Mike Pinder, the last surviving founding member of the Moody Blues, whose innovative use of the Mellotron — a precursor to the sampler — helped make the band a progressive rock pioneer, died Wednesday at his home in the Sacramento area. He was 82 years old.
Dan’s son confirmed the death. He said his father had breathing difficulties and was in a hospice for a few days.
The Moody Blues were formed in 1964, with a lineup of Mr. Pinder on keyboards, Denny Laine on guitar, Graeme Edge on drums, Ray Thomas on flute and Clint Warwick on bass. Of the group “GO now!,” sung by Mr. Laine, peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Mr. Laine and Mr. Warwick left after the release of the band’s first album, “The Magnificent Moodies” (1965), and were replaced by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. The change in personnel set the stage for a change in direction: from rock with R&B to the psychedelic, orchestral sound that the Moody Blues showcased live on their 1967 breakthrough album, Days of Future Passed.
Mr. Pinter had worked as a tester at the Mellotron factory in Birmingham, England, before the Moody Blues were formed. Playing the company’s Mark II model for the first time was “my first ‘man on the moon’ event.” he told British music website Brumbeat.
That’s how he realized the musical potential of using the Mellotron, an electromechanical keyboard that uses tape loops to simulate the sounds and rhythms of an orchestra, on “Days of Future Passed” and beyond.
“With ‘Tron, I could develop melodies and countermelodies in Moody Blues songs.’ Mr Pinter told Rolling Stone in 2018 for the oral history of “Nights in White Satin,” the album’s signature song, which Mr. Hayward wrote and sang. “When you become an orchestra, I think you become the orchestrator by default. I could create the scenery and scenery for the tunes the kids were writing.”
After the death of Mr. Pinter, Mr Hayward wrote on Facebook: “Mike was a natural musician who could play any style of music with warmth and love. Redesigning and rebuilding (literally) the Mellotron gave us our recognizable early sound.”
Mr Pinter said he had introduced the Mellotron to John Lennon. Played by Paul McCartney on the Beatles’ 1967 single “Strawberry Fields Forever”.
“Days of Future Passed” also featured Mr. Pinter’s baritone recitation of “Late Lament,” the mystical coda (written by Mr. Edge) to “Nights in White Satin.” Mr. Pinter was lying “in a meditative state,” he said in the oral history, when he recited the poem that famously begins, “Breathe deep the accumulated gloom/The clock lights go out from every room.”
Michael Thomas Pinter was born on 27 December 1941 in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham, and grew up in nearby Kingstanding. His father, Bertram, was a bus driver and his mother, Gladys (Lay) Pinder, was a bartender.
Michael had no formal training and started playing the piano and guitar when he was young. He was in the British Army, playing with a band, when he first heard the Beatles.
“When I heard ‘Love Me Do,’ I was like, ‘Okay, that’s what I expected.'” he told the Classic Bands website in an undated interview. “I was waiting for this sign, because the music scene in England up until then was quite poor.”
When they formed in 1964, the Moody Blues were called M&B 5, using the initials of the brewery that had clubs and dance halls where they played. The name was a ploy to get money from the brewery to fund the band. Did not work. So, Mr. Pinter told Classic Bands, he was inspired to create the name Moody Blues by combining “the mood that affects the changes in the music” and the fact that the band’s repertoire at the time was primarily rhythm and blues.
Mr. Pinter remained with the Moody Blues until 1978, providing vocals and contributing songs, and continued to use the Mellotron on albums such as “In Search of the Lost Chord” (1968) and “On the Threshold of a Dream” ( 1969). He moved to another electromechanical keyboard, the Chamberlin, for ‘Seventh Sojourn’ (1972) and the synthesizer for ‘Octave’ (1978)..
By then, he had already released a solo album, “The Promise,” in 1976. He spent many years off the scene, part of that time consulting on computer music composition for Atari, the video game manufacturer, before recording a second album. , ‘Among the Stars’, in 1995. He also recorded two albums for children, ‘Planet With One Mind’ (1995) and ‘A People With One Heart’ (1996), in which he told stories, accompanied by his musical arrangements .
“We wanted stories that have layered meaning,” he told The San Francisco Examiner in 1997, referring to the search for the right picture books he pursued with his wife, Taralee (Grant) Pinder. “We went through hundreds of books. We were looking for a lot of books that said ‘The rabbit went down to the mouse house for a cup of tea’. But we were looking for books like The Rabbit Went Down to the Mouse House and We Discussed the Zen of Tea-Making.
In addition to his wife and son Daniel, from his marriage to Donna Arkoff, which ended in divorce, Mr. Pinter is survived by two other sons, Michael and Matthew, from his second marriage. four grandchildren; and a sister, Monica Hackett.
After the Moody Blues were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 – nearly 30 years after they first became eligible – Mr Pinder wrote about the ceremony on his website.
“The whole band brought their children and grandchildren and it was magical” He wrote. He added: “A lot of MB fans asked why I didn’t speak at the introduction, but by the time the Moodies came on stage we had spent five hours at the ceremony. The oldest of the introduced were the most recent.’