Bibek Acharya
Before analogue synthesisers began to dominate 1970s rock, the instrument of choice for the era’s prog heavyweights was the novel Mellotron keyboard. Famed for its uniquely weathered and warm textures, the Mellotron’s innovative bank of samples and pleasing aural flutters and warbles lent a distinct aura to many a psychedelic pop record of the day, used extensively by Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Yes, and Genesis.
The Mellotron’s original concept was developed in America by musician and inventor Harry Chamberlin in the early 1950s. Building a keyboard that played a series of taped pre-recordings of real orchestra instruments, any given ‘voice’ could be selected by a switch and ‘played’ by hitting the key that would spin the audio in the desired note or pitch. While complex and wieldy, Chamberlin’s representative Bill Fransen travelled to the UK in search of engineering expertise to improve the mysterious machine, heading to Birmingham’s Bradmatic Ltd to begin prototyping.
The Mellotron Mk I was commercially available in 1963, but it was the following year’s Mk II that the keyboard took off. Initially, a lavish household entertainment device indulged in elite circles by the likes of Princess Margaret, King Hussein of Jordan, and Peter Sellers, the emerging psychedelia guiding the rock and pop stars to explorative sonic terrain soon became enamoured with the Mk II’s rich and magical possibilities. First toyed with on The Graham Bond Organisation’s ‘Baby Can It Be True?’, The Moody Blues’ keyboardist Mike Pinder would become an enthusiastic advocate for the Mellotron and use a second-hand purchase on the majority of their albums up to 1978’s Octave.
According to Pinder, it was he who recommended the Mellotron to The Beatles. During 1966’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, EMI Studios hired a Mk II to aid John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s increasingly ambitious songcraft. Written in Spain’s Almeria and demoed in his Weybridge home, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’s surrealist nostalgia saw its first take in EMI’s Studio Two with just an acoustic guitar, confident that something special had been captured. According to engineer Geoff Emerick, it was McCartney’s idea to open the piece with the Mk II, its distinctive flute introduction standing as the most famous use of the Mellotron in rock and pop.
The fate of the ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ Mellotron has become shrouded in conjecture and lore. The consensus, as pieced together by dedicated Beatleologists, is that this specific model remained on hire throughout 1967—used exquisitely on The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle—but returned to Bradmatic Ltd’s renamed Streetly Electronics after the lease was up. Later purchased by future Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne while in predecessor band The Idle Race, the Mk II was then sold to The Tremeloes’ Chip Hawkes and used prominently on his score for 1970’s May Morning.
Reportedly, Hawkes still owns this Mk II but had loaned it to Liverpool’s The Beatles Story museum for some time. As for McCartney’s Mellotron, it’s understood he snapped up the customised Sound Effects Console model purchased by EMI before its use on The Beatles sessions in early 1968. Yet, stories of Lennon’s Mellotron, the supposed one heard on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, ending up in the hands of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor abound. What’s the deal?
Reznor did indeed have a Mellotron once owned by Lennon in his possession in the 1990s, but not one used on any Beatles record. Enamoured with the Mk II as much as any of his peers, Lennon ordered a limited edition black model, one of only six made. Shipped to his Weybridge estate, the sleek Mk II can be heard on various demos made at his Kenwood home, as well as his and Yoko Ono’s Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins sound collage. Shifted over with the couple’s move to Berkshire’s Tittenhurst Park, rudimentary attempts were made to incorporate the Mk II in the Imagine sessions, but it was discovered unplayable due to the inner magnetic tapes becoming tangled.
Imagine engineer Jack Douglas claimed that Lennon’s Mellotron travelled with his US emigration to New York City and was stored indefinitely in the basement of Manhattan’s Record Plant recording studio. While gathering dust across the 1980s following Lennon’s assassination, the pop world was rapidly changing. Aside from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s bold use of the upgraded M400 model in 1981’s Architecture & Morality, the Mellotron was deemed a distant relic of the prog era with little relevance among the flood of polyphonic and digital synthesisers, as well as the developments in sampling technology.
At some point, Lennon’s black Mk II was acquired by Interscope Records co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field, remaining a prized feature at their HQ and a keen talking point for artists and bigwigs passing by for business. Having built a reputation as a shared business team that also valued artistic integrity from its 1990 founding, the recent label successes of 2Pac and Primus brought Reznor to the Interscope hub in need of assistance in ridding itself of a contractual headache with TVT Records, which had issued 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine debut. Operating under secrecy, Reznor corralled the band and producer Flood to record an infinitely more abrasive and fucked-off follow-up.
Swapping aggro synthpop for blistering metal attack, 1992’s Broken EP conjured six stabs of gargantuan guitar heft smattered with acidic electronics that channelled the explosive energy of Ministry. Yet for all the sessions’ hi-tech hardware—most of the engulfing sonics were manipulated with the latest Macintosh computers and software—Field let Reznor borrow Lennon’s Mellotron at the makeshift studio set-up in Los Angeles’ 10050 Cielo Drive, the site of Sharon Tate’s murder at the hands of The Manson Family. Smattering the heavy metal with an eerie coating of warped keyboards lifted Broken‘s intensely alien impact on the industrial and hard rock world, as well as signalling the arrival of a unique artistic vision set to make its mark on the 1990s’ underground.
The Mellotron would crop up again on later Reznor’s work—either Lennon’s Mk II or an M400—on 1994’s The Downward Spiral and Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar, which he co-produced. By the late 1990s, the Mellotron was back in vogue, Radiohead utilising its haunting tones on OK Computer and Oasis wishing to evoke some of the magic of pop yesteryear with its touches on (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. Far from a fusty artefact, the Mellotron became a source of fascination for a new generation of artists captivated by its stirring aural sonics, just as the original pioneers had been 30 years earlier.
In need of a serious spruce-up, Streetly Electronics received Lennon’s Mellotron in 2009 and oversaw a massive restoration project, returning to Interscope HQ where it rests to this day. Replacing the magnetic tapes, the original recording spools were handed to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ co-creator and long-time client McCartney to treasure.
