why do mike and peter seem to dislike each other? is it bc of their creative differences? or something personal?
Oh, boy. Well, we at NP have been asked this very question before, and this is really one of those long-running “Monkee myths” that, despite the passing years and evidence to the contrary, just doesn’t seem to want to go away. So let’s break it down:
Mike and Peter first met prior to the start of the Monkees, when Mike was hosting the “Hoot Nights” at the Troubadour. Stephen Stills, when asked about what Peter’s first impressions of the Monkees were, said:
“He [Peter] liked Michael Nesmith. That was the first thing that happened.”
In the beginning of the Monkees, Mike and Peter were actually friends! True story. Peter actually lived with Mike (and Phyllis) during the filming of the pilot episode of the TV show. Mike and Peter wrote songs together and were “comradely, very buddy-buddy” as Peter describes it. Peter’s talked about how fondly he looks back on that time, even if things later started to go south:
“What I remember most are some of the guys in the background - who they were and what kind of times we had during those days on the set. I remember staying at Mike’s house in Hollywood when we first started filming the series. It was the upper story of a two-story building on a little hillside. Mike’s wife, Phyllis, was wonderful. Mike and I laughed a lot and played music together. I remember that time very fondly.”
Being that Mike and Peter were the two most serious musicians of the group, that connected them in a way that they didn’t connect with anyone else. Despite the media’s insistence that Mike was the only “real” musician of the group, Mike has said how Peter was a better musician than he “by several orders of measure.” He also has spoken fondly of Peter’s songwriting contributions to the movie HEAD:
“I think Peter’s songs are the best songs in the movie,” admits Nesmith. “On ‘Can You Dig it’ and ‘Do I Have to Do This All Over Again’, he had gotten into cahoots with Stephen Stills and some other really good players and they were beautifully put together.”
Now, this is not to say that Mike and Peter didn’t have clashes of personality—they absolutely did, without question. And there were times when these clashes turned out to be very stormy indeed. Part of the problem was that both guys had very different ideas about the musical direction they wanted The Monkees to go in, yet both were promised by Bert & Bob that they could express their musical visions on the albums.
The other cause of the clashes is just that they’re two very different people (as Micky says in his book, “Peter is water, Mike is oil. Mike is pragmatic, Peter is ethereal. Mike is impatient, Peter is laid-back”). So when the Monkees came to an end (and if you’re a Torksmith fan, as some of us are, this also coincided with the first of several bad breakups between Mike and Peter), this was the first time either of them had a chance to air their frustrations.
Both have said unkind, bitchy things about each other (though Peter certainly more so than Nez), but the difference lies in that Mike said a few choice words right after the Monkees broke up, in the ’70s, but not particularly since then. Peter, however, has carried an ongoing undercurrent of bitterness for many years, which has only finally lessened recently.
But Peter has also talked about his respect and admiration for Mike, and how talented he is with putting albums together. During the recording of Justus, Peter said how Michael was “an old hand” in the recording studio and how great it was to have him because he knew how to get “great bass sounds, great guitar sounds, great drum sounds.”
Then, at the end of 2012/in 2013, there was the reunion tour, which was extraordinary for many reasons. But we truly do believe that if Nez and Peter disliked each other that much, the tour simply would not have happened. And up there on stage, it was very clear that the camaraderie of those early pilot-filming days is alive and well between them.
To sum up: Mike and Peter have always had a love/hate relationship for as long as they’ve known each other. They have been friendly toward each other and they have been at each others’ throats, as sometimes happens with opposing personalities. Factor in the quotes and anecdotes—those mentioned above and others—and what we have is two very different people who flat-out don’t get along sometimes, but who also ultimately respect and care for each other.
Hopefully this helps to answer your question. Thanks for asking!
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