1967 and 2012; photos by Michael Ochs Archives and Leigh-Anne Dennison.
By popular demand, a comprehensive collection of Peter and Michael quotes:
“Michael used to run a hootenanny at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, and so I met him there. But that’s all, just to say hi to, pretty much.” - Peter Tork, GOLD 104.5, 1999
“I have a great deal of respect for Mike as a musician and a songwriter. He’s very good. He could make it on his own easily. Also he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.” - Peter Tork, Flip, August 1967
“Mike’s a song writer, one of the best in the country.” - Peter Tork, The San Francisco Examiner, November 23, 1968
“I remember staying at Mike’s house in Hollywood when we first started filming the series. It was the upper story of a two-story building on a little hillside. Mike’s wife, Phyllis, was wonderful. Mike and I laughed a lot and played music together. I remember that time very fondly.” - Peter Tork, When The Music Mattered (1984)
“Michael was very kind to me at the outset. He put me up through the entire shooting of the pilot process. He and his wife had a wonderful little apartment just big enough for a guest on the day bed, which overlooked Hollywood. I remember a Thanksgiving Day when the air was crystal clear in a way that I’ve never seen it before or since in L.A., and you could see all the way out to Catalina. It was wonderful. That crystal clarity symbolizes the whole era for me. Mike and I wrote a few things together. We were very comradely and very buddy buddy, and it was a wonderful time, with Mike’s then wife, Phyllis, and Christian, their little infant baby. The early days of the pilot shooting were just great by my lights and I had a wonderful time.” - Peter Tork, quoted in Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees (1996)
(Please read the following quote with a grain of salt. While the author, Glenn A. Baker, interviewed Boyce, among other people, for this book, Boyce’s recollection isn’t, to the best of my knowledge and research, verified by a second first-hand account.)
“I did give Peter a voice audition on Saturday’s Child but I had to finally say, ‘look Pete, I can’t play banjo and you can’t sing. If I played the banjo I’d sound like you singing, I have to erase the tape.’ So Peter left in a huff and came back with Michael, who pulled off his motorcycle helmet, crashed it down onto the console and demanded ‘why don’t you let Peter sing? You guys never let us come to the sessions, it’s just you two with Davy and Micky.’ So I said ‘well that’s the way it should have been in the first place Michael, you know what I mean? You should have stayed with the Randy Sparks Trio.’ In the end we let him do a couple of tracks on his own just to calm the situation down a little.” - Tommy Boyce, Monkeemania: The True Story of The Monkees (1997)
“When I heard that frail banjo over the top of my 12-string [on 'You Told Me'], I thought, ‘Boy, this is good. This is really, really good.’” - Michael Nesmith, YouTube, 2019
“At the Troubadour […], Peter Tork strolled in, banjo on his knee. Later, in-between ‘Alvin’ and a great banjo finger-picker, Peter yelled a hello to Mike Nesmith, who was standing in the upstairs darkness and the two fell into a hilarious patter routine. Peter climbed out long enough to display great talent, great warmth, great humor and, in general, a great personality. Mike did the same when, later, I asked him how the album was coming. ‘Album? Oh, Uh huh. Nice weather, yes? Album’s gonna be good. How are you. Hi, Pete, how’s the album?’” - Ginni Ganahal, TeenSet Magazine, February 1968
Q: “Being that your tastes were similar, and you both were the first to leave the group, why didn’t you form a group with Peter Tork?”
Michael Nesmith: “I don’t like Peter Tork — never have liked him, I don’t like him as a man. I have to qualify that now: Me not liking somebody doesn’t mean that they’re bad people — he could do a lot of wonderful things for and to me. Not liking someone to me is a very gut reaction — a very visceral attitude. The first reaction to Peter was one of dislike. I don’t like him, I have never liked him, and I probably will never like him. I didn’t enjoy playing in a band with Peter, and I still don’t.
Our tastes were much the same, our political beliefs were similar, our ideas of fun, pleasure, our intellectual capacity, our ability to talk to each other — we were very much alike. I have a great respect for Peter — his technical abilities on an instrument and the positions he took were well conceived ideas, always a posture with a motive, never emotional.
I don’t like my mother. She happens to be a very nice lady — never done anything that would make me not like her — but I don’t. I like my wife.” - Hit Parader, February 1972” - Hit Parader, February 1972
“There’s one song ['Come On In'] that Peter Tork sings on that Missing Links album where he sounds absolutely super. He sounds great; he’s right on the button. Sings it good and he wasn’t supposed to be a singer. The other guys were always pushing him out and Mike Nesmith was always sort of like threatening him, putting his fist through the wall doing all this kind of shit. I’m sure Peter could kick his ass if he wanted to, but he never did. Unbelievable.” - Davy Jones, The Monkees Day By Day
Q: “Are you thinking about doing any recording in the near future? An album, perhaps?”
Peter Tork: “I’d like to. I haven’t got any way of getting started. If you look around, you’ll see that you’re not exactly sitting in the luxurious mansion that someday who went through the money I did would be expected to be living in. As a matter of fact, I’m living pretty close to the bone right now. I’ve got my picture out in the Hollywood circles, and I’m getting some gigs. I’m thinking about doing some commercials. If I ever get enough money together, I’m going to go into the studio and make enough demos to get an album made. I’ve got some new material I’ve written, like ‘Ladies’ [sic] Baby,’ which would make a good album cut. If worse comes to worst, I’ll just make an album myself.”
Q: “Have you considered Michael Nesmith’s Pacific Arts label? Your bass and his lead guitar supplemented one another superbly.”
PT: “Michael at that time was somewhat of a reticent fellow. He had a hard time giving anything away, in terms of praise. He’s changed a lot. Before the transformation, he was a pretty begrudging fellow. He was not given to compliments. I have not come to know him very well since his transformation. I was thinking about getting him involved. If I have anything to show him, I’ll definitely get it to him. I hope he’s interested.” - Blitz!, May/June 1980
“Well, I have only the vaguest memory of coming close to recording for Michael’s label. I actually believe that nothing whatever was ever done. I’m not even sure I laid down a single track. Your letter reminds me that there was some indication of a potential project, but I think that’s about as far as it went.
I have no direct info about Geffen’s dumping Michael’s label. He himself might be a better source. Check out his website, videoranch.com.
Thanks for asking.
Take care.
Peter” - Ask Peter Tork, The Daily Panic, 2008
“Michael’s in a force field of his own and not much gets in there.” - Peter Tork, TV Guide, June 2000
“I still have a lot of respect for Michael.” - Peter Tork, WDBB, February 2006
"I have a lot of respect for Mike Nesmith and we’ve structured ways to work together." - Peter Tork, Phawker, circa 2012; re-published 2019
“Well, I’ve never been really close with Michael [Nesmith] for some reason. You know, I have a lot of respect for him and admiration. But somehow we’ve never integrated. We’ve never been warm with each other. We worked together and did pretty well at it really." - Peter Tork, Clevescene, March 13, 2017
“There are two common and, to me, repugnant notions about the Monkees. Number one, that I was the only one who had any talent, which is patently absurd. It’s as unfair and as unkind as it is stupid. The other one is that I was the only musician. I wasn’t the only musician and I wasn’t much of a musician. Peter was a much more skillful player than I was by some orders of magnitude. He wasn’t a singer nor was he a writer. What I was able to do was write tunes — I could sort of pull those out of a ht. But they weren’t very good, were they? I mean, they were the tunes that were on the show from time to time, so that’s what made the, seem better than they were.” - Michael Nesmith, Monkees Tale (1985)
“Everyone was accomplished—the notion I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and won’t stop—but it was not true. Peter was a more accomplished player than I by an order of magnitude, Micky and Davy played and sang and danced and understood music.” - Michael Nesmith, Rolling Stone, March 8, 2012
"There really couldn't be two more incompatible characters. Mike is pragmatic, Peter is ethereal. Peter is laid-back, Mike is impatient. Mike is oil, Peter is water." - Micky Dolenz, I'm A Believer: My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness (1993)
"I will miss him — a brother in arms.
Take flight my Brother." - Michael Nesmith, Facebook, February 2019
Q: "You were talking to the press in Australia a few months back and you said something about Peter Tork that surprised a lot of fans. You said, 'I never liked Peter and Peter never liked me.' I’d never heard that before."
Michael Nesmith: "It was something that was known on the set [of the Monkees’ TV show]. They knew Pete and I went our own ways. This wasn’t a dislike of someone who had committed some infraction against me or some sort of crime. It was just, 'Oh, this guy eats those little noodles and I don’t like ’em and I can’t eat with the guy.' It was kind of an off-putting thing. It was, 'Oh, he likes to play paintball and I don’t like to play paintball.' So we never played paintball, but every once in a while we’d find ourselves in the same paintball park because we owned it, so we had to keep it clean and do all the stuff we had to do and we did do it.
We didn’t have too many civil words to say to each other, but we also didn’t fight all the time. We just didn’t say much. There wasn’t a lot to say. Peter would play me the songs that he thought were good and I didn’t. And I would play him the songs I thought were good and he wouldn’t. Then we just left it at that. Partners in silence." - Rolling Stone, December 3, 2019
