Mellotron Mike

A tuneful farewell to Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues

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In any case, I was very saddened to read the news last week that Mike Pinder has left the arena. Coincidentally, the passing of The Moody Blues’ Mellotron man occurred just a few days after I’d brought home a lovely 1969 pressing of the Moodies’ To Our Children’s Children’s Children, which caused me to marvel once again at the strange brilliance of the quasi-orchestral sounds with which Pinder (the above mustachioed chap in the turtleneck) swathed the band’s music during their psychedelic heyday.

I must admit that I slept on The Moody Blues for far longer than I should have. Their big Days of Future Passed hits “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon,” though unquestionably tuneful, struck my young ears as a little on the square and stodgy side, due in part to the presence of the London Festival Orchestra on those tracks, and the general sense that there were probably far too many meetings with “some of Deram’s production team” for anyone’s good.

Even during college, when I really started to immerse myself in the wonders of British psychedelia beyond the more well-known Beatles/Stones/Donovan stuff, I completely ignored the Moodies’ back catalog. It was only years later that a stray copy of 1968’s In Search of the Lost Chord alerted me to the band’s deeply psychedelic tendencies. These were further confirmed by an interview I did about 15 years ago with Justin Hayward, in which he revealed that he and three other members of the band — bassist John Lodge was the only holdout — used to drop acid together on a regular basis. (Note to self: Dig up that interview!)

That I willfully overlooked the band’s late-sixties output while combing the “Various Artist” bins for compilations of British psychedelic obscurities is deeply ironic, because one could make the case that The Moody Blues were actually a major influence on UK pop-sike, thanks to Mike Pinder’s use of the Mellotron to create all manner of haunting sounds, textures and moods. And 1968’s The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, one of my all-time favorite albums, is just one of many fantastic records from the era that would have sounded drastically different without the Moodies-popularized Mellotron. And if In Search of the Lost Chord had sold about as many (or rather, as few) albums as, say, Kaleidoscope’s Tangerine Dream or The Pretty Things’ S.F. Sorrow, British psych aficionados would be happily laying down hundreds of dollars for an original pressing, something which you can presently find in your local used bin for about eight bucks.

Sure, you can draw a straight (if vividly colored) line from the Beatles’ “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever” single to the explosion of jaunty, dreamy and often drug-addled British pop experiments, but who was it that introduced John Lennon and Paul McCartney to the Mellotron in the first place? Why, Mike Pinder, that’s who.

Pinder wasn’t just an enormously talented manipulator and advocate of the Mellotron — which is essentially a keyboard-controlled sampler that uses pre-recorded analog tapes and a series of tape heads, pinch wheels and capstans to “recreate” a wide variety of instrumental and vocal sounds — he actually worked for Streetly Electronics, the company that manufactured the instrument, before he co-founded The Moody Blues.

According to this fascinating essay from Pinder’s website, written by one “Jerry” with notes from Pinder himself, he worked as a “test driver” during his 18 months at Streetly, and his first encounter with the company’s Mellotron MK II was very much a “Eureka!” moment for him.

I will never forget seeing and playing the Mark II for the first time. This was my “first man on the moon” event. I knew that my life had led up to this moment, this portent to the future, and the instrument felt like an old friend.

I spent a few days in every department of manufacturing. This gave me a good overall knowledge and feel for the instrument. My position was quality control and test driver. I made suggestions as they occurred to me, and “I passed no ‘tron before its time.” Later, after I had left Streetly Electronics to found the Moody Blues, I finally got a Mark II Mellotron that Les Bradley had located for me. It was at the Dunlop Tyre Factory’s recreation centre (where no one knew how to use it). Finally I was able to experiment freely.

Pinder’s Mellotron experiments eventually inspired him to make several important modifications, including getting rid of the instrument’s percussion tapes and replacing them with a second set of lead instrument tapes.

This gave me 36 choices to mix sounds. I didn’t want to play someone else’s music. I only wanted to play someone else’s instruments.

Though the orchestra on Days of Future Passed often distracted from or drowned out Pinder’s Mellotron work, the Moodies went into full Mello-dramatic mode on their follow-up, In Search of the Lost Chord. To the uninitiated, the “orchestral” music on that album and the band’s many followups through 1972’s Seventh Sojourn could be that of trained classical musicians, but in fact it’s largely Pinder’s Mellotron mastery at work. And to my ears, it’s actually a lot more interesting; the drag and wobble of the instrument’s tapes lends the music an ethereal, otherworldly quality that works especially well in a psychedelic context.

But hey, don’t ask me — ask Justin Hayward. In a 2013 interview with Harvey Kubernik, the singer/guitarist reflected upon the importance of Pinder and his Mellotron to the Moodies’ music:

Mike and the Mellotron made my songs work. That's the simplest way I can put it. When he was playing piano it was difficult for me to try and find something that Moody Blues would be percussive on the piano and that would be interesting. And particularly because Mike had already played, you know, the greatest piano single ever [“Go Now”], so that was going to be an impossible act to follow. But when he found the mellotron suddenly my songs worked, you know. When I played the other guys “Nights in White Satin” they weren't that impressed until Mike went on the mellotron and then everyone was kind of interested. Because it really started to hang together from the Mellotron.

Such was Mike Pinder’s importance to The Moody Blues that it’s difficult to pick out one “quintessential” example of his work with them. But I’ll salute him here with a more obscure track that most of you probably haven’t heard — “King and Queen,” a gorgeous Justin Hayward-penned reverie that was recorded in 1968 for In Search of the Lost Chord; for whatever reason, it was left to sit forlornly in the vaults until 1977, when it was included (along with four other previously unreleased 1960s tracks) on Caught Live + 5, which was where I first discovered it.

Dig how Pinder’s Mellotron “strings” add color, drama and intensity to the song’s chorus without ever overpowering it. It’s a masterfully subtle performance, and (much like the man himself) should be far more widely known.

Rest In Peace, Mellotron Mike. Thank you for all the lovely music.

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