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Peter Halsten Thorkelson (born February 13, 1942),
better known as Peter Tork, is an United
States|American musician and actor. 

He was born in Washington, D.C. and began studying
piano at the age of nine, and showed an aptitude
for music by learning to play several different
instruments, including the banjo and acoustic and
bass guitars. Tork dropped out of college and
moved to New York City, where he became part of
the folk music scene in Greenwich Village during
the first half of the 1960's.  While there he
befriended other up and coming musicians such as
Stephen Stills, and after both moved to the Los
Angeles, California|Los Angeles area Stills
suggested Tork audition for a new television
series about four pop-rock musicians.  Tork got
the job and became one of the four members of The
Monkees, who ended up being both characters in a
television Situation comedy|sitcom and a band in
their own right.


Tork was the most proficient musician of the four,
and though the group did not play their own
instruments on their first two albums, after that
point he played keyboards, bass guitar, banjo, and
other instruments on their recordings.  He also
wrote the closing theme song of the second season
of The Monkees, "For Pete's Sake." On the
television show, he was relegated to playing the
dummy; even though he was actually an intelligent,
literate person.


After two years of the show, six albums, a movie,
and a television special, Tork had had enough and
quit the group, striking out on his own with a
group called “Release.” This new band
never achieved success, and problems with drugs
including alcohol led to his leaving show business
entirely for a few years while he taught school
and coached basketball.  Finally in 1980 he quit
drinking and the next year gave up drugs, and in
1986 he rejoined fellow-Monkees Davy Jones and
Micky Dolenz for a 20th anniversary reunion tour. 
Since then he has intermittently toured with his
former bandmates and also played with his own
bands The Peter Tork Project and Shoe Suede Blues
as well as in solo performances and with touring
partner James Lee Stanley.


==External links ==

*http://www.petertork.com/ The Official Peter Tork
Website
* imdb name|id=0868074|name=Peter Tork