The Monkees Members of the Monkees, Nesmith in particular, cite the soundtrack album as one of the crowning achievements of the band. Tensions within the group were increasing. Peter Tork, citing exhaustion, quit by buying out the last four years of his Monkees contract at $150,000 per year, equal to about $ per year today. This was shortly after the band's Far East tour in December 1968, after completing work on their 1969 NBC television special, "33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee", which rehashed many of the ideas from "Head", only with the Monkees playing a strangely second-string role. In the DVD commentary for
The Monkees directly to Kirshner's later venture, "The Archies", which was an animated series—the "stars" existed only on animation cels, with music done by studio musicians, and obviously could not seize creative control over the records issued under their name. Screen Gems held the publishing rights to a wealth of material, with the Monkees being offered the first choice of many new songs. Due to the abundance of material numerous tracks were recorded but left unreleased, until Rhino Records started releasing them through the Missing Links series of albums, starting in the late 1980s. A rumor persists that the Monkees were offered