Rhodes Pianos I Have Loved

This is a photo of my actual Fender Rhodes 73 Stage Electric Piano which I just published  on my facebook artist-page; I bought it second-hand in London a few years ago through an ad in "Loot".

It is the fourth I have owned, the first being one I bought when I was a student In Brighton for what seemed an amazing sum in those days, £600, the same as I paid for this one second-hand. I took that one with me to Paris when I studied there on a cross-channel ferry (that was long before the chunnel). Some Parisian friends  who wanted me to be in their band had driven all the way to Calais to pick me up, but by mistake the ferry company had put this heavy object straight onto the train that connected with the boat, and it went all the way to Paris by itself, so my friends had a wasted journey!

The second I bought quite cheaply in Boston USA to help me with my music-studies when I was at Berklee College of Music, and they seemed rather two-a-penny compared to the UK. As I used the Rhodes mainly as a study-aid, I kept it in my room in my small apartment, occasionally dusting it like a piece of furniture and even getting underneath to dust the pedal mechanism, On those occasions, I used to joke to my room-mate that, if the legs suddenly gave way, “Death by Electric-Piano” (such was its size and weight)  would make quite an unusual headline.

I sold that one there as it was too big too bring back, then bought a third one when I arrived back here to gig around town, and almost broke my back lugging it around, especially as I lived at the time at the top of a 15-story high-rise in which the elevator only went to the 14th floor and sometimes broke altogether!  Maybe they're so sturdily built  because they have their origins in the U.S. military, where Inventor Harold Rhodes was originally trying to provide a therapeutic aid for recovering soldiers. Anyway, all this was probably why I eventually sold mine, because lighter, smaller electronic keyboards came on the scene.

This fourth one came along many years later after I had  eventually come to miss the organic sound of a real  keyboard such as a real Rhodes on my recordings, having used synthesizer and sampling modules so much in the intervening period. This one had evidently lain in someone's damp garage for some years, judging by its peeling case and the mouldy look of its insides when you lifted the top! However, it had a good action and funky feel showing that someone seemed to have loved it at least at some point.

Later, I started to record the Rhodes on some tracks of my new album, and to learn quite a lot about quite a lot about some of it's little oddities that you have to watch out for when trying to do that... I'll tell you about that in a future blog.

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