Mike Edwards

Career Electric Light Orchestra years Edwards joined the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) in 1972 and played with the band from their first live gig in Croydon until he departed, of his own choosing, in January 1975. Previously he had had little interest in non-classical music, though he had played on recording sessions for Barclay James Harvest.

Although his bandmates remembered him as a small, shy, broadly-smiling classicist in formal attire, his eccentric cello playing (fingering the strings with an orange or grapefruit) and bizarre costumes were a major ingredient of early ELO concerts: his cello solo spots, often The Dying Swan or Bach's Air, ended with his instrument exploding with the aid of pyrotechnics (Edwards actually mimed to a backing track using a specially rigged instrument). He contributed to the studio albums ELO 2, On the Third Day, and Eldorado, and the live album, The Night the Light Went On in Long Beach. He was replaced by Melvyn Gale.

Life after ELO

He changed his name to Pramada on becoming a sannyasin of Osho: in Suffolk as well as spells in Poona in India, Hamburg in Germany, and the US,

Death Edwards was killed on the A381 road between Harbertonford and Halwell near where he lived in Totnes in Devon, on 3 September 2010, when a cylindrical hay bale weighing rolled down a hillside and collided with the van he was driving. A court case concluding on 19 November 2012 resulted in two defendants being found not guilty of health and safety charges relating to the accident. ELO co-founder Jeff Lynne posted the following about Edwards: