Stacking Keyboards

Manfred Mann and the Zombies' Rod Argent often stacked a Hohner Pianet on top of a Vox Continental for live performances.  I was thinking about this recently (because I wrote a post about Argent's use of the Pianet), and after I did some research, I discovered that Mann started doing this before Argent.

Here's a picture dated 10 August 1964, with Mann's Pianet on top of his Continental:

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As far as I can tell, this was before Argent even owned a Vox Continental.  On the Zombie Heaven box set, there are three songs ("Leave Me Be," "Woman," and "Kind of Girl") where Argent plays Pianet on the demos (recorded on 13 August 1964) but Continental on the final versions (recorded 31 August).  These dates and the change of keyboards suggest that it was sometime between the 13th and the 31st when he got his organ.  Even at the earliest, that's three days after the above picture was taken.

In this interview (at ~30:57), Argent recalls "our first TV, we did a Ready Steady Go" and meeting Mann backstage.  (According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, the Zombies' first appearance on Ready Steady Go was 31 July 1964.)  It's possible that Argent got the idea to stack his Pianet and Continental after seeing Mann do it.

When keyboards gained importance during progressive rock in the 1970s, stacking them became de rigueur.  Mann himself did this in the Earth Band with a Moog on top of a Hammond organ:

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There were a few other keyboard players in the 1960s who stacked their keyboards (notably the Doors' Ray Manzarek), but as far as I know, Manfred Mann was the first to do it.