Yes, we've all heard of the Mellotron--it makes those distinctive notes that introduce "Strawberry Fields Forever"--but up until a few weeks ago, I didn't know what a Birotron was. Pronounced "Byro-tron", the instrument was invented by Dave Biro, with financial assistance from keyboardist Rick Wakeman of Yes and Campbell Soup/Pepperidge Farms.
That unlikely pairing was due to the keyboard's perceived potential value. The Mellotron used a static bank of 8-second tape loops to create orchestral sounds when a key was pressed, but the Birotron looked to increase the music-making capacity. Its loops were housed in replaceable 8-track cartridges, meaning different sounds could be switched out depending on the need.
Furthermore, a note on the Mellotron could only be played for 8 seconds before the tape ran out; the Birotron promised to work more like a standard synthesizer where a note could be played indefinitely. Control of pitch and decay meant a Birotron chord could change over time, thus a violin could gradually turn into a cello before morphing into a bass. The use of 8-track cartridges also meant the musician could record his or her own sounds and plug them into the Birotron. For a musical world that was just coming out of the psychedelic stew of the '60s, the experimental possibilities of the instrument were endless and tantalizing.
The Birotron was introduced to the public in 1976, retailing between $1,500 and $3,000. That hefty price tag meant the early demand came from popular musicians themselves: Elton John, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, Rod Stewart, and Led Zeppelin all ordered their own copies. It seemed like only a matter of time before the Birotron revolutionized popular music.
So what happened? As you can probably guess, the Birotron was unwieldy, expensive to produce, and constantly broke. Tapes jammed within their cartridges, motors malfunctioned, and the instrument was so heavy that it would necessitate a full-time crew to tend to it. Between thirteen and thirty-five were assembled, with Wakeman owning most of them (in fact, you could have heard him playing a Birotron on Yes tours in the late '70s and early '80s, but even he grew fed up with the problematic instrument). Campbell Soup attempted to resurrect the Birotron with increased funding--jingles could be recorded at a fraction of a cost by replacing several musicians with one instrument--yet nothing ever came to fruition. By 1982, Dave Biro himself was broke and homeless.
It's a bitter irony that the Birotron is now considered one of the world's rarest instruments (Birotron's own US sales director in the '70s never even physically saw one, relying on descriptions and photos to lure in prospective buyers). Wakeman recalls one being sold one for $35,000, and nowadays most experts believe there are only five or six left in existence. Only two or three of those are in complete working order.
Through the magic of the Internet, there's a video below of someone playing a Birotron, and as you can tell, the physical tapes are well-worn. Still, that warbling sound gives an otherworldly quality to the instrument, and it makes you wonder what could have been. The uploader of the video is looking to repair the tapes and document what a Birotron would have sounded like in its peak shape. More conventional synthesizers took the Birotron's place, but there's no topping the weird romanticism of an outlandish idea.
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