Mike Pinder
Photo: Wikipedia
Moody Blues fans around the world are in mourning following the death in northern California this week of keyboardist Mike Pinder aged 82.
All five founding members of the group that started in Birmingham in 1964 – Dinny Lane, Graeme Edge, Ray Thomas, Clint Warwick and Pinder – are now dead.
Of the later ‘big five’ Moodies who produced the bulk of their work across their seven most famous albums with Decca between 1965 and 1972 – Pinder, Thomas, Edge, John Lodge and Justin Hayward – only those last two now survive. (Click here to see Graeme Edge obituary from 14 /11/21.)
The ‘big 5 Moodies’ with Pinder on the left.
The Moody Blues were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. In a 54-year career they had produced a total of 18 platinum and gold albums which sold 70 million worldwide.
Across this number, their quirky lyrics were incorporated into a variety of musical styles: Pinder’s bluesy So Deep Within You and his acid, psychedelic flavoured The Best Way to Travel; Thomas’s melodic perfection of For My Lady; Hayward’s romantic ballads Never Comes the Day and Are You Sitting Comfortably; and the raunchy rock ‘n roll sounds of his The Story in Your Eyes and Lodge’s Just a Singer in a Rock ‘n Roll Band.
They had the lot – and much of it thanks to Pinder’s signature invention, the mellotron.
In addition to his exceptional keyboard work, Pinder’s mellotron enabled the band to adopt all these styles and others of their choosing so easily. It was an instrument that looked like a conventional keyboard but which could also pre-record several tapes and then reproduce a variety of musical sounds as required by the keyboardist.
“The mellotron enabled me to create my own variation of string movements. I could play any instrument I wanted to hear in the music. If I heard strings, I could play them with the mellotron. If I heard cello, brass, trumpets or piano I could play them.” (Moody Blues oral history, Rolling Stone).
Pinder’s rich baritone also underpinned the dense textures of the unique Moodies’ sounds. This enabled other band members – most notably the triumphant tones of Justin Hayward’s soaring vocals – to shine. But it was Pinder who was always the guiding essence of their classical sound.
Like most other successful groups, The Moody Blues’ musical work as a band was always much more than an assembly of the talents of five individuals. Collectively, it was Pinder’s keyboards, Edge’s drums and Thomas’s woodwinds that were, together, the bedrock upon which Hayward and Lodge were able to dazzle as songwriters, guitarists and vocalists.
After leaving the band in 1978, Pinder subsequently produced three solo albums in 1994 and 1995.
And his most oft repeated saying was reprised by his family yesterday.
“… his music and the message he shared with the world from his spiritually grounded place was “keep your head above the clouds but keep your feet on the ground.” (Pinder family Facebook).
Valé Mike Pinder.
RDL walking the talk!
Photo courtesy of the author.
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About Roger Lowrey
Roger Lowrey is a Geelong based writer who lists his special interests as reading, writing, horse racing, Roman history and AEC electoral boundaries. Some of his friends think he is a little eccentric.
RDL, a sad day for Moody Blues devotees. I was unaware of Pinder’s invention of the mellotron. I hope he patented it! Also, refer back to my comment on your obituary for Graeme Edge for further thoughts.
A very fitting tribute Roger. Like you, I was saddened by Mike’s death- the last of the original 5.
In the early to mid 70’s, when most of my hours where spent with a vinyl record playing – either at my place or some friend’s home – the Moody Blues were one of the bands that captured my senses in the most profound way.
As we scan the planet in 2024 and reflect on Anzac Day, the MB’s lyrics still ring true:
Why do we never get an answer
When we’re knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war
Thanks again for your article.
Karl
Mike Pinder did not invent the Mellotron but he did a lot to make the instrument well-known and did a lot to improve the original design.
It was based on keyboard-driven tape instruments built and sold by California-based Harry Chamberlin. The concept of the Mellotron originated when Chamberlin’s sales agent, Bill Fransen, brought two of Chamberlin’s Musicmaster 600 instruments to England in 1962 to search for someone who could manufacture 70 matching tape heads for future Chamberlins. He met Frank, Norman, and Les Bradley of tape engineering company Bradmatic Ltd, who said they could improve the original design. The Bradleys subsequently met bandleader Eric Robinson, who agreed to help finance recording the necessary instruments and sounds. Together with the Bradleys and television celebrity David Nixon, they formed a company, Mellotronics, in order to market the instrument.
Fransen failed to explain to the Bradleys that he was not the owner of the concept, and Chamberlin was unhappy with the fact that someone overseas was copying his idea. After some acrimony between the two parties, a deal was struck between them in 1966, whereby they would both continue to manufacture instruments independently. Bradmatic renamed themselves Streetly Electronics in 1970.
Mike Pinder worked for Streetly Electronics for 18 months as a tester and was immediately excited by the possibilities of the instrument for his band The Moody Blues.
I stand corrected, DP. Thanks for the detailed background.
RDL, if you can bring yourself to read ‘The Australian’ today (Monday), you’ll see an obituary for Mike Pinder on the back page of the first section of the paper. I read it over breakfast at one of our treasures here ‘up norf’, Little Cove on Weyba Road, Noosaville.
And speaking of bias (real or imagined) in the media, I thought a comment made to me by a friend from SA last year to be quite apt. He’s a bit of a soft-left type. He said that he reads ‘The Weekend Australian’ to balance out his during-the-week diet of the ABC and SBS. (This was while we were imbibing suitably delicious coffee and cake at yet another local treasure, Sunshine Social, on Duke Street, Sunshine Beach.)
Actually, there’s a possible post in all of that – ‘Treasures of the Noosaville precinct’ – a tour of 8 or so of our favourite local coffee shops in an arc from Doonan, through Noosaville and Sunshine Beach, and down to Peregian Beach. I’m sure we must cut across several AEC/ECQ boundaries in that journey. What more could you ask for? For the mathematically minded among us, that arc may also provide an opportunity to develop an equation to represent the progression from D to PB.
Psephologically your, IJH.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Let us all hope that the Justin Hayward and John Lodge – the two young’uns – have many more birthdays ahead of them.
Ian, I don’t routinely read Monday’s Oz however I shall do so today. Thanks for the tip. That said, I do routinely read the Weekend Oz as there is usually quite a bit of interesting material in all its constituent parts.
RDL