Did Peter Sell His Gold Records?

Why Peter didn’t sell his gold records…..

…or, why all that glitters is not gold…..

In honor of The Monkees Platinum record ceremony this week, here’s a
little story I transcribed from Peter’s Q & A session at the 1988 Chicago
Monkees Convention:

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A fan named Nancy asks:
“Awhile back, I had heard that you had written an autobiography, and
called it “Why I Had To Sell My Gold Records”. Is that true?”

Peter replies:
“Well, sooorrt of…”

“What happened was, I got together with a woman who was a writer for fan
magazines, and she and I worked for a couple of months on an
autobiography. We wound up not going very far with it–we put together
maybe two or three chapters. She tried to peddle it, but we didn’t get
much of an interest. She wanted to call it that, but I don’t think I
would have settled for that one, partly because I never did sell my gold
records, and partly because you can’t GET anything for gold records,
because they’re not really gold–they’re really plate-metal or something,
with a little bit of spraying of some goldish paint…”

“I didn’t sell them, but I DID do something interesting with them–I took
them apart and I tried to play them! And, they aren’t Monkee records!
Heres’ a little clue for you guys….”

“When they go to make gold records, what they do is they take down what
they call the “mother”, which is like a metal record. First they cut the
record, then they make a negative impression of that, then they make some
positive impressions of that, then they make impressions of THAT, then
they cut the records with those. (Or make the records by stamping.) Well,
these mothers are actually metal records–that’s what these mothers are–
[audience giggles] and what they do is they take down old ones from the
shelf, records that they’re never going to put out. So one single was a
Supreme’s style Black gospel trio, you know, gospel pop trio, another one
was an Italian tenor [audience laughter and cheers as Peter does his
Italian tenor impression]. So it was funny and it was worth doing because
I really enjoyed finding that out, and now you know too.”

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Transcribed from a Q & A session with Peter Tork
Chicago Monkees Convention, 1988 (8/20/88)
TXDN39A@prodigy.com (Tami Bassler)