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The Moody Blues: Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Versions

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I don't know about you, dear reader, but so far this book/website has seemed awfully studio-bound: yes there are the odd live albums dotted round in the discographies but a touring life was usually as important if not more so to our AAA artists. Even we can't go through every gig they ever played however, so what we've decided to do instead is bring you five particularly important gigs with a run-down of what was played, where and when and why we consider these gigs so important, along with one particularly good one that summed up the band's setlist during their live peak (or one of them, anyway). Think of these as a sort of 'highlights' covering from first to (in some cases anyway) last, to whet your appetite and to avoid ignoring a band's live work completely! The Moody Blues had a rollercoaster ride with the stage down the years. From early career peaks supporting The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Walker Brothers (in that order) they ended up bottom of the bill in cabaret with a turning point when they nearly gave it all up. Yet somehow they bounced back and only four years later were playing to a then record British audience at the Isle of Wight festival. With only three actual live albums from their heyday (two recorded a mere week apart) it’s sometimes hard to get a glimpse of what this band’s live act was really like, but considering that all they had was a mellotron that kept going off pitch and some late 1960s/early 1970s technology it’s quite a marvel that they got as close to their expressive expensive studio sound as often as they did on stage.

1)  Where: Carlton Ballroom, Birmingham When: May 4th 1964 Why: First Gig Under MB Name Setlist: Unknown but might have included [13]Steal Your Heart Away [1] I’ll Go Crazy [2] Something You Got Baby [5] I Don’t Mind [12] Bye Bye Birdie

The Moody Blues played their first gig just two days after agreeing to form a band together, which must surely be some kind of a record. It made sense however:  they were all good friends after playing many of the same clubs together around Birmingham and were all seen as the city’s next hope without ever quite having got it together. What’s more they were playing very similar material in their different groups: Denny Laine in Denny and the Diplomats joining Mike Pinder and Ray Thomas from El Riot and The Rebels, Graeme Edge of Gary Levene and the Avengers and Clint Warwick of The Dukes. Given that almost all of these band were based in the Erdington end of Birmingham, they met up for a drink at local pub The Moathouse on May 2^nd  and passed an audition to become the house band for the up and coming Carlton Ballroom where they played most of their early gigs (which still exists, though the club is now rebranded ‘Mothers’ – it’s also where the live half of Pink Floyd’s ‘Ummagumma’ was taped in 1969). The new quintet didn’t, however, have a name. As the venue was sponsored by the local Mitchell and Butler Breweries they figured it wouldn’t hurt if they called themselves the Mitchell and Butler Five, but were rather stung when the management decided they didn’t want to be associated with a rowdy r and b band and would rather take their chances with alcoholics! Instead the name shrunk to the ‘MB5’ later changing to ‘Moody Blues’ in honour of the Elvis Presley song. We don’t know much more than that alas – the group and venue were too small for any local newspapers to write any reviews and being so new there were few fans who attended the gig to write down what the tracklisting was. It seems likely, though, that the band would have stuck to the r and b cover material they had all been playing in their respective bands and that it would all have sounded not unlike their first LP ‘The Magnificent Moodies’, with Denny the lead vocalist and the band missing many of their signature points such as Ray’s flute (added later in the year) and their own material (which won’t start properly until Denny and Mike get to know each other better). They must have done ok though as only a month later they were going places – Salford University to be exact!

2)  Where: The Fiesta Club, Stockton When: Late September Or Early October 1966 Why: Turning Point Setlist: Unknown

This is – so we think – the source of the oft-told incident where a new-look Justin ‘n’ John era Moody Blues had stapled together a stage act and were playing their second Denny-less gig without much enthusiasm when a man broke into their backstage dressing room to give them a dressing down: ‘I take my wife out every Thursday night, spend two pounds and ten shillings on her and you’re bloody terrible, the worst band I’ve ever seen in my life. You need to ditch the blue suits and R and B and, well, somebody ought to tell you before its too late’. The band were shocked: they’d been on a two year gradual decline from the days of ‘Go Now’ and a disillusioned Denny had already jumped ship in August, but they had been making do: Justin was doing his best impressions of Denny’s lead, Mike was writing more songs and new/old bassist John (who’s also been a ‘rebel’ in his school days) was getting by. But somehow the new line up wasn’t right for the old songs and the music scene had moved on from the R and B covers The Moodies had been doing for years by now. The band knew it, but hadn’t spoken it out loud till someone had said it for them. ‘He’s right, that bloke, you know’ said Graeme after the man had gone – and then and there, in the back of a dressing room, The Moodies began reshaping their future, deciding to throw out the covers, add more original songs and come up with a ‘concept album’ that was all the vogue in late 1966 and which would eventually be ‘Days Of Future Passed’. Without this moment in time The Moodies might have only ever made that one Laine-filled LP, but regrouping from zero gave them a second shot at fame. What we don’t know, what with The Moody Blues being so close to the bottom of the bill on a cabaret show, is what they played that night though the band have referred to playing ‘the same old stuff’ which probably means the ‘Magnificent Moodies’ album with a few of the Laine era singles in there too (oddly their last Laine single ‘Life’s Not Life’ won’t be out in the shops till January – maybe they got some early plugging in? [34] ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ also seems a likely bet). Incidentally, Stockton is Justin’s memory of where the event took place and which has appeared in so many Moodies documentaries many fans take it as sacrosanct, but John has always remembered this event happening after a gig in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. If we ever get that tine machine invented, I’ll let you know who was right!

3)  Where: Isle Of Wight Festival When: August 30^th 1970 Why: Biggest Gig? Setlist: [77] Gypsy [41] The Sunset [39] Tuesday Afternoon [88] Minstrel’s Song [66] Never Comes The Day [86] The Tortoise and The Hare [82] Question [90] Melancholy Man [68] Are You Sitting Comfortably? [69] The Dream [70-71] Have You Heard? > The Voyage [43] Nights In White Satin [49] Legend Of A Mind [46] Ride My See-Saw

By contrast, less than four years later and The Moody Blues are one of the biggest acts on the planet, touring the globe in their personalised jet planes and playing sell-out gigs. The audience at the Isle of Wight gig was easily their biggest, though (500,000 or thereabouts) and the band’s only sizeable festival of the period brought them to a whole new audience who’d never heard their music. Almost all the full show (alas four songs had deteriorated beyond repair) has since been released on CD and DVD and reveal a nervy band struggling to cope with their equipment in the open air and worried about the off-stage politics (Ray makes a rare bid for the microphone in between songs to comment on the fans tearing down the burger vans and fences with the cry that ‘music should be free’ with the healing lines that ‘they say it’s all for bread but, Christ, money can’t buy what you give us!’) Fifth album ‘A Question Of Balance’ had just been released three weeks before and many of the night’s songs come from that album, including one of the first performances of the band’s second biggest hit ‘Questions’ and a few songs not heard live after this tour. An album written to be simpler than usual to cater for the band’s biggest tour to date, it’s actually a surprise they didn’t play more songs from it this night, ending with a lengthy suite taken from third album ‘On The Threshold Of A Dream’. The part of the set that got the fans talking, though, was the finale with two of the band’s most popular songs stuck together (‘Nights’ and ‘Legend’), something so popular that for the first time in their career the audience refused to let the band go and demanded an encore (which must have annoyed the heck out of Jethro Tull waiting in the wings to play!) The band chose ‘Ride My See Saw’ and have since stuck to this three-song closing trilogy like a lucky talisman, never varying their set from that day to this. Interestingly many fans regard this as the peak of the band’s ‘democratic’ period of five writers and singers all with their own unique voices working together – surely the perfect approach for a festival of all places – and yet a look at the track listing reveals Justin dominating the band like never before, with six of the fourteen songs his (by contrast John and Mike get three each and Graeme just one).

4)  Where: The Cow Palace, California When: February 4^th 1974 Why: Last Gig With Original Members Setlist: Unknown but sample from same tour includes [71] Higher and Higher [76] Out and In [94] The Story In Your Eyes [98] One More Time To Live [39] Tuesday Afternoon [49] Legend Of A Mind [81] Watching and Waiting [78] Eternity Road [90] Melancholy Man [68] Are You Sitting Comfortably? [69] The Dream [70] Have You Heard? > The Voyage [43] Nights In White Satin  [49] Legend Of A Mind  [46] Ride My See-Saw

Though many fans think of 1972 being the last hurrah for the original Moody Blues they continued into early 1974, honouring gigs that had been booked before their decision to stop making new music. Though billed as a ‘Grand Toure’ in many ways it was the opposite, the Moodies playing shorter sets and making less speeches to fans, while there were no songs played from downbeat finale ‘Seventh Sojourn’ meaning that the most recent music here was already three years old. There was though, oddly, a revival of much of the fourth ‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’ album where the songs of optimism and space travel must have seemed a world away – the band wouldn’t revive the likes of ‘Higher and Higher’ and ‘Eternity Road’ for another three decades, while ‘Out and In’ would be booted out the setlist for good as soon as Mike hangs up his mellotron at the end of the tour. This wasn’t meant to be the end either: the band also had a tour in China booked, which would have been a first for a Western group in 1974, but they decided enough was enough and bought their way out of their contract (which was a shame as it had been arranged by an unlikely source. A big Moody Blues fan had been part of the British table tennis team that had won in China and had been granted a ‘celebration’ in their honour. Asked what music they would like to play, he nominated ‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’, which went down so well with the crowd that the Moodies were invited on the back of it!) Ironically the last song sung by the ‘classic’ line-up on stage ended up being ‘Ride My See-Saw’, John’s song of hope and optimism at being given a second chance to make his dreams of being in a band come true, now replaced by musical disagreements and general boredom.

5) Where: Cologne Sporthalle, Germany When: October 19^th 1978 Why: First Reunion Gig Setlist: Unknown but sample from same tour includes [132] Steppin’ In A Slide Zone [133] Under Moonshine [135] I’ll Be Level With You [136] Driftwood [138] I’m Your Man [139] Survival [141] The Day We Meet Again [94] The Story In Your Eyes [106] Isn’t Life Strange? [91] The Balance [110] I’m Just A Singer In A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band [39] Tuesday Afternoon [49] Legend Of A Mind [43] Nights In White Satin [82] Question [46] Ride My See-Saw

The band reunited in 1978, although it speaks volumes that they were much more nervous of going on tour again than they were making music in the studio, waiting four months until after the release of their eighth LP with the Justin ‘n’ John line-up ‘Octave’ before hitting the road. The trouble was that Mike wasn’t keen on uprooting himself from his American family to travel round the world singing old songs but the band also wanted to promote their album so it was agreed partway through the album that he would stay at home (and indeed drop out of the band). Worried about how they might go down without their founding member and that distinctive mellotron sound on stage (Mike was surely the only musician who ever got a mellotron to play in key on stage – and even he had problems some nights!), the other four Moodies decided to bounce back with some under-publicised shows away from the limelight over in Germany. Their new replacement, learning their old songs in a hurry, is Patrick Moraz of fellow prog rocker’s Yes and his impact  on the band will have a major effect in the years to come. Fans have long disputed whether he was a ‘full’ member or not (not least in the televised court case after he left the band) but it’s worth noting that as early as the shows that follow this concert he’s already on the front of the tour programme. With their new album still freshest in their mind, they took the odd decision to open with an entire set of  the new material (everything barring Justin’s  [134]‘Had To Fall’ and [137] ‘Top Rank Suite’, plus understandably Mike’s [140] ‘One Step Into The Light’) before playing some old friends in the second half. The shows went down very well though, encouraging the band to play a short UK and then a longer US tour soon afterwards. The Moody Blues were back, with a setlist that will be added to over the years but isn’t really all that changed from what they play in concert now.

The musical baton thing works both ways – sometimes younger or contemporary or even older acts hear music that they like and want it in their discography too. The Moody Blues don’t have as many cover versions out there as some of our other bands – all the more so once you’ve skimmed the wide range of teeth-gnashingly slow versions of [43] ‘Nights In White Satin’ there are out there – but there are some good ones out of the many we've heard (and no we haven't heard them all - do you know how many AAA albums out there are out there even without adding cover songs as well?!) There are to date three albums dedicated purely to Moody Blues covers and they’re a mixed bag. ‘Higher and Higher – A Tribute’ is as epic as you’d expect from all things Moody and runs for three discs. That’s at least one too many, possibly two, but there is some good stuff there if you keep the skip button handy (Ryan Guidry sounds just like Justin and revives perhaps his most obscure song, ‘London Is Behind Me’, from his pre Moody days while the suitably named Time Traveller have fun with [167] ‘The Other Side Of This Life’ by wondering what it would be like if it was made in 1966 rather than 1986). There are also no less than two volumes of a ‘Moody Bluegrass’ series which seems to exist mostly for the admittedly pretty funny gag in the title. I’m not sure The Moodies’ complexity really suits hoe-downs, however, while fiddles are no substitutes for flutes (although we have chosen our favourite moment below).  

Tangerine Zoo [37] Another Morning (‘Outside Looking In’ 1969)

Ray’s jolly childlike singalong always sounded like the odd one out on ‘Days Of Future Passed’ without the sense of weight or oppression of much of the rest of the album. That all changes with Tangerine Zoo’s Pink Floydesque interpretation which loses the jolly flute part and swaps it for an eerie claustrophobia and some gorgeous backing ‘ahhhhs’. This idea works less well on the chorus than it does on the verses, but it’s still a good idea and this version from 1969 oddly enough sounds far more in keeping with the main feel of 1967 than the original. Tangerine Zoo made quite a name for themselves ‘rediscovering’ lost nuggets like this and making them weirder and this Massachusetts band are quite a cult amongst psychedelic collectors who wish they’d taken up the invitation to appear at Woodstock instead of turning it down to do some hackneyed TV appearance instead – they deserved to be so much bigger!

1)  Ambrose Slade [27] Fly Me High (‘Ambrose Slade’ 1969)

I never got the appeal of ‘Slade’ when they became popular – to my ears they wasted a perfectly decent guitarist and a pretty excellent vocalist by making them sing inane ditties and where more of the budget went on the clothes than the recordings. But their first aborted incarnation, as a psychedelic band (with an added ‘Ambrose’ to their name) I like a lot. Noddy Holder is, along with The Move and Ozzy Osbourne, the only other big act to come out of the Midlands. As a result he sounds less ‘wrong’ singing the Moody songs with his Brummie tones than most cover acts do and he adds a characteristic grit to Justin’s fun and funky song of optimism. The Moodies’ original was perhaps a little too self-consciously poppy and as beautiful as much of it is, it feels as if it was written for its audience more than it’s performers. With no record contract yet in the offing Slade’s version sounds much more like a Moodies ‘song’ somehow, especially the gorgeous adrenalin rush of instruments 1:40 in which follows the massed harmony section (which Slade also do pretty well I have to say). Forget ‘cum on feel the noize’, I want Slade to come on and re-release their finest if obscurest hour again so other collectors can hear how unexpectedly good they sound with the snarl down low and the weirdness up high.

2)  Dave Harvey and Various Artists [49] Legend Of A Mind (‘Moody Bluegrass’ 2004)

In The Moodies’ original this playful pastiche is like a Catherine wheel with ADD, fizzing and spitting and bouncing all over the place with a whole world to explore. On this cover it’s been quietened down and stabilised. It should sound like a duff firework, but instead you hear the beauty of Ray’s original tune, while the words are more serious than arch given subject matter and psychedelic guru Timothy Leary’s ‘real’ death in 1996. I’m particularly impressed with the ending, which cuts down several minutes of mellotron madness into a gorgeous Pentangle style yearning where the busy mandolin meets the melancholy fiddle head on. The best cover songs always see the world in a new way to the original (or what’s the point of doing them at all?) without betraying what made them special in the first place. This highlight is a great example of that, as different as it can be and yet it still somehow ‘feels’ like the same song. Exquisite! None of the rest of the two volumes compare (though [107] ‘You and Me’ sounds impressively authentic as a bluegrass number!)

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

'Days Of Future Passed' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-moody-blues-days-of-future-passed.html

'In Search Of The Lost Chord' (1968)  http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-22-moody-blues-in-search-of-lost.html

'On The Threshold Of A Dream' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/news-views-and-music-issue-53-moody.html

'To Our Children's Children's Children' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-32-moody-blues-to-our-childrens.html

‘A Question Of Balance’ (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-moody-blues-question-of-balance-1970.html

'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-49moody-blues-every-good-boy.html

'Seventh Sojourn' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-53-moody-blues-seventh-sojourn.html

'Blue Jays' (Hayward/Lodge) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-38-blue-jays.html

'Songwriter' (Hayward) (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/news-views-and-music-issue-112-justin.html

‘Octave’ (1978) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/moody-blues-octave-1978-album-review_13.html

'Long Distance Voyager' (1981) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-moody-blues-long-distance-voyager.html

'The Present' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-98-moody.html

'The Other Side Of This Life' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-moody-blues-other-side-of-life-1986.html

'Sur La Mer' (1988) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-moody-blues-sur-la-mer-1988.html

‘Keys To The Kingdom’ (1991) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-moody-blues-keys-to-kingdom-1991.html

'Strange Times' (1999) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-moody-blues-strange-times-1999.html

‘December’(2003) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-moody-blues-december-2003.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

Solo/Live/Compilation Albums Part One 1969-1977: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-moody-blues-livesolocompilation.html

Solo/Live/Compilation Albums Part Two: 1979-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/the-moody-blues-livesolocompilation_25.html

Essay: Why Being A Moodies Fan Means You Can Never Go Home https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/04/moody-blues-essay-why-being-moodies-fan.html

Landmark Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-moody-blues-five-landmark-concerts.html

Moody Blues Essay: Why Being A Moodies Fan Means You Can Never Go Home

You can now buy 'New Horizons - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Moody Blues' in e-book form by clicking here!

Well done, you made it to the halfway part of the book (or halfway through our 'music' section at any rate!) We can't give you a prize to celebrate I'm afraid though you probably deserve one, but we can shake things up a bit by moving outside talking about our respective AAA bands' discography and moving on to what makes them stand out from their peers and offer something no other band can. In truth these essays kind of run across the whole book and you can read them in any order, but now we've reached the halfway point it's quite useful to take stock of where we've been and why before working out where we will go next. With The Moody Blues you’re pretty safe in the knowledge that where that path will be could be anywhere (though it’s probably not giving too much of the story yet to come away that the paths to travel get narrower from this point onwards). However the band were adamant that there was one path that could never be taken…

Some bands write for their very narrow audiences. Some stick to talking about their particular g-g-g-g-generation. Others appeal only to the lowest common denominator. Some, like The Spice Girls, can’t even do that right. And then there are other bands who aren’t interested in the here and now but the bigger picture. The Moody Blues’ biggest strength and weakness and what makes them stand out from everyone else is their sheer size, for even though the form it takes changes from album to album almost all of their songs (at least on the ‘seven wonders’ Justin ‘n’ John albums before the split) are about nothing less than the evolution of mankind. This story can be told in any order it seems: we cover the caveman grunting years on album six’s [93] ‘Procession’, take in as many musical forms as the band can cram into a six minute two part song suite in 1968 on [48] ‘The House Of Four Doors’ from album number two and zoom off into space and our unfolding possible futures on the whole of album four ‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’. What rings true for all of these albums, though, is the question of what life is all for – why mankind was created, what paths he was meant to take and whether he has in fact learnt anything. To traverse in the Moodies universe (where thinking is always the [51] ‘best way to travel’) is to realize that the idea that mankind is always evolving is a con and that in many ways we are going backwards, losing our sense of self in a world full of materialistic greed and avarice and deception. The Moody Blueniverse is a world where anything can happen – and most of it bad, with the only things stable and unbreakable being love for one’s family (this band wrote more songs for their children than any other, from [96] ‘Emily’s Song’ to Ray’s solo tune ‘Adam and I’) and occasionally for a partner (endless love songs from [105] ‘For My Lady’ through to Justin’s solo hit ‘Forever Autumn’).

The Moodies’ journey for mankind is a road that isn’t just long and winding, it’s a labyrinth. In many ways their albums are also about a rite of passage that all of us in our modern age have to go through, to work out who we really are underneath all that 9-5 job pressure, financial restraints and a modern society that keeps up apart from really knowing one another. This is a road that seems to end in destruction, but The Moodies do have happy endings in there too.  also has the capacity to put things right if we all pull together ([98] ‘One More Time To Live’) and find what our true purpose in life is meant to be (most of ‘In Search Of The Lost Chord’, which ends up with meditation as the closest to a life-changing answer on [55] ‘Om’ pronounced ‘Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm’), while ‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’ is split neatly down the middle (where you turn the record over) about whether out future will be great or ghastly. Like all the best groups, The Moodies never pretend to have all the questions (as a quick listen to [110] ‘Don’t Ask Me - I’m Just A Singer In A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band’ will explain) but they are the group that perhaps asked more of these questions than any other, most of them ending with a question mark: [83} ‘How Is It (We Are Here?)’, [70] ‘Have You Heard?, [106] ‘Isn’t Life Strange?’, [39] ‘Forever Afternoon (A Tuesday?)’, most famously [82] ‘Question’ itself which is about exactly this sort of thing and never getting answers that seem to fit. They do however have one theme in common.

One thing you can never do on this strange life path is go backwards. Not for The Moody Blues is there a Kinks like nostalgia for days past. Never is there a sense of childlike wonder that can be found in Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd or mid period Beach Boys. Nowhere is there a nihilistic refusal to grow old the way The Who once snarled. Instead The Moody Blues see life as a chance to grow from nothing into…something. What that something is up to us, just as long as we appreciate that life is all about ch-ch-ch-ch-ange and a turn of the pa-a-a-a-age. You see, without experiences good and bad, we can’t grow – both us individually and mankind as a species in general. [100] ‘You Can Never Go Home’ laments this thought directly: Justin used to know what he was searching for (there’s a hint that it’s the fame, money and prestige that comes with being a famous musician) but once you reach that golden goal you discover that it’s just another illusion. The ‘prize’ that he gets for growing older and coping with situations he hates is that he becomes more and more confused as to what life is really all about. The middle eight of one of the Moodies’ most under-rated songs, though, is one of their greatest moments: ‘All lies, bye bye, never really knew me till today. Now I know I’m just another step along the way’. All that confusion and angst is turned on its head – suddenly this narrator has learnt responsibility and has started to think about the bigger picture, because if what he’s dreamed of getting his whole life can’t satisfy him what can? He will never be the same again as he was as a child.

Which is interesting because children crop up an awful lot in the Moody Blues’ canon. A quick aim at the stars aside, the journey into the stars on album four begins not with a summary of mankind’s glorious exploits (as Pink Floyd would have done) or a lament over the inevitable doom and disaster (as per The Kinks) but with [72] ‘The Eyes Of A Child’. Twice. Once in pure innocent mode – the other in something darker and scarier, as if the narrator is trying to shut his eyes again and un-see everything he has seen, but he can’t – once you’ve learnt something, you can’t unlearn it (at least not in a Moody Blues song).[96] ‘Emily’s Song’ has daddy John wishing he could travel down the road to childhood and innocence with his daughter, but sighs that ‘I cannot go’, that he’s seen too much of the adult world that can never be unseen. [135] ‘I’ll Be Level With You’ runs one reunion track where the drummer comes clean to the children who are, as yet, still babes in arms. Life is going to be one long struggle, but in the end will be worth it (he hopes). The childlike quality looms large in Moodies fare and usually through the eyes of their flautist Ray. After an album of things going wrong and mankind facing ‘Revolution! Confusion! Illusion!’ it’s a relief to wind up at the rabbit warren of [99] ‘Nice To Be Here’ and unwind after the dramas of space in [73] ‘Floating’, while Ray’s songs for his own son (‘Adam and I’) and grandson ([203] ‘My Little Lovely’) are full of longing to dive back down the rabbit hole into a free and innocent childhood world. But The Moody Blues as a whole are all about growing up and home is the one place your road will never take you – because life is chiefly about learning.

This is itself a chief source of many a Moodies Blues song – worrying about whether the life decision you took was the right one and whether you might not be better off on a different path. ‘Yesterday’s dreams are tomorrow’s sighs’ runs [37] ‘Another Morning’, ‘The children playing they seem so wise’. But that’s the trouble – they’re wise because they haven’t yet learnt how to regret, forgive and forget, in an endless cycle mankind can never break. [74a] ‘I Never Thought I’d Live To Be A Hundred’ laments Justin, wondering about all those missed opportunities and whether he made the most of his life. Half an album later and there he is, ruminating that [74b] ‘I Never Thought I’d Live To Be A Million’ and wondering still over everything left unsaid and undone since he was a hundred and still wondering where the time left. For the universe is vast and we are small insignificant fractions of it. The world is no place for confidence: the narrator of [84] ‘And The Tide Rushes In’ finds himself facing calamity every time he thinks he has life sorted, [155] ‘Going Nowhere’ about finding your life on pause after thinking you had found the right path and [136] ‘Driftwood’ about being afraid of being abandoned and lost. The Moodies world (a [152] ‘Blue World’ more often than not) is a place where things can often go wrong and there is always something left to learn. You can never go home and be the same person you once were.

This is particularly true in romantic terms. [43] ‘Nights In White Satin’ struck a chord with so many people not because it was sung with such passion (though it was) or because it made a particularly poignant finale to an album all about a typical day in the life of mankind (though it did that too) but because Justin Hayward admitted to being vulnerable, of struggling to work out whether he should run after the departing girl in his life because she’s the only one who’ll ever bring him happiness or whether she’s just another learning curve on his life’s path. He writes romantic letters because he feels love, but he realizes that he can never bring himself to send them. ‘Beauty I’ve always missed’ he sighs, regretting the romances that never quite clicked and the ones who turned out not to be the one after all. For the record Justin married his longterm girlfriend Ann in 1970 (when he was all of twenty-four) and they have what must surely be one of the longest lasting marriages in rock and yet over and over again the theme of the loves who got away keep cropping up in his work: [119] ‘Who Are You Now?’ (First Love Of Mine), [162] ‘Your Wildest Dreams’ and [171] ‘I Know You’re Out There Somewhere’. The one that got away is what keeps this band up late at night and yet it’s a clock that can never be turned (except, of course, in music videos where anything can happen!) and you can never go home, ever.

Other songs have the band wondering where it all went wrong in a much wider generational sense. Just contrast the pure beauty and comfort of [68] ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ with its tales of castles and knights and good guys in charge with other later songs about life in the 1960s and 1970s (even if Camelot is itself a neat analogy, pictured here before Guinevere starts sleeping with Lancelot and things get complicated). [31] ‘Cities’ are full of smug smog and soot, the people treated like the open sewers they walk about, with the population so heavy with people that nobody cares about the individual anymore. [83] ‘How Is It We Are Here’ should be celebrating mankind’s biggest mining project, but knows in its heart that the answer to mankind’s problems lies not underground or in outer space as ‘To Our Children’s has it, but in ‘inner space’, from within. We, as a species, have what we have long dreamt of: creature comforts, robots to help us in our work, a life away from toiling in the fields and working merely to survive. But still we are unhappy, [90] ‘Melancholy Men’ who are [103] ‘Lost In A Lost World’ because mankind has lost the bigger picture. Instead of helping each other to help ourselves we’re in constant competition with each other, an endless cycle of [86] ‘The Tortoise and The Hare’ where everyone is chasing each other’s tail and where our precious time away from the rat race ([40] ‘Evening (Time To Get Away)’) is spent in such tired stupor that the band’s narrator can barely stir himself out of his armchair. We’ve lost focus, worrying about bills and jobs and keeping up with the Joneses, rather than exploring our inner souls, discovering who we are and working out why we are really here (a question The Moody Blues ask more times – and usually more musically – than anyone).

‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’ (note the reference to great-grandchildren) is perhaps the ultimate Moodies album in terms of scope and theme. One day I’m going to write an extra feature for my website about the bigger themes that link all (or most) of the AAA bands and why the 1960s and to a lesser extent the 1970s musical landscapes turned out the way they did. Chief place will be the moon landings: what a perfect 1960s project, stretching out into pastures new and providing a clean slate for mankind in the future away from Earth boundaries. Mankind can do anything and be anyone, which is the long strange journey from Beatlemania to psychedelia in a nutshell. Only hang on a minute because even there the complications implicit in 1960s music runs deep: commissioned by a president who was assassinated, overseen by a president who ended up embroiled in lies and scandal, launched to a backdrop of cold war propaganda and nationalism at odds with interplanetary travel, the moon landings was one big leap for mankind but also proved how many more steps he would have to take to be a truly civilised species. Released the month of the Moon landings, ‘To Our Children’s reflects this, trying to sum up the contradictions for future generations. The band didn’t know when they were making it if there would even be a ‘happy ending’ or not, so they hedged their bets just in case Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins ended up martyrs adrift in lonely soul-less space. Mankind gets to have everything he dreamed of ([76] ‘Out and In’ must surely be unique in music circles, a love song to the universe that’s almost sexual; ‘floating free as a bird’ and [80] ‘the sun is still shining, while [75] ‘Beyond’ is a band jam that’s the epitome of excited curiosity), but at a price: lost without his home planet he’s a [77] ‘Gypsy’ in a ‘strange and distant land’, travelling [78] ‘Eternity Road’ looking for answers he will never finds and afraid that he’s alone in the universe after all, left [81] ‘Watching and Waiting’ with the weight of the universe on his shoulders as the only life that has survived and embraced the bigger picture. The album ends on a very down note indeed, but then so do many of the Moodies’ concepts: ‘Days Of Future Passed’ ends with the pained howl of [43] ‘Nights In White Satin’ the night before a morning of going through your life again and pretending the revelation of your life hasn’t just happened; ‘In Search Of The Lost Chord’ finds only meditation as its answer, a shortcut rather than an answer in and of itself, ‘On The Threshold Of A Dream’ goes round in circles asking [70] ‘Have You Heard?’ following a voyage where everything is different yet the same, the entire history of mankind on ‘EGBDF’ ends with Mike Pinder trying vainly to struggle with ‘all the thoughts inside my head’ on [101] ‘My Song’ and after the false ending of [109] ‘When You’re A Free Man’ (the Moodies’ most ironic title on a song about always being trapped) the final original Moodies album ends up with the band admitting that they haven’t got a clue about anything and have been in the dark as much as their fans ([110] ‘I’m Just A Singer In A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band’)while ‘A Question Of Balance’ ends with, umm, eating an orange (no, me neither).

So what’ is the answer? Have The Moody Blues spent their entire career thinking about without discovering it? Well not completely. You see the other theme is living in ‘The Present’. No, not the album specifically, but embracing what you’re going through at any particular time in your life and making the most of every opportunity life hands you and to keep people in the present as much as you can, not the past. [113] ‘Remember Me, My Friend’ the Blue Jays urged old friends (maybe even old bandmates) as they tried to move on with their lives. [176] ‘Vintage Wine’ spends a lot of time remembering ‘1968 through to 69’ but it concludes that as fun and wonderful and indeed groovy as the past was, the present is the place to be. [190] ‘Never Blame The Rainbows For The Rain’ tries to put it more poetically (and would succeed were it not recorded with the worst 1980s synths imaginable – in 1991!), that you are a better person for what you’ve learnt and been through and you shouldn’t curse the glorious destination because the road that took you there was so tough. The one truly exuberant track in the Moodies catalogue (at least post the Denny Laine age) is about being given a second chance to be a child, but as an adult. [46] ‘Ride My See-Saw’, a song written by John in response to getting the job he always dreamed of after watching his old school chums go on to big success, is about getting a second chance when you thought you’d lost it – and making sure that you make the most of it this time (and us too – this is a song that invites the audience to play too). That’s the ‘real’ answer and destination for mankind. For if we are doomed to walk down unexplored and scary paths both personal universal, at the mercy of those greedier ghastlier and gloomier than we are, then we should realize that we are not alone in our endless struggles (the Moody Blues – and by association every Moodies fan – is experiencing similar struggles or they wouldn’t sing/listen to them so avidly because, wow, do the Moodies have a committed fanbase even by AAA standards), that we should give ourselves a break because life is hard, a pat on the back for getting through life this far, that we should make the most of the small moments when we’re allowed to be childish in a world that demands that we be grown up and responsible and corrupt far too often, that we should never stop asking why – and that we should allow ourselves to move on. Because even if we can never go home again, the places we end up are pretty interesting and exciting in their own right and who wants to be the same person forever? Now, after being a Moodies fan, I know that I am just another step along the way – and what’s more I feel better that this step is out of my hands.

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

'Days Of Future Passed' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-moody-blues-days-of-future-passed.html

'In Search Of The Lost Chord' (1968)  http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-22-moody-blues-in-search-of-lost.html

'On The Threshold Of A Dream' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/news-views-and-music-issue-53-moody.html

'To Our Children's Children's Children' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-32-moody-blues-to-our-childrens.html

‘A Question Of Balance’ (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-moody-blues-question-of-balance-1970.html

'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-49moody-blues-every-good-boy.html

'Seventh Sojourn' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-53-moody-blues-seventh-sojourn.html

'Blue Jays' (Hayward/Lodge) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-38-blue-jays.html

'Songwriter' (Hayward) (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/news-views-and-music-issue-112-justin.html

‘Octave’ (1978) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/moody-blues-octave-1978-album-review_13.html

'Long Distance Voyager' (1981) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-moody-blues-long-distance-voyager.html

'The Present' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/news-views-and-music-issue-98-moody.html

'The Other Side Of This Life' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-moody-blues-other-side-of-life-1986.html

'Sur La Mer' (1988) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-moody-blues-sur-la-mer-1988.html

‘Keys To The Kingdom’ (1991) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-moody-blues-keys-to-kingdom-1991.html

'Strange Times' (1999) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-moody-blues-strange-times-1999.html

‘December’(2003) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-moody-blues-december-2003.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

Solo/Live/Compilation Albums Part One 1969-1977: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-moody-blues-livesolocompilation.html

Solo/Live/Compilation Albums Part Two: 1979-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/the-moody-blues-livesolocompilation_25.html

Essay: Why Being A Moodies Fan Means You Can Never Go Home https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/04/moody-blues-essay-why-being-moodies-fan.html

Landmark Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-moody-blues-five-landmark-concerts.html