During The Headquarters Recording Sessions, 1967.

During the Headquarters recording sessions, 1967.

Peter Tork: “When I broke up with The Monkees, I left because I couldn’t get those guys back into the studio to do the same kind of thing that we’d done on our third album, which was Micky on drums, Michael on guitar, me on piano, our producer on bass, Davy Jones playing rhythm sections, and then hiring the occasional string player or something like that. Micky said, ‘You can’t go back.’ He thought he was Thomas Wolfe. And Davy said, ‘I don’t wanna be banging a tambourine day in, day out. You guys, it takes you 54 takes to get your parts down, I’ve got my part down first take. Just bang a tambourine. I’m sick of banging a tambourine, Peter, I hope you don’t mind.’ ‘Okay, Davy.’ And so we went into this mixed mode. But I wanted the guys to be a real, live group. I had this Pinocchio/Geppetto complex, you know. And when they wouldn’t go for it, I really — it burned me out. And there I was being burnt out because things wouldn’t happen my way, and it was a case of His Majesty The Baby, trying to, you know, have his own way. If I had had the good sense God gave me, I might have noticed that I was having my own personal way, that is, in the sense that I wanted for myself was happening. I could be in the studio playing bass or guitar or piano on every single cut The Monkees did from then on if I wanted to, but that wasn’t enough for me, I wanted things for other people to do, otherwise I wanted to produce and direct and write the script for the whole shebang.” Q: “Why did you want everyone to be playing? Because you thought it was more honest? Or was there another reason?” PT: “I thought it was more honest, I thought it was a bigger deal, I wanted a real live group, I thought that this was the way things were done; I was a victim of the same illusions that other people were criticizing us for shattering in their lives. In other words, ‘You’re not a — you don’t just do this all by yourselves, you’re not an organic group, you don’t this, you don’t that, and how could you, you’ve broken my heart.’ As if, you know, as if we’ve broken their heart, as if it wasn’t the shattering of false illusions. If you hang on to false illusions, of course your heart’s gonna get broken.” Q: “Did you try to organize the band to maybe rebel against —” PT: “Mh-hm.” Q: “— the producer.” PT: “Well, we did organize the band, and we did get — rebel against Don Kirshner, but it was Mike and me wanting to — each for reasons of our own — and Micky and Davy went along. And then we did the thing, and then everybody said, ‘Well, that’s enough of that, thanks very much.’ And I went, ‘No, no, no, you’ve got to do it the way we planned, the way I had in mind for us to do,’ you know. The fact that everybody went along with what looked like my plan obscured my vision of the fact that everybody was doing what it was they thought they had to do for reasons of their own. And when their reasons changed, and their behavior changed, and my plan didn’t change, I went after them screaming to try to mend my shattered illusions. What a jerk.” - NPR, 1983

“I’m so fond of Headquarters because that was the one we actually got to play on, that was our album, that was the garage band that we actually became playing its debut album. And we had a good time and I thought we put some good records together, and I thought — it stands up. It’s a little thin, but what the heck. So were we at the time. (laughs)” - Peter Tork, GOLD 104.5, 1999