Hey, Hey: Peter Tork finally enjoys Monkee business
By Larry Getlen • Bankrate.com

Peter Tork is an intelligent man. He revels in Bach and Dvorak, and loves building his knowledge in history and various schools of thought.

As such, being a Monkee has been, at times, a source of frustration.

The Monkees, also known as the Prefab Four, were a huge hit in the '60s among the teeny-bopper crowd, and anathema to the hipsters, stoners, and musicheads who defined the psychedelic era and made the music of the '60s the stuff of legend. If a defining sentiment of the era was a search for truth and reality, then The Monkees were the fluffy musical counterpoint.

The Monkees as a band were, by all accounts, fake. They were actors, hired to play roles, to be goofy and sing cheery songs that others wrote. They didn't play their own instruments on their albums.

But for the band's members, this perception presented conflict. None, it seems, was harder hit than Peter Tork. Pre-Monkees, Tork was a folk musician who could have easily wound up with a very different career, one in which his music and talent played well to the peace-and-love hippie crowd. In fact, he was introduced to the creators of The Monkees by a folkie friend who had himself auditioned for the group, only to go in another musical direction -- Stephen Stills.

As with many young groups of that and prior eras, The Monkees didn't adequately protect or invest their earnings, and by the end of their brief run as teen idols, Tork was back where he started -- a struggling musician with no money. He waited tables and taught school, and lived his life as if The Monkees' success never happened -- until the reunions began in the '80s. Now, as a regular on the reunion circuit, Tork is finally reaping some of the financial benefits of the phenomenon that was The Monkees.

Bankrate.com spoke with Tork from his California home to talk about his post-Monkees life, and the all-too-fleeting nature of fame.

Bankrate.com: After The Monkees' initial wave of success, how were you situated financially?

PETER TORK: As it turns out, when The Monkees folded, I had a certain substantial amount of money, but it was in a limited partnership. Other than that, I had a debt with the IRS, a car, and a guitar, and that was it.

B: What was the limited partnership?

PT: It was a property holding.

B: Separate from The Monkees?

PT: Yes.

B: What about money from The Monkees?

PT: That was it. I had invested it in that limited partnership, and aside from my car and my guitar, I had nothing. And I had a $35,000 debt with the IRS.

B: So what did you do to sustain yourself?

PT: The Monkees started reruns after a year, so that was a paycheck, and then I just basically lived cheaply and did a few odd gigs here and there, some musical and some table waiting. I actually waited tables for a year in Marin County (California).

B: After The Monkees?

PT: Yeah. And I taught school for three years. I taught high school -- social, English. Let me see (fellow Monkee Michael) Nesmith do that.

B: Did the kids remember The Monkees?

PT: Oh yeah, sure.

B: Were they freaked out that they were being taught by Mr. Tork?

PT: No, it was Peter. They were relatively informal schools. I gave them half a class to put it all on the table, to ask whatever questions they wanted, and then they had to get their damn grades. So we got to work. The initial thing wore off.

You know, what's funny about this stardom thing is that it really requires remove, requires distance. You get to hanging with somebody long enough, and the star thing fades pretty far into the background. What you deal with is a human being, and the human does take the place of the star. That happens pretty quickly in schools with kids, who are, "Oh, Peter Tork is our teacher, yeah, and did you see that dishy kid in math class?" It's a big deal for about a quarter of a second, and then it's on to the next thing. There's a new sensation every minute.

B: How did it work that someone who was involved with such a success wound up not being rich when that was over?

PT: There wasn't that much money. Of the four of us, only Mickey (Dolenz) came out of it with anything, and that's because he came from a showbiz family, and his mother minded his money. He bought a car, and she saw to it that he had insurance right away, so that when it rolled down the driveway and turned over and crashed, it was covered. Because he happened to mention that he got a new car, she ran out and got insurance. She took care of his business faster than he could think of it, and the result was that after The Monkees, he had a substantial little nest egg and a good-sized house, and he could afford to keep it, and he had his life in order. But we were hired hands. We got the gig, and they paid us minimal. They discouraged us from having any management of our own, separate from them -- to keep costs down. It was the right move. We were very young, we didn't know what we were doing, and they took advantage.

B: When did you reach a point in your life when you were comfortable? Did the reunion tours help a little bit?

PT: Yeah, the reunion tours helped me a lot. In fact, they did it all.

B: Are you now comfortable, in better shape?

PT: Yeah.

B: Now that you're comfortable, are you an investor?

PT; I don't work the market. My money is stashed, but it's stashed in lower-drama instruments, the stock market at a remove. There are a couple of money market funds, basket funds, but I don't invest directly myself at all.

B: Is that because you've been through such tough times that you can't see taking that kind of risk?

PT: Partly that, and partly because to get more deeply involved, I'd have to spend more time tending it. I'm not remotely interested in tending to the stock market.

-- Posted: March 2, 2001