Richard Tandy, keyboard player and Jeff Lynne’s right-hand man in the Electric Light Orchestra – obituary
Richard Tandy, who has died aged 76, was the keyboard player with Electric Light Orchestra, the band led by Jeff Lynne who fused rock and pop music with classical arrangements; a foil to Lynne, and his right-hand man in the studio, he played on every album save their 1971 debut, and was the only former member Lynne would call on for later iterations of the band.
While Lynne wrote most of the songs, Tandy’s keyboards – which included a range of synthesisers and pianos, as well as the harmonium, clavinet and Mellotron (plus dashes of guitar and backing vocals) – formed a crucial element in the sound of a band who at their best drew comparisons to The Beatles.
Richard Tandy was born in Birmingham on March 26 1948, and began learning the piano aged nine. He attended Moseley Grammar School, where he added guitar to his repertoire.
Bev Bevan, the future ELO drummer, was a couple of years above him: “It it was Bev and his friends who brought electric guitars to school, and played them on the school playing field, whilst us younger boys watched in awe,” Tandy recalled.
He played in a bevy of Birmingham groups, including the Chantelles, and the Uglys, who also featured his future ELO bandmate, guitarist Dave Morgan, and the bassist Dave Pegg, later of folk-rock kings Fairport Convention: “I got a job because I could play the intro to I Am A Walrus,” Tandy recalled, “and I think my keyboard, a Hohner Clavinet, added to their sound.”
The Uglys’ guitarist was Trevor Burton, who went on to form the Move with Bev Bevan and others, including Roy Wood, and when Tandy sent a couple of his songs to them he ended up playing harpsichord on their 1968 No 1, Blackberry Way – “If you listen carefully you can hear it,” he said – as well as filling in for Burton for a fortnight when he dislocated his shoulder.
In 1970 Jeff Lynne was a late addition to the Move line-up, and when he, Wood and Bevan formed the Electric Light Orchestra the following year Tandy joined the live band, initially on bass before moving to keyboards.
When Wood decamped to form Wizzard, Lynne assumed the leadership role, with Tandy at his side, as they had a run of hit albums and singles throughout the 1970s and into the following decade. “Richard is my lifetime man in the group,” said Lynne. “He’d be in the studio with me when other people wouldn’t be.”
The band split in the mid-1980s, and in 1985 Tandy formed the Tandy Morgan Band with Dave Morgan and released the concept album Earthrise, the story of a space explorer who longs to return to the woman he loves on Earth.
In the 1990s Bev Bevan led ELO Part II; Tandy, meanwhile, played on Lynne’s solo debut album Armchair Theatre (1990), alongside the likes of George Harrison and Del Shannon. In 1999 Bevan sold his share of the ELO name to Lynne, who in 2001 issued a new ELO album, Zoom, on which Tandy played on one track.
Other projects on which Tandy worked with Lynne included songs for the soundtrack to the 1984 sci-fi romcom Electric Dreams.
In November 2013 Tandy and Lynne teamed up again to play two songs for Children in Need, and the interest from fans resulted the following year in “Jeff Lynne’s ELO” – Lynne and Tandy backed by the Take That/Gary Barlow band from the Children in Need concert – playing the BBC’s Festival in a Day in Hyde Park; the 50,000 tickets had sold out in 15 minutes.
In 2019, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landings, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire performed an orchestral version of Earthrise with Tandy and Morgan.
Richard Tandy married, first, Carol, known as “Cooky”. They divorced, and he married secondly, Sheila, whom he met after an ELO gig in Los Angeles in 1991; she survives him.
Richard Tandy, born March 26 1948, died May 1 2024
