R inder and Lewis—the musical partnership formed by drummer Laurin Rinder and keyboardist W. Michael Lewis—was one of disco’s most versatile, innovative, and successful production outfits. Beginning in 1975, they released a slew of records using the monikers Le Pamplemousse, El Coco, Saint Tropez, and Tuxedo Junction that put their stamp on Los Angeles disco. Under their own names, they released a series of groundbreaking conceptual albums, starting with 1977’s Seven Deadly Sins . Despite their extensive recorded catalog, Rinder and Lewis remains an elusive collaboration. Laurin and Michael had the itinerant sensibility of session musicians: of professional instrumentalists who each day took on several new identities. They embodied the many faces of disco, and yet disco does not tell the whole story. If anything, it provides a convenient veil that even now conceals the motions of a close friendship that would eventually succumb to its intensity. In the wake of disco, their own identity remains a mystery. Who are Rinder and Lewis?
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Drummer Laurin Rinder (top right) with the Four Sounds, 1965. Photo courtesy of Laurin Rinder.
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