Posted on Leave a comment

Mike Pinder 4/2024

Mike Pinder (82) – The Moody Blues –  was born in Erdington, Birmingham on 27 December 1941. His father, Bert, was a coach driver and his mother, Gladys (née Lay), was a barmaid. As a child, he had an affinity for rocket ships and outer space which earned him the nickname “Mickey the Moon Boy”. These interests would be recurring themes throughout his career as a song writer. (Mickey the Moonboy. In 1995 Mike got a personal tour at NASA and a treasured memento.)

He was a member of several bands in Birmingham in his teenage years, among them the Checkers, who won first prize of £50 in a talent competition. In his first band, rock’n’roll combo El Riot and the Rebels, Pinder played support to the Beatles in 1963 in a show at Tenbury. As a member of the short-lived Krew Kats, he played for two months in clubs in Hamburg where the Beatles had played.

Between 1962–63, Pinder worked for 18 months as a development engineer, responsible for testing and quality control, at Streetly Electronics in Streetly, Birmingham, a factory manufacturing the first models of Mellotron in the UK. In May 1964 he left Streetly Electronics to co-found 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 breakthrough came with their second single, a cover of Bessie BanksGo 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 45 rpm 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”.

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.

Pinder acquired a second-hand Mellotron from Streetly Electronics, 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. He introduced the Mellotron to his friend John Lennon, and the Beatles subsequently used one on “Strawberry Fields Forever.

His “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”. Days of Future Passed had been planned as a stereo demonstration album for the Decca Deram label, combining rock and orchestral music. It sold more than a million copies in the US alone.

Pinder, Moody Blues recording engineer Derek Varnals and long-time producer Tony Clarke (a Decca staff producer assigned to them from “Fly Me High” onwards), devised an innovative way of playing and recording the unwieldy Mellotron to make its sound flow in symphonic waves, rather than with the instrument’s usual sharp cutoff. This symphonic sound provided the basis of the musical style of the band’s seven major albums between 1967 and 1972.

Pinder was one of the first musicians to use the Mellotron in live performance, and he had to rely on the mechanical skills he had gained from his time as an engineer with Streetly Electronics to keep the instrument functioning. In the band’s first US concert, the back of the Mellotron fell open and all of the tape strips fell out. Pinder got the instrument back into working order in 20 minutes while the lighting crew entertained the audience by projecting cartoons.

On Moody Blues recordings from 1967 onwards, in addition to the mellotron, organ and piano, Pinder also played harpsichord, Moog synthesizer, tablas, various forms of keyboards and percussion, autoharp, tanpura (tambura), cello, bass and acoustic and electric guitars. He sang vocal harmonies and lead vocals from 1964 to 1978, and was the group’s main musical arranger up to 1978.

Pinder wrote and sang several of the band’s more progressive, even mystic, numbers, including “The Best Way to Travel” and “Om” (both from 1968’s album 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.

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”. He played tambourine rather than the mellotron he had intended to use because, he said, 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 the Seventh Sojourn album, which included two songs written and sung by Pinder: “Lost in a Lost World” and “When You’re A Free Man”, dedicated to Timothy Leary. For this album he played the similar-sounding but less troublesome tape-based Chamberlin keyboard.

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.

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. During and after his stint with the band, he released three solo albums — 1976’s “The Promise”, 1994’s “Among the Stars” and 1995’s “A Planet With One Mind”.

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

Tribute:

The Heart and Soul of the Moody Blues, Mike Pinder, passed away on April 24, 2024. He was probably the most widespread influence on Music that many people had never heard of. His Sound: The Mellotron: He was the undisputed Master of that Instrument, and did more with it than any other Band or Musician. Bands such as Yes, King Crimson, The Beatles and Stones all used the Mellotron (many with Mike’s instruction), but none produced the widespread Huge Spacy Orchestral Sound that he played. All Popular Music today that features spacy orchestral sounds are a direct influence of Mike Pinder. The Moody Blues produced Seven Masterpieces with Pinder, starting with Days Of Future Passed. It was released in 1967, the same year as Sgt. Pepper, and had a more expansive creative sound. Many of the sections that we thought were the Orchestra were actually played by Mike Pinder – For the most part, the Orchestral Sections were recorded separate from the Band tracks. But the Band tracks sounded huge and orchestral due to Pinder’s Mellotron. All of the Classic Seven Masterpieces have the words on the cover: “All Instruments Played By The Moody Blues.” Their range of sonic expression and creativity seemed to be without boundaries or limits. The test of a good stereo can be done using Moody Blues albums. Their songs, in great part due to Pinder, are Deep, Intelligent, Emotional and hair-raising, and they Rock. Pinder’s songs on the Moodies albums are most often the Most Experimental, Moody, Deep, and are often Amazing Sonic Journeys into the Mind as well as Outer Space. As he sang, “You Gotta Make the Journey Out and In.” Tunes such as “My Song” are not to be believed. You just need to sit and listen to that Journey – He takes you deep into your Soul and out into Space and back. The Sounds are unworldly.

Justin Hayward said “Nights In White Satin” was just another song until Mike Pinder told him to run through it one more time. Pinder added that 7 – note phrase that transported the song. Then the powerful orchestral Mellotron on the chorus lifted it into Heaven.

That same 7 – note phrase has been repeated countless times on other songs: Those notes are the intro to “Layla,” played by Duane Allman and the ABB used that phrase constantly in their improvisations. Pinder first recorded it on “Nights” from Days Of Future Passed.

The Sounds played and Pioneered by Mike Pinder resonate through all Music through the decades and still are heard today. When you hear a Band that sounds deep, spacy, orchestral, and powerful – that’s the Influence of the Moody Blues and their Black Light Soul: Michael Pinder. 

Posted on Leave a comment

David LaFlamme – 8/2023

Violin for It's a Beautiful DayDavid LaFlamme (It’s a Beautiful Day) was born in New Britain, Connecticut, on May 4, 1941, the first of six children of Adelard and Norma (Winther) LaFlamme. His mother was from a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, and when he was eight years old, the family moved to Utah to be near her family. He spent his early years in Los Angeles, where his father was a Hollywood stunt double, before settling in Salt Lake City, where his father became a copper miner. David was about 5 when he got his first violin, a hand-me-down from an aunt back in Connecticut, whose daughter never took to the violin.

“I began fooling around with it on my own and taught myself to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’” he said in a 1998 interview. Formal training followed and in Salt Lake City in later years, he won a competition to perform as soloist with the Utah Symphony Orchestra.

After joining the Army — he was stationed at Fort Ord, near Monterey, Calif. — he suffered hearing damage from the firing of deafening ordnance. He ended up in Letterman military hospital in San Francisco, and from there put down roots in the city after his discharge in 1962. He found lodging in the same house as his future wife, Linda Rudman. “By the second day that I was there, she and I had already written a song together,” he said.

During the ensuing years he performed with a wide variety of notable San Francisco acts, such as Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Dino Valente (Love). In 1967, Mr. LaFlamme formed a band called Electric Chamber Orkustra, also known as the Orkustra, with Bobby Beausoleil, a young musician who played bouzouki and would later be convicted of murder as a follower of Charles Manson. He also created an early version of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks.

But the times were the times, and in 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, he and his wife Linda, a keyboardist, formed It’s a Beautiful Day. The band bubbled up from the acid-rock cauldron of the Haight-Ashbury district, which also produced the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and other groups.

The band got its break in October 1968, when the promoter Bill Graham had them open for Cream in Oakland. It’s a Beautiful Day signed with Columbia Records soon after and the group’s eponymous LP was released by Columbia Records in 1969, containing their biggest hit, “White Bird”. The album was produced by David LaFlamme, who infused the psychedelic rock of the 1960s with the plaintive sounds of an electric violin. “White Bird,” encapsulated the hippie-era longing for freedom.

The LaFlammes wrote the song in 1967, when they were living in the attic of a Victorian house during a brief gig relocation to Seattle. The lyrics took shape on a drizzly winter day as they peered out a window at leaves blowing on the street below.

White bird – In a golden cage – On a winter’s day  – In the rain

“We were like caged birds in that attic,” LaFlamme recalled. “We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable.” He later said the song, with its references to darkened skies and rage, was about the struggle between freedom and conformity. In an email, Linda LaFlamme said that she considered it a song of hope, and that the only rage they had felt was about the Seattle weather.

Still, the song, with its pleading chorus, “White bird must fly, or she will die,” seemed to echo the mounting disillusionment of 1969, as marmalade skies turned into storm clouds with the realities of drug addiction and social turmoil, as epitomized by the bloodshed at the Altamont rock festival that year.

“It was a very solemn period of music on that first album,” Mr. LaFlamme said in a 2003 interview published on the music website Exposé. “If I would have kept going that way,” he added, “I would have ended up like Jim Morrison, getting more and more into that personal torture trip.”

My personal favorite on that album  was “Bombay Calling” and I didn’t realize until later that Deep Purple’s “Child in Time” was directly influenced by “Bombay Calling”. “Child in Time” was my favorite cover song to play in the band in those days. Here is Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan explaining how “Child in Time” came about. 

Ian Gillan said in an interview in 2002: “There are two sides to that song – the musical side and the lyrical side. On the musical side, there used to be this song ‘Bombay Calling’ by a band called It’s A Beautiful Day. It was fresh and original, when Jon was one day playing it on his keyboard. It sounded good, and we thought we’d play around with it, change it a bit and do something new keeping that as a base. But then, I had never heard the original ‘Bombay Calling.’ So we created this song using the Cold War as the theme, and wrote the lines ‘Sweet child in time, you’ll see the line.’ That’s how the lyrical side came in. Then, Jon had the keyboard parts ready and Ritchie had the guitar parts ready. The song basically reflected the mood of the moment, and that’s why it became so popular.”

Ironically enough David LaFlamme later on admitted that he got the idea for the song during one of his house jams when saxophone player Vince Wallace started out the tune.

It’s a Beautiful Day’s second album, Marrying Maiden, was released the following year. It was their most successful showing on the charts, reaching number 28 in the U.S. and number 45 in the U.K. Funny enough their opening track Don & Dewey featured clearly the riff  from Deep Purple’s 1968 release “Wring that Neck” on the album The Book of Taliesyn. Great humor in my opinion and also a strong indicator of how life has changed since those early days. Think how many times Zeppelin was taken to court for the opening riff on Stairway to Heaven. Randy California, the creator wouldn’t have cared a bit.

After two additional albums, Choice Quality Stuff/Anytime and Live at Carnegie Hall, LaFlamme left the group in 1972 over disputes regarding the direction and management of the band.
For a time he performed with the groups Edge City and Love Gun in the Bay Area before going solo.

In 1976, he released the album White Bird on Amherst Records. His remake of the song “White Bird” cracked the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 89 that same year. This was followed by the album Inside Out in 1978, also on Amherst Records. Both project releases were co-produced by David LaFlamme and Mitchell Froom.
After years of legal wrangling over ownership of the band’s name, LaFlamme resumed formal use of It’s a Beautiful Day when former mis-manager/leech Matthew Katz let the trademark of the name go un-renewed. From 2000, he performed with the reconstituted band, which included his second wife Linda LaFlamme (not the same person as his previous wife Linda LaFlamme) and original drummer Val Fuentes.

LaFlamme also appeared on the television shows Frasier, Ellen, and Wings, as a strolling violinist who stands right at the table in a restaurant, playing loudly or annoyingly.
It’s a Beautiful Day was included in the documentary film Fillmore, which covered the final days of the famed San Francisco music venue Fillmore West in 1971. The group split in 1973, but later re-formed with new membership, David LaFlamme remaining the only constant into the present era. He occasionally recorded under the group’s name for various labels, and also maintained a solo career, releasing several solo albums and working with other bands.

The band never found the commercial success of its hallowed San Francisco contemporaries. Its debut album, called simply “It’s a Beautiful Day” and released in 1969, climbed to No. 47 on the Billboard chart. “White Bird,” sung by David LaFlamme and Pattie Santos, did not manage to crack the Hot 100 singles chart, largely perhaps because of its running time: more than six minutes, twice the length of most AM radio hits. Even so, the song became an FM radio staple, and an artifact of its cultural moment.

LaFlamme released several albums over the years, including a solo album in the mid-1970s called “White Bird,” which included a disco-ready version of the original single. It actually outperformed the original, peaking at No. 89 on the Billboard Hot 100. LaFlamme said in 1998, “It was a very difficult period musically, because during that period disco music ruled the earth.” “It was really the day the music died,” he said.

David LaFlamme died on Aug. 6, 2023 in Santa Rosa, Calif. Shortly after his friend Dan Hickman. He was 82. His daughter Kira LaFlamme said the cause of his death, at a health care facility, was complications of Parkinson’s disease. In addition to his daughter Kira, from his first marriage, Mr. LaFlamme is survived by his third wife, Linda (Baker) LaFlamme, whom he married in 1982; his sisters, Gloria LaFlamme, Michelle Haag and Diane Petersen; his brothers, Lon and Dorian; another daughter, Alisha LaFlamme, from his marriage to Sharon Wilson, which ended in divorce in 1973; and six grandchildren.

Posted on 2 Comments

Leonard Cohen 11/2016

leonard-cohen-marianne-ihlenNovember 7, 2016 – Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on September 21, 1934 and raised in the English-speaking Westmount area. His father, who had a clothing store passed away when Leonard was 9.

In high school he was involved with the student council and studied music and poetry. He became especially interested in the poetry of Federico García Lorca, after whom he named his daughter (Lorca) with artist/photographer Suzanne Elrod.

Even though poetry and writing were his first interests, he learned to play the guitar as a teenager and formed a country–folk group called The Buckskin Boys. Although he initially played a regular acoustic guitar, he soon switched to playing a classical guitar after meeting a young Spanish flamenco guitar player who taught him “a few chords and some flamenco.” Continue reading Leonard Cohen 11/2016

Posted on Leave a comment

Rod McKuen 1/2015

Rod McKuenJanuary 29, 2015 – Rod McKuen was born on April 29th, 1933 in Oakland, CA. He ran away from home at the age of 11 and drifted along the West Coast, supporting himself as a ranch hand, surveyor, railroad worker, rodeo cowboy, lumberjack, stuntman and radio disk jockey.

He went on to become one of the best-selling poets in the USA during the late 60s and throughout his career. He produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music. His songs include “Jean”, “Seasons in the Sun”, “The Loner”, and “I Think of You”.

He earned two Academy Award nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his music compositions. In the early 1960s, he moved to France, where he first met the Belgian singer-songwriter and chanson singer Jacques Brel. He was instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world.

Continue reading Rod McKuen 1/2015

Posted on Leave a comment

Peggy Lee 1/2002

Peggy Lee21 January 2002 – Peggy Lee was born Norma Deloris Engstrom on May 26th 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. Her mother died when Peggy was just a four year old toddler. Afterwards, her father married her step-mother Min Schaumber, who treated her with great cruelty while her alcoholic but loving father did little to stop it. As a teenager she developed her musical talent and took several part-time jobs so that she could be away from home to escape the abuse of her step-mother.

Lee first sang professionally over radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a salary in food. Both during and after her high school years, Lee sang for small sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy in Fargo, North Dakota, changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee. Miss Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17. Continue reading Peggy Lee 1/2002

Posted on Leave a comment

Frank Sinatra 5/1998

Frank SINATRAMay 14, 1998 – Frank Sinatra  was born on December 12, 1915

American singer and actor; arguably the most important popular music figure of the 20th century, his only real rival for the title being Elvis Presley. He began his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, he became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-40s, being the idol of the “bobby soxers.”

His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in From Here to Eternity. He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums, In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice ‘n’ Easy. Continue reading Frank Sinatra 5/1998