RIP Mike Pinder - Founding Member of The Moody Blues and Mellotron Pioneer (2024)

Somehow, The Moody Blues were cleverly able push the sentimental envelope

To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, the great Nigel Tufnel, there is a fine line between corny and clever. Their biggest hit, “Nights in White Satin” is a masterclass in this. Packed with dewy-eyed poetry, and bodice-ripping orchestral crescendos, it’s so close to being melodramatic, and yet it is a masterpiece.

There was a period, roughly between 1967 and 1968, when some of the British beat bands blossomed into impressive Mk.II iterations. Swingin’ London had been a good time, but clearly the celebrated groups of the day had been strongly informed by American R&B, soul, rockabilly, a little country, along with home-turf British music hall. There’s no denying the soundtrack of that period is brilliant, but the British Invasion was a case study in “the British are very good at giving Americans their music back to them.” As an American, I appreciate this phenomenon because it has created interest in geniuses we have ignored, whether it’s Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton, or Juan Atkins.

A lot of the beat bands had worn their influences on their frilly sleeves. The Yardbirds used American jazz slang in their name. John Mayall came right out and said it. Pink Floyd were named after two bluesmen, Anderson and Council, respectively. The Moody Blues had it in the masthead, and their first big hit, “Go Now,” was an American R&B cover.

[The Moody Blues in 1965]

Acid In The Jar

So what happened in 1967, when some of these bands truly broke through and started writing their own scripts? Was there something in the water? The likely explanation is indeed there was something in the sugary paste Michael Hollingshead carried around in a mayonnaise jar – lysergic in nature, to be clear.
5000 trips worth.
Hollingshead holds the honor of truly exposing the world to acid, including Timothy Leary, who ultimately got the credit for being the drug’s evangelist. Bands like The Pink Floyd, Pretty Things, Small Faces, The Moody Blues, and so many others got properly weird and experimental after turning on. It was often playful, sometimes celebrating a return to childhood, a wild-eyed abandon, or mind expansion, all of which we associate with LSD.

What’s less talked about is how technology was intrinsically linked to this paradigm shift as well. Color film became more common, bringing the shocking fashion of the day into the living rooms of normies with full, DayGlo effect. The fuzztone may have been invented to make guitars and basses sound like brass instruments, but Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page didn’t seem to get that memo. Rotating speakers were meant to add movement to the Hammond organ’s sound, not transform vocals into ghostly transmissions. Recording studios continued to grow into instruments themselves. The Mellotron, a tape-based proto-sampler, was originally aimed at upscale consumers who wanted to bring something a little more exciting than an organ or piano into their living spaces. Instead, it found its way to pop records and stages, allowing bands to add lavish orchestration without all of the traditional costs. A Mellotron didn’t come with union rules which demanded tea breaks every few hours either.
At last, orchestration was at your fingertips! Strings! Choirs! Horns! Bells and percussion!
That is, when it worked and stayed in tune….
And it was portable!
Well, kind of.
350 pounds technically weighs less than an entire string section.
It would be forever-known as a blessing and a curse to the bands that used one.

. [You, too, can have a Dixieland band in your country home]

Hallo Moonboy

Mike Pinder had grown up enamored of all things cosmic, earning him the nickname “Moon Boy.” As a tech-obsessed futurist of a young man, he landed work at Streetly Electronics, the manufacturer of Mellotrons in Britain, which was right down the road from his home. After a couple of years doing QC and other tasks, he left that job to become a full-time musician, forming the Moody Blues in 1964.

During the aforementioned mid-60s sonic shift, Pinder and the Moodies decided to explore their more flamboyant side. They had an adept woodwind player in the group, Ray Thomas, and adding more orchestration to the band felt right. The first pop song to use a Mellotron was probably Manfred Mann’s 1966 single, “Semi-Detached, Suburban Mr. James,” which was built around a fairly straight use of a flute sound.

Soon after, though, The Beatles put it on the map with 1967’s “Strawberry Fields,” but it should be noted that John Lennon learned about the machine from his friend, Pinder. It was the first time of many that Pinder would connect the instrument with musicians we associate with its use. Once the psychedelic space race was in full swing, The Stones dropped “2000 Light Years From Home,” just a few months later. Both tracks showcase the Mellotron in a new way. Rather than being employed as a substitute orchestra, it was used to add some otherworldly, warbling swirl, in an era of “what the hell is that?” psychedelic production. Later that year, The Moody Blues released “Nights In White Satin,” which spotlighted the Mellotron in yet another new way. More orchestral than the other two tracks mentioned, it still had a heaping helping of cosmic musica universalis stitched into it. These three songs can be considered the Mellotron holy trinity, and all of them are a result of Pinder’s influence.

It’s open for discussion which album is the “first” prog rock release, but the first to really get on peoples’ radar is undoubtedly The Moodies’ Days of Future Passed. It actually features a symphony orchestra along with the Mellotron. “Nights In White Satin,” which is on the album, is to prog what “Helter Skelter” is to punk and metal.
All of the hallmarks are there: poetic lyrics, bombast, disregard for the accepted pop song structure, mid-song meter changes, nods to classical music, and some sort of palpable connection to Renaissance chanson, which probably explains why so many people have malaproped the title into “Knights In White Satin” over the years. The Moody Blues, once a bunch of kids in suits, playing earnest versions of R&B tunes, had morphed into pop mystics, clad in Nehru jackets and kaftans, free to explore any musical whim, aided by psychedelics and the Mellotron. Plus, the latter brought studio-level production to their live performances.

In the classic lineup, Justin Hayward, John Lodge, and Graeme Edge represented the rock wing of the band, with Thomas and Pinder bringing the orchestration to the party, but it needs to be said that Pinder continued to delve into what was possible with the Mellotron. He pioneered new ways to record it that studio engineers continued to use over the years. Additionally, he used it unconventionally. Along with padding actual woodwinds, percussion, and vocals with sympathetic settings on the instrument, he used brass, strings, and horn patches in ways those actual instruments could not be used. The various textures in “Question” and “(I’m Just A Singer) In a Rock and Roll Band” are the results of Pinder’s exploration of the instrument. Not unlike how Jon Lord used the Hammond organ in a way that shared space with electric guitar, Pinder sometimes moved the Mellotron out of the chamber, and into the noisemaker realm. Today, with so many pedals, studio effects, and synth settings available, it’s easy to forget that most instruments are much, much deeper than we know, only to be unlocked by pushing them in ways that weren’t intended.

[Mike Pinder masterfully taking the audience on a Mellotron glide – watch his hands at 1:08]

Pinder was also constantly modifying Mellotrons to make them more reliable and useful on the road. He replaced the tubes with transistors, and removed the speakers to make his more portable, and the tuning more stable. He got his hands under the hood to use it not unlike a “prepared” piano. He worked the tuning knob to add eastern-inspired portamento to songs like “Tuesday Afternoon,” “Legend of a Mind,” and many others. He modified the tape frames to work better with what the Moodies’ songs needed. It’s likely that later models, like the more stage-friendly M400, would not have come along if Pinder hadn’t created a demand for the instrument in a live setting.

So many musicians had a love/hate relationship with the Mellotron. Rick Wakeman is associated with them because they were a huge part of the Yes sound, but there’s the story of him talking his out to a field, dousing it with petrol, and setting it on fire, once technology had moved forward, and left the Mellotron behind. There are countless accounts of ‘Trons belching out their tapes at crucial moments, scuppering concerts, but only one involving Pinder getting the lighting crew to show cartoons for 20 minutes while he opened his up to get it back up and running, allowing the Moody Blues to finish their set.

The Mellotron was used on countless tracks in the 60s and 70s, including songs by T. Rex, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Big Star, David Bowie, Traffic, ABBA, Earth Wind & Fire, Roxy Music, The Zombies, Tangerine Dream, King Crimson, Genesis, and almost every other prog band in history. As a pastiche machine, it was used after it was deemed obsolete by bands like XTC, Radiohead, Split Enz, OMD, Sparklehorse, and Smashing Pumpkins, just to name a few, but no musician is linked to it more than Pinder.

When you add it up, Mike Pinder is to the Mellotron what Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix, and people like Thurston Moore are to guitar. He is arguably the father of prog rock. He was the de facto leader of one of the most popular bands in history, even if he wasn’t the face of it. A complete master, he turned on countless bands to the potential of the Mellotron, yet he’s not really a household name, outside of muso circles. He’s the Michael Hollingshead, when he should be as well-known as Timothy Leary.

People who knew Pinder remember him as a kind man, who selflessly worked to keep the Moodies on-script enough to not lose the plot, and off-script in a way that they were able to grow. Due to this focus on aesthetics and artistry, not the business side, he ended up with very few writing credits on songs that wouldn’t be as iconic without his vision and contributions. In his words, he was the orchestra of the band, and “when you become the orchestra, I think you become the arranger by default.”
Yes, Pinder is yet another example of a paradigm-shifting genius who was cut out of his payday.

Mike Pinder set off to fly his astral plane on Wednesday, after entering hospice for breathing difficulties, having changed pop music immeasurably. While some members of the classic lineup are still living, Pinder was the last surviving member of the founding five.

Michael Thomas Pinder – 27 December 1941 – 24 April 2024

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