Mike Pinder

Not to be confused with Mike Pender.

Mike Pinder
Pinder in 1974
Background information
Birth name	Michael Thomas Pinder
Born	(1941-12-27)27 December 1941 Erdington, Birmingham, England
Died	24 April 2024(2024-04-24) (aged 82) California, U.S.
Genres	Psychedelic rock R&B progressive rock symphonic rock
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instrument(s)	Keyboards vocals
Years active	1964–1978, 1994–2024
Labels	Threshold One Step
Website	Official website

Michael Thomas Pinder (27 December 1941 – 24 April 2024) was an English rock musician. He was a founding member and the original keyboard player of the rock group the Moody Blues. He left the group following the recording of the band's ninth album Octave in 1978. Pinder was renowned for his technological contributions to rock music, most notably in the development and emergence of the Mellotron in 1960s rock music. In 2018, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues. He was the last surviving member of the group's original five members.

The Moody Blues

Early years

Pinder and Ray Thomas rehearsing (1969)

Pinder was born in Erdington, Birmingham. As a child, an affinity for rocket ships and outer space earned him the nickname "Mickey The Moon Boy". These interests would be recurring themes throughout his career as a song writer.

In May 1964, Pinder co-founded The Moody Blues with Ray Thomas, Denny Laine, Clint Warwick and Graeme Edge. The band moved to London and signed with Decca Records. Their first single, a cover of Bobby Parker's "Steal Your Heart Away", failed to chart. The band's breakthrough came with their second single, a cover of Bessie Banks' "Go Now", which became a UK No. 1 and US Top 10 hit in 1965. In the US the band was signed to London Records. The band had further UK hits with a cover of The Drifters' "I Don't Want to Go On Without You" and the Pinder/Laine original "From the Bottom of My Heart". They released their first album, The Magnificent Moodies, in July 1965. Pinder took his first lead vocal on a cover of James Brown's "I Don't Mind". "Bye Bye Bird" from this album was also a hit for the band in France. In the US the album was titled Go Now.

Pinder and Laine began a songwriting partnership, providing most of the band's B-sides from 1964–66, including "You Don't (All The Time)", "And My Baby's Gone", "This Is My House (But Nobody Calls)" and "He Can Win". They progressed to writing A-sides with "From The Bottom of My Heart" and another UK chart hit, "Everyday", in 1965. Two more Pinder/Laine originals, "Boulevard De La Madeline" (1966), and "Life's Not Life" (issued in January 1967 but recorded much earlier in 1966), were recorded for single release before Laine and Warwick left the group in 1966.

A rare, non-UK Pinder/Laine song from this era was "People Gotta Go", released on the France-only EP Boulevard De La Madeline and later included as a bonus track on a CD release of The Magnificent Moodies in 2006. The song is also known as "Send the People Away".

'Core Seven' period

Pinder was partly responsible for the choice of young Swindon guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Justin Hayward to replace Laine. It was Pinder who phoned Hayward and collected him from the railway station. Rod Clarke briefly replaced Warwick as bassist until John Lodge was recruited as bassist/vocalist, completing the 'classic' Moodies line-up.

After trying to continue with R&B material, the band decided to drop covers and record only original songs. Hayward's "Fly Me High" was the first single from the revised line-up, released on Decca in early 1967, with Pinder's old-style rocker "Really Haven't Got the Time" as the B-side. A recorded but unreleased Pinder song from this time (1967) was the jazz blues ballad "Please Think About It". It was included on the Caught Live + 5 double album issued by Decca in 1977.

Pinder acquired a second-hand Mellotron from Streetly, and after removing all the special effects tapes (train whistles, cock crowing, etc.) and doubling the string section tapes, used it on numerous Moody Blues recordings, beginning with their single "Love and Beauty", a flower power song written and sung by Pinder, which was his only A-side after 1966. Pinder introduced the Mellotron to his friend John Lennon and the Beatles subsequently used one on "Strawberry Fields Forever".

Pinder's "Dawn (Is A Feeling)", with lead vocals by Hayward, and Pinder singing the bridge section, opened the Days of Future Passed album. Pinder also contributed "The Sunset" and narrated drummer Edge's opening and closing poems, "Morning Glory" and "Late Lament".

Pinder, along with Moody Blues recording engineer Derek Varnals and long-time producer Tony Clarke (a Decca staff producer assigned to them from "Fly Me High" onwards) managed to devise 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 characterise most of what later were seen as the band's seven major albums between 1967 and 1972.

Pinder was one of the first musicians to use the Mellotron in live performance, relying on the mechanical skills he had gained from his time with Streetly to keep the reportedly unreliable instrument in working order. Typical of his travails was the band's 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 toolbox 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, cello, bass and both acoustic and electric guitars on Moody Blues recordings from 1967 onwards, as well as providing key vocal harmonies and lead vocals from 1964 to 1978. He also acted as the group's main musical arranger up to 1978.

The 1969 concert on the Caught Live + 5 album and the Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 DVD show Pinder and Thomas acting as the group's onstage spokesmen.

Pinder wrote and sang several of the band's more progressive, even mystic numbers, including "(Thinking is) The Best Way To Travel" and "Om" (both from 1968's album In Search of the Lost Chord on Deram Records), 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 stands 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 of the group's UK hit single "Ride My See-Saw" from In Search of the Lost Chord; both this song and Pinder's On The Threshold of A Dream song "So Deep Within You" (1969) were both later successfully covered by The Four Tops.

On 12 October 1968, the Moody Blues also cut a version of "A Simple Game", featuring Hayward on lead vocal, considering the song as a potential UK single, but this never materialised and the recording was not issued at the time. The version sung by Pinder was used instead. The rare 'Hayward' version later appeared as a bonus track on the remastered CD version of In Search of the Lost Chord, issued in 2006. In 1974, Threshold Records included the song on a compilation double-album, This is the Moody Blues, with the title "Simple Game."

In 1969 the Moody Blues established their own record company Threshold Records.

Pinder's 1970 album track "Melancholy Man" (from A Question of Balance) became a No. 1 hit as an overseas single in France that year. His "How is it (We Are Here)" was his other song contribution (a working title; "Mike's Number One" from the album sessions has since surfaced as a later CD release). All three songs had him singing lead vocals, as was usually the case with his compositions.

His composition and lead vocal "My Song", a deep, reflective atmospheric item, concluded the Moody Blues' 1971 album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, on which he also took co-credit with the entire band for the unusual opening track "Procession" (an attempt aurally to depict the evolution of vocal and musical harmony through time). He also sang a featured co-lead vocal and solo spot along with Hayward, Lodge and Thomas on Edge's song "After You Came".

Also in 1971, Pinder guested on John Lennon's Imagine album on the songs "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier (I Don't Wanna Die)" and "Jealous Guy", playing tambourine rather than the mellotron he intended to play, because by Pinder's account the tapes in Lennon's mellotron looked like "a bowl of spaghetti".

In 1972 the Moody Blues, then at the height of their popularity, recorded 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. However, Pinder switched to the similar-sounding but less-troublesome Chamberlin for this album.

Band hiatus, reformation and departure

The Moody Blues went on hiatus in 1974, largely because of tour fatigue and family considerations. By this time, Pinder had grown tired of the burgeoning crime and inclement weather in his homeland. This, along with an impending divorce, prompted him to re-locate to Malibu, California, where he recorded a solo album The Promise in 1976, released through the Moody Blues' Threshold label.

In 1977 the band reformed and began work on the 1978 release Octave. Pinder's only writing contribution to the album was "One Step Into the Light", an unused song from The Promise. 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. During this time, Pinder was also in a new relationship resulting in marriage and children, thus he preferred not to tour with the band at the time. As a result, the band chose to continue without him, hiring Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz, formerly of Yes, in his place.

After the Moody Blues

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 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), and "A People With One Heart " (1996), capitalised on Pinder's experience as chief reciter of Graeme Edge's poetry on the 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.

Pinder continued to work in the studio on his own and others' projects and in developing new artists and nurturing the creative process.

Hall of Fame induction

In April 2018, Pinder was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues. He was the only one among the five on stage, however, not to give an acceptance speech. Some fans and critics took his decision to be a silent protest against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for its perceived snub of the group in previous years. Pinder subsequently explained on his website:

The rock hall of fame people were wonderful. The ceremony was too long and the sound too loud for the room but there were moments of great interest. For the Moody families it was the opportunity to share in several days of love, past memories and making new memories for our families. All the band brought their children and grandchildren and that was magic. The grandchildren got to see that the music has remained relevant and impactful for 50 years.

Many MB fans have asked why I did not speak at the induction but by the time the Moodies took the stage we were 5 hours into the ceremony. The oldest of the inductees were up the latest. The speeches were a bit anti-climatic at that point and it was only fitting that the current touring members (Edge, Hayward and Lodge) spoke first. I am happy that we finally got inducted for our fans sake.

As I have said for the last 30 years 'the fans are my hall of fame.'

Family and personal life

Pinder's first marriage was to Donna Arkoff, with whom he had his eldest son Daniel, but the marriage ended in divorce. Pinder then married an American, Tara Lee, with whom he had two sons, Matt and Michael Lee. All three of his sons are musicians: his eldest, Daniel, is a film music editor and consultant, with many credits, including Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and The Da Vinci Code. Matt and Michael Lee perform as The Pinder Brothers. They have two CDs, Jupiter Falls and Ordinary Man. Several songs from both albums can be heard on their website and their Myspace page. Mike Pinder plays his trademark Mellotron on some of the songs.

In 2013, Justin Hayward spoke of Pinder's learning Transcendental Meditation in 1967, along with other members of the Moody Blues.

Death

Pinder died at his northern California home on 24 April 2024, at the age of 82. He had been suffering for some years from dementia.

Solo discography

• The Promise (1976)
• Among the Stars (1994)

The Moody Blues discography

• The Magnificent Moodies (1965)
• Days of Future Passed (1967)
• In Search of the Lost Chord (1968)
• On the Threshold of a Dream (1969)
• To Our Children's Children's Children (1969)
• A Question of Balance (1970)
• Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971)
• Seventh Sojourn (1972)
• This Is The Moody Blues (compilation released 1974)
• Caught Live + 5 (1969 live recordings + 5 unreleased studio tracks from 1967 and 1968, released 1977)
• Octave (1978)
• Time Traveller (box set compilation released 1994)

Songwriting contributions to the Moody Blues

• 1964: "Lose Your Money (But Don't Lose Your Mind)" (with Denny Laine) (single B-side)
• 1964: "It's Easy Child" (with Denny Laine) (single B-side)
• 1965: "From the Bottom of My Heart (I Love You) (with Denny Laine) (single A-side)
• 1965: "And My Baby's Gone" (with Denny Laine) (single B-side)
• 1965: "Let Me Go" (with Denny Laine) (from The Magnificent Moodies)
• 1965: "Stop!" (with Denny Laine) (from The Magnificent Moodies)
• 1965: "True Story" (with Denny Laine) (from The Magnificent Moodies)
• 1965: "Thank You Baby" (with Denny Laine) (from The Magnificent Moodies)
• 1965: "Everyday" (with Denny Laine) (single A-side)
• 1965: "You Don't (All The Time)" (with Denny Laine) (single B-side)
• 1966: "People Gotta Go" (with Denny Laine) (France-only EP track)
• 1966: "Sad Song" (with Denny Laine) (recorded for abandoned second album to be titled Look Out, released as a bonus track on 2014 reissue of The Magnificent Moodies)
• 1966: "Jago & Jilly" (with Denny Laine) (Look Out sessions, released on 2014 Magnificent Moodies reissue)
• 1966: "We're Broken" (with Denny Laine) (Look Out sessions, released on 2014 Magnificent Moodies reissue)
• 1966: "Boulevard de la Madalaine" (with Denny Laine) (single A-side)
• 1966: "This is My House (But Nobody Calls)" (with Denny Laine) (single B-side)
• 1966: "Life's Not Life" (with Denny Laine) (single A-side)
• 1966: "He Can Win" (with Denny Laine) (single B-side)
• 1967: "Really Haven't Got The Time" (single B-side)
• 1967: "Love and Beauty" (single A-side)
• 1967: "Please Think About It" (first released in 1977 on Caught Live + 5)
• 1967: "Dawn is a Feeling" (from Days of Future Passed)
• 1967: "The Sunset" (from Days of Future Passed)
• 1968: "The Best Way to Travel" (from In Search of the Lost Chord)
• 1968: "Om" (from In Search of the Lost Chord)
• 1968: "A Simple Game" (single B-side)
• 1969: "So Deep Within You" (from On the Threshold of a Dream)
• 1969: "Have You Heard" (from On the Threshold of a Dream)
• 1969: "The Voyage" (from On the Threshold of a Dream)
• 1969: "Out and In" (with John Lodge) (from To Our Children's Children's Children)
• 1969: "Sun Is Still Shining" (from To Our Children's Children's Children)
• 1970: "How is it (We are Here?)" (from A Question of Balance)
• 1970: "Melancholy Man" (from A Question of Balance)
• 1970: "Mike's Number One" (outtake from the sessions for A Question of Balance, released as a bonus track on 2006 reissue of the album)
• 1971: "Procession" (with John Lodge, Justin Hayward, Ray Thomas and Graeme Edge) (from Every Good Boy Deserves Favour)
• 1971: "My Song" (from Every Good Boy Deserves Favour)
• 1972: "Lost in a Lost World" (from Seventh Sojourn)
• 1972: "When You're a Free Man" (from Seventh Sojourn)
• 1978: "One Step into the Light" (from Octave)

External links

• Official website
• Pinder Brothers web site
• Songwars – Contest website (includes pictures, etc. of Mike Pinder)
• Mike Pinder at AllMusic
• Mike Pinder discography at Discogs
• Mike Pinder at IMDb