recruited him to join a made-for-TV pop act called the Monkees.
The irony? The talented multi-instrumentalist originally wasn’t allowed to play his own instruments in the pre-fabricated band. It was a unique arrangement – as he later told David Letterman.
“It’s interesting, when you say the Monkees, you think of a couple of things. One was a TV show, one was four actors who played characters with their own names. Peter Tork? That was the name of the character I played. He was really stupid [audience laughs].”
Tork wasn’t satisfied to play the dumb one. He left the band in 1969, just after their rambling psychedelic film odyssey, “Head.” But he rejoined the group from time to time for reunion tours. Most recently, just last year for the band’s thirteenth album, “Christmas Party.” Tork took the lead with a banjo for “Angels We Have Heard On High.”
Tork was diagnosed with cancer in 2009. But he told fans he was cancer-free by the end of the year. He told Minnesota Public Television in 2011 he saw himself as a survivor.
“Thing that is most important to me is that I haven’t given up. Haven’t quit. Haven’t quit doing the music, haven’t quit doing what we call the exploration of the mystery.”
A cause of death hasn’t been announced for Tork.
