Electric Light Orchestra Keyboardist Richard Tandy Dies at Age 76: A Look Back at His Time with ELO

Electric Light Orchestra keyboardist Richard Tandy has died aged 76. Bandmate Jeff Lynne made the announcement on X. “He was a great artist and friend. I cherish the memories that we had together.”

Tandy joined ELO when the first album was already released in 1972. He moved from guitar to keyboards because there was a place available there. In all the different forms of ELO, Tandy would continue as the backbone of the Birmingham band along with Lynne and drummer Bev Bevan.

At a time when keyboard players had more options with new electric instruments, Tandy left his mark on the ELO sound: in addition to a piano, he used a Minimoog synthesizer, a Wurlitzer electric piano, the clavinet and a Mellotron. With him the band had hits like that I can’t get it out of my head, Don’t bring me down, An evil woman in A living thing.

Tandy himself can be heard distorted on perhaps the band’s most enduring hit, Alan Gorm Mr, which is still consistently among the top 100 albums in the Radio 2 Top 2000 every year. By putting his voice through a vocoder, he gives the catchy song mysterious robot sounds.

Hear one of his contributions below:

His oft-misunderstood sounds at the end of that song are a holdover from the LP era: “please take me over”signal for the listener to turn the record over.

In the 1980s the band broke up, but not before recording one more album under contract. After the turn of the century, Lynne revived the creation with Tandy. There were no new successes to come, but the classics were very popular: Alan Gorm Mr can be heard widely in the opening scene of, for example Guardians of the Galaxy IIwith Groot dancing happily.

In the obituary Lynne did not report a cause of death, but Tandy had been ill for a long time. Last month, Lynne announced that she would be performing another series of ELO shows, but it is not known what this news means for the Over and Out tour.