{"id":804573,"date":"2020-02-25T10:20:21","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T17:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=957872"},"modified":"2020-02-25T10:20:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T17:20:21","slug":"flashback-peter-tork-performs-a-tender-daydream-believer-in-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-peter-tork-performs-a-tender-daydream-believer-in-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Peter Tork Performs a Tender \u2018Daydream Believer\u2019 in 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/peter-tork-flashback.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>Last week marked the one-year anniversary of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/peter-tork\/\" id=\"auto-tag_peter-tork\" data-tag=\"peter-tork\">Peter Tork<\/a>\u2019s death, but thanks to some confusion on behalf of the good people running the official Foghat Facebook account, word of his demise spread all across social media like it was fresh news. This was surely baffling to Monkees fans who have been mourning him for a year, but it did provide another chance to celebrate the man who brought a hippie spirit into the band.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you were lucky enough to see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/the-monkees\/\" id=\"auto-tag_the-monkees\" data-tag=\"the-monkees\">the Monkees<\/a> live over the past decade, you know being in the room with Peter Tork was one of the planet\u2019s happiest places to be,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/monkees-peter-tork-tribute-rob-sheffield-797659\/\">Rob Sheffield wrote last year<\/a> shortly after Tork\u2019s death. \u201cHe was the funniest Monkee, their Ringo, their truest hippie, always happy to pitch in with a banjo solo or a bit of his dazed flower-child wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tonk was diagnosed with the rare tongue cancer adenoid cystic carcinoma in 2009, but he recovered and continued to play with the Monkees through the end of their 50th-anniversary tour in late 2016. He never went public with his health problems, but things felt very ominous when his bandmates Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith announced they were touring without him in 2018. They pinned his absence on a Lead Belly tribute album Tork was recording, but it felt like they weren\u2019t giving the whole story.<\/p>\n<p> <!-- .l-article-content__pull--left --> <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m afraid I would betray a confidence if I said any more than, \u2018This is not a right time for him,\u2019\u201d Nesmith <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/monkees-micky-dolenz-mike-nesmith-announce-first-tour-as-duo-203511\/\">told <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> at the time<\/a>. \u201cHe has his reasons. They are very private.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, Tork attempted to put a more positive spin on the situation. \u201cI have in general made no secret of the fact that all these recent years of Monkees-related projects, as fun as they\u2019ve been, have taken up a lot of my time and energy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m shifting gears for now, but I wish the boys well, and I\u2019ve learned to never say never on things further down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He died almost exactly a year after that statement went out. His final shows beyond a few quick guest appearances were with the Monkees, but his main touring outfit during the last two decades of his life was his band Shoe Suede Blues. They played largely blues songs, but he never left the stage without breaking out a few Monkees classics. Here\u2019s video of Tork and the band playing \u201cDaydream Believer\u201d at the Open Arts Stage Theater in Bordentown, New Jersey, on November 29th, 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Tork didn\u2019t sing lead on the original, but it was still one of his favorite Monkees songs. \u201cI was on the piano and I came up with this opening lick which I thought was just sparklingly original,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-lists\/the-monkees-our-life-in-15-songs-103726\/daydream-believer-1967-107496\/\">Tork told <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2016.<\/a> \u201cWhat really makes the song work, I think, is the chord change on \u2018Jean\u2019 in \u2018Cheer up sleepy Jean.\u2019 It goes from a IV chord to a V chord to a III. That\u2019s a very unexpected and sweet chord change. It really grabs your attention.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lyrics have been baffling people for decades, but Tork managed to make sense of them. \u201cThere\u2019s the line, \u2018What can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen,&#8217;\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t go right in your face, but when you think about it you figure it out. You\u2019re like, \u2018OK, the guy is in a workaday world and he\u2019s got his head in the clouds. His girlfriend was a homecoming queen, but they\u2019re still scratching.\u2019 You don\u2019t get all that until you think about it for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Monkees are hitting the road this spring for a U.S. tour that kicks off April 3rd at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver and wraps up April 26th at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville. The core band just consists of Nesmith and Dolenz at this point, but they pay tribute to both Tork and the late Davy Jones every single night.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pmc-contextual-player\">\n<h3> Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/peter-tork-monkees-daydream-believer-live-2014-957872\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week marked the one-year anniversary of Peter Tork\u2019s death, but thanks to some confusion on behalf of the good people running the official Foghat Facebook account, word of his demise spread all across social media like it was fresh news. This was surely baffling to Monkees fans who have been mourning him for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-21 18:47:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}