My Mellotron Fixation
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 9:51AM 
When I was a kid, I had a strange fixation on the music of the Moody Blues. Don't worry, I got over it. I've already apologized for it, many times, and now it's behind me. But it wasn't the band members or the Edwardian coats, or the earnestly vapid lyrics that attracted me. It was the sound. Orchestral yet not, synth-y yet not, coupled with a muted bass line and a jangley acoustic twelve-string, and I loved it. By and large, the band, their music, even their success were framed by a big, clumsy 35- note cabinet keyboard called the Mellotron.
Later (well, in high school), I was fully taken in by the versatility and hard edge of King Crimson. Eerie, dark and obscure, definitely not pure pop for now people. But something resonated, that sound, that orchestra from a parallel universe - it was of course the Mellotron.
The Mellotron is an analog polyphonic audio sample loop-playback keyboard, which is to say that it gets its sound by purely mechanical and electrical means. No one's and zero's involved. The cabinet encloses a massive bank of tape loops, grouped by sound - strings, flutes, voices - activated by dialing in a sound bank and pressing a key. A tape head makes contact with a loop of tape, and off you go.
Like many fine technologies, it was conceived in a tinkerer's workshop. In the early sixties, Harry Chamberlin had the insight to hook up a bunch of tape players to a keyboard so it could play "real sounds." In essence, the first sampling keyboard. he opened a shop in Upland California and battled his way to a prototype.
The thing moved to England, got a brand name and a functional technology, became the Mellotron, but that history history is readily available elsewhere. I'm talking about the sound, the aural atmosphere that pervaded British pop music for a decade or more - King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Roxy Music, Elton John, the Kinks, Traffic, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream - if you got high to it, it probably involved a Mellotron.
The sound of the instrument, cheesy as it seems today, is a thread that runs through many styles of pop. And it's not all hoary prog-rock, either. Think of the Beatles, the song Strawberry Field. Those flutes? Mellotron. Brian Jones went nuts on the thing for the Stone's Their Satanic Majesties Request. and more currently, listen to Richard Thompson's Rumor and Sigh. Elvis Costello's Spike, Like a Rose, and Brutal Youth, decorating them is the Chamberlin, the Mellotron's first cousin. REM, Radiohead and Oasis made use of the sound, good or otherwise. The list of albums, as posted by Mellotron, is over a thousand.
Recently I picked up what will be as close to an actual Mellotron as I'm ever likely to get, a digitally sampled virtual keyboard version called the M-Tron. I'm not much for irony, but there's irony in the thought that the Mellotron, an entirely electro-mechanical device that derived its perfectly unique sound from hissy loops of audio tape, a sound that pervades a generation of pop music, may live on entirely in the digital realm.
But I won't dwell on the irony, because I'm not much for irony, and it's the inherent cheesiness of the Mellotron that attracts me in the first place. See, I'm not a musician, I'm a comic writer who likes to make music. But I got to use the M-tron for the first time on an actual song, with my musical partners The Rifftones.
More on that soon...
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Reader Comments (13)
Where did you find an M-Tron?
nice. If it's king crimson approved then it must be good.
Aw, don't apologize for your Moody Blues phase. I'm still in mine, twenty-five-plus years later. Seriously, I could defend, at least, the "classic seven" albums for ever and so on. But not here and now. You're all welcome.
Kevin, are you familar with the optigan?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optigan
Robert Fripp has written about the trials and tribulations of touring with two mellotrons and keeping them in tune and working. Quite tempramental beasts from what he says. I believe they used them again most recently in the late 90's. But you have to love that "it's almost an orchestra but wonderfully artificial" sound.
Hey, I still like the Moody Blues for the reasons you did. And I'm only 32. Still sounds great on vinyl
Sounds like a forerunner of Frank Zappa's Synclavier. Though the Synclavier does use ones and zeroes, it sounds like they came from similar brainstorms.
Not a fixation, but a fascination, I have long appreciated the striking qualities of the Mellotron since birth, perhaps since conception, but my parents aren't talking. Bold, gregarious, and bold, the Mellotron is to modern music what the harpsichord was to chamber music, a departure yet subtly, familiarly evocative. A sucker for reading liner notes while intensely baked, I recall the Mellotron (as an accredited instrument) leaping from the weed-clouded pages at my prodigiously bloodshot eyes. What is that? my hallucinogenically-preoccupied-self pondered many a moon and bong ago. Ah, I cleverly concluded, it must be at the heart of what makes Rush an imperative bit of stonerage, for the discerning stoner on the go, or lounging slack-jawed on a mound of satin pillows, as the case may be. Yes, it too, lies in and around the lake of what made the aural ecstasy of Yes the focus of noon time after-lunch drives during my formative lost-in-a-haze-of-purple-haired-weed-from-Alaska period. Then there was my postgraduate college malaise period often highlighted by elongated listenings of Animals into Dead Set back into Animals then ...And Justice for All. Not quite as Mellotron-driven as my oft belittled mullet period, but nevertheless a treat for the soul.
Randy
No need to apologize for the Mellotron. I can think of two great albums off the top of my head, "Odessey and Oracle" and "(pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd)" where the Mellotron added a great deal to the final mix. In fact, I think that the Zombies sounded better with a Mellotron backing them than real strings.
so YOU"RE the one who was into Moody Blues. I always wondered who was making all those comment on MST. (threshold of a dream is my fav.)
Well, the Mellotron is an awesome thing. I know I was excited the first time I got to play on one.
-Kat
I've been impressed with the people who've made the 32-some-odd Walkman-based Mellotrons. It's an awesome idea that I wish I'd come up with first.
(Also, nice nod to Nick.)
Dedicated to all things mello'
http://www.planetme llotron.com/
As a prog-rocker, I'm of the belief that the musical worth of an artists is directly dependent upon how much "mellotron" is used in their songs.
For instance:
"Celebrate" by Kool and the Gang would get 1 out of 5 stars, while
"Watcher of the Skies" by Genesis would receive somewhere around 1,000,000 out of 5.
Amen to the last poster, except that he is entirely too charitable to Kool And The Gang. If you haven't heard of Anglagard yet, I suggest you check them out. I saw them live in '03 and they had 3 mellotrons on stage. Heaven!!! Check out Anglagard Jordrok (Part 2) on YouTube. Kevin, you've been beating up on progressive rock for too long. I'll admit it has never helped me score with the ladies, but then again, neither has MST3K.