Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: The Mellotron Group

I happened to be in Manny’s one day in 72(I think) when the entire Focus entourage came in and bought , of all things, a Mellotron. Why would a dutch band  be buying a mellotron in N.Y.C? I don’t have the answer for that. My dad really liked them probably because of the jazz influence.
There weren’t many guitarists around like Jan Ackerman those days- I don’t think I ever saw any one doing hammer strokes before.
We saw them at the Felt Forum (Aerosmith the backup band??!!).. I saw them again at the Beacon –they followed Gentle Giant. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody- how do you follow a show like that. To top it off, none of Thij’s synthesizers worked and he had to sing all those parts . They looked really stressed out. Great band, it wasn’t easy in those days (or now) for a progressive band to get that far- a major tour and a string of albums on a big label.