A Life In Music: The Men Who Make Mellotrons

In a workshop not too far away from you, magic is being made (and recreated). 

John Bradley and Martin Smith have been involved with Mellotrons all their lives. 

What is a Mellotron? Well, please read on, and listen to the companion podcast. 

John is the pragmatic engineer who can look at a piece of kit and know exactly what to do. Martin was and is a superfan of 60s, 70s and 80s music with a decided taste for Progressive Rock. The Mellotron simply reeled him in. John's dad ran the original Streetly Electronics, based in a small building just to the north of Birmingham. They made Mellotrons. Musicians beat paths to their door. It was John and Martin who revived the current business. And now the musicians are calling on them. 

The Mellotron was key to 60s and 70s pop. Then it sort of fell out of fashion. But the sounds on countless Beatles, Genesis, Moody Blues and Barclay James Harvest tracks, and tons more are still in demand. So much so that John and Martin's order book is full for the next two years. And as for their stellar client list...

Be warned: there's one teeny little swear word; it's so funny, I couldn't bring myself to cut it out. I travelled to the workshop for the Lives in Music interview. Copious amounts of tea were consumed. Followed by copious amounts of editing. 

The podcast has now been published: go here to listen, subscribe and/or download... or go to the player at the bottom of this post. 

Background

If you are still not entirely sure what a Mellotron is, read the exhaustive details on Wikipedia here...

Some samples

Here's a YouTube link for Strawberry Fields Forever...
This is a Link to one of the earliest recorded uses of the Mellotron ...
or how about this Moody Blues cut?

Other Links

Streetly Electronics website
Streetly Electronics on Facebook

Listen to the podcast

Lives in Music 

Lives in Music celebrates people who have spent a lifetime in music. They may be famous; they may be people who have simply spent their lives working at their craft for the love of it. They all have stories. Lives in Music is a Radio To Go production.

Also published in Lives In Music 

all with show notes and music links

1 - Ruby Turner 
2 -  Steve Ajao
4 - Mike Hatton 
5 - Horace Panter
6 - Jasper Carrott
7 - Sam Slater
8 - John Patrick
9 - Gordon Giltrap
10 - Jim Simpson

The theme music for this series is by local band Big Q Fish. 'Boksburg Jive Toon' was written by Brian Neil, and recorded at the Jam House, Birmingham, in 2017.

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Hold on to those band snaps! In 50 years you could be sitting on a gold mine.

Don't you point that thing at me, pal... Number 6: Jim Simpson

You can cover an awful lot of ground in the music biz if you stick at it. Now probably best known for running Birmingham International Jazz Festival, as a young sixties groover Jim Simpson was eking out a living as a semi-pro trumpet player, a band manager (Locomotive, Black Sabbath, and others)... and, significantly, as a part time snapper, selling photos wherever he could.

All this was long before the advent of digital. Jim worked with a lovely professional twin-lens reflex camera, very similar to the one here. I had a very cheap version of Jim's pro kit back in the day, and I absolutely loved it. Twin lens machines used conventional film, in the now very rare format: 120. This usually means square negatives, 56 millimetres along each edge: vastly larger that the smaller and faster 35 millimetre format. 

The downside? A larger, heavier, much more unwieldy camera, into which you normally squinted downwards, rather than at the subject, to compose and focus. More often that not, you had to work with a degree of formality. These weren't machines that let you grab images on the fly. And as we've already seen with Pogus Caesar, you could only fire off 12 shots before you had to change the film.So you took more care over your precious limited set of images. The upside was super image quality, which then meant terrific enlargements.

Jim shot a lot of stuff, half a century back. Some of his best images are now on show at Havill and Travis, a new gallery in Harborne, South Birmingham. The gallery is a joint venture between Gerv Havill of Moseley Folk fame, and Dave Travis, also a photographer and onetime promoter. 

At the preview, Jim was happily running though old memories.

I had no idea until I knew of the exhibition that you ware also a pro photographer. 

Yes it kept me alive. I went seriously into it at a rather stupid point when I should have been paying more attention to Black Sabbath, who I was managing then. 

You mean you didn't take any shots of the band in their extreme youth? 

Only about six shots in all the years I was with them. A bit of an omission. 

Here's the Move in 1965... fresh-faced boys.

Trevor Burton, Roy Wood, Bev Bevan, Carl Wayne and Ace Kefford. In a field. In the cold. 

I thought Roy Wood's fringe was a hat, actually. A hat made of hair. That was the first publicity session they had. It was very early in the morning, and it was very cold. They're all wearing college scarves. I don't think they went anywhere near a college. Bev (Bevan)used to drive past a college on his way to work. 

Let's move on to the Moodies...

Ah. That was at the Carlton Club in Erdington. It eventually became Mother's, of course. 

Named after the brewery, weren't they? The Mitchells and Butler 5, or the M&B 5, I understand.

Yes. 

This really was the band that became the Moody Blues. This really was the club that became Mothers. 

I was in London then, and the first thing I heard from them was their cover single of Bessie Banks' Go Now...

Well, they were an R&B outfit. This line-up, they all came from major bands in Brum at the time, except for the drummer, who managed them. The guys who owned the Carlton Club got behind them, so they could be put before the Friday night crowds there. They were a major local draw, very early on. The sad thing is that the bass player in the picture, Clint Warwick – that was a stage name – after a couple of years, he thought 'I don't Like This', and he left the band, went back home to Aston and became a carpenter.

So here's a piece of history... the young Spencer Davis Group looking very chipper and cheerful, on the central divider of Smallbrook Queensway.

And the magazine they're holding, Midlands Beat. I used to take photographs for it. And write a news column, for twelve pounds a month. Look at the cars – very vintage. And look how few of them there are in the picture. 

Steve and Muff Winwood, Pete York and Spencer Davis. Just down the road from their Golden Eagle residency

You sat them in the middle of Smallbrook Queensway for a photoshoot?

We weren't exactly taking a risk, were we? Look at the traffic - it was a bit different. Steve (Winwood) was sixteen, I think.

So that's the local boys. Of the rest – shots of Mick Jagger, Nina Simone, Little Richard – what are you proudest of?

Howling Wolf. 

He was a very interesting man. On stage, he could rock a room into bad health without any effort, At the same time, he scared audiences. He was a terrifying presence. Six foot four, 350 pounds. But talk to him, and he was so gentle and mild. He told me a lot about himself and his life. He told me he couldn't read and write until his forties. The he went back to school and college. He was also very proud to tell me that when he first went to Chicago, he was recording – I think – for Sam Phillips in Memphis. Chess called him and he went up, but as he said, all the old blues guys went up to Chicago with the insides of their pockets hanging out. He went up in his own car, with 4000 bucks. In those days, a massive sum. 

Jim, these shots from your twin lens reflex have come up beautifully. Have you had to do any kind of retouching work?

Very little. We tried in most cases to print from the negative. There's a couple we've had to adjust slightly. No much burning in or dodging. I'm digitised now, and I don't really like it. I love the flexibility - 20 or 25 shots without even thinking about it. In those days, with 12 shots a roll, and the fuss of changing the rolls over, you made sure each negative counted. 

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Fathers and Sons: 60s veteran Don Fardon is back working, with DC Fontana

Old and in the way… or possessed of invaluable perspective? With Don Fardon and DC Fontana, it's, emphatically, the latter. 

Don Fardon interviewed. Pic by Mark Mortimer

It’s fair to say that most music ventures tend to draw on people of much the same age range. And the more image-conscious the venture, the more this pattern seems to apply. 

It’s often the fate of veteran musos to find themselves reverently placed on a pedestal, to be worshipped from afar rather than collaborated with. For example, much as 70s Brum metal monsters are venerated by 21st century rockers, I’m not at all sure the new kids would actually welcome any of the old boys onstage. And that’s a great shame, because every generation has creative goodies to pass on to the next. You could look at it the other way too: every new generation, no matter how much it thinks it's  blazingly original, actually feeds from, builds on, and recycles what’s gone before.

It’s not a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions, and when they work, it’s a pure delight. 

The excellent Friendly Fire Band, one of the keepers of Birmingham’s reggae flame, is only too happy to work with reggae veterans whenever they can. World, Blues, Jazz, Country and Folk, too, also all hold their veterans are held in high esteem. With Rock, Pop and Dance / Club / Urban variations, I think it’s a slightly different story; there, image and tribalism carries much more weight.  

So it was nice to learn that a band I really admire, DC Fontana, who have great (but not compulsive/obsessive) love for 60s pop, had forged a link with Don Fardon, who himself had had a fair go in the 60s as a solo artist and with his band The Sorrows. 

Don (based in Coventry) was hooked up with DC Fontana (based in Tamworth) by a promoter in London; it’s proved a fruitful connection. DC Fontana leader Mark Mortimer was thrilled at the prospect of working with a seminal 60s name; Don, for his part, was very happy to have another canter round the course. 

I met with Don and Mark as Don added vocals to an alternative version of the lead song on the next DC Fontana EP. In keeping with DCF’s nod to the 60s practice of recording multiple language versions of the same song, there’s talk of a Spanish version of the single. Hey, if the Beatles could cut German versions of their songs (Sie Liebt Dich, anyone?)…

The song in question is Pentagram Man; you can see the original YouTube clip down the page in this post. It’s about Aleister Crowley, the Leamington spa-born occultist. This is very 60s in itself: both Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath paid a lot of attention to Crowley. The single even has The Great Beast himself intoning at the start...


Pentagram man: DC Fontana with Don Fardon 

Mark, I hope this clip of Crowley is now in the public domain? I’d hate to think of him dropping by in person for his royalty share….

It's a recording taken from a wax cylinder dating right back to the early 1900s. So we are presuming it is in the public domain, and we’re safe to use it - as safe as can be expected when dealing with the Great Beast! We’re hoping to get the 6-track ep released by the end of September. We’re releasing on our own label, DC Tone, but it will also come out in vinyl on an Italian label called Teen Sound records. We release in all forms: CD, mp3 and vinyl. 

Tell me about hooking up with Don?

We’d been asked to do backup for Don; he had re-formed the Sorrows, and this was to cover his solo work as well. We’ve had this sort of thing offered to us before, but it’s never actually happened for one reason or another, so I wasn’t expecting too much. Ironically, I’ve always loved his music. ‘I’m Alive’ by Don, which came out in 1969, is one of my top ten records of all time. 

A couple of months later, we were approached by the same promoter; the gig was definitely on, could we look at contacting Don? 

We met and hit it off well. He’s a lovely guy, with a lot of stories to tell. We worked up a show where we open up with some of our material, and then Don comes on and we play his stuff; it’s looking very promising.   

So when is this show going on the road?

It’s started. We played in August at Euro Ye Ye in Gijón in Spain. It’s a great festival, held in the city square, in front of nine or ten thousand people. Great gig, big stage… we got to do an hour of DC Fontana and then 45 minutes with Don, and it went down an absolute storm. He’s an absolute pro. We’ve now been offered shows in Australia and Europe on the back of this. Don was a big-selling star in the 60s and 70s in those markets; there’s still a lot of fondness for him over there. 

DC Fontana live, August 2, 2012 in Gijón, Spain. Photo: Fernando Da Silva.

 Let me just rewind for a second here, Mark. You’re playing in front of ten thousand people in Spain….and you’re doing Australian tours. I know you do shows in France. That’s great, but how the hell does all that square with the gigs I’ve seen you play in Birmingham – several times now – in front of a small but dedicated audience who certainly like you a lot? There's a bit of a disconnect here…

It is a bit surreal – but I really enjoy that surrealism. I quite like the fact that we do so many different gigs, from the sublime to the ridiculous and back. We do gig a lot, because we need to fund our existence… which is a bit surreal in itself. A lot of bands are struggling to survive; we’re no exception. We deal with this by gigging a lot. We’re very old-school in that respect. But we are phasing out the smaller gigs now.

Like the one I saw you first at, in the Witton Arms behind Villa Park – the one with no stage at all?

Ironically, we’ve just been asked to play there again. They’re actually turning the beer-garden in the back into a bit a venue for bands. They’ve got quite ambitious plans. There is a gig happening on October 6th, outdoors, where they have Aslan coming over from Dublin – where they are huge – to play a fairly low-key gig. We’re supporting. It’s a bizarre combination again, but I like that – it opens us up to a new audience. The plan from the pub’s point of view is that it helps to put them on the map as a Birmingham music venue. 

It’s a welcome addition as far as I’m concerned. North Birmingham simply doesn’t have enough music venues. Turning to the EP again – are you producing a video?

We’re done three – to support a six-track EP.

DC Fontana are issuing series of videos from Pentragram Man EP. Here's number 1  

Wow. Did that cost a lot of money?

Well, we haven’t got a lot of money! We tried to box as cleverly as we can. We try to surround ourselves with people who are really creative, who are quite hungry as well. We want to work with directors and actors and performance artists who want make their name in the world, who’ll be happy to work with people like us on a collaborative basis. We do try to make out videos look a lot more expensive that they really are.

Well, that’s part of your goal, isn’t it?

Well hopefully. It’s not easy to pull off. We do spend thousands… but not tens of thousands like some people do. I used to work for a record label in Birmingham (Network Records, based at Stratford House in Camp Hill) and I can remember the sums of money we spent on bands like Altern8, the rave duo, KWS from Nottingham, who had a number 1 hit… Brum based house duo Mother, and people like Groove Corporation, who we now record with…  we spent an awful amount of money on videos. I can remember hanging out on set and seeing how it was done. I always felt that, as a lot of things were with the music industry back in those days, that everybody was ripping everybody else off, everybody was making a huge amount of money, when it could have been done with a much smaller budget. 

Meantime, back in the studio, Don Fardon was warming up nicely up as he worked up through a bunch of takes. We spent a lot of time talking about his early career, and especially about how the vast sums of money he made in the 60s …. never actually seemed to trickle down to him. Don’s got a lot of solid advice for anybody starting out, and this is going to be the subject of a separate post later in the year. But he’s a contented man. It wasn’t always that way

Don Fardon: The first agency agreement I signed with the Sorrows, we signed at a champagne reception for the farewell tour for the Drifters. We didn’t know until two years later that we were managed, and owned, by the Krays… The company was called Capable Management. My advice is: take advice before you sign anything. We didn’t, and we paid for it. 

Louise and Don Fardon on stage in Gijón, Spain. Photo: Fernando Da Silva.

Not a contract I’d want to break. Here we are in a studio in Balsall Heath, a funky part of Brum in all senses of the word, and you’ve just dropped vocals onto DC Fontana’s 60s psychedelic pop. And it’s 2012. How does it feel?

Pretty good. The big concert we did in July in Spain was such a wow. We all enjoyed it, and they said we’d love you to put vocals down on one of the main tracks of the new album; I said of course I would.  

But are you getting a royalty on this?

We haven’t even talked about it! 

But it's crystal clear that you're having a ball...

Absolutely. This is different. This is for friends! 

DC Fontana's second video from the new EP, shot in Birmingham's Custard Factory

Links
DC Fontana website
Don Fardon Wikipedia page