#peter tork
this scene lives in my heart
Peter Tork onstage and backstage with Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Coco Dolenz, Rodney Bingenheimer and members of the Elton John band at the Starwood Club in Hollywood on March 24, 1977. Photo 3 by Henry Diltz; photo 4 from the collection of Rodney Bingenheimer, published in Monkees Tale(1985).
“In the mid-seventies, Tork’s place in the human scheme of things was anything but clear. ‘I was kind of half wanting to get my career back together again, but not doing a great deal about it,’ he said. ‘I was playing odds and ends here and there and not making out terribly well. The woman I was living with, who would later become my wife, was teaching at a school on the beach in southern California. Through the grapevine we heard that there was a job open at a small private school in Santa Monica.’ Another ego might have found the shift in rank disastrous, a falling from grace to mere mortalhood, with the screams of the crowds – instead of the alarm clock – still ringing in your ears.
‘I believe I’m meant to do whatever it is I do,’ Tork stated. ‘I don’t want to say it was easy, but sometimes getting up at eleven o'clock is not easy for me now.’ The two professions were not entirely dissimilar. ‘You try to be of use,’ he said. ‘You try not to just while away the empty hours, either as an entertainer or a teacher. The long-term relationship that you build up in teaching with what could be compared to an audience has a dynamic of its own – that I found to be very interesting. But the thrill of a good job of entertaining, when you know you’re hot and everybody else thinks you’re hot, is really unmatched for me.’
Tork taught English at this school for a year until its director died and the school collapsed. He found another teaching job at a different school, one that had a much more restrictive atmosphere. ‘What had gotten me out of organized show business in the first place,’ said Tork, ‘were the tensions involved with having to deal with power-hungry people. I thought, if this is what show business is like, I don’t want to have any part of it. Then, when I worked at this highly autocratic school, I found exactly the same things going on. It was at that point that I finally decided to make my push for show business again. I thought I might as well do what I like to do, where there’s a chance for the big bucks. Even if I don’t have them, at least I’ll be doing what I enjoy.’” - When The Music Mattered(1984)
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A “cheeky” shot of Peter holding baby Hallie, circa 1970. Photo by Nurit Wilde.
(With thanks to NP fan Adrienne for sending this in!)
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