No sooner had I heard the news on the radio that Duane Eddy had died (and Richard Tandy of ELO too) than I opened the Guardian’s obituary page to find that Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues has made his final voyage.
Pinder was the last of the original five members of the Moody Blues still standing. Now only Justin Hayward and John Lodge remain of the later classic line-up.
Pinder’s contribution to that classic line-up was immense. It is fair to say that without his ability on the mellotron (an instrument he personally brought to the attention of The Beatles) The Moody Blues would not have sounded as they did, nor had the same success.
His piano solo on the original group’s biggest hit Go Now was no small part of its effectiveness.
This song written by Pinder was the B-side to Ride My See-saw but later appeared on the odd album Caught Live + Five. It was later a hit for The Four Tops but as usual Levi Stubbs shouted his way through it.
The Moody Blues: A Simple Game
This is another of my favourite Pinder songs:-
The Moody Blues: The Best Way to Travel (from In Search of the Lost Chord)
I always loved the piano ending to this track which was sandwiched between Have You Heard Part 1 and Have You Heard Part 2 on the LP On the Threshold of a Dream.
The Moody Blues: The Voyage
Michael Thomas (Mike) Pinder: 27/12/1941 – 24/4/2024. So it goes.
As soon as I hear the first notes of this it takes me right back to when my family first got a transistor radio which kick-started my interest in popular music. It immediately conjures up the time and place – specifically listening to (the pirate) Radio Scotland and especially the late great Stuart Henry. This was the big hit at the time.
You may have noticed I’ve not put up any Tamla Motown tracks in this category so far despite that label (or collection of labels if you lived in the US) by and large soundtracking the sixties. While I enjoyed a lot of Motown stuff it wasn’t what I was mainly into. Certainly not enough to buy any Motown records.
This is one that started out in 1967, as a B-side I believe, and wasn’t very big in the US. When (re?)-released over here in 1969 it reached no. 5 in the UK charts.
It mines that same stream of unrequited/spurned love as Tracks Of My Tears and Tears Of A Clown but I always preferred this song to either of those.
From its quiet intro to that final drum sign off it’s just a perfect pop song.
Walk Away Renee is another underestimated 1960s gem.
I bought The Truth’s cover version of this song before I learned it was a cover. (I knew there were other versions around at the time but it wasn’t until years later that I discovered it had first been done by The Left Banke.) I’m featuring the original, as The Truth’s recording isn’t on You Tube.
Walk Away Renee was of course a biggish hit later for the Four Tops but they overplayed it. Levi Stubbs was just too shouty for a delicate flower like this.