The Moody Blues
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The Moody Blues Biography
Although they're best known today for their lush, lyrically and
musically profound (some would say bombastic) psychedelic-era albums,
the Moody Blues started out as one of the better R&B-based combos
of the British Invasion. The Moody Blues' history began in Birmingham,
England, where one of the more successful bands during that time was El
Riot & the Rebels, co-founded by Ray Thomas (harmonica, vocals) and
Mike Pinder (keyboards, vocals). Pinder left the band, first for a gig
with Jackie Lynton and then a stint in the Army. In May of 1963, he and
Thomas reunited under the auspices of the Krew Cats. Following some
success in Germany, Thomas and Pinder decided to try turning
professional, recruiting members from some of the best groups working
in Birmingham, including Denny Laine (vocals, guitar), Graeme Edge
(drums), and Clint Warwick (bass, vocals). The Moody Blues, as they
came to be known, made their debut in Birmingham in May of 1964, and
quickly earned the notice and later the services of manager Tony
Secunda. A major tour was quickly booked, and the band landed an
engagement at the Marquee Club, which resulted in a contract with
England's Decca Records less than six months after their formation. The
group's first single, Steal Your Heart Away, released in September of
1964, didn't touch the British charts.
Their second single, Go Now, released in November of 1964 -- a cover
of an American single by R&B singer Bessie Banks -- fulfilled every
expectation and more, reaching number one in England and earning them a
berth in some of the top venues in England (including the New Musical
Express Poll Winners Concert, appearing with some of the top acts of
the period); its number ten chart placement in America also earned them
a place as a support act for the Beatles on one tour and the release of
the follow-up LP (Magnificent Moodies in England, Go Now in America) on
both sides of the Atlantic. It was coming up with a follow-up hit to
Go Now, however, that proved their undoing. Despite their fledgling
songwriting efforts and the access they had to American demos --
including one choice number by Ellie Greenwich -- this version of the
Moody Blues never came up with another single success. By the end of
the spring of 1965, the frustration was palpable within the band. The
group decided to make their fourth single, From the Bottom of My
Heart, an experiment with a different, much more subtly soulful sound,
and it was one of the most extraordinary records of the entire British
Invasion, with haunting performances all around. Unfortunately, the
single only reached number 22 on the British charts following its
release in May of 1965. Ultimately, the grind of touring, coupled with
the strains facing the group, became too much for Warwick, who exited
in the spring of 1966, and by August of 1966 Laine had left as well.
Warwick was replaced by John Lodge, an ex-bandmate of Ray Thomas, and
in late 1966 singer/guitarist Justin Hayward joined.
For a time, they kept doing the same brand of music, but Hayward and
Pinder were also writing different kinds of songs that did get out as
singles, to little avail. At one point in 1966, the band decided to
pull up stakes from England -- where their bookings had devolved to
workingman's clubs and cabaret -- and start playing in Europe, where
even a has-been British act could earn halfway decent fees. And they
began building a new act based on new material that was more in keeping
with the slightly trippy, more pop-oriented folk-rock sounds and light
psychedelia that were popular at the time. The Beatles were doing
acoustic-textured folk-rock and incorporating Indian influences into
their music, and even the Rolling Stones were releasing records such as
Lady Jane, so the Moody Blues moved past their R&B roots into
new, more richly textured music. They were still critically short of
money and prospects when fate played a hand, in the form of a project
initiated by Decca Records.
In contrast to America, where home stereo systems swept the country
after 1958, in England stereo was still not dominant, or even common,
in most people's homes -- apart from classical listeners -- in 1966.
Decca had come up with Deramic Stereo, which offered a wide spread of
sound, coupled with superbly clean and rich recording, and was trying
to market it with an LP that would serve as a showcase, utilizing
pop/rock done in a classical style. The Moody Blues, who owed the label
unrecouped advances and recording session fees from their various
failed releases, were picked for the proposed project, which was to be
a rock version of Dvorák's New World Symphony. They did try to fulfill
that specific commitment, but were never able to deliver the songs.
Luckily, they were able to convince the staff producer and engineer
that the proposed adaptation was wrongheaded, and to deliver something
else; the producer, Tony Clarke, was impressed with some of the band's
own compositions, and they arrived at the idea of an archetypal day's
cycle of living represented in rock songs set within an orchestral
framework. With Clarke leading the subterfuge in cooperation with
engineer Derek Varnals, and conductor/arranger Peter Knight writing the
orchestrations that were used to accompany the group's work and bridge
the songs, the result was the album Days of Future Passed.
The record's mix of rock and classical sounds was new, and at first
puzzled the record company, which didn't know how to market it, but
eventually the record was issued, first in England and later in
America. It became a hit in England, propelled up the charts by the
single Nights in White Satin (authored and sung by Hayward), which
made the Top 20 in the U.K.; in America, the chosen single was another
Hayward song, Tuesday Afternoon. All of it hooked directly into the
aftermath of the Summer of Love, and the LP was -- totally accidentally
-- timed perfectly to fall into the hands of listeners who were looking
for an orchestral/psychedelic recording to follow works such as the
Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Better still, the band
still had a significant backlog of excellent psychedelic-themed songs
to draw on. Their debt wiped out and their music now in demand, they
went to work with a follow-up record in short order and delivered In
Search of the Lost Chord (1968), which was configured somewhat
differently from its predecessor. Though Decca was ecstatic with the
sales results of Days of Future Passed and the singles, and assigned
Clarke and Varnals to work with them in the future, the label wasn't
willing to schedule full-blown orchestral sessions again. And having
just come out of a financial hole, the group wasn't about to go into
debt again financing such a recording.
The solution to the problem of accompaniment came from within the
group, with keyboard player Mike Pinder, and an organ-like device
called a Mellotron. Using tape heads activated by the touch of keys,
and tape loops comprised of the sounds of horns, strings, etc., the
instrument generated an eerie, orchestra-like sound. Introduced at the
start of the 1960s as a potential rival to the Hammond organ, the
Mellotron had worked its way into rock music slowly, in acts such as
the Graham Bond Organisation, and had emerged to some public prominence
on Beatles records such as Strawberry Fields Forever and, more
recently, I Am the Walrus ; during that same year, in a similar
supporting capacity, it would also turn up on the Rolling Stones' Their
Satanic Majesties Request. As it happened, Pinder not only knew how to
play it but had also worked in the factory that built them, which
enabled him over the years to reengineer, modify, and customize the
instruments to his specifications. (The resulting instruments were
nicknamed Pindertrons. )
In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) put the Mellotron in the spotlight,
and it quickly became a part of their signature sound. The album,
sublimely beautiful and steeped in a strange mix of British whimsy
( Dr. Livingston I Presume ) and ornate, languid Eastern-oriented songs
( Visions of Paradise, Om ), also introduced one psychedelic-era
anthem, Legend of a Mind ; authored by Ray Thomas and utilizing the
name of LSD guru Timothy Leary in its lyric and choruses, along with
swooping cellos and lilting flute, it helped make the band an instant
favorite among the late-'60s counterculture. (The group members have
since admitted at various times that they were, as was the norm at the
time, indulging in various hallucinogenic substances.) That album and
its follow-up, 1969's To Our Children's Children's Children, were
magnificent achievements, utilizing their multi-instrumental skills and
the full capability of the studio in overdubbing voices, instruments,
etc. But in the process of making those two LPs, the group found that
they'd painted themselves into a corner as performing musicians --
thanks to overdubbing, those albums were essentially the work of 15 or
20 Moody Blues, not a quintet, and they were unable to re-create their
sound properly in concert.
Indeed, from their album To Our Children's Children's Children -- which
was also the first release of the group's own newly founded label,
Threshold Records -- only one song, the guitar-driven Gypsy, ever
worked on-stage. Beginning with A Question of Balance (1970), however,
the group specifically recorded songs in arrangements that they could
play in concert, stripping down their sound a bit by reducing their
reliance on overdubbing and, in the process, toughening up their sound.
They were able to do most of that album and their next record, Every
Good Boy Deserves Favour, on-stage, with impressive results. By that
time, all five members of the band were composing songs, and each had
his own identity, Pinder the impassioned mystic, Lodge the rocker, Edge
the poet, Thomas the playful mystic, and Hayward the romantic -- all
had contributed significantly to their repertoire, though Hayward
tended to have the biggest share of the group's singles, and his songs
often occupied the leadoff spot on their LPs.
They weren't really a singles act by then, their audience principally
consisting of college students who primarily purchased LPs, and their
music was more prominent on FM radio than on AM radio. Question and
The Story in Your Eyes, for example, were known as singles, but were
also totally overshadowed by their respective LPs. Their music had
evolved from pop psychedelia to a very accessible, almost pop variety
of progressive rock. Meanwhile, a significant part of their audience
didn't think of the Moody Blues merely as musicians but, rather, as
spiritual guides. John Lodge's song I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock &
Roll Band) was his answer to this phenomenon, renouncing the role that
had been thrust upon the band -- it was also an unusually hard-rocking
number for the group, and was also a modest hit single. Ironically, in
1972, the group was suddenly competing with itself when Nights in
White Satin charted again in America and England, selling far more
than it had in 1967; that new round of single sales also resulted in
Days of Future Passed selling anew by the tens of thousands.
In the midst of all of this activity, the members, finally slowing down
and enjoying the fruits of their success, had reached an impasse. As
they prepared to record their new album, Seventh Sojourn (1972), the
strain of touring and recording steadily for five years had taken its
toll. Good songs were becoming more difficult to deliver and record,
and cutting that album had proved nearly impossible. The public never
saw the problems, and its release earned them their best reviews to
date and was accompanied by a major international tour, and the sales
and attendance were huge. Once the tour was over, however, it was
announced that the group was going on hiatus -- they wouldn't work
together again for five years. During this era, Hayward and Lodge
recorded a very successful duet album, Blue Jays (1975), and all five
members did solo albums. All were released through Threshold, which was
still distributed by English Decca (then called London Records in the
United States), and Threshold even maintained a small catalog of other
artists, including Trapeze and Providence, though they evidently missed
their chance to sign a group that might well have eclipsed the Moody
Blues musically, King Crimson. (Ironically, the latter also used the
Mellotron as a central part of their sound, but in a totally different
way, and were the only group ever to make more distinctive use of the
instrument.)
Other bands, including Barclay James Harvest and the Strawbs, the
latter coming into progressive rock from a folk orientation, picked off
some of the Moody Blues' audience during the 1970s. Still, the Moodies'
old records were strong enough, elicited enough positive memories, and
picked up enough new listeners (even amid the punk and disco booms)
that a double-LP retrospective (This Is the Moody Blues) sold extremely
well, years after they'd stopped working together, as did a live/studio
archival double LP (Caught Live + 5). By 1977, the members had decided
to reunite, a process complicated by the fact that Pinder had moved to
California during that period. Although all five participated in the
resulting album, Octave (1978), there were numerous stresses during its
recording, and Pinder was ultimately unhappy enough with the LP to
decline to go on tour with the band. The reunion tour came off anyway,
with ex-Yes keyboardist Patrick Moraz brought in to replace Pinder, and
the album topped the charts.
The group's next record, Long Distance Voyager (1981), was even more
popular, though by this time a schism was beginning to develop between
the band and the critical community. The reviews from critics (who'd
seldom been that enamored of the band even in its heyday) became ever
more harsh, and although their hiatus had allowed the band to skip the
punk era, they seemed just as out of step amid the MTV era and the
ascendancy of acts such as Madonna, the Pretenders, the Police, et al.
By 1981, they'd been tagged by most of the rock press with the label
dinosaurs, seemingly awaiting extinction. There were still
decent-sized hits, such as Gemini Dream, but the albums seemed rather
mechanical and soulless, the result of going through the motions of
being a group. Without Pinder with his broadly arcing mysticism, and
with his would-be successor, Moraz, seemingly unable to contribute to
the songwriting, they seemed a shadow of what they'd been to longtime
fans. There were OK records, and the concerts drew well, mostly for the
older songs, but there was little urgency or very much memorable about
the new material.
That all changed a bit when one of them finally delivered a song so
good that in its mere existence it begged to be recorded -- the
Hayward-authored single In Your Wildest Dreams (1986), an almost
perfect successor to Nights in White Satin. Mixing romance, passion,
and feelings of nostalgia with a melody that was gorgeous and instantly
memorable (and with a great beat), the single -- along with its
accompanying album -- approached the top of the charts. They were
boosted up there by a superb promotional video (featuring the Mood Six
as the younger Moody Blues) that suddenly gave the group at least a
little contemporary pop/rock credibility. The follow-up, I Know You're
Out There Somewhere, was a lesser but still impressive commercial
success, with an even better secondary melodic theme, and the two
combined gave them an essential and memorable pair of mid-decade hits,
boosting their concert attendance back up and shoring up their
contemporary songbag.
Still, the Moody Blues were no longer anywhere near the cutting edge of
music, and by the end of the 1980s, they were again perceived as a
nostalgia act, albeit one with a huge audience -- a bit like the
Grateful Dead without the critical respect or veneration. By that time,
Moraz was gone and the core group was reduced to a quartet, with
salaried keyboard players augmenting their work (along with a second
drummer to back up Edge). They had also begun attracting fans by the
tens of thousands to a new series of concerts, in which -- for the
first time -- they performed with orchestras and, thus, could do their
most elaborately produced songs on-stage. In 1994, a four-CD set
devoted to their work, entitled Time Traveller, was released. By that
time, their new albums were barely charting, and seldom attracting any
reviews, but their catalog was among the best-selling parts of the
Polygram library. A new studio effort, Strange Times, followed in 1999
and the live (at the Royal Albert Hall) Hall of Fame followed a year
later, but it was the 1997 upgrades of their original seven albums,
from Days of Future Passed to Seventh Sojourn, that attracted far more
attention from the public. In 2003, Ray Thomas retired, and the Moody
Blues carried on as a core trio of Hayward, Lodge, and Edge. ~ Bruce
Eder, All Music Guide
Written by Bruce Eder