Conversation with Robert Moog
September 9,1991

John Hinds: Do you remember Sun Ra’s Moog (synthesizer)?

Robert Moog: Oh sure.

John Hinds: Is there a story behind that?

Robert Moog: Well, it was a prototype. That’s basically the story. We loaned it to him and Sun Ra’s way of working is that when you loan him something you don’t expect to see it back(laughs). So that’s really the only story.                                      

John Hinds: He contacted you?

Robert Moog: His whole band came by.

John Hinds: Is that right.

Robert Moog: Yeah (laughs). His whole band came by(laughs).

John Hinds: Now, there’s a whole story right there.

Robert Moog: His whole band came by to this small upstate town in New York. It was, you know, I don’t know, fourteen or fifteen people and they came up in cars,I don’t know, three or four cars and each one was older than the other. The head chauffer, his claim to fame was that he could fix any-

Thing with a tool kit and he was always repairing the cars on the road.You know,it was a piece of…of sociology. Of a demonstration of a piece of culture that is never seen in upstate New York.

And…it was…It was a happening. You just had to stand there and watch the whole thing.

John Hinds: Was that in 1969?

Robert Moog: Well yeah. That’s exactly when it was because the Mini Moog was introduced in 1970 and by then we were in production.

John Hinds: I remember that instrument, seeing it. He has since lost it so…these things come and go

I guess. I don’t know where it is now.

Robert Moog: Yeah, that’s for sure. You know, we don’t take these things too seriously. I mean, when

You’re making instruments and you’re constantly pushing them out you don’t worry about any one particular instrument.