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The Moody Blues “A Question Of Balance” (1970)
Question/How Is It (We Are Here?)/And The Tide Rushes In/Don’t You Feel Small?/Tortoise And The Hare//It’s Up To You/Minstrel’s Song/Dawning Is The Day/Melancholy Man/The Balance
After
he had traversed a full octave of eight other Moody Blues albums, the scribe
found he had journeyed far and wide, and his mind was sore, and he was tired, and
his mind was full of sojourns and lost chords and space rockets and many
wondrous things, and then when he began to despair of what to wryte he came
upon an album he had forgotten named ‘A Question of Balance’. And he rested,
and he lay in the cool, and he let his thoughts turn to the music within and
while he was lying there he took out a Satsuma, stared at it blankly, thought
‘why the hell are the Moody Blues singing about fruit?!’ and went back to
sleep. But as he lay resting he saw the tree above him and the stars flickering
in the nights sky (ignoring thoughts of ‘why the hell am I outside when I
should be in my writing chair?!’) and let the music wash over him again, and he
thought of the album in balance. And he thought of Moody Blues albums he loved,
full of mellotrons and Justin Hayward ballads and John Lodge rockers and Ray
Thomas emotional insights and Mike Pinder melodramas and Graeme Edge curios,
for he was not a neutral music critic. And then he thought of Moody Blues
albums he hated, full of 1980s noisy synths and empty pop tunes and lack of
guitar and bass and drums, for he was not a eulogising music critic who thought
his idols could do no wrong. And then he realised he’d written about most of
his favourite Moodies albums already and had reached the midway point between
the albums he loved and the albums he loathed. And he understood this album and
himself, for when he was in anger over missed opportunities or 1980s
synthesisers or when he was hurt by less-than-perfect songs, it was because he
was not understanding what the hell some of the confusing tracks on later Moody
Blues albums were all about. He then saw his enemies like unto himself, and he
learned love, and then he was answered, with a music review for Alan’s Album
Archives (Letters to the Clandusprod Corinthians III, from
the Face of Bo Bible V: chapter V).
For an album that’s traditionally meant to represent
the Moodies’ return to the basics of their career, containing a suite of songs
that could be performed by the band live on tour, there’s still one hell of a
lot of weird stuff going on in the vinyl grooves of ‘A Question Of Balance’.
All of the ‘classic seven’ Justin/John-period Moodies albums have something
strange going on in them, but usually its heard in interludes, in openings and
endings, in musical segues and in album artwork. ‘A Question Of Balance’ is
simply strange all the way through, a gem of a hit single not with-standing,
and a journey that divides the five Moodies’ writing styles up into categories
like never before (vocal-less you’d be hard pressed to guess which of the five
wrote each song on past albums, but not here when all five seem to be carving
out their own niches within the band sound). There’s also the curious factor of
why a band who wrote possibly the most consistent seven-album run of any AAA
band should suffer so much on album five, with ‘A Question Of Balance’ caught
between five definite masterpieces and five pieces of rather less dignified
filler. Traditionally ‘Balance’ is thought of as one of the band’s best
(alongside the excellent ‘On The Threshold Of A Dream’ and rather patchy ‘Days
Of Future Passed’), so I was expecting something sensational when I finally
managed to track this album down – the last of the seven original Moodies
albums I needed for my collection.
In that light ‘Balance’ is a bit of a
disappointment. The ‘return to basics’ just basically means there’s not much of
Mike Pinder’s sterling mellotron which had done so much to create the band’s
melancholy, thoughtful , exotic air (thank goodness its back by album six
‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’), slightly fewer overdubs and a little bit
more drums. However, rather than re-invent the Moodies sound in front of our
ears and prove what a great rock and roll band our favourite Brummie quintet
could be, full of fiery passionate songs based around guitar bass and drums, it
simply means that the Moodies sound like every other band around in 1970.
Though as much money and time and effort was spent on 'A Question Of Balance'
as all the others, it comes off sounding the lowest-budget record of the band's
classic run - slightly lighter on ideas, production and the deep thinking that
The Moodies so loved. You could imagine another band delivering a 'tribute'
cover record of most of the songs on this album (there's even the nagging
feeling a rockier band might have delivered songs like 'Tortoise and the Hare'
and 'Minstrel's Song' slightly better) with only closing monologue 'The
Balance' sounding pure Moodies; you'd be hard pressed to imagine another band
tackling 'Have You Heard?' or 'The House Of Four Doors' for instance. Far from
adding to our enjoyment of the band and what they can bring to the musical
table, 'A Question Of Balance' just sounds like it's the 'lite' version of The
Moody Blues for those who've heads have been turned so much by philosophical
ponderings that they're temporarily forced on a diet ('I Can't Believe It's Not
Bluer!') As to the band being able to play this stuff on stage: well, a quick
listen to period performances shows (such as the band’s Isle of Wight
performance from 1970) reveals that the band still had a long way to go trying
to re-create their detailed exotic soundscapes outside a studio setting - the
whole point of making this album in the first place ('Tortoise and Hare' sounds
like its being tortured on that album and even 'Question' sounds flat-footed,
while 'Melancholy Man' sounds positively suicidal). Last time round we got a
record that took us to the back of beyond - this rootsier album is more
earthbound and slightly clumsy in places and The Moodies are a band who belong
in space, pushing back the boundaries no matter how silly this sometimes gets;
there are a million other bands who lack the same imagination who can do
'earth-bound'.
On the other hand (this is an album about ‘balance’
after all) when this is album is good, it's great. Though other songs come
close, 'Question' is the real heart and soul of The Moody Blues diluted down to
one catchy song which shows off both the band's sad deflated and angry urgent
sounds all at once. 'Melancholy Man' somehow manages to be one of the band's
most OTT moments despite featuring a comparatively light production (until the
end anyway, when all hell breaks loose) and has rightly become one of the
band's better loved album tracks. Justin's 'Dawning Is The Day' and Ray's 'And
The Tide Rushes In' are two of the most
under-rated Moody Blues songs in the whole book, sweet yearning ballads full of
the longing indescribable emotions lesser artists wouldn't have known where to
start with. Even the album's lesser moments simply fall slightly short rather
than flat on their faces, the closest that the band have yet got to an even LP
(which isn't marred by that orchestra and those poems, ten minutes of 'House Of
Four Doors', the simpler first side of 'Threshold' not living up to the second
or the song 'Floating' on each of the last four albums respectively). The
Moodies will do better yet with their next two albums, but even so it's
impressive just how many ideas the band are still coming up with by their fifth
album together (with this line-up), even if there is less of an overall band
identity compared to 'To Our Children's. Though I was expecting slightly more
from the performances given this album's reputation as their 'rock and roll'
album (the band still sound as if they're working separately rather than
together) when the band do get it on this album represents another peak, of
sorts. 'Question' kicks out the blocks with the last song where all five
Moodies are giving their all big-time at the same time and sounds great; the
band also rally around Graeme for the creepy 'Don't You Feel Small?' where they
turn the fact that only the drummer can't sing into an advantage. These songs
work fine together on a record too, with the Moody Blues again rivalled only by
Pink Floyd and Wings in their ability to get dense complex textures on a record
without anything in the mix sounding cluttered or murky (hurrah again for the
unsung engineers and producer Tony Clarke for the highlights of this album are
all, if you excuse the pun, a question of the right balance in the mix).
Balance is, naturally enough, a dominant theme of
the lyrics on this album and seems a natural fit for a band who always thought
deeper than your average 60s posters. What’s fascinating for me is how each
band member interprets that ‘balance’ theme in a different way. Let’s take the
record’s first side as an example, with a song each per Moody (the only time
this happens in the whole of the ‘classic’ line-ups history (though, alas, the
theme falls apart on the more rushed second side): Hayward uses ‘Question’ as a
song that’s really about looking for answers and is a song that alternates
angry, strident rocking verses with inward questioning, balancing the desire
for outer and inner change. ‘How Is It (We Are Here) finds Mike Pinder writing
poetically about the Industrial Revolution and claiming that – as all good
historians and history students know – that each period in human history brings
benefits and problems in equal measure. Ray Thomas goes for the personal idea
of balance, with ‘And The Tide Rushes In’ one of his better songs about having
the rug pulled from under your feet every time you at last feel secure. Graeme
Edge backs up Pinder with his scary song about progress ‘Don’t You Feel Small?’
when each ‘progress’ made by man (discovering new continents, planets and
inhabitants) serves to make humanity’s world bigger and their place within it
smaller. Finally, John Lodge updates the timeless Aesop fable ‘The Tortoise and
the Hare’ to show the ‘balance’ between working fast and burning your ideas up
quickly and taking things slow and steady – two methods each with their
benefits and weaknesses. Always questioning, always looking for the ‘truth’ and
‘balance’ of each argument, in many ways this is the band’s most thoughtful
record, caught at the midway point between the confidence of albums one to four
and the melancholy insecurity and guilt of albums six and seven.
The balance comes into play on the striking album
cover, more garish than most Moodies sleeves but certainly more interesting
than the stone-age scrawled cover for ‘To Our Children’s (personally I think
the band should have used the inner sleeve, a marvellous
photograph-come-illustration showing the Moodies in a cave and subverting our
ideas of the ‘stone age past’ on its head by showing us our future). The theme
is balance, with images of peace and war stuck together in a sort of non-ending
collage featuring such distinctive images as a storm-cloud in the shape of a
tiger raining on a pretty beach, Einstein’s dreams resulting in both triumphant
space-rocket and a smoky, vulnerable-looking Earth and, most controversially, a
hunter shooting an elephant and in turn about to be bitten by a crow. The
hunter, drawn by artist Phil Travers (later a 10cc record producer) from an
illustration he found in National Geographic, was so recognisable as hunter
John Blashford Snell that the explorer successfully sued album company Decca
for using his image without his permission (UK original editions contain a
black square over the image). Decca promptly forgot to tell their US arm though
who issued the record as planned – and Snell successfully sued a second time.
Much ridiculed at the time for taking the Moodies to court, it actually showed
great awareness by Snell as to what the album was all about (most hunters of
the day couldn’t understand why their profession was viewed as ‘bad’ by the
peace loving hippies and would have been tickled at being on an album cover;
see the similar story of the Beatles’ Indian colleague Bungalow Bill who went
to his death seeing nothing wrong with hunting in between meditating at
Rishikesh and who was reportedly rather proud of being turned into a song!). The image has been restored for the CD
copies, interestingly – presumably Snell’s estate don’t have the same problems
he had with the ‘hippie’ generation, or perhaps a settlement has been reached
or they don’t know and I’ve just accidentally opened a can of worms there and
we'll all be back in the courts again before you know it (in which case, sorry Moodies!)
There’s another theme on the record too, possibly a
by-product of left-over songs from the previous ‘To Our Children’s Children’s
Children’ record, an album all about man’s evolution and the start of his
journey into space (released to coincide with the moon landing of July 1969).
Many of the songs here seem to be looking at the human race as a by-product of
evolution and assess how mankind fares across time, with exploration bringing
out the best in mankind as a species (curiosity, courage and a desire to find
out the scientific ‘truth’) with the bad (losing sight of humanity as
individuals, a loss of a ‘home’ world, more opportunities for war). If ‘How Is
It’ is a song reminding us of how far humanity had to come to reach the moon
landings then ‘Small’ is an eerie echo from mankind’s future when all of these
bad points have come true. The second side of the record features both the
happiest and saddest of all Moodies songs, as if offering up two alternative
futures based on mankind following the good and bad points. On the one hand,
the hippie peace philosophy of the late 60s (already dying out by 1970 when
this album was released) results in the joyous vibe of ‘Minstrel Song’, with a
whole generation of people marching to the beat in the name of ‘peace and
‘love’. On the other is ‘Melancholy Man’, the moodiest song the Moodies ever
recorded (and a surprising #1 hit single in France), with Mike Pinder’s
narrator lost and adrift in space, part of a new breed of ‘melancholy humans’ ,
lost without the security and base of a ‘home’. A kind of space-age update of
next week’s review of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘I Am A Rock’, it makes for often
uncomfortable hearing. That little lot over, all that’s left is for a poetic
psychobabble Graeme Edsge poem and a catchy Ray Thomas pop chorus in ‘The
Balance’ – the one Moodies song I must confess I don’t understand at all (and
parodied above – is it really about a man eating an orange? Or did I miss
something somewhere?!)
A quick word, now, about the latest CD re-issue of
the album (from 2007), which like the re-releases of the other six ‘classic’
Moodies albums came under a bit of fire from fans. Like the others the supposed
SACD quality (made from the original quadraphonic tapes) is disappointing,
being in 4.0 rather than 5.1 surround sound, although I can’t say I’m as fussed
about that as many of my fellow fans (its a low of 1960s and 70s music that
everything should be good enough to stand up to being heard on a tinny portable
transistor radio, because that’s where most of these songs were first played)
and it still sounds good on headphones. The use of ‘full’ edits of songs is an
interesting one, irritating given that we generally have to listen to four or
five minutes of music that we’ve known for decades to hear a titbit of a second
or two, but something that’s proved brilliant for my mp3 players (where I don’t
have so many Moodies segues to navigate through on ‘shuffle’). By and large my
advice for the other six albums is to stick with what you’ve got if you already
own a decent-sounding copy – with this as possibly the only exception. For the
unreleased song ‘Mike’ Number One’, though heard here in undeniably rough form,
may well be the best of the handful of Moodies outtakes released so far. A slow
and Moody Mike Pinder song, its similar in structure to ‘Question’ with its
strident choruses and timid verses and a mixture of ‘Melancholy Man’ and
‘Minstrel’s Song’ in theme, hoping for goodness and fearing the worst. It’s a much
better song than either of Pinder’s songs to make it to the album and would
have fitted well onto Pinder’s only solo album ‘The Promise’ (1976), with a
simple and pretty tune and a hummable chorus. One wonders why it was never
finished, especially given the ‘filler’ on most of side two of the album – and
the fact that Pinder, uncharacteristically, seems to suffer writer’s block in
1971, coming up with just the one song for the ‘Every Good Boy’ LP.
The end result? ‘Balance’ is a difficult album to
get a hold of. Less immediate than their best work and simpler than the ‘other’
six classic LPs, it shows a band in turmoil to some extent, wondering where to
go next after an impressive run of four albums which were gathering critical
and commercial momentum with each release. The fact that the album is best
known today for Justin’s ‘Question’, the band’s biggest single until the 1980s,
rather overshadows the fact that this is even more of a diplomatic group record
than usual, with all five members pulling their weight for perhaps the last
time. Many fans love this work for its looser, rawer rhythms, though for me its
something of a relief to get back to the grandioseness of ‘EGBDF’ and ‘Seventh Sojourn’, which sound
like much more ‘complete’ to me. That said (it’s all about balance this album,
after all) there are songs here that are right up there with the Moodies’ best
and even the lesser ‘filler’ songs from this album have a charm and a panache
that few other groups can compete with. Had the Moodies made no other albums
except this one, I’d have still have loved them dearly – the fact that this
album can’t hold a candle (of life) to ‘In Search Of The Lost Chord’ ‘To Our
Children’s ‘ EGBDF’ and ‘Seventh Sojourn’ doesn’t make ‘A Question Of Balance’
a lesser album by any standards except the Moodies’ own and there’s still much
to enjoy. After all, how many albums do you know that manage to be this lushly
produced, feature that many poetically driven lyrics and soundscapes about man
finding balance in life by eating oranges and yet still rock as hard as
‘Balance’ does on ‘Question’ ‘It’s Up To You’ and ‘Tortoise and the Hare’ (the
first two of which are among the band’s best rockers)? And how many albums do
you know that can piss off British Empire explorers, contain angry songs
written in response to the Vietnam War and create one of the eeriest, scariest
passages of any song ever recorded (‘Melancholy Man’) without sacrificing any
of the beauty that has come to be the Moodies’ trademark? ‘A Question Of
Balance’ might not be the place to start your Moodies collection (see our
‘reviews’ section for the four we recommend!) but it is still a great album,
far better than anybody’s fifth album in four years has a right to be.
A final discussion based around what you get if you
buy the deluxe CD. Not a lot, really compared to the four earlier albums: The
Moody Blues were by now so big that they didn't need to promote their records
with appearances on BBC radio shows and now have the confidence that even their
dodgier ideas will work so that there are less unused songs or non-album tracks
in this era. However 'Question' does contain one of the greatest Moody outtakes
in 'Mike's Number One', a Pinder track far more representative of his usual
songwriting style than either 'How Is It (We Are Here)' or 'Melancholy Man'.
The closest The Moodies ever got to writing an 'anthem', it's an 'All You Need
Is Love' dressed up in even hippier clothes as the band turn back to their
early days of addressing the 'flower children' with the promise that 'we've all
started something - and it's begun to grow'. Though clearly unfinished, it's
already a very lovely track that would have made a fine addition to the album -
or indeed the next one 'EGBDF' where Mike will only get the one song. The
'balance' theme even shows in the 'bonus tracks', though, with this brilliant
find (why wasn't it released on 'Caught Live+5'?) followed by five bits of
scraping the barrel. An early version of 'Question' starts with even more
aggression than the finished version but soon settles down into more of a plod
which just sounds like a rather rougher version of the finished song without
the orchestral overdubs and a rather more manic Justin guide vocal; 'Minstrel's
Song' runs longer by about ten seconds with a few extra improvised yells and
calls (with Pinder getting very carried away!); 'Dawning Is The Day' opens with
ten extra seconds of strumming and humming cut when the song merged into the
back of 'Minstrel's Song and 'It's Up To You' includes barely five seconds of
extra double-tracked Hayward guitar. Only 'Don't You Feel Small?' is really
worth your while, starting not with the slight half-start and deep breath for
the opening lyric but with a very moody ten second instrumental part with more
scary Ray Thomas flute. Apart from 'Mike's Number One' and the new 'Question,'
then, what you get for your extra money adds up to around thirty seconds
compared to a quarter hour of repeats: a bit unbalanced if you ask me! (Surely
there were 'earlier mixes' or at least 'alternate mixes' with the original
beginnings and endings intact that could have illustrated the point?!)
‘Question’ is the opening track and the album’s best known
moment – indeed, it's the closest the Moodies ever got to having a #1 hit in
their UK homeland (I’d love to tell you it was another great artist that kept
them from being top of the charts and stuck at #2, but no – it was the flipping
England Football Team singing ‘Back Home’ before the inevitable loss and
penalty-ridden disaster!) Justin has since said that he wrote the song very
hurriedly the morning of the first recording session and, thanks to its
simplicity, the band managed to nail it in a couple of takes, setting the
‘tone’ for the ‘return to roots’ feel they wanted for the album. The song
clearly struck a chord with a whole group of people who took to this record in
a way they hadn’t for other Moodies near-misses like ‘Lovely To See You’
‘Voices In The Sky’ and ‘Watching and Waiting’ – in fact everything since ‘Ride
My See-Saw’ in early 1968. No doubt the song’s catchy hook and its intriguing
structure, ‘balanced’ neatly between a loud strident half and an inward timid
half, helped but in a year of social unrest, violence and escalating anti-war
protests it’s lyrics must have seemed particularly apt. The sixties dream of
peace and freedom, which the Moodies embodied more than most bands, was
unravelling and nobody knew quite why: this song’s opening line ‘Why do we
never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door?’ and its theme of looking
for answers and not getting any sum up the year far more than anything else
released back then (including ‘Back Home’!) If you look at Justin’s back
catalogue, his songs are pretty much evenly split between the ‘personal’ and
the ‘universal’, songs of self-doubt mixing with others about the troubles of
the world. ‘Question’ stands out in his catalogue because it’s the only case
(to date) where he merges the two strands and suggests that the world’s problems
are simply those that all of us face writ large, full of guilt and
recriminations. Great as the opening section is, with its slashing chords and
driving tempo, its the quieter middle section that gives this song it’s heart.
After wondering why a generation’s questions are never answered and pointing
the finger at others, it’s a masterstroke to slow the song down and hear
Hayward’s narrator admit his own mistakes and falling out with people (in a
very Paul Simon lyric, Justin adds It’s not the way that you say it when you
say those things to me, it’s more the way you really mean it...’ – compare with
‘Tenderness’ from the ‘Rhymin’ Simon’ album). The other Moodies back Justin
well here, with some fine mellotron from Pinder and some classic band harmonies,
but its Justin’s emotional outpouring on both lead vocal and guitar that
elevate this song from great to classic status, with an honest and believable
performance matched only by the ‘other’ big hit ‘Nights In White Satin’. The
song then ends with a repeat of the opening, another great idea suggesting that
questions are never answered and ending with one of the loudest drum flurries
of any Moodies records, the Moodies almost going heavy metal! The first song
properly recorded for the album, ‘Question’ is central to the record’s themes
of balance and simplicity and works even better as the opening overture on LP
than it did as a singalong single (which undeniably deserved much better than
to have been stuck behind a novelty football record for the whole of it’s run!)
‘How Is It (We Are Here?)’ is another fan favourite, this time
by Mike Pinder, something that’s always puzzled me both because it doesn’t
sound like Pinder’s usual forward-looking melancholia pieces and because – by
the Moodies own high standards – its a bit of anonymous record. Not quite
lasting three minutes it tries to ask its own big questions (‘Why are we here
and where are we going?’) but instead of answering with emotion or outrage it
turns into a history lesson, showing how while the Industrial Revolution
brought inventions that eased living, it also destroyed nature and doesn’t
solve ‘real’ human suffering such as starvation and poverty. There’s a dig at
evolution too, suggesting that man is devolving back into the ‘ape’ he once
became, becoming uncaring and oblivious to others’ suffering (although it’s
interesting to note that in the lyrics evolution is what ‘scientist-priests all
think’; priests, of course, believe in creationism and that evolution is a
mistake; Pinder doesn’t believe in either it seems – perhaps, like me, he
believes that we were artificially created by another race; if true they must
be furious that all that hard work and effort resulted in – gulp – the Spice
Girls). The trouble with this song is that, like many of Pinder’s songs, its
very talky with long cumbersome lines to sing that rather get in the way of the
lovely lilting melody played on Pinder’s mellotron behind his vocal. At two
verses and a seemingly un-related middle eight (‘Her love is like a fire burning
inside’ – presumably mother Earth although the link isn’t made clear) there
simply isn’t enough scope to cover several millennia of man’s evolution.
Hayward adds some terrific stormy guitar to the end of the track and Ray Thomas
adds a rare flute harmony part (he’s noticeably absent from this album), but by
and large this is Pinder’s show and an alarming example of how little the band
were actually playing together at the same time by 1970.
‘And The Tide Rushes In’ is Ray’s one great moment on the record
and its one of his best songs, a much more personal take on the ‘questioning’
theme of the album. Thomas was always at his best writing love songs and this
song about breaking up and making up was apparently inspired by a colossal
argument with his first wife (producer Tony Clarke, who considered this song
one of the best things the band ever did, jokingly goaded the couple into
having more rows!)’Balance’ is the theme again here, with the idea that good
and bad things always comes in cycles, with the ‘tide rushing in’ as a symbol
of life’s unexpected developments and leaving the hapless narrator unsure
whether his partner is in love with him or not (‘I’m not so sure which side of
the bed I should lay’). Lyrically there’s also a hint that the Moodies are getting
tired of their fame and status, a second verse (‘I sit down and lend an ear,
but I hear nothing new’) seemingly developed and transformed into the Moodies’
closing statement from two albums later ‘I’m Just A Singer In A Rock ‘n’ Roll
Band’. There’s a lovely instrumental middle section, which desperately deserves
to be longer, Hayward’s minstrel-like acoustic guitar fills from the past
meeting Lodge’s very 60s bass runs from the present and Pinder’s gorgeous
sounding mellotron representing the future, as if the song is timeless and has
been repeated by mankind many times. Structured like a low key version of
‘Question’, this song shows an even finer grasp of dynamics, starting so
quietly you can barely hear it and letting Ray’s passionate vocal soar at full
strength by the final chorus. The lyrics even start the same way: ‘I’ve been
searching for my dream...’ is basically the same head-shrugging re-action to
life’s problems). The one thing that lets this song down is the rather abrupt
ending: the last verse about a blackbird watching acorns fall is far less
inspired than the first two (if this song is symbolic of mankind’s stuttering
progress, then ‘who’ is the omniscient blackbird?!) and the song doesn’t end so
much as fizzle out, ending on an uncomfortable and unresolved fourth.
'Don’t You Feel Small?’ is the eeriest of many eerie songs from
drummer Graeme Edge and features his own whispered ghostly voice set against
the harmonies of Ray, Justin and John (Mike must have been out that day!) The
song is urgent and spiky, full of staccato rhythms and a mock-nursery rhyme
sing-songy melody that could be beautiful but instead sounds creepy. The
tension that’s built up by the end of the third verse is palpable, but the song
really comes alive in an unexpected chorus, garbled off so badly you can’t hear
it without the lyric sheet (it’s ‘Look at progress, count the cost, we’ll spoil
the seas with the rivers we lost’) but is still affective as a sudden
adrenalin-pumping rush of energy. After a blistering but short instrumental
passage, with some great flute playing from Thomas, the song sadly reverts back
to its lesser beginning, but for a minute or so there this is exciting,
energetic stuff. Lyrically this is an even darker take on ‘How Is It We Are
Here’s discussion of evolution and progress, sarcastically summing up mankind’s
denial over the problems the industrial revolution has caused with the opening
lifted straight from Snow White ‘Ask the mirror on the wall...’ The band also
seem to be spoofing themselves with the line ‘See the world, ask what its for’
and laughing at the idea that the world is ‘for’ anything (mankind being a
pretty recent development in terms of the history of the Earth and thus isn’t
‘for’ any purpose at all). There’s a hint, too, that if mankind doesn’t start
widening his horizons to other planets he’s in danger of wiping himself out,
with a verse that should have been on ‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’
(an album about that very theme). In the midst of the great vastness of space
mankind really is just a speck on the great scheme of things and this song –
part sarcastic, part angry, part bitter, part wary – is one of the best tracks
around at summing up that feeling, especially the contrasting middle section.
Graeme’s disembodied voice is also surprisingly effective and had the drummer
lived in a different era he’d have been the star of many a Hammer Horror film
(along with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters’ bloodcurdling screams!)
‘Tortoise and the Hare’ was deliberately written by John Lodge
as a simpler song the band could do in concert, but the song never really took
off on live shows (listen to the Moodies’ Isle of Wight performance for a
particularly mangled reading) and is only partly successful on record, thanks
to a rushed recording that never really comes together. The harmonies, in
particular, are all over the place, with Lodge’s double tracked lead (including
his trademark high falsetto) needing a couple more takes to perfect and even
the Mike, Justin and Ray chorus struggling to blend together as smoothly as
normal. Lyrically this is so close to the Aesop fable of the title as to be
cheating, although ironically its the bits added to the song that work least
well (what does the rather boring ‘It’s alright’ chorus signify? That the
rabbit is convinced he’s going to win? Or that the tortoise will make up lost
ground when his competitor goes to sleep?) The one part of this track that does
come off is the unusual chunky rhythm which does a good job at mimicking the
relentless march of the tortoise (with the fluid, mercurial guitar runs from
Hayward sounding like its playing at double-speed and mimicking the hare). A
cautionary tale without anything new to add or any idea who exactly its aimed
at (Is it telling the 60s generation to ‘keep plodding on’ and their ideals
will come into play in the future? Is it Lodge’s song to the rest of the band
to slow down? Is it simply a last minute bit of filler?!) this is a curiously
ungraceful song for a Moody Blues recording, all mangled production and leaden
tempos, and while it’s nice to hear the band doing something different this is
perhaps[s an experiment too far. A curiously dull end to an eclectic first
side.
Side two opens with another Hayward song, ‘It’s Up To You’, which is
the hidden highlight of the entire album. Starting with a timid acoustic
opening, it soon turns intoi a strident pop number with a deliciously retro
vocal from Hayward who even sings with a Buddy Hollyish hiccup on a very 1950s
sounding track. Lyrically this is another interesting song that starts off
being about a disintegrating relationship (where she’s not in love as much as
he is) and ends up going back to the theme of ‘Question’s disconnection, that
the denial of the peace and love generation is ‘lies’ (an unusually bitter and
angry put down by the Moodies) and that even now, even after all the troubles
of 1969 and 1970, ‘that we have got nothing to lose’. There’s a particularly
lovely chorus where the Merseybeatish rhythm section falls away and the song
just soars which is highly affecting and, like all the best Moodies tracks,
convinces you so thoroughly that things are going to turn out right that it’s a
shock when the song stops and you realise its 2012, all the same old school are
still in power and none of the good things from that era lasted at all. Though
low mixed, Justin’s double-tracked vocal is another masterpiece of
vulnerability and power, although it’s a shame to hear a chorus featuring more
Haywards singing together instead of the rest of the group and hints again at
the divisions that are going to become more common on Moodies albums six and
seven. Again a sudden ending, on one of the shortest fades in musical history,
undoes much of the good work (was there a mistake dead close to the ending that
the band couldn’t repair?) but that doesn’t take away from a song that deserves
to be much better known.
Alas ‘Minstrel’s Song’ is the worst song on the record, a rather dull
re-tread of ‘Love Is All Around’ by the Troggs that even recycles the exact
same chorus line that like John Lodge’s other composition on the album is
rather ploddy and repetitive (its a curious fact that Lodge will write either
the best or the worst songs on a Moodies LP; play this song and ‘hare’ back to
back with the superlative band highlight ‘One More Time To Live’ from the next
LP ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’ and it’s hard to believe it’s by the same
writer). At least the Moodies sing en
masse this time, albeit with John’s lead up front in the mix, but the song gets
so deep and low at times that even Ray and Mike struggle to keep up. That said
Pinder’s singing on the chorus is a delight and I wouldn’t be surprised to
learn that he wrote it, given its close proximity to his own ‘The Sun Is Still
Shining’. Lyrically this is a song about how a minstrel band manage to spread
love around a community like the pied piper, gradually spreading the joyous
vibe to ‘nations’ from their starting point (which means the revolution which
brought peace and joy to the world started in...Birmingham of all places, if
the bandare indeed singing about themselves here). Alas Lodge has written much
better songs on the same theme and he doesn’t seem to have the same belief in
this song as its mirror image ‘I’m Just A Singer In A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band’
(which basically has the minstrel of this song telling his fans to get lost
because he’s just as confused about life as they are!) There is a pretty tune
in here somewhere, though and it’s nice to hear a full band performance,
especially on the chaotic ending where they sound like they’re having fun
(Pinder and Hayward trading lines that seem to be improvised and expand the
song by some 30 seconds or so) – it’s just a shame the song itself doesn’t have
something a little extra to add.
‘Dawning Is The Day’ is a third and final Hayward song and is
ever so nearly up to the standards of the other two, showing what a terrific
purple patch he was in during this period (The Moodies are often painted as
‘his’ band nowadays, but one of the many things I love about them is what a
democratic and fair unit they were, splitting their albums evenly between all
five members – until the split in 1972 at least). The opposite of ‘Question’,
this song balances a timid opening section and a booming chorus, although the
lyrics are more like ‘It’s Up To You’, seemingly approaching a loved one before
back-tracking to reveal it’s (probably) about the world in general. The song
opens with the belief that ‘you will find your way’ and moves on to delight in
the idea of escape and freedom (‘no one tells the wind which way to blow’), but
upsets the whole song thanks to a storming middle eight that barely lasts 20
seconds. ‘Baby there’s no price upon your head...now the angry words have all
been said, do it, don’t doubt it’ Justin almost yells to the accompaniment of a
scary bass mellotron rumble and some swirling flute, as if the narrator’s
seemingly endless sea of patience has just run out and he’s cajoling his
generation to recover from the setbacks of the late 60s and plough ahead in the
name of love and peace oblivious to all. The song then reverts back to the
pretty melody of the start, but things have changed and the narrator – who
started off all confidence and support – now sounds worried and nervous, adding
the one word ‘So...’ at the repeat of the first verse which makes all the
difference (nagging rather than pleading). The memorable song then ends with a
round of the line ‘listen we think we have found you’ sung by the whole band in
harmony, like the pied piper from Minstrel’s song gathering up followers bit by
bit. It’s a moving moment on an excellent song that works to all of Justin’s
many strengths (emotional integrity, dynamic control, guitar work, strong
melody and a theme of the personal reflecting back on the universal) and is
another of the highlights of the album.
‘Melancholy Man’ is a divisive track that fans either love or
loathe, exaggerating every Moodies trait to the hilt (a slow, stately melody,
depressing lyrics and a really epic feel in production terms). For me,
typically, I can take or leave this song and I admire the structure that slowly
travels from miniscule to mammoth in the space of nearly six minutes, whilst
still wishing occasionally the band would just ‘get on with it’. Some fans take
this song at face value and see it as an emotional outpouring about how rotten
the world is and how messed up we all are, but the way Pinder sings the song
(with a ‘glow’ of calm and tranquillity rather than utter suffering) has led
some fans to think this song is a lot happier than first meets the ear.
Certainly thinks look up in the second verse (this long song has only two,
although both are quite long) when a sudden ‘beam of light’ will fill
everyone’s heads and they’ll accept the ‘good’ advice from our great artists,
thinkers and composers and ‘forget’ the bad, embracing peace over war and love
over hate. The theme that mankind will ‘keep growing’ past his present
‘barbaric state’ also leads on nicely from Pinder’s other song on the album
about our past and lack of progress in all ways bar the technological. However,
this is still a very ‘down’ song, complete with a slowly turning riff that is
beautiful but only in a ghostly, sombre, stately way and keeps moving lower
and lower down the keys, as if searching for something in a melancholic state
that does nothing more than get the narrator ever more depressed. The rest of
the band cope well with a tricky song and their ghostly harmonies are as
impressive as ever, and ironically its Pinder who comes a little unstuck on his
own song, sounding a little too detached on the main verses and very OTT in the
song’s fade. His mellotron sound effects are also a little on the ‘heavy’ side
and very unlike his usual subtle, emotional playing, although they do at least make
the song sound ‘grand’. An experiment that’s partly successful, ‘Melancholy
Man’ is meant to sound like the album’s big statement and sounds more out of
place here near the end of the band’s ‘traditional’ album than it would on,
say, the next two albums (where everything is lush once again).
The album then ends with ‘The Balance’, a rare
one-off collaboration between Edge and Thomas which is more of a narrated story
than a song. We don’t know for sure but I’m willing to bet another Spice Girls
reunion on the fact that all the cod-Shakespeare is by the drummer and the
hummable catchy chorus is by the flautist. The idea of the ‘balance’ between
mankind is a strong one, but fifth time around this last Edge spoken word piece
for some 30-years (until ‘Strange Times’ in 1999) has lost the impact that
earlier spoken word pieces on ‘Days Of Future Passed’ and ‘On The Threshold Of
A Dream’ had. The fact is that this piece about a man eating an orange and
realising the answers to life simply isn’t that interesting and the idea of
offering any kind of ‘answer’ seems to go in the face of what the Moodies were
all about (on all their albums to some extent but particularly this one). The
highlight of the song is undeniably the chorus which deserves to have been made
into its own song, including the catchy clever rhymes for ‘eyes’ and ‘realize’,
‘mind’ and ‘find’ band ‘heart and start’, making for one of the band’s better
lyrics (and very much in Ray Thomas’ music hall quickfire style – think of ‘Dr
Livingstone I Presume’). A little too weird even for the Moody Blues, ‘The
Balance’ simply doesn’t have enough music in it to keep the listener
entertained.
Overall, though, ‘A Question Of Balance’ is neatly
stacked against the Moodies’ more accessible moments (largely on side one) with
their weirder, more exotic moments (largely on side two). The fact that this
album includes such a big hit single and is pretty fairly divided up between
the five members means that fans often quote is as a good ‘opening’ for other
fans to get a hold on Moody Blues albums - but I’m not quite sure I agree
because, in many ways, this album is a bit of a one-off, a Moodies album
without a real concept and one that’s divided pretty sharply between their
production numbers and their rawer, looser stuff. Frankly, too, their looser
rawer stuff isn’t as well played as other great bands of the period (‘Question’
aside) because the Moodies aren’t that sort of a band: they thrive more than
any other on polished productions, layered techniques and the rare ability to
make detailed soundscapes sound clear and uncluttered. Without as much studio
trickery and without the usual mellotron backing the album risks coming off as
undercooked Moodies, but on balance and heard as part of a magnificent seven
album run (and after all isn’t balance what the album is all about?) it is nice
to hear the band try to do something different with their talents. ‘A Question
of Balance’ isn’t bad enough to be a ‘bad’ album – nothing falls that flat and
only two or three songs here are less than good – but neither is it good enough
to be a ‘great’ album. Our advice is, if you’re a fan you’ll find lots to enjoy
(and almost definitely own it anyway) and if you’re not a fan have a go at some
of the other Moodies albums with the ‘proper’ trademarks’ in place before
having a go at this ‘exception’ to the rules.
And after ending and eating his oranges, the scribe rested in the cool while the stars beckoned and twinkled to him and in the light he realised that he had found the album in balance and that he had found understanding. And he turned the oranges into jaffa cakes, gave himself a sugar rush and started up his own supermarket brand which brought him one step closer to becoming a millionaire but a step further away from the light.
A Now
Complete List Of Moody Blues Related Articles At Alan’s Album Archives:
'The Magnificent Moodies' (1965)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-moody-blues-magnificent-moodies.html
'The Other Side Of This
Life' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-moody-blues-other-side-of-life-1986.html
‘Keys To The Kingdom’
(1991) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-moody-blues-keys-to-kingdom-1991.html
Surviving TV Clips
1964-2015: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-moody-blues-surviving-tv-clips-1964.html
The Best Unreleased
Recordings 1961-2009: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-moody-blues-unreleased-recordings.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
One 1964-1967: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-moody-blues-non-album-recordings.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
Two 1968-2009: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-moody-blues-non-album-recordings_11.html
