Peter Tork of the Monkees dies at 77

Peter Tork, a struggling musician who became an overnight teenage idol in the 1960s with the Monkees, died Thursday at a family home in eastern Connecticut. He was 77.

His son, Ivan Iannoli, said the cause was complications from a rare form of cancer that was first diagnosed in 2009.

The Monkees were an unabashedly manufactured band, created by Hollywood producers in the 1960s to capitalize on the astounding popularity of The Beatles. The members - Tork (the oldest, at 24), Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith - were cast as the stars of an NBC sitcom, “The Monkees” (1966-68), in which they performed and dealt with comic situations with a childlike irreverence.

Tork was positioned as the goofy one, the court jester. Director Bob Rafelson, one of the show’s creators, compared him to Harpo Marx.

Because they were created for television, did not write their own songs and did not play their own instruments (they mimed playing on camera), the Monkees were disdained by many; if the Beatles were the Fab Four, the Monkees quickly earned the derisive nickname the Prefab Four.

But they surprised many in the music industry, and perhaps themselves as well, when they became popular both on television and on the charts.

Both Tork and Nesmith were accomplished musicians - Tork played several instruments - and Dolenz and Jones were seasoned singers. But because studio musicians did the playing on the first two Monkees albums, the notion that they were not a real band persisted.

That began to change in 1967, when the group released what came to be considered its signature album, “Headquarters,” on which they played most of the instruments themselves and wrote several of the songs. Tork co-wrote some of them, and he shared lead vocals with Jones on the wistful ballad “Shades of Gray.”

Tork recorded his first solo album, “Stranger Things Have Happened,” in 1994. He later formed a blues band, Shoe Suede Blues, with which he continued to perform and record until recently. The band’s latest album, “Relax Your Mind,” was released last year.

Tork left show business shortly after leaving the Monkees and at one point taught high school in Santa Monica. There were financial problems, and personal ones as well; he dealt with alcoholism and drug abuse, and served a short prison sentence for hashish possession in 1972.

Later in his career he made guest appearances on a handful of television series, including “The King of Queens” and “7th Heaven.” His last movie role was in “I Filmed Your Death,” a horror drama yet to be released.

Tork reunited with his fellow Monkees for a world tour in 2011 and with Dolenz and Nesmith in 2012 for a tour that included a tribute to Jones, who died that year. In recent years the surviving Monkees released two albums.

Like many artists, Tork concluded that happiness came simply from doing the work. “It’s about getting to play the music full time,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. “It’s not about the following anymore, the fame game. A little bit of fame is fun, but I’ve had enough, thank you.”