John Paul Jones on his Mellotron and Fairlight keyboards (interview part 12 of 22)

This is the 12th part of the transcript of my interview with John Paul Jones, conducted Dec. 10, 2001.

SPS: Back to the instruments for a second. You always complained about the Mellotron. I always hear, "Oh, that Mellotron." [laughs]

JPJ: I mean, it sounded great when it worked.

SPS: You used it every year from ’72 to ’77.

JPJ: But I had no choice! I had no choice!

SPS: There wasn’t much else out?

JPJ: There was nothing else! Nothing else! No string machines and… It was the only thing you could get that had strings and flutes on it. When we used to start "The Rain Song," I had one foot on the volume control and one had like a tuning control. So I used to have to come in [quickly hums the guitar intro] just at the start of the guitar, and I’d play [imitates the Mellotron] and I’d try and tune it [makes a tuning noise] before it got too loud. Oh, awful. ’Cause you’d set it up and tune it, and then the crowd would come in. Basically, their heat would make the tapes stretch, and so you simply didn’t know what it would be. We hated each other.

SPS: You and the Mellotron?

JPJ: But it was great. As I said, once you got going it was fine, but at that first intro… [People would say to me,] "Oh, the Moody Blues can do it." Because it could work for them. He was constantly rebuilding his Mellotron [inaudible]. He was a Mellotron technician and was constantly rebuilding it [inaudible]. Oh, it was hell. And the day that I managed to replace it, I did, and that was the GX-1. ...

SPS: Then you sold that to Keith Emerson, right?

JPJ: Yeah, while it was getting big in the United States. I wasn’t really using it. I’d already replaced that, ’cause that was huge. It had to weigh a quarter of a ton. I think I had a roadie who used to live in the flying case, it was that big. And I replaced that with the Fairlight. I used that on one tour. I was one of the few people ever to use a Fairlight on the road.

SPS: There's a historical footnote.

JPJ: Yeah, that was 1980 on the European tour.

On to part 13: John Paul Jones on "progressive" music.