1941-2024
Mike Pinder
1941-2024
Mike Pinder
Mike Pinder, from The Moody Blues, was born December 27, 1941 in Erdington, Birmingham and is a founding member. He is also the original keyboardist of the group.
In 1964, Pinder, Denny Laine, Clint Warwick and Graeme Edge formed The Moody Blues. The group released their first single, “Steal Your Heart Away,” but the track didn’t chart. Later on, the band hit No.1 in the UK with their second release, “Go Now.” With the success, the group released another UK hit called “I Don’t Want To Go On Without You.” After that came their first album The Magnificent Moodies. During their cover of James Brown’s “I Don’t Mind,” Pinder sang lead vocals. In the US, this album was released as Go Now.
Pinder (and guitarist/lead vocalist Laine) began writing songs starting with most B-sides from 1965 to 1966. Some examples are “And My Baby’s Gone,” and “He Can Win.” Eventually the two began writing A-sides like “From The Bottom of My Heart,” and “Everyday.”
Mike Pinder bw
Once Laine left the group, they needed a new front man. Pinder helped decide on Justin Hayward. He was the one to make the call. At this point the band consisted of Mike Pinder, Graeme Edge, Justin Hayward, Ray Thomas and John Lodge. This later became known as the “classic” Moody lineup. This new lineup decided to drop the R&B material and cover songs from the band's repertoire. From now on the group would focus on original songs. The first release from the “classic” lineup was Hayward’s “Fly Me High” with Pinder’s “Really Haven’t Got The Time” as the B-side of the track.
When Pinder got a secondhand Mellotron from Streetly, he removed all the special effects and doubled it up with the string section tapes. This was used on many Moody Blues recordings. Along with the Moodies recording engineer Derek Varnals, Pinder found a way to record the Mellotron to make the sound sound like waves instead of the usual sharp cutoff. The first song this was used on was a Pinder song called “Love and Beauty.” This song was also his only A-side track after 1966. After the track, Pinder introduced the instrument to John Lennon of The Beatles. Subsequently, The Beatles used a mellotron on the track “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Pinder played a lot of instruments for the band including the piano, mellotron, harpsichord, tablas, organ, Moog synthesizer and various percussion instruments. He also helped the band with important vocal harmonies and lead vocals from 1964 to 1978. To top it all off, Pinder was also the main musical arranger for the group up to 1978.
In 1971, Pinder was featured on Lennon’s album Imagine. On the tracks, “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier (I Don’t Wanna Die)” and “Jealous Guy,” Pinder played the tambourines. Originally he was going to play the mellotron, but Pinder said Lennon mellotron tapes looked like “a bowl of spaghetti.”
In 1972, The Moodies recorded Seventh Sojourn before taking a break in 1974. During the break, Pinder went to California and released a solo album called The Promise in 1976. The band got back together in 1977, but Pinder wasn’t as active as he once was. He declined full participation, but collaborated on 1978’s Octave.
After The Moody Blues, Pinder was a consultant at the Atari computer corporation working on music synthesis. He stayed out of the spotlight until the mid 90s. In 1994, Pinder released his second solo album called Among the Stars, but with limited success. Then 1995’s A Planet With One Mind was a spoken word album that was praised in its genre. It was even a finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Audio.
Afterwards, Pinder continued to develop new artists and himself in the studio. In April 2018, Pinder was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Moody Blues.
