December 27, 1941 – April 24, 2024
Mike Pinder, the last surviving founding member of The Moody Blues, has died at the age of 82. The keyboard player had been suffering from dementia for several years.
A statement from his family revealed that Pinder passed “peacefully” and that his final days were “filled with music, encircled by the love of his family. Michael lived his life with a childlike wonder, walking a deeply introspective path which fused the mind and the heart.”
Pinder helped form British band The Moody Blues in 1964 and they had an initial hit with Go Now. But it wasn’t until 1967, by which time Justin Hayward and John Lodge had replaced guitarist Denny Laine and bassist Clint Warwick respectively, that the band began to rise in popularity, shifting their sound from their early R&B roots to a more progressive and symphonic sound with second album Days Of Future Passed, released in 1967.
Birmingham-born Pinder had moved to California during the band’s mid-70s hiatus. When the band reconvened in 1977 to begin work on the album Octave, he declined full participation, and was replaced by former Yes keyboard player Patrick Moraz.
Pinder released his debut solo album, The Promise, in 1976. A second solo album, Among The Stars, followed in 1994, and A Planet With One Mind a year later.
Away from music Pinder worked as a consultant to the Atari Corporation.
Happy to stay out of the limelight, Pinder was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame as a member of The Moody Blues in 2018, although he was the only member of the band not to give an acceptance speech. Afterwards he said: “Many MB fans have asked why I did not speak at the induction, but by the time the Moodies took the stage we were five hours into the ceremony. The oldest of the inductees were up the latest. The speeches were a bit anti-climactic at that point, and it was only fitting that the current touring members [Graeme Edge, Hayward and Lodge] spoke first. Iam happy that we finally got inducted, for our fans’ sake. As I have said for the last thirty years, ‘the fans are my hall of fame’.”
As well as the music he created with The Moody Blues and solo, Pinder will best be remembered as an advocate of technology, notably his early pioneering work with the Mellotron.
His passing means that no original members of The Moody Blues are still alive. Drummer Edge died in 2021, vocalist and flautist Ray Thomas in 2018, and
