Mike Pinera died on November 20, 2024, at 76. As Blues Image’s singer and guitarist, he co-wrote “Ride Captain Ride,” the 1970 hit that reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. That breakthrough came as he was moving into another band, Iron Butterfly.
Born in Tampa in 1948, Pinera co-founded Blues Image in 1966. The group moved through Miami before relocating to Los Angeles and releasing its self-titled debut through Atco in 1969. Their second album, Open, followed in 1970, with “Ride Captain Ride” among its songs.
Pinera described the writing session in a 2014 interview with Jeff Cramer. With studio time running out, keyboardist Skip Konte brought him a musical idea. Pinera began working from it, finding an opening number in the 73-key Rhodes piano in front of him. That became the starting point for an imagined voyage: people setting out by boat in search of somewhere they could live freely. He recalled the song coming together in roughly 10 to 15 minutes, after which producer Richard Podolor made it the session’s priority.
The recording paired Pinera’s lead vocal with guitar contributions from two players. Kent Henry handled the main solo, while Pinera played the more distorted passage toward the ending. The hit also had a consequence far removed from the charts. Pinera told Goldmine in 2023 that its earnings enabled him to pay off his parents’ house when they were struggling financially.
His transition into Iron Butterfly overlapped with that success. Recalling a 1970 tour in the same Goldmine interview, Pinera said Blues Image and Iron Butterfly shared the bill. He played with Blues Image, took a break, then returned for Iron Butterfly’s set. Hearing “Ride Captain Ride” on the radio happened alongside the practical work of performing with both groups.
On Iron Butterfly’s 1970 album Metamorphosis, Pinera contributed as a writer, singer and guitarist. He approached the material with arrangements already taking shape: as he explained to Cramer, he recorded demos at home, playing the parts himself before bringing them to the band. “It almost sounded like a finished master,” he said. He also felt the finished album had changed the group’s sound too abruptly, and that the studio guitars lacked the weight of his demos.
Pinera’s recording career continued under his own name and alongside other artists. His solo albums included Isla in 1977 and Forever in 1979. In the early 1980s, he played guitar with Alice Cooper, appearing on Special Forces and Zipper Catches Skin. The same musician who had sung a Top 5 single was also working inside another singer’s records and stage show.
He returned to his earlier material on Blues Image’s Next Voyage in 2023. Produced by Michael Franklin, the album brought together new recordings of songs from different chapters of his career, including “Butterfly Bleu” and “Isla.” Recorded in Orlando, it also gave his breakthrough song a larger arrangement. The album closes with “Captain’s Suite,” which expands “Ride Captain Ride” with additional sections and a flute solo.
