Happy Birthday, Mellotron
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 1:51 am
What is a Mellotron?
Only the world's first mass-produced sampled instrument. And it was made by Brummies.
Only the world's first mass-produced sampled instrument. And it was made by Brummies.
I'll keep this one short. Which will be a relief to you all, I'm sure. But exactly 50 years ago today - 11th December, 1963 - the first production mellotron left the gates of Mellotronics Ltd in Birmingham, UK. Where it went is either lost to history, or lost to the big pile of boxes in John Bradley's loft, but today's the day it went.
50 years is a long time. 50 years ago things were different - the first public demonstration of an all-transistor radio was only 10 years prior to this. The Second World War was less than 20 years behind us. The first Beatles LP had only been released 3 weeks previously. I was only 4 years old. Sheffield Wednesday were still a force to be reckoned with. It was a very, very different world.
And into that world, unrecognisable to us today, was born a box full of tapes, containing drum loops and rhythm tracks, designed and conceived to be a home organ for the relatively wealthy, but destined to be so much more than that, mainly due to the guy who drove the delivery van and played the organ in a little beat group up the road. The soundtrack to a thousand first kisses via Nights in White Satin (thanks van driver guy!), a thousand first acid trips via Strawberry Fields, then another thousand first kisses via Wonderwall, and in between a thousand 'ooh I preferred them when they played rhythm and blues' first hearings of 2,000 Light Years from Home.
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