Post-Monkees
During a trip to London in December 1967, Tork contributed banjo to George Harrison's soundtrack to the 1968 film Wonderwall. His playing featured in the movie, but not on the official Wonderwall Music soundtrack album released in November 1968. Tork's brief five-string banjo piece can be heard 16 minutes into the film, as Professor Collins is caught by his mother while spying on his neighbour Penny Lane.
Striking out on his own, he formed a group called 'Peter Tork And/Or Release' with girlfriend Reine Stewart on drums (she had played drums on part of 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee), Riley "Wildflower" Cummings on bass and - sometimes - singer/keyboard player Judy Mayhan. Tork said in April 1969, "We sometimes have four. We're thinking of having a rotating fourth. Right now, the fourth is that girl I'm promoting named Judy Mayhan." "We're like Peter's back-up band", added Stewart, "except we happen to be a group instead of a back-up band." Release hoped to have a record out immediately, and Tork has said that they did record some demos, which he may still have stored away somewhere. According to Stewart the band were supposed to go to Muscle Shoals as the backing band for Mayhan's Atlantic Records solo album Moments (1970) but they were ultimately replaced. They mainly played parties for their "in" friends and one of their songs was considered for the soundtrack to Easy Rider, but the producers - who had also produced Head - eventually decided not to include it. Release could not secure a record contract, and by 1970 Tork was once again a solo artist, as he later recalled, "I didn't know how to stick to it. I ran out of money and told the band members, 'I can't support us as a crew any more, you'll just have to find your own way'."
Tork's record and movie production entity, the Breakthrough Influence Company (BRINCO), also failed to launch, despite such talent as future Little Feat guitarist, Lowell George. He was forced to sell his house in 1970, and he and a pregnant Reine Stewart moved into the basement of David Crosby's home. Tork was credited with co-arranging a Micky Dolenz solo single on MGM Records in 1971 ("Easy On You", b/w "Oh Someone"). A bust for possession of hashish resulted in three months in an Oklahoma penitentiary in 1972. He moved to Fairfax in Marin County, California, in the early 1970s, where he joined the 35-voice Fairfax Street Choir and played guitar for a shuffle blues band called Osceola. Tork returned to Southern California in the mid-1970s, where he married and had a son and took a job teaching at Pacific Hills School in Santa Monica for a year and a half. He spent a total of three years as a teacher of music, social studies, math, French and history and coaching baseball at a number of schools, but enjoyed some more than others.
Peter Tork joined 'Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart' onstage for a guest appearance on their concert tour on July 4, 1976 at Disneyland, and following on from this later that year he reunited with his fellow former bandmates Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz in the studio for the recording of the single "Christmas Is My Time of The Year" b/w "White Christmas", which saw a limited release for fan club members that holiday season.
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