#mikepinder #themoodyblues #rockfileradio
Michael Thomas "Mike" Pinder (born 27 December 1941, Erdington, Birmingham, England) is an English rock musician, and is a founding member and original keyboard player of the British rock group the The Moody Blues. He left the group following the recording of the band's album, Octave, in 1978. He is especially noted for his technological contribution to music.
Pinder was born to Bert and Gladys Pinder in Kingstanding, Birmingham, and as a young adult played in El Riot and the Rebels, a rock band that achieved some regional success. Bandmates in El Riot included future Moody Blues members Ray Thomas and John Lodge. After a spell in the British Army, Pinder and Thomas played together in a band called the Krew Cats; the band wound up in Germany playing at some of the cellars where The Beatles had polished their musicianship. Pinder and Thomas, completely broke, wound up walking across northern Europe to get back home to England.
Around this time, Pinder was employed by Streetly Electronics, a firm that manufactured the Mellotron.
Pinder, Thomas, and members of other successful Birmingham bands (Denny Laine, Clint Warwick and Graeme Edge) formed The Moody Blues in 1964. Their initial single, "Steal Your Heart Away" on Decca, failed to chart. Their second release, however, reached the UK Top spot in January 1965. After their No.1 chart hit "Go Now" in 1965, the band went on to have a further UK hit with "I Don't Want To Go On Without You" and then release their first album The Magnificent Moodies (Decca) in mono only, on which Pinder took the lead vocal on a cover of James Brown's "I Don't Mind". The album was released in the USA, retitled as Go Now on London records.
Mike Pinder was instrumental in the selection of young Swindon guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Justin Hayward as Laine's replacement. It was Pinder who phoned Hayward up and then collected him at the train station. Old friend John Lodge from the El Riot days came in to replace the temporary Rod Clarke as permanent bassist/vocalist, thus setting the 'Classic' Moodies lineup in place.
After an initial abortive attempt to continue with R&B material, the band decided to drop all covers and record only original songs. Pinder and Hayward duly led the way. Hayward's "Fly Me High" was the first release from the revised lineup, released on Decca in early 1967 with Pinder's older-style rocker "Really Haven't Got The Time" as the B-side.
A recorded but unreleased Mike Pinder song from this time (1967) was the jazz-blues ballad, "Please Think About It", which would later be included on the Caught Live Plus Five double album issued by Decca in 1977.
Pinder obtained a secondhand mellotron from Streetly and, after removing all the 'special effects' tapes (train whistles, cock crowing, etc.) and then 'doubling up' the string section tapes, used it on numerous Moody Blues recordings. This began with their single "Love and Beauty", a 'flower power' era song written and sung by Pinder, and his only Moodies 'A' side after 1966. Pinder introduced the mellotron to his friend John Lennon. The Beatles subsequently used the instrument on "Strawberry Fields Forever".
Pinder's "Dawn (Is A Feeling)" - with lead vocals by Hayward, and Pinder himself singing the bridge section - led off the Days of Future Passed album, on which Pinder also contributed "The Sun Set" and narrated drummer Graeme Edge's opening and closing poems, "Morning Glory" and "Late Lament".
Pinder and Moodies recording engineer Derek Varnals, plus longtime producer Tony Clarke (a Decca Staff Producer assigned to them from 'Fly Me High' onwards) managed to create an innovative way of playing and recording the unwieldy mellotron to make the sound 'flow' in symphonic waves, as opposed to the sharp cutoff the instrument normally gave. This symphonic sound would largely characterize the Moodies' famous core seven albums between 1967 and 1972. Pinder actually switched to the similar-sounding but less-troublesome chamberlin for 1971's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and 1972's Seventh Sojourn.
Pinder was one of the first musicians to use the mellotron in live performance, relying on the mechanical skills garnered from his time with Streetly to keep the unreliable instrument in working order. Typical of his travails was the Moodies' first US concert. When the band struck their first harmony, the back of the mellotron fell open and all of the tape strips cascaded out. Pinder grabbed his tool box and got the instrument back into working order in 20 minutes time, while the light crew entertained the audience by projecting cartoons.
In addition to the mellotron, organ and piano, Pinder also played harpsichord, Moog synthesizer, tablas, various forms of keyboards and percussion, autoharp, tambura and both acoustic and electric guitars on Moody Blues recordings from 1967 onwards, as well as providing key vocal harmonies from 1964 to 1978 and lead vocals. Pinder also acted as the group's main in-house arranger up to 1978.
Pinder wrote several of the Moodies' more progressive, even mystic numbers, including; '(Thinking is) The Best Way To Travel', 'Om', (both from 1968's 'In Search of the Lost Chord'), plus the innovative symphonic rock piece "Have You Heard/The Voyage/Have You Heard (part two)" which concluded their 1969 album, On the Threshold of a Dream. Parts of this track later featured on the Loving Awareness jingles on Radio Caroline during the 1970s. Pinder also continued to narrate Edge's poems, notably 'The Word' (1968); 'In The Beginning' (with Edge himself and Hayward) and 'The Dream' (both 1969); and 'The Balance' (1970).
On Edge's 'Higher And Higher' (1969) Pinder's mellotron simulated the sound of a rocket blasting off to open the "To Our Children's Children's Children" album, to which he wrote and sang "Sun is Still Shining" and a rare co-written song (with John Lodge), "Out and In", on which he also sang lead vocals. Pinder's mellotron stood out particularly on tracks such as Edge's instrumental "Beyond" and the Hayward-Thomas closing track "Watching And Waiting".
Pinder's earlier non album song "A Simple Game" (1968), for which he won an Ivor Novello Award, was used as the 'B' side to their UK hit single "Ride My See Saw" on Deram; this song plus Pinder's other "On The Threshold of A Dream" song "So Deep Within You" (1969) were both later successfully covered by The Four Tops.
Also in 1971 Pinder guested on John Lennon's Imagine album on "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier (I Don't Wanna Die)" and "Jealous Guy", playing tambourine rather than the mellotron because according to Pinder, the tapes in Lennon's mellotron looked like a bowl of spaghetti, hence the switch to tambourine.
By 1972, The Moodies, then at the height of their popularity, retreated to Mike Pinder's home studio to record Seventh Sojourn, which included two Pinder penned and sung contributions: "Lost in a Lost World", and "When You're A Free Man", dedicated to Timothy Leary.
The Moody Blues took a break from recording in 1974, and Pinder relocated to California, releasing a solo album The Promise in 1976 through the Moodies' Threshold label.
In 1977 the band returned to recording and performing; Pinder declined full participation, although he collaborated on the 1978 release Octave by recording an unused Promise-era song "One Step Into the Light" with the band. He also added some synthesizer and backing vocals to the album, notably the album intro to Lodge's "Steppin' In A Slide Zone" and the instrumental climax on Edge's "I'll Be Level With You"; he then stopped coming to the sessions when interpersonal conflicts (mostly with Edge) arose. After Pinder refused to tour, the band hired Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz in his place.
Pinder took employment as a consultant to the Atari computer corporation (primarily working on music synthesis), remarried, and started a family in Grass Valley, California. He remained out of the public eye until the mid-1990s, when he began to grant interviews and to work on new recording projects. The year 1994 saw the release of his second solo album, Among the Stars, on his own One Step label, to limited success. Another One Step release, A Planet With One Mind (1995), capitalised on Pinder's experience as chief reciter of Graeme Edge's poetry on the seminal Moody Blues albums; in this recording, Pinder reads seven children's stories from different world cultures, accompanied by appropriate world music. As his first spoken word album, it was well received among its contemporaries in the genre - it was a finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Audio as an outstanding children's recording.
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