Category: Monkees

From The Research Vault: Yes, Peter Tork of the Monkees can play by Mary Schmich, June 12, 2013

 Back when I was still young enough to be entertained by unrequited love, I routinely kissed Peter Tork good night.

It was the summer just before I entered high school, and I kept photos of all four Monkees — Peter, Davy, Micky, Mike — taped to my bedroom wall. Later, as I matured, I would transfer my yearning to Mike, the manliest Monkee, but during that summer, it was Peter who revved my heart.

Peter, with his floppy blond hair. Peter, with the brooding intelligence that I, alone among teeny-boppers, discerned beneath the goofy persona he displayed on TV. Peter, who waited nightly for my tender kiss.

Sweet dreams, my darling!

I would press my lips against the wall.

Until fate brings us together!

That memory blazed in my mind, brighter than yesterday, when my friend Gail asked recently if I wanted to go see Peter Tork at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.

Read Yes, Peter Tork of the Monkees can play by Mary Schmich

From The Research Vault: Teen Television: Davy Jones Fans Return Love, Support His Horses by Susan Salk

Long before Davy Jones became a Monkee, he was a horseman.

It was in the company of racehorses that he sought to make a career as a young jockey. Until, that is, his trainer lovingly kicked him out of the racing stables for his own good, with the admonishment that he shouldn’t have to be picking up after horses his whole life, says Jones’ daughter Jessica Cramer Jones.

 “My father was a broken boy when he first discovered horses,” Jones says in a telephone interview with Off-TrackThoroughbreds.com. “He was 12 when he lost his mother, and he turned to horses in his grief. They are what gave him his confidence back … horses kept him together his whole life.”

From The Research Vault: Review: Deep cuts from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at the Fonda by Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times

On Monday night in Hollywood, Tom Petty had Los Angeles ghosts on his mind as he and his longtime band the Heartbreakers opened the first of six shows at the Fonda. They introduced themselves through the Byrds’ 1967 classic “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” and paid homage to that song’s inspiration, the Monkees, with a rebuttal via “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone.” 

Read the the entire article – Review: Deep cuts from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at the Fonda by Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times