Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

This is from the Bennett and Bloom catalogue available at their website.

NEW ANNOUNCEMENT

Mellotron
The Machine and the Musicians That Revolutionised Rock
by Nick Awde

Some of Britain’s most influential musicians, songwriters and
producers chart their careers with the Mellotron. Across 20-plus
interviews, legendary acts include the Moody Blues, Strawbs,
King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Barclay James Harvest and Orchestral
Manoeuvres In The Dark, plus later groups such as I.Q. and
Sweden’s The Flower Kings.
This Heath Robinson-like machine, built in the UK’s industrial
heartland of the Midlands, used banks of pre-recorded tapes
to create the world’s first sampler keyboard. It lent its haunting
trademark orchestral sounds to such ground-breaking classics as
the Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, the Moody Blues’ ‘Nights
in White Satin’, and King Crimson’s avant-garde album In the
Court of the Crimson King.
By concentrating on the Golden Age of British rock and pop
from the late Sixties to the post-Beatles early Seventies, the result
is a unique insight into how Mellotron bands – many of them
Baby Boomers who grew up in post-World War II austerity –
refl ected and shaped the social background to British popular
music and established a lasting influence worldwide. Linking this
is a thoughtful and often entertaining overview of the development
of symphonic and progressive rock bands and how, contrary
to popular opinion, they were not killed off by punk but
continued instead to adapt and thrive up to the present day.
Published by Desert Hearts
May 2007, 352 pp., 40 b&w illustrations
ISBN 978 1 898948 02 5, hardback, £19.95