Peter Tork Claims Mike Nesmith Didn’t Want to Be ‘Trapped’ by the Monkees, and Didn’t Think He Was Wrong in Saying That
The Monkees television series was created by television producers looking to piggyback on The Beatles’ success. But the natural talents of its members were all their own. Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith were musicians. Davy Jones had a musical theater background, and Mickey Dolenz was a former child star. However, as the series progressed, Nesmith rebelled against the television show‘s success, and didn’t want to be “trapped” by the band, said Tork.
Mike Nesmith and his fellow Monkees bandmates, including Peter Tork, often clashed
It has long been part of The Monkees’ lore that the foursome wasn’t as close as they appeared on stage and on the set of their television series.
Rolling Stone asked Nesmith if the rumors he couldn’t get along with Jones were true. He replied, “Well, some people would say that one or both of us were fractious and couldn’t get along with anybody.
“I’ll leave that somewhere on the doorstep or the threshold of the Davy and Mike friendship, but I don’t know. We were all friends on some level, very casual work-space partners. We enjoyed, to a degree, playing music.”
In a separate Rolling Stone interview, Nesmith said this about bandmate Tork.
“We didn’t have too many civil words to say to each other, but we also didn’t fight all the time. We didn’t say much,” Nesmith admitted. “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.”
Peter Tork said that Mike Nesmith didn’t want to be ‘trapped’ by The Monkees
In an interview, Tork once claimed that Nesmith didn’t want to feel as if he would always be defined by the work he, Tork, Dolenz, and Jones did as The Monkees on television and their many LPs.
“At the very best, it was impolite,” says Tork to Wired. “Mike has this idea about who he wants to be and what he wants to do. He wants to be a serious thinker, seen as somebody significant in the world of ideas.”
“At some point,” Tork continued, “he decided it wasn’t a good idea to act like the Monkees was a wonderful thing because he’d be trapped. And I’ll have to say this for him: There’s nothing to prove to me that he was wrong.”
Mike Nesmith stayed away from The Monkees reunion tours for the better part of the 1980s
After The Monkees ended, Nesmith explored the world of country rock with his group First National Band. He skipped reunion tours in the 1980s with The Monkees — something he said was a matter of bad timing but interpreted as an embarrassment of being associated with the pop group.
However, he did appear during an encore with the three other Monkees at the Greek Theatre on September 7, 1986, at the close of the group’s 20th reunion tour, led by Dolenz, Jones, and Tork.
“Quite the contrary,” Nesmith told Rolling Stone in 2013. “It was a nice part of the resume. It was fun for me and a great time of my life.
“I mean, where do you want to be in the sixties except in the middle of rock and roll, hanging out with the scene? London was an absolute blast, and so was LA back then. There was so much going on back then.”
