C’mon! Point me to some great songs that use that Mellotron! (Excluding Moody Blues music because that’s too easy)
Lol Coxhill’s “A Series of Superbly Played Mellotron Codas” from Ear of Beholder.
Ashes to Ashes and Space Oddity by David Bowie
King Crimson is also too easy…or Genesis.
Bee Gees: Every Christian Lion Hearted Man
Jethro Tull: The Witch’s Promise ('tron about two minutes in)
Surely I don’t need to link to “Strawberry Fields Forever”…
Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song.”
The Stan Kenton Orchestra’s Music from West Side Story!
Oooops. That has mellophones.
Fun trivia about the Moodies and the Mellotron, however:
Moody Blues keyboardist Mike Pinder had worked at Streetly Electronics, the company which created the Mellotron. His engineering skills apparently frequently came into play in order to keep the finicky Mellotron working. As related on Wikipedia:
“Typical of his travails was the Moodies’ first US concert. When the band struck their first harmony, the back of the Mellotron fell open and all of the tape strips cascaded out. Pinder grabbed his tool box and got the instrument back into working order in 20 minutes’ time, while the light crew entertained the audience by projecting cartoons.”
One must visit planet mellotron!
http://www.planetmellotron.com/revgenesis.htm
Well early (version 1 and 2) KC.
Personal favourite for the OP would be Starless off Red. Indeed an all time favourite.
“And You and I” by Yes apparently has Rick Wakeman playing a Mellotron during at least one portion.
For a less obvious example, I present to you one of my favorite bands, Norway’s Motorpsycho:
The first time I ever heard a mellotron, and understood what the hell kind of device I was listening to was Dinosaur Jr.'s Thumb. It being bare in the intro shows off that it’s a bunch of tape segments. Flutes just don’t make noises that abruptly.
“Electrolite” by R.E.M.
Rolling Stones, 2000 Light Years from Home
Well-known bit of trivia that is bound to come up: the flamenco guitar sample on the Beatles’ White Album between “Wild Honey Pie” and “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” is a stock Mellotron sound. There is at least one early live recording of King Crimson where you can hear them triggering the same sample in an improv.
The real answer to this question is Genesis “Watcher of the Skies”. Or just about any Gabriel-era Genesis song, for that matter.
While I don’t know if I would call it a “great song” here is a contemporary song that youtube randomly played and I found enjoyable.
I do like the tiny desk concert version of Agnes Obel’s song “Happening”
She is 5× Platinum in Denmark but I find her albums way over produced, but that is true of lots of artists these days but this version is nice.
It was while hearing this song for the first time that I realized that I need to buy a Mellotron. Still looking. The opportunity has arisen, but at times and places where I couldn’t do anything about it.
Michael Pinder actually sold some Mellotrons to the Beatles. The “flutes” at the start of “Strawberry Fields Forever” are Paul playing a Mellotron.
A real one, not the digital version they’re making nowadays? Man, I don’t know a lot of people who’ve been willing to take on that much heartache. Favorite quote about the tron, from Robert Fripp: “Tuning a Mellotron doesn’t.”
Manfred Mann, Ha! Ha! Said the Clown
I agree I have messed with the original and the digital M4000D and you could never talk me into messing with the original.
Pork Rind:
IMHO Paying $400 for a mess like this just to get the extra latency is far past my tolerance of pain…and I own an OB8 and a Voyetra 8 and the OB8 just broke this week…so lots of time with a soldering gun soon.
The current smaller production Mellotron MkVI does have less lag and you can do some cool things with the voice switch but at $250 per set of 3 voice tapes and $7000+ for the unit when the m4000d or m4000d mini will give you 100 sounds for less than $3K.
It has the same interface and keyboard limitations and has 24 bit samples from the original tapes which is about 17 bits more than the original audio had…
I enjoy analog gear but don’t talk my word for it, check out the list of well known users from this page.
http://www.mellotron.com/well-known-users-M4000D.html
That said if you want to own it as a piece of history I am not trying to talk you out of that. But if you want it to play and to work within the creative limitations of the original it would be a worth your time to take a long hard look at the M4000D.