In 1963, the Mellotron was developed in Birmingham, England. A special instrument with an aptitude for orchestral sounds, this baby was used to elevate the soundtrack of 60s and 70s rock music, especially. Here are a few songs from the 70s that made use of the Mellotron that you likely know.
“Dream On” by Aerosmith
Ah, yes. An Aerosmith staple. “Dream On” was written by frontrunner Steven Tyler over the course of about 6 years. It’s a song that sounds like it’s about exactly what it is: following your dreams, relentlessly, no matter what.
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In his autobiography, Walk This Way, Steven Tyler remembers using the Mellotron: “I put the string section on ‘Dream On’ sitting at this Mellotron while a friend of mine kept laying out lines of crystal THC that I was snorting while I was playing.”
“Let It Loose” by The Rolling Stones
This song by The Rolling Stones is gospel and blues with a side of rock. “Let It Loose” is a “rambling song”, as Mick Jagger told Uncut Magazine.
“I think Keith [Richards] wrote that, actually,” he said of the lyrics. “That’s a very weird, difficult song. I had a whole other set of lyrics to it, but they got lost by the wayside. I don’t think that song has any semblance of meaning. It’s one of those rambling songs. I didn’t really understand what it was about, after the event.”
“Changes” by Black Sabbath
For a Black Sabbath song, “Changes” is surprisingly low-key. The lyrics of this song were written by bass player Geezer Butler, who was inspired by the divorce that the band’s drummer was going through.
“Bill Ward and his wife were going through a divorce,” he explained to Songfacts. “When your marriage fails—that’s what it was about.”
On this song, there’s a string-like drone sound that’s played in the background. This is the work of the Mellotron. There’s really not a lot of other instrumentation on this track besides that. Ozzy Osbourne shared in a 1972 interview that, “We’re certainly not going to get any less heavy; we will probably do ‘Changes’ on stage with a Mellotron, but we’ll never take strings on stage with us or anything like that.”
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