Mike Edwards: the musician ELO lost to a cult before he was crushed to death by a hay bail
“Mike Edwards was unlike your average balaclava-wearing cellist in a rock group,” Jeff Lynne once said in tribute to his former bandmate. What a eulogy.
But the thing was, it was actually very true. Edwards was absolutely not your average musician, and probably also the opposite of the average person in general. Everything about the man was done with more than a hint of the absurd, the zany, and often the downright weird – both in life and in death.
Because, of course, why wouldn’t you make a career playing a cello with a grapefruit? Yes, you read that right – Edwards was an original member of ELO, performing at their first-ever gig in Croydon in 1972, but in an attempt to up the ante of strangeness and intrigue, he would appear on stage wearing a balaclava and play his cello, somehow, with either an orange or a grapefruit.
In some ways, the cult celebrity status of this oddball may have proved too much to bear as ELO rose in status, so Edwards nobly bowed out of the band in 1975. But his life of eccentricity couldn’t just stop there, as he then went on to join a cult and changed his name to Pramada after becoming a sannyasin in the Rajneesh movement under the Indian godman Osho. As you do.
During this enlightened period of his life, Edwards lived in a myriad of exotic places, from Pune in India, Hamburg in Germany, across the US… and Suffolk. While much closer to home, the quaint country village of Herringswell was actually home to the group’s large Medina commune during the 1980s.
And so, Edwards lived out the rest of his days in a perfect sense of contentment, whether through his religious calling or through the various other artistic ventures he explored – from being part of a dance duo, taking part in stage plays, composing for all forms of music, and being a cello and viola instructor.
But then, one day in 2010, as Edwards was driving near his home in Devon, tragedy struck in the cruellest of fashions. A 600-kilogram hay bail had rolled away down a hillside and collided with his van, killing him in the process. No culpability was found in the incident, but it was clear that a terrible chance of fate had snatched one of life’s most colourful characters away too soon.
This ultimately led to Jeff Lynne uttering the celebratory words: “Mike Edwards was unlike your average balaclava-wearing cellist in a rock group. He was a very good-natured chap who mixed politeness and reserve with wild and wacky stage performances. Even though he left the group over 35 years ago, I occasionally think about him on stage in his woollen balaclava playing his cello solo with an orange. Now that was pretty original. Mike was a great cellist, but most of all a real gentleman.”
And truly, what a way to be remembered. His shot at musical stardom may have been short-lived, but in many ways, it was Edwards setting himself free from the ranks of ELO that made his time on Earth all the more interesting. After all, how many balaclava-wearing, cello-playing, fruit-obsessed, Indian cult worshippers do you find in one lifetime? I’d hedge a bet there aren’t many.
