Why Peter Tork Said 1 of The Monkees’ Songs Was Recorded Like The Beatles’ ‘Free as a Bird’
The Monkees released a song with Davy Jones’ vocals years after Jones’ death. Subsequently, Peter Tork compared the song to The Beatles‘ “Free as a Bird.” The Fab Four recorded “Free as a Bird” under similar circumstances.
Peter Tork discussed the reaction to The Monkees’ songs from the 2010s
Jones died in 2012. In 2016, The Monkees released their album Good Times! During a 2016 interview with Rolling Stones, Tork discussed the reaction to Good Times!
“The good reviews to this record were really gratifying, but part of me is amused since the record isn’t that much better than the early ones,” he said. “It’s just that the moralistic attitude is gone and that enables people to just enjoy the album.” Tork said bands were no longer expected to write their own material.
Peter Tork compared The Monkees’ ‘Love to Love’ to The Beatles’ ‘Free as a Bird’
While Good Times! was released four years after Jones’ death, it includes a song he recorded called “Love to Love.” “It’s a Neil Diamond song and it was recorded with Davy,” Tork told Entertainment Weekly in 2016. “We got to mix it and Micky [Dolenz] and I sang backups.
“After John Lennon died, The Beatles released a song that John [Lennon] had left behind and the other three made a record around that,” he said. “They reported that, ‘Well, we just pretended John had stepped out for a cup of tea.’
“In a sense, this was the same. ‘Well, Davy isn’t here at the moment, but we’re carrying on,'” he added. “It’s not like we pretended that he was still alive. It wasn’t ghoulish. We just sang what we had to sing.” According to the book The Beatles: Everything Fab Four, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr recorded “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” in the 1990s while pretending John was absent from the studio to have tea or lunch. The former is the more famous of the two songs.
How ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Love to Love’ performed on the pop charts in the United States
“Free as a Bird” was a hit. It reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for 11 weeks. “Free as a Bird” became the Fab Four’s final song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on the album Anthology 1, which topped the Billboard 200 for three weeks. The album lasted a total of 29 weeks on the chart.
On the other hand, “Love to Love” was never a single and it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Meanwhile, Good Times! reached No. 14 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for four weeks.
“Free as a Bird” was a hit and Tork felt there was a trace of it in “Love to Love.”
