Name: Peter Tork on Letterman, July 8, 1982
Uploaded: 2015-11-27T02:18:49.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Peter Tork on Letterman, July 8, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-11-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Peter Tork on Letterman, July 8, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-11-27. Transcript available.

Peter Tork on Letterman, July 8, 1982

One of these lucky ladies is going to win a dream date with former monkey,
Peter Tork.
You must be very excited about tonight.
I'm thrilled about tonight. I don't even want to give it away. I'm so thrilled.
All right, well, let me...
As you know, tonight, ladies and gentlemen,
when someone in our studio audience will win a date with former monkey, Peter Tork.
Now, here's how this works.
Sure, go ahead and applaud if you like.
Fifteen years ago, every girl in the world wanted a date with one of the
monkeys,
but there just weren't enough of those lovable mop tops to go around.
Today, there is a new generation of girls, and they still want dates with the
monkeys,
and who can blame them?
So, Late Night is proud to have the opportunity to let one lucky girl in our
studio audience win a date
with former monkey, Peter Tork, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, bear with me, girls.
I just have to explain the rules first.
It's something the legal department is making me do.
Before the show, we pre-selected five finalists for the Win a Date contest.
Their names are sealed in envelopes...
and will be chosen by drawing.
So now, if we may, let's take one more look at our finalists,
who all must be on needles and pins right now.
I know I am.
All of those folks are the...
Where... Oh, there they are.
Okay, now, we're going to bring out Mr. Tork right now,
and he's going to select his dream date for the evening.
I'm very excited about all of this.
I'm excited, too, David.
I'm very excited about all of this.
I'm excited, too, David.
All right, now, may we have the drum, please?
The lovely Marie O'Donnell, ladies and gentlemen.
That's all right.
I'll get them half-sold later.
Do we, uh, do we, uh...
Thank you very much, Marie.
Now...
Do we beat the drum, David?
We, uh...
Um...
We're going...
I'm going to spin this.
Is that correct?
All right, we'll mix these up.
Is that about enough?
Oh, let's go a little more, shall we?
Just a little more.
Okay, Peter.
Why don't we fix your time, David?
Select the lucky winner of the dream date with Peter Tork, if you will.
I know my hand is guided.
By a power greater than myself.
And here it is.
Yeah, it's funny.
There's no name on the envelope.
No, we'll open it up.
Oh, open it up.
We'll see who the lucky winner is.
It's very exciting here on the David Letterman Show, I must say.
You want me to, uh, read that for you?
Uh, you want it?
Please.
Yes, all right.
Get ready, ladies.
Esther Pollack.
Come on down.
Come on down.
Congratulations, Esther.
This is, uh, Peter Tork, and, uh, it probably goes without saying that, uh, you,
you must
have been a big Monkees fan, huh?
Of course.
Yeah.
Uh, let's see.
For everybody else who was not chosen, uh, do not be a despondent.
We have, uh, Monkees albums for everyone else who was not chosen.
All right.
Now.
Dollar, uh, $1.47 in the clearance bins.
All right.
Now, Esther, uh, well, they've grown up, haven't they?
Uh.
Steady, David.
Bill Wendell, uh, where, uh, is our happy couple going to spend their dream
date?
Dave, Peter, and his date will be whisked off to Rockefeller Center's snazzy
green room
in the heart of New York City, New York, where they'll watch a taping of
America's fastest
growing late night show, Late Night with David Letterman.
Very exciting.
We'll just go, all right, uh, yeah, Esther, uh, and Peter, if you come on over
here, uh,
I know you, uh, have a lot to talk about.
We're, uh, going over to the dream, uh, date of a lifetime.
Thank you, Bill, here in the, uh, Esther, this is the green room.
Where are you from?
Uh, Florida and St. Louis.
Florida and St. Louis.
At the same time?
All right.
I think Esther's done some time.
Uh, now, just come on in here.
This is our actual green room.
Have a seat there, Esther, if you will.
And, uh, Peter, over.
Uh, let me introduce you to your...
Here, let me help her with that.
I don't think you'll have a seat.
Let me introduce you to your chaperone, uh, for the evening.
This is Larry Budd Melman.
And, uh, Peter, do you have a, uh, flower for, uh, Larry Budd?
Oh, Peter, there you go, Esther.
We have a...
It's going to be my pleasure, too.
Anything you want.
Waiter, could you step in here?
Uh, see to it that these folks get the best of everything, and go ahead and put
it on
my tab, and nothing is too good, uh, for you folks tonight.
Congratulations, Esther.
I will be checking back with you during the course of the evening.
Peter, nice to see you.
We'll be talking with you a little bit later.
Fried chicken is good enough.
Whatever you want.
No limit, huh?
Have a nice time.
And, uh, there will be photos and a souvenir album after all of this is over.
Uh, my heart is thumping a mile a minute.
We're going to pause now, but we'll be right back with Joe Piscopo.
Very nice, Esther.
Very nice, Peter.
Very nice.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes.
Yes.
There's the happy couple, Esther Pollock and former monkey, Peter Tork.
Of course, I guess once you're a monkey, always a monkey, I would think, and we'll
be talking with both of those folks a little bit later.
We have a...
Well, there they are right now.
They seem to be spellbound.
I think they're becoming more than good friends.
We'll be right back to talk with Peter Tork.
Thank you very much, Paul Schaefer.
Welcome back to the show.
Now, tomorrow night, we want to mention this one more time, our Christmas
program.
Tomorrow night, we're going to get it done early and out of the way with, so
you can really enjoy the holidays when they roll around, whenever they roll
around.
But tomorrow night, right here on this network, our Christmas show.
Now, my next guest, whom you've actually already met this evening, was a member
of a musical group that has sold over 36 million records.
Their television series was also a huge success all over the world, many, many
countries around the world.
It is still seen in most of them, though the band broke up in 1969.
Hard to believe, truly a phenomenon.
Welcome again, Peter Tork.
Hello, Peter.
Peter, how are you?
Hi, David.
Have a seat, sir.
Thank you.
How do I do?
First of all, how is the big date going?
How are you and Esther getting along?
Famously, it couldn't be better.
I'm just so glad that I told you it was going to be some extra something that
was going to guide my hand, and it's true.
It's been one of the, been a high point in my day.
What kind of things are you doing back there?
Well, we have, we've been graciously serving.
Well, there's Esther now.
She's watching you talk right now.
Hi, Esther.
How are you?
I hope it's, I hope it's all right.
We, you can see that we're having, we were having pizza and chicken.
Oh, yeah.
There's no, no fair too good for us.
I'm really glad that the, at the height of the success of your television
program, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to catch you off.
It's quite all right, please.
I didn't have anything to say, I'm sure.
Did you ever, did you ever have a win a date contest for real that one of those
fan magazines would sponsor?
Yeah, but I lost.
You didn't get to go out with me?
I didn't get the, I didn't get to win the girl, no.
For people who, it's hard to believe people watching don't know about the
television show,
The Monkees and the group and so forth, how did that begin?
How did the group come together?
How did the show start?
Well, the thing about the group, it's interesting, that sort of, when you say
The Monkees, you think of a couple of things.
One was a TV show, one was four actors who played characters with their own
names.
Like, right there, it says Peter Torkman.
That was the name of the character I played.
Right.
He was really stupid.
But it's all right, I'm real intelligent, folks.
That's the chaperone there.
Yes, our chaperone, he's taking good care of Esther.
Yeah, I wasn't worried that maybe you'd make a move on her while you were gone,
but...
Well, Esther is an enormously attractive woman.
There she is.
There she is, yeah.
Yes.
Esther asked me to put in a good word for her.
She said, you noticed that the Losers got albums, but Esther wanted me to make
sure that she got one for Esther.
Now, you were talking about how you were four actors on your show.
Well, the cast of the show was put together by audition, and I tried out for
the part, and I got it.
Uh-huh.
Yep.
Now, had you musical experience to that point?
Yes, I had.
I'd been a singer in the Greenwich Village stages for two and a half years,
singing my little ditties with my banjo and guitar.
Nesmith, Mike Nesmith, my ex-partner.
And if you're watching this, Mike, eat your heart out.
Uh...
He, uh, he'd been a folk singer, and, uh, Mickey and Davey, who were selected,
uh, for their acting experience, were also musicians, although they weren't, uh,
instrumentalists.
You know, we, we, they learned how to play their instruments, and, uh, when we
went on the road, uh, we actually did play our own...
Yeah, now, tell me about that.
The show came first, and then the, the records started to come, right?
Uh, as it were, yeah.
Well, the, the whole concept, as far as I know, the whole, they don't tell me
everything, folks, I'll tell you.
Uh, the whole thing was thought of as a package, and, uh, they selected the
guys, and they hired Don Kirshner to make the music, um, and, uh, which he did,
uh, and, uh, very successfully, too.
The records, uh, have, uh, at one point, the Monkees, as a recording project,
outsold the Beatles.
Um, I find myself, it's real interesting, I find myself taking only very little
credit for all of that, because one of the things about the project, it serves
to distinguish between the project and the actors and the, and the crew.
When you said the Monkees on stage, you meant the four actors, or musicians, or
whatever we were at the time, but the Monkees, as a whole thing, was a
television show production.
It's, like, you're not the David Letterman show, you're David Letterman
starring in the, and it's like that kind of a thing.
Now, when, uh, when you, uh, started to become more than a TV show, you became
a musical group, you had to go out.
That's right.
And, uh, how, how, what happened when you had to perform the music that had not
been recorded by you guys to begin with, or, or had it?
We, well, uh, the first two albums were put out pretty much without our help as
instrumentalists.
And we went out on the road, and we did those two, we did most of the songs
from those.
Uh, I'm an experienced musician, I've been, I've been playing, uh, piano and
guitar and French horn practically continuously since I've been nine years old,
and boy am I winded.
So, was it, uh, oh God, well.
Was it more difficult than we would imagine it to be, or not quite so difficult?
I don't know, how difficult do you imagine it to be, David?
Well, to me it seems it would be impossible if I had to now suddenly become a
musician to play music that people had heard me play on a TV show that I never
played.
Well, I don't, uh, I don't know, David, did you ever play any music at all?
No, no.
You ever took piano or sang or anything like that?
No, no.
Well, it would probably be very tough.
Yeah, it would be almost tough.
On the other hand, but what, the point I'm trying to make is these guys did
have musical experience.
Mickey was a group, a lead singer, he was a group all by himself.
Stop.
He was a lead singer for a group called The Missing Links.
Ironic, huh?
And David Jones was a singer on Broadway.
And so neither of these guys was, like, musically bereft, if you know what I
mean.
And so when it came time to just teach them an instrument, they picked it up
readily.
So it was Mike, and Mike was an experienced musician, and I was, and we just
taught these guys simple parts.
We reduced the parts to a mere smidgen of their former selves, and went out on
the road.
And we enjoyed ou