Peter Tork of the monkeys dies at the age of 77: NPR

Peter Tork, a member of the 1960s rock and television quartet The Monkees, died Thursday. He was 77 years old.

His death was announced on his official Facebook page and his website. "Peter has succumbed to a 10-year battle with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer of the salivary glands," we read.

The Monkees were a musical group designed for television whose comic ups and downs were designed after the classic Beatles movies. Night of a hard day and Help me!

Their show began in 1966 and lasted only two seasons. But he won an Emmy in 1967 for his exceptional humorous series. The Monkees became overnight stars, producing a series of No. 1 hits such as "Last Train to Clarksville", "Daydream Believer" and "I'm Believer". Their record sales in 1967 exceeded the Beatles and Rolling Stones combined.

Despite their commercial success, including six Top 10 songs and five Top 10 albums, critics hammered them for their genesis of pop culture and the fact that they did not play on their own records at first. .

"Almost all of their debut was written by a stable of well-known songwriters, including Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, David Gates, Neil Sedaka, Jeff Barry, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart," according to the Washington Post. the songs were mainly performed by session musicians. "

But their popularity was real. Finally, the band takes control of their work and plays their own instruments on their third album. Headquarter. They also started touring sold out. For a brief moment, their first act was a young guitarist by the name of Jimi Hendrix.

Tork left the group in 1968 and sought a solo career. He struggled throughout the 1970s, was jailed for possessing a small amount of hashish and ended up teaching in high school and at the waiting tables. Alcohol was also a problem, an addiction he had overcome in the early 1980s.

A combination of 1960s nostalgia and television reruns kept the Monkees in their memory and earned them a new generation of fans. The group had touring tours every ten years since the 1980s.

All the while, Tork and the others defended the band's musical integrity and dismissed criticisms that the Monkeys were only making older television producers seeking to capitalize on youth culture of the 1960s.

"I refute any claim that four men could have done what we did," Tork said in an interview with GuitarWorld in 2013. "There was a magic in this collection, we could not have chosen each other have stolen, but in the circumstances they have the good guys. "

Tork was born Peter Halstein Thorkelson on February 13, 1942 in Washington, DC. From musical training, he played many instruments, including guitar, bass, banjo and keyboards.

Davy Jones, another member of the group, died in 2012.

As recently as 2016, Tork is marveling at the power of nostalgia and the group's ability to attract audiences even when most of the music has been produced with the help of secondary musicians.

"It's not a band," Tork told The Telegraph. "It's an entertainment operation whose music is Monkee music, it took me a while to understand that, but what a great music it was! And what a wild and wonderful trip it took! "