Emerson Mandrake
We met this extraordinary keyboard player way back in the early 60's outside Boston when we were still touring across the country.
Extraordinary and inventive…
Emerson was playing Hammond organ for a regionally notorious psychedelic band called The Dilated Pupils. They not only split a few incredible bills with us, but also let us stay at the band's house for a few weeks as we continued touring in the Northeast. It was during that visit that Emerson began experimenting with complex and complicated electronic components that he would insert between the organ and the amplifier, radically changing the tones and sounds that it produced.
A pioneer…
Using these new and fascinating musical textures, he and Dellwood wrote the primordial elements of a number of songs together; songs that would later go on to be completed by the Nightshades. Many credit Emerson as a pioneer in the field of analog synthesizers due to his incredible innovations of the time.