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 and Minor Threat both recorded versions of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was often played live by Toy Love. The Japanese new wave pop group the Plastics recorded a synthesizer and drum-machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979 album "Welcome Back." Glenn A. Baker, author of "Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees," described the Monkees as "rock's first great embarrassment" in 1986: Like an illegitimate child in a respectable family, the Monkees are destined to be regarded forever as rock's first great embarrassment; misunderstood and maligned like a mongrel at a ritzy dog show,