The ultimate air guitar, you might say.A few models have even found their way into museums. The theremin, in various customised forms, has since provided a background hum for artists as diverse as Kraftwerk, Paul Weller and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Jimmy Page has a special fondness for it, using it on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and on the recent Page and Plant tour. The following year Captain Beefheart reputedly drafted in none other than Sam Hoffman to electrify his first album, Safe as Milk. “Good Vibrations” was the Beach Boy’s second song to feature the theremin: the first being “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times”.

A vital contribution to an astonishing record, it quickly became a pet sound. Dr Hoffman’s career took off: he remained in Hollywood and through the Fifties tingled spines on many classic sci-fi soundtracks, notably Bernard Herrmann’s The Day The Earth Stood Still.Twenty-one years after Hitchcock first took the theremin to the movies, Brian Wilson was also in Hollywood, recording one of pop’s greatest three- and-a-half minutes. With selections entitled “Lunar Rhapsody”, “Celestial Nocturne” and “Radar Blues”, it presented music which, according to the sleeve notes, “can affect the sensitive mind in a way that is sometimes frightening… always fascinating”.It was followed by two more recordings in 1948 and 1950: Music For Peace Of Mind and Perfume Set To Music, with arrangements by Billy May and the carpet-slipper king of lounge music, Les Baxter The theremin was back. Hoffman’s performance on Spellbound revived his thrilled cinema-goers. In 1947, he teamed up with British songwriter Harry Revel and full orchestra to record Music Out Of The Moon, the first in a series of 78s for Capital records, now the subject of a repackaged CD set.

“The anticipated technical developments just never happened,” says Glinsky, “so people lost interest.” Hoffman went back to his day job and, despondent, Leon Theremin returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, where he was imprisoned for “un-Soviet activities”.When Hitchcock’s composer phoned the Hollywood musicians’ union in 1945 for someone to play his score, there was only one thereminist listed who could read music: Dr Samuel J Hoffman. Eventually though, the theremin was just another gimmick: it failed to bring about the expected revolution in electronic music. The theremin became a trademark in the NBC band, for whom Hoffman, when he wasn’t shaving corns, played the violin. It attracted his attention and before long Hoffman was transforming himself into Hal Hope, celebrated bandleader and theremin player.For a while, Hoffman was famous in Manhattan dancehalls, where his orchestra was billed as the “casino in the air”. “Most people found it impossible, managing little more than a police-siren squeal.

So they gave up and left it to gather dust in the garage.” Only a few budding players became skilled One virtuoso was Samuel Hoffman, a New York chiropodist. “I almost don’t like to say this, but it’s really the most difficult musical instrument in the world to play,” admits Glinsky.At home, the untutored player simply had to imagine the notes and grope around in the air, hoping for the best. RCA were quick to see the novelty value and manufactured 500, backed by a fierce publicity campaign Many people were unsure what to make of the new gadget Even more baffling was how to play it. To escape the restrictions on his work, he fled Russia for the United States in 1927. “In America it was announced as a magical device which heralded a new era in electronic music,” says Glinsky. Imagine listening to the Star Trek theme on shortwave radio.Leon Theremin unsurprisingly attracted the attention of the KGB and his invention was classified as top secret. With one hand controlling the pitch, and the other the volume, the chaotic whines and groans can be modulated to produce discrete musical pitches.