I note the last surviving member of US rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd has died. Guitarist Gary Rossington’s finest moment probably came with his slide guitar playing on Free Bird voted by viewers of the Old Grey Whistle Test as their favourite track to have been played on the show.
So here it is. (There’s what sounds like some mellotron on this. Even better.)
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird
Gary Robert Rossington: 4/12/1951 –5/3/2023. So it goes.
I came across this when I was searching for Emitt Rhodes songs. It seems he started out in The Merry-Go-Round. Being a US (minor) hit I hadn’t heard it before or at least didn’t recall it. I do remember Alan Freeman championing Emitt Rhodes when his first solo album came out, in 1970 I think.
There’s a Zombies feel to the introductory guitar and the “strings” sound very like a mellotron to me.
(I had scheduled this for 24/6/16 but a certain referendum result happening and then the anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme took up the last two Friday postings. Better late then never.)
You’ve just got to love the name of the band that recorded this. Crocheted Doughnut Ring. So sixties.
The song’s treatment is also very much of its time what with the flute, the drum rolls, mellotron and all.
I missed the Moody Blues next single after Fly Me High, the Mike Pinder song, Love and Beauty, where his mellotron made its first appearance on record, but I actually bought the one after, the initial issue – on the Deram label, DM 161 – of Nights In White Satin, written by Justin Hayward, which crept into the UK top twenty, making no. 19.
I was impressed by the B-side too, also written by Hayward. That mono version has the harpsichord, which features more prominently on later stereo releases, much lower down in the mix.
The Moody Blues: Cities
This is the stereo version with the more pronounced harpsichord:-
(This is the way my mind works. One word different from last week’s title.)
This single comes from the time when Denny Laine and Clint Warwick had quit The Moody Blues and John Lodge and Justin Hayward had just joined the group. The change signalled a new direction in which they would play only their own songs, develop a more harmony based approach and an “orchestral” sound. Fly Me High was the new line-up’s first single and was something of a transitional song as Mike Pinder had yet to acquire what would become his trademark mellotron.
The hairy guys in the picture below would only appear a few years later. At the time of this recording they were much more clean-cut.
Ace of Wands was a children’s TV programme, broadcast by ITV between 1970 and 1972, which had fantasy elements. As well as this, another attraction was the cracking theme tune.
The tune was released as a single, Tarot, and was performed by Andy Bown. There’s some brilliant mellotron in this.
