Mike Ratledge, Soft Machine Keyboardist and Co-Founder, Dead at 81

Mike Ratledge, the keyboardist and a co-founder of English rock band Soft Machine, has died, the band’s guitarist John Etheridge confirmed. He was 81 years old.

“Incredibly sad news that my great friend and Soft Machine legend passed away two hours ago after a brief illness,” Etheridge wrote on Facebook. “Mike was the backbone of Soft Machine in the early years and a man with an absolutely incisive mind – a marvelous composer and keyboardist. A real renaissance man – so talented, cultured, charming – and wonderful companion. We used to meet every few weeks for over 40 years – a treat for me. What a loss to all of us and his sisters and wonderful girlfriend Elena, who were with him at the end.”

Ratledge was born in Kent, England in 1943, and he learned to play classical music on the piano as a child. After earning a degree in psychology, he co-founded the group in 1966 alongside Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen and Larry Nowlin. Ayers died back in 2013, and Allen — who also co-founded the psychedelic rock group Gong — died in 2015. Soft Machine has had many lineups over the decades, with Ratledge in the band until 1976. He was the band’s longest-tenured original member upon his departure following the release of 1976’s Softs, appearing on Soft Parade’s first nine studio albums.

Soft Machine was influential for fusing jazz into its psychedelic rock sound, In his time with the group, the band released a bulk of their discography, including their influential debut album The Soft Machine in 1968. That year, Soft Machine opened for the Jimi Hendrix Experience for the legendary group’s North America tour. The band also opened for Pink Floyd.

Outside of Soft Machine, Ratledge also contributed to Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs and former band mate Kevin Ayers’ Joy of a Toy.

Rolling Stone named Soft Machine’s 1970 album Third as one of the greatest prog rock albums of all time back in 2015, with Ratledge writing two of the album’s four tracks, “Slightly All the Time” and “Out-Bloody-Rageous.”

“Cosmically heady, unconventional to a fault, and often more audibly jarring than a piano dropped on top of a piano, the English instrumental savants’ unvarnished tape collages make Pink Floyd songs sound like bubblegum,” we wrote, commending Ratledge’s “typically nuts” keyboard work.