Ex-Moody Blue Mike Pinder looks at the legend of Leary's mind

(June 13, 1996)

Timothy Leary's dead, but his legend lives on, at least in the minds of Moody Blues fans.

The psychedelic guru was immortalized in "Legend of a Mind," a trippy track off the Moodys' 1968 album "In Search of the Lost Chord." Written by flutist Ray Thomas and arranged by keyboardist Mike Pinder, the song's haunting refrain of "Timothy Leary's dead/ Oh, no, he's outside looking in" was actually a high compliment.

"It was quite metaphysical," Pinder said recently from his Auburn, Calif., home. "It used him as an out of body experience and looking back at life at a normal level."

Those who didn't get the message behind the song "were on the other outside looking in," he said with a laugh.

Leary never had a problem with the song, Pinder said.

"I explained it to him, where we were coming from, and he understood it. He even came on stage and banged a tambourine at a few shows. If he had missed the point, him of all people, that would have been awfully strange."

Once a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, Leary administered drugs such as LSD to other researchers, students and celebrities (the Moodys included) seeking "spiritual ecstasy, religious revelation and union with God."

"Others were doing it without any understanding or knowledge of what it involved," Pinder said. "They were using it as a party drug and that was wrong. Timothy was on a frontier of discovery. He caught the ball and ran with it."

Pinder said he kept in touch with Leary over the years and listened to the ideas he had.

"They were usually ungrounded, like space stations," he said. "And he was trying to do good things with computers, but he didn't know where he was taking it. He hung on the external side of things."

Pinder carved the Moody Blues' sound with the use of the Mellotron, a keyboard that reproduces orchestral and choral sounds. After 14 years, he quit the band in 1978, vowing to devote more time with his wife, Tara, and their children.

He returned to recording last year with his second full-length solo album, "Among the Stars," on his independent label One Step Records. This year's follow-up, "A Planet With One Mind," featured a collection of children's stories read by Pinder and set to music. It recently was named one of three finalists in the audio-children category of the 1996 Benjamin Franklin Awards. The winner will be announced at a ceremony June 14 in Chicago.

Pinder also obtained the rights of his Threshold debut album, "The Promise," from 1976 and reissued it a few weeks ago on One Step. It contains two new tracks, including "Island to Island," which features Michael Sembello ("Maniac") on guitar.

All three Pinder albums can be purchased by calling (800) 770-9292.

Supergroup Platypus suddenly turns into 'the main gig' for one member

(Feb. 14, 1999)

Everything in 1999, it seemed, was all mapped out for Dream Theater keyboardist Derek Sherinian. The hard-rock quintet was to begin recording a new album this month; he had his involvement in a side project, the supergroup Platypus, whose debut Velvel album was released Feb. 9, and his solo debut LP, "Planet X" (on Magna Carta), is scheduled for a June release.

Then he got the dreaded phone call.

"Two weeks ago, (Dream Theater) made a change," Sherinian said recently. "They just gave me a call out of the blue and said they wanted to use Jordan Rudess at keyboards, plain and simple. He was playing in Liquid Tension Experiment, another side project with (Dream Theater guitarist John) Petrucci and (drummer Mike) Portnoy. I know Jordan was their first choice when (original keyboardist) Kevin Moore split five years ago and for some reason Jordan wasn't available, so they've had a relationship with Jordan for a long time.

"It totally came out of the blue. I played some holiday shows with them in December, and we were talking about going into the studio in February. There was nothing to indicate to me that wasn't going to happen, so the call really did come out of the blue. That's rock 'n' roll, man. You're always a gun for hire, unless you're the one that's writing the songs and it's your band. I don't have any hard feelings toward them, I wish them the best."

After the initial shock wore off, Sherinian began to feel better about his situation.

"The first thought is it's scary because the mother ship is leaving you behind and you think you've lost all your superpowers," he said, "but after a while, I assessed the situation and realized I'm going to be fine. I've gotten a couple of really cool job offers, and I'm going to explore them as soon as my record is done. One of them is an album and a tour with a pretty famous guitar legend."

Jeff Beck, perhaps?

"Oh, I wish," Sherinian said, laughing. "That would be a dream gig. This guy's not that legendary, unfortunately. He's the B-tier of legend. I'll announce it later."

Platypus was formed by Dream Theater bassist John Myung, who enlisted Sherinian, King's X singer-guitarist Ty Tabor and Dixie Dregs drummer Rod Morgenstein. Their debut album, "When Pus Comes to Shove," started off as an experimental affair but quickly turned into the real deal, fusing straightforward rock 'n' roll with psychedelia, metal and instrumental melodies.

To many listeners, the album will resemble shades of Deep Purple.

"The Deep Purple influence is probably there because I play a lot of B3 (keyboards) on the record," Sherinian said. "While I was in Dream Theater, we did a monthlong tour with Deep Purple, and I got to listen to Jon Lord every night, who is awesome."

In the liner notes, Sherinian thanks three early rock 'n' roll mentors: Buddy Miles, Alice Cooper and Kiss' Gene Simmons.

"They're the first ones to validate what I was trying to do," he said. "They were the first ones to step up and say, 'I believe in your talents, and I want to put you on the payroll.' Buddy Miles hired me in 1988; that was the first time I went on a national tour and played in nightclubs like five nights a week, playing with a name entity. I listened to his (Jimi) Hendrix stories and about how he hung out with the Beatles and played with Santana; it was very important schooling.

"Alice Cooper was my first really big break in '89 for the 'Trash' tour. It was very overwhelming. I was starving and living in Hollywood, and I was 22 at the time, then this job came through and all of a sudden I'm making all this money and touring the world and I'm on MTV. It was very exciting. It was a huge comeback for him, and I was glad to be part of it.

"Then I got with Kiss. Eric Singer played drums with them at the time, and he had played in Alice Cooper with me. They snapped him away and he said, 'Why don't you hire my friend Derek?' I've been very fortunate to work with some legends."

Sherinian joined Dream Theater in late 1994, a year after the group enjoyed the gold-selling success of its Atco album, "Images and Words." Though he worked side by side with Myung in Dream Theater and Platypus, Sherinian said his ouster hasn't affected their friendship.

"I've always gotten along best with John out of all the guys," he said. "I have no problems with any of them, whatsoever. I'm really sincerely thankful for the opportunity they've given me and I harbor no animosity toward them. I want to make that clear. I'm moving on.

"What's funny is, Platypus started off as a diversion. Right now, it's my main gig. Ha! C'mon, Platypus! You know what? I'm just having fun with it. We're probably going to do another record in a couple of months. I'd love to tour with it; I had a blast working with those guys. C'mon, Platypus!"

FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: "Aerosmith's 'Toys in the Attic.' Great album."

FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "Van Halen in 1980, the 'Women and Children First' tour. My parents forbid me to go, and I ended up going anyway because there was no way I was going to miss it. I left a note for my parents saying, 'I know you told me not to go and I know I'm going to get punished, but there was no way I was going to miss Edward Van Halen's guitar solos, so punish me as you will. See you tonight. I assure you I'll be safe.' They grounded me for a couple of weeks, but then they let me off the hook."

BWF (before we forget): Waddle up to Platypus on the Web @ www.velvel.com.

P.M. Dawn has a spiritual awakening

(Oct. 25, 1998)

If P.M. Dawn leader Prince Be's world changed with the arrival of his son, Christian, a few years ago, imagine what happened after his wife gave birth to twins in January.

Prince Be's brother and musical partner, J.C./The Eternal, can't help but laugh.

"Man, you should see the stress on his face," J.C. said recently from their native Jersey City, N.J., studio. "He's a happy man, but he's stressed."

Prince Be's not so much overwhelmed by late-night feedings, diaper changes and constant attention as he is with the uncertainty of his children's future, every child's future. He addresses those concerns, tempered with shades of hope, on the group's fourth album, "Dearest Christian, I'm So Very Sorry For Bringing You Here. Love, Dad" (Gee Street/V2), released Oct. 27.

P.M. Dawn has had a fruitful career since its 1990 gold-selling debut LP, "Of the Heart, Of the Soul and Of the Cross: The Utopian Experience." The album's centerpiece, "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss," hit No. 1 on Billboard's pop chart. Other hits followed over the next four years - "I'd Die Without You," "Looking Through Patient Eyes," "Downtown Venus" - and "The Bliss Album ...?" also sold more than 500,000 copies in 1993.

They had fame and fortune, but something was missing, Prince Be said.

"Before Christian, I was very self-destructive," he said. "Children have calmed me down a lot. I try to keep my kids happy as much as possible, because I know their adult life is going to be shit. Once you have to start dealing with reality, it's fucked up. After you have kids, there isn't anything worth doing for yourself. Me and Jarrett made a lot of money and we've had a lot of success, but it was almost like, 'What else now?'

"As a parent, you have to wing it, man. It's the bottom line. But you can't worry yourself to death about the world around you. When I see my son, I just try to have the best time I can possibly have within those minutes I'm with him. We're always joking, we're always laughing. There are lessons to be learned and we deal with it, then after it, we start laughing."

A big part of Prince Be's fears stem from his own childhood. His father died of pneumonia when J.C. was just a month old, and a younger brother, Duncan, drowned in a park lake at age 2. Prince Be, born Attrell Cordes, and J.C. (Jarrett), were raised by their mother and her second husband, George Brown, a founding member of Kool & the Gang.

"There are too many things that bother me about how we communicate with each other to not worry about how it might affect my kids," Prince Be said. "Even with my parents, I had a horrible relationship with them, my mother in particular. I know that when she first saw me that she didn't start out hating me; it's like, wow, how do you get from point A to point B? I don't want to be this horrible parent, but I don't want to spoil my kids. I'm trying to juggle every possible theory I have about child-rearing."

"Dearest Christian," the duo's most absorbing album to date, touches on Prince Be's roller coaster of parental emotions: fear, annoyance, exasperation.

"I wanted to use the negative to evoke the positive," he said. "It seems like a very hopeless record, but there actually is hope on there, I'm just not going to serve it to people on a platter. You have to find it yourself. These are all questions I'm faced with, but I still have hope in some weird-ass way. These are the questions that are on my mind, these are the reasons why I feel like, 'Wow, was I really thinking when I said 'Yeah, we should have kids'?' Was I thinking for myself, was it an ego trip thing or was I really doing some soul some good?"

While Prince Be came to terms lyrically with his situation, he relied heavily on J.C.'s melodic flair for the album's atmospherics.

"When we had a discussion about doing the album, Be was talking about having it really moody, slightly demonic," J.C. said. "I was thinking, 'Oh, shit.' One of the first songs I heard was (the opening track) 'Music For Carnivores' and that sparked it off for the vibe of the album, sonically where it was going. Be went through a lot writing this record; I pretty much had the easy job. He would sing melodies to me and we'd work out parts for the songs and create the vibe."

The album's first single, "I Had No Right," is at No. 44 this week on Billboard's pop chart. Unlike past P.M. Dawn hits that liberally sampled other artists' songs (i.e. Spandau Ballet's "True" on "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss"), "I Had No Right" has its own inspired, heartfelt arrangement. Through the rest of the album, the samplings are so subtle that no obvious classic hooks stand out, making "Dear Christian" a true P.M. Dawn effort.

"We were going to change the album and can it," Prince Be said, "because there were a few samples and we had a lot of sample problems with people. If you don't understand nowadays that we sample your song out of compliment to you, if you don't understand that, then we don't need to give you any more fucking money. We don't need to sample anymore.

"Sampling a song is the ultimate tribute. There are only 88 keys on the fucking keyboard, we're all going to run into notes in songs. Any artist is a bunch of artists they respect rolled up into this new guy. It's out of respect for each other. I don't think anyone's going to sample a Joni Mitchell song and say they do it because they hate her. She's a big influence on me, in terms of my lyric writing and everything I've done as an artist, the same way Prince and Michael Jackson and Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye are. You listen to these people and they consume you as an artist.

"We were going to take off every song that had samples, and that would've left about five or six songs on the record. We were going to call the record 'I Hate This Place.' If I couldn't present this record the way I wanted to, then I didn't want to do it at all. We ended up using a lot of live instrumentation, doing a lot of things differently than we normally do."

It was a risk worth taking, Prince Be said.

"I'm not checking articles to see what's been written about the album or seeing if radio's playing it," he said. "We've been working on this record for so damn long, it's like, 'Here it is, if you like it, you like it. If you don't, I'm real sorry.' "

BWF (before we forget): Wake up to P.M. Dawn on the Web @ www.geestreet.com or www.v2music.com.

A good feelin' to know Poco

(March 23, 1995)

Rusty Young is no Clay Walker or Wade Hayes, and he would be the first to admit he doesn't look great in a cowboy hat, but thanks to warhorses like The Tractors, he has a record deal.

The pedal steel guitar player for the veteran country-rock band Poco has teamed with Patrick Simmons of the Doobie Brothers, Bill Lloyd (formerly of Foster & Lloyd) and John Cowan (New Grass Revival) to form an as-yet-named country group. (Young jokingly says they've tossed out names like the Armadylans and Counting Cows.) They're signed to Reprise Records and are aiming to release their debut album in early 1996.

Between work on the new album, Young squeezes in an occasional gig with Poco member Paul Cotton to perform acoustic versions of the band's hits.

"I'm the only one who's been in Poco for 25 years and has never done an outside project," Young said recently from his Nashville home. "Paul's done solo records, so has Richie (Furay) and Tim (B. Schmit). Pretty much everyone's done something outside of the band except me, so I thought it was my turn, and it's about time."

And the atmosphere now couldn't be more ripe, Young said. Once the other labels saw Arista Records' unexpected success with oldtimers The Tractors, things opened up quickly.

"Before The Tractors," Young said, "the record companies wanted to sign a lot of young guys pretty cheaply and throw it out there, and if it worked, great. Guys like Clay Walker are selling a lot of records. When the labels hit a formula, they stick with it.

"Now, because of The Tractors, everybody's out looking for old, ugly people," he said laughing, "... so now we have a chance." Young, who grew up in Colorado, has lived in Nashville for 10 years. He said the area is much more suited for his type of music.

"These days, '70s country-rock is mainstream country music, basically," he said. "Friends of mine that made rock 'n' roll records in the '70s are now making country records in the '90s, like Henry Paul with BlackHawk. I wouldn't know anyone in Los Angeles anymore; they're all here."

Pond brings out its 'Rock Collection'

(May 8, 1997)

It's a miracle that Pond ever happened, says drummer Dave Triebwasser, and here's the Portland, Ore., rock trio's third album, "Rock Collection," making its big-label debut on WORK Group.

"The first album we did ('Pond' in 1993 on Sub Pop), those were songs we were playing live, so we recorded them," Triebwasser said recently. "The second one (1995's 'The Practice of Joy Before Death'), we didn't know what to do and we had a few months to record it.

"This time, finally, with 'Rock Collection,' it felt like this is something we can do. I finally felt comfortable as a band, going into the studio and recording an album and being happy with it all."

That's because, Triebwasser said, he and singers Chris Brady (bass) and Charlie Campbell (guitar) now are at ease with their creative roles.

"We're unusual in that we have two fairly prolific songwriters and I'm involved a lot and we all have a say in what goes on," he said. "But we also like what each other's doing. A lot of bands, as they go along, they get tired of each other or they don't agree about their creative direction.

"We're at a point where I think we can write albums we're happy with, that we think are slightly groundbreaking, and not feel like one of us is not getting to do what they want to do."

Blowing caution to the wind, Pond laces its brand of noisy pop-rock with passion and reverence in such tracks as "My Dog Is an Astronaut, Though," "Rebury Me" and the leadoff single, "Spokes." Triebwasser said the band's crunchy guitar sound has come full circle.

"The first album was, I think, highly produced," he said. "It almost sounded too much the same through the whole album, but it had a lot of pop nuggets. The second one, we recorded mostly ourselves in our house and had a friend help engineer it, but I think a lot of people were like, 'This is not Pond, what is this?'

"Now we have all those elements on this album - some weird stuff, but we also know how to write songs people might like. People are going to respond to these songs as pop songs with crazy extravagancies. It's a melding of both albums."

The Posies are still dreaming all day

(April 9, 2000)

For a group that supposedly disbanded two years ago, The Posies - namely Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer - are sure omnipresent these days.

Geffen/UME released the 19-track "The Best of The Posies: Dream All Day" on March 21; "Alive Before the Iceberg," recorded live in Barcelona and issued last year in Europe, is due stateside April 18 on Badman Recordings; Stringfellow and Auer taped an acoustic Posies show last month and likely will release it after an acoustic tour of the United States this summer, and the erstwhile members are putting the finishing touches on "At Least, At Last," a four-disc box set of demos, unreleased tracks and live cuts on Not Lame Records, out May 30.

That's just half of it for Stringfellow. When the singer-guitarist isn't fronting his own band, Saltine, he's a pseudo member of R.E.M., touring with the group and playing on its "Man On the Moon" film soundtrack material, and has joined Auer, Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens for Big Star shows off and on for the past seven years.

Good thing Stringfellow is organized.

"Everything's one day at a time," he said recently from his Seattle home, "and I make sure I write everything down in my day planner, and it's all in pencil because it's always changing. There are times when I think I should put some breaks in there for myself, but I also have a pretty resilient nature. I can work for a long time, and I love to work."

The Posies were one of the premier power-pop groups of the 1990s, cracking Billboard's modern rock tracks chart with "Golden Blunders" and "Dream All Day" at the height of grunge. They didn't sell many albums, but they had a fervent following and critics praised them to no end.

By 1998, after 11 years together, they were anxious to do something new.

"I don't foresee Jon and I having any interest in like having a four-piece band get back together, make a record and tour," Stringfellow said. "That doesn't seem very much fun. But going out on an acoustic tour, it's so easy for Jon and I to just grab a couple of guitars; we know lots of songs and it'd be fun to do. That's something we're willing to do.

"As we do these things together, like the box set and the live stuff, I keep thinking maybe the two of us could make a record, but that's a little more farfetched. I'm pretty into developing my own thing as well."

But, oddly enough, it always comes back around to The Posies. With the best-of, the box set and live albums, there's more Posies material available this year than ever before.

"The box set, for instance, is not stuff from the (previous) albums," Stringfellow said. "It's entirely comprised of demos, unreleased songs and live tracks. It's pretty fierce, too. There's some crazy, crazy stuff on there. There's like 20 unreleased songs; some of them are just four-track things, but they're very cool. There's some interesting cover tunes and definitely some very, very strange live performances.

"We decided to fill in the gaps of everything that didn't get represented by our albums, rather than repackage our available output. Here's the other side of us if you're a fan of The Posies, like there's a live track from our very first show in 1987, doing a song off our first record before it was made. You can tell how green we were, how nervous we were."

The still-untitled box set is The Posies, warts and all.

"The hardest thing when you're making a record is and have a band," Stringfellow said, "is to get the broad spectrum of your abilities represented. You need to find a common place working with a group of musicians in a band and some of the fringes of what one's capable of doing gets left out. Here's all the fringes."

Trying to pin down Stringfellow on The Posies' legacy is a bit more problematic.

"I can't think about The Posies' music in any other terms than my own life and my involvement in it," he said. "To me, the band has no other historical significance because it was my band. A question that's always been on my mind, a strangely unanswerable thought, is: Would I like The Posies if I wasn't in them? I don't know; I have objectivity at all. But I think we were pretty cool."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: " 'Discovery' by the Electric Light Orchestra. It had 'Shine a Little Love' and 'Don't Bring Me Down' on it. I really got into those guys at the time. I haven't really retained fan-dom over the years, but I was definitely into them when it came out."

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "My dad took me to see Don McLean and Juice Newton in 1979, which was a slightly underwhelming experience. The first one that was my choice was The Who and The Clash in '82. It was in the Kingdome and it was this huge rock show. I was so incredibly into Pete Townshend; it was a huge watershed for me to go to that show. It didn't sound very good, because the Kingdome was a terrible venue. But it was a great experience, and everywhere it smelled like pot and there were weird punk people there too. I was from a smaller town; I lived like an hour and a half north of Seattle, so it was kind of my first coming-into-the-big-city experience."

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "I ordered some stuff off CDNow. I got divorced about four years ago and when my wife and I split up, we split up our CD collection, so recently I've been going, 'Oh, yeah, I used to have that record. I should go get that.' I went out and got a couple Elvis Costello records - 'My Aim Is True' and 'This Year's Model,' which are both masterpieces. I'm also into a huge Neil Young thing now, so I got 'Comes a Time,' a really great record. My ex-wife and I didn't speak for a couple of years, but now we're friends again. As soon as we became friends again, I was like, 'Okay, look, I know this is kind of ridiculous, but I have to get the Gary & the Hornets single. You don't listen to it, you gotta give it to me.' And she gave it to me."

BWF (before we forget): Fans can get cozy with The Posies on the Web @ www.slumberland.seattle.wa.us/dear23.html. ... The Posies album discography - "Failure" (Pop Llama, 1988); "Dear 23" (DGC, 1990); "Frosting On the Beater" (Geffen, 1993); "Amazing Disgrace" (DGC, 1996); "Success" (Pop Llama, 1998); "The Best of The Posies: Dream All Day" (Geffen/UME, 2000); "Alive From the Iceberg" (Badman, 2000); "At Least, At Last" box set (Not Lame Archives, May 2000).

Pound finally strikes it rich

(June 13, 1999)

Poughkeepsie, N.Y., isn't exactly a hot bed for music, but the rock quartet Pound may change all that.

Brothers Jason (lead singer) and Jerry Terwilliger (drums), guitarist Pat Gasperini and bassist Sandy Nardone are putting the city of 40,000 along the Hudson River on the musical map with its debut Island album, "Same Old Life" (released May 11). The first single, "Upside Down," is in the Top 20 this week on Billboard's mainstream rock tracks chart, just as the band is in the middle of a high-profile tour with Buckcherry and Fuel.

"If there was no IBM (headquarters) here, god knows what people would be doing," Jerry Terwilliger said recently of his hometown. "It would be like this big town with a big mall. You would drive through and wouldn't even notice it, except for the mall."

The Terwilligers didn't see forming a band as their ticket out of Poughkeepsie. It was just something they wanted to do, regardless.

"My brother and I, ever since we were kids, we've been playing," Jerry Terwilliger said. "I don't think there was any question of what we wanted to do. It's just a matter of getting older and realizing the serious side and what it takes to get here, instead of trying to be cool and be in a band just to chase girls around. The older you get, you still chase the girls, but the music comes first. I don't think it matters where you come from, it's how much you want to do it, if you have it within you to do it.

"We never had doubts we could make it. It was never 'if,' it was always 'when,' and I'm being dead serious. It was never like, 'Oh, if it doesn't work out, I could get a job at IBM.' We never talked like that. The eight, nine years we've been together went by real quick; we went through a lot, but it doesn't seem that long."

Pound made it the hard way. The four pounded the pavement, handing out flyers, mailing demos and working on new material between rehearsals and club gigs.

"It's weird with us," Terwilliger said. "We were out there playing and showcasing, demoing and demoing, in the studio with producers and without producers and having lawyers and having management and not having management. Then finally in the last couple of years, it was like the heck with lawyers, to hell with management, to hell with everybody, 'Let's see what happens on our own.' Pat (Gasperini), when it comes to the business end of it, we totally put it in his hands and he's just a mother at it. We basically carried ourselves with this deal, carried it until it was the other way around, when they were wanting us."

Terwilliger admits the band was worried after Island was eaten up by the Unigram merger.

"Even the big bands were worried," he said, "not that they would be dropped, but just the whole thing. Jim Caparro (chairman/CEO of Island Def Jam) actually called before it switched over and said he loved the record. He said, 'We're gonna use you guys as an example of what we can do,' so we actually wound up in better shape, because we're a total priority here."

BWF (before we forget): Hit it off with Pound on the Web @ www.pound.net.