Mike Pinder, Founding Keyboardist of the Moody Blues, Dies at 82

Mike Pinder, the final surviving founding member of the Moody Blues, whose revolutionary use of the Mellotron — a predecessor of the sampler — helped make the band a pioneer of progressive rock, died on Wednesday at his house within the Sacramento space. He was 82.

His son Dan confirmed the loss of life. He stated that his father had respiratory difficulties and had been in hospice take care of a couple of days.

The Moody Blues had been fashioned in 1964, with a lineup of Mr. Pinder on keyboards, Denny Laine on guitar, Graeme Edge on drums, Ray Thomas on flute and Clint Warwick on bass. The group’s “Go Now!,” sung by Mr. Laine, rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Scorching 100.

Mr. Laine and Mr. Warwick left after the discharge of the band’s first album, “The Magnificent Moodies” (1965), and had been changed by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. The change in personnel set the stage for a change in course: from R&B-tinged rock to the psychedelic, orchestral sound that the Moody Blues vividly showcased on their breakthrough 1967 album, “Days of Future Passed.”

Mr. Pinder had labored as a tester within the Mellotron manufacturing unit in Birmingham, England, earlier than the Moody Blues fashioned. Taking part in the corporate’s Mark II mannequin for the primary time was “my first ‘man on the moon’ event,” he told the British music website Brumbeat.

So he understood the musical potentialities of utilizing the Mellotron, an electromechanical keyboard that makes use of tape loops to simulate the sounds and rhythms of an orchestra, on “Days of Future Passed” and past.

“With the ’Tron, I could develop melodies and countermelodies within the Moody Blues’ songs,” Mr. Pinder told Rolling Stone in 2018 for its oral historical past of “Nights in White Satin,” the album’s signature tune, which was written and sung by Mr. Hayward. “When you become the orchestra, I think you become the arranger by default. I could create the backdrops and the landscape for the melodies that the guys were writing.”

After Mr. Pinder’s loss of life, Mr. Hayward wrote on Facebook: “Mike was a natural born musician who could play any style of music with warmth and love. His reimagining and rebuilding (literally) of the Mellotron gave us our identifiable early sound.”

Mr. Pinder stated that he had really useful the Mellotron to John Lennon. It was performed by Paul McCartney on the Beatles’ 1967 single “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

“Days of Future Passed” additionally featured Mr. Pinder’s baritone-voiced recitation of “Late Lament,” the magical coda (written by Mr. Edge) to “Nights in White Satin.” Mr. Pinder was mendacity down “in a meditative state,” he stated within the oral historical past, when he recited the poem that famously begins, “Breathe deep the gathering gloom/Watch lights fade from every room.”

Michael Thomas Pinder was born on Dec. 27, 1941, in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham, and grew up in close by Kingstanding. His father, Bertram, was a bus driver, and his mom, Gladys (Lay) Pinder, was a barmaid.

Michael had no formal coaching and began taking part in the piano and guitar when he was younger. He was within the British Military, the place he carried out with a band, when he first heard the Beatles.

“When I heard ‘Love Me Do,’ it was like, ‘OK, that’s what I’ve been waiting for,’” he told the website Classic Bands in an undated interview. “I’ve been waiting for that signal, because the music scene in England up until then was pretty poor.”

After they fashioned in 1964, the Moody Blues had been known as the M&B 5, utilizing the initials of the brewery that owned golf equipment and dance halls the place they’d been taking part in. The identify was a ploy to get cash from the brewery to fund the band. It didn’t work. So, Mr. Pinder informed Traditional Bands, he was impressed to create the identify Moody Blues by tying collectively “the mood affecting changes of music” and the truth that the band’s repertoire on the time was primarily rhythm and blues.

Mr. Pinder remained with the Moody Blues till 1978, offering vocals and contributing songs in addition to persevering with to make use of the Mellotron on albums like “In Search of the Lost Chord” (1968) and “On the Threshold of a Dream” (1969). He moved to a different electromechanical keyboard, the Chamberlin, for “Seventh Sojourn” (1972), and the synthesizer for “Octave” (1978).

By then, he had already launched a solo album, “The Promise,” in 1976. He spent a few years off the scene, a part of that point consulting on composing music for computer systems for Atari, the online game maker, earlier than recording a second album, “Among the Stars,” in 1995. He additionally recorded two albums for kids, “Planet With One Mind” (1995) and “A People With One Heart” (1996), wherein he informed tales, accompanied by his musical preparations.

“We wanted stories that had multilevel meanings,” he informed The San Francisco Examiner in 1997, referring to the seek for the suitable image books that he pursued together with his spouse, Taralee (Grant) Pinder. “We went through hundreds of books. We were looking through a lot of books that were like, ‘The rabbit went down to the mouse’s house for a cup of tea.’ But we were looking for books like, ‘The rabbit went down to the mouse’s house and discussed the Zen of tea making.’”

In addition to his wife and his son Daniel, from his marriage to Donna Arkoff, which ended in divorce, Mr. Pinder is survived by two other sons, Michael and Matthew, from his second marriage; four grandchildren; and a sister, Monica Hackett.

After the Moody Blues were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 — nearly 30 years after they first became eligible — Mr. Pinder wrote about the ceremony on his website.

“All the band brought their children and grandchildren and that was magic,” he wrote. He added: “Many MB fans have asked why I did not speak at the induction, but by the time the Moodies took the stage, we were five hours into the ceremony. The oldest of the inductees were up the latest.”