PETER TORK, SINGER & BASSIST OF THE MONKEES DIED

​The affable performer played with the Monkees from their earliest days as a made-for-TV band all the way through their recent reunion tours.
Monkees bassist and singer Peter Tork, who played with the group from their earliest days as a made-for-TV band in the Sixites through their recent reunion tours, died Thursday of unknown causes. He was 77. Tork’s sister, Anne Thorkelson confirmed the affable musician’s death to The Washington Post.
“I am told he slipped away peacefully,” his Monkee bandmate Michael Nesmith said in a statement. “Yet, as I write this my tears are awash, and my heart is broken. Even though I am clinging to the idea that we all continue, the pain that attends these passings has no cure.”
The sentiment was echoed by Micky Dolenz, his other surviving bandmate. “There are no words right now,” he said. “Heartbroken over the loss of my Monkee brother Peter Tork.”
Tork played a lovable dimwit on the Monkees TV show, but in real life, he was an accomplished songwriter and guitarist/bassist that played on many of their key recordings and wrote numerous songs for the group, including “Can You Dig It?” and “For Pete’s Sake.” “I was hired to be an actor on a TV show,” he told Rolling Stone in 2016. “The producers did have hopes that something musical would come out of us when they cast the four of us. But if we couldn’t have done the music, they would have been alright with us just making the TV show.”