EXCLUSIVES

Years of Future Ahead:
The Silver-Surfing Moody Blues on Macs, Music and Middle Age.

By Joshua Rotter
April 2005

From their trippy, hippy heyday in the late 1960s to the present, The Moody Blues have been synonymous with crafting songs as saporous as a vintage merlot, slowly sipped from a crystal glass, while lying with your loved one on a bear rug by a roaring fire in a ski cabin up in the mountains at the first sign of snowfall.

But songs like "Nights In White Satin," "Tuesday Afternoon," "Ride My See Saw," and "I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)," are palatable for more than just their lyrical and musical majesty.
They're also technologically groundbreaking. In fact, The Moody Blues were the first British band to record an album in stereo, and one of the first to experiment with the “Mellotron” keyboard on their first seven albums.

So it is no surprise that today's line-up featuring longtime members: singers/guitarists Justin Hayward, 58, and John Lodge, 59, and drummer Graeme Edge, 64, just back from their international summer tour, are not only computer aficionados, but Mac heads.
From his home in Monaco, where Justin Hayward has lived for seven years, the singer/guitarist said he uses a Cube and utilizes Reason 9.2 to record demos. His iBook — "my little pal that travels around Europe with me" is mostly used for email, Internet and word-processing.

Back in England, 20 miles south of London, in his Cobham studio, John Lodge, a G4 user, who makes demos on Logic, said although the members are miles apart - Graeme lives in Florida — they are connected via the Internet superhighway.

"Email seems to work very well for us," he said. "With web and the Internet, it's made things so much easier, because we can run ideas by each other really quickly. So if someone wants to do a concert, it's easier to go over it in email than a meeting."

But to keep in touch with friends and family back home — while touring with his band — Lodge uses a Titanium G4 laptop. "As soon as I arrive at the hotel, I hook up to high speed Internet access," he said. "One of the criteria for booking a hotel is that it has high speed Internet access, because I always have a deluge of emails or I go on the web, looking for information."

Even dating back five decades, Hayward said the group was always interested in technology. “We've always chosen good engineers and people to work with,” he said. “New stuff and programs and wiz kids are all great, but first we need a song, and a great band. In my case, it's first about the songs. We can't do anything without them. But it's hard to find original sounds now. The only way is to have a sound in my mind and go for that instead of hearing one.”

On their groundbreaking full-length debut "Days of Future Passed"(1967), the archetypal concept album, they fused orchestral motifs with electric guitars on one of the earliest stereo recordings, the first in the U.K.

One of the greatest-selling albums of all time, "Days of Future Passed," would spawn indelible, worldwide hits "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights In White Satin" which, hitting number one three separate times, became one of the top-grossing singles of all time.
"When we think about where we'd been, the wonderful thing about the 1960s was the creativity, the tenacity and the courage to open all the doors and go through the walls," Lodge said, explaining the novel nature of the album. "No generation before had ever been there."

Hayward remembers that generation equally fondly. “People who I knew from then were all beautiful and lovely, and it does start with you,” he said. “If you get your act together and are gracious and in the world, other people will want to be with you. Everyone used to say, ‘You're beautiful, man.' I can still do that. There is still an aura about the people. Whether as a generation we failed, that's another question in terms of the ideals, because once you have a house and a car and something to lose, it's different.”

For their follow-up, the aptly titled "In Search of the Lost Chord," the band continued to experiment with new sounds from psychedelic and straight-ahead rock, a trend they continued on a handful of records up to "Seventh Sojourn" (1972). From these albums, such hit recordings as "Ride My See Saw," "Voices In The Sky," "The Story In Your Eyes," "Isn't Life Strange," "Question" and "I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)" became classic radio hits.

For these albums, known popularly as the "Core Seven," member Mike Pinder further distinguished their sound with a still relatively unheard of analogue synthesizer called the Mellotron.

As The Moody Blues achieved cult status as a band, a good number of fans searching for gurus in the early 1970s began viewing the band as spiritual guides.

“It happened to us only because we were reasonably artistic, middle-class English boys with success in America, who had come up through the swinging 60s and Carnaby Street,” Hayward said. “And I was on a quest to find enlightenment. There were many substances I could get my hands on without destroying my health, psychological experiences and religious experiences, and I could write about things that happened in my life, reflective of other people. And I got to them a couple of years before a lot of other people. I could understand this, because we were talking about a search for enlightenment and finding peace. But I always had my feet on the ground, while still getting stoned."
After "Seventh Sojourn," The Moody Blues took a break to focus on other projects including the top 20-selling Justin Hayward/John Lodge Blue Jays collaboration. Graeme Edge made two solo albums, and other members followed suit.

The Moody Blues also released a live LP and greatest hits collection before re-forming in 1977 to deliver the much-anticipated, top-selling "Octave," which garnered hit singles "Steppin' In A Slide Zone" and "Driftwood."

Sadly, while recording the album, Mike Pinder decided to leave the band. “He just didn't want to go on the road,” Hayward said. “I missed him very much when he left, because I really looked up to him and he was a great musician. The most annoying thing is when people won't be what you want them to be when you know they can.”
But Pinder's departure didn't halt the band's momentum and "Long Distance Voyager" (1980) met with similar success, shooting straight to number one and spawning two hit singles: "Gemini Dream" and "The Voice." The Moody Blues then released "The Present" (1983) with the hits "Blue World" and "Sitting At The Wheel." They followed by "The Other Side of Life" in which "Your Wildest Dreams," one of their top-selling singles to date, became a huge hit on MTV, and was named "Billboard" magazine's "Video Of The Year.”

Although subsequent albums were well received, the 1990s found the band selling fewer albums and more concert tickets after the phenomenal response they received for their "Days of Future Passed" 25th anniversary concert, featuring a symphony orchestra. Soon the band would play Red Rocks, Colorado and the show was released on LP, video and as a PBS special.

Throughout the decade The Moody Blues released several Gold-selling anthologies, and in 2000, they released "Strange Times" (2000), their first new album in eight years, along with their second live public television special "The Moody Blues: Live At The Royal Albert Hall," also released as a live album, video and DVD.

In 2001, The Moody Blues were featured in the highest-grossing giant- screen production of the year, the IMAX film "Journey Into Amazing Caves." Featuring two new Moody Blues songs, "We Can Fly" and "Water" and their classics "Nights in White Satin" and "Ride My See Saw," the film was awarded the 2001 MAC Award.

The band's great achievement in a new medium — that of film scoring — couldn't stop flautist Ray Thomas from retiring. “I miss Ray, like I miss Mike,” Hayward said. “But when it happens, it's not bad, really. I miss him as a man, a lovely person and a really good friend. The trouble was what we had in common was the group. I don't see either of them now.”

Now down to three original members, Hayward is hopeful that the current line-up, with Norda Mullen on the flute, whom he truly respects, will last. “I suppose we're greater than the sum of our parts, because we're always a group and must be complementary,” he said. “But I don't analyze it, because I would be stumbling over words. I don't actually know. I think it's the same with three as with five.”

John Lodge added: "It's for me, the music, new music, old music, it's the performing on stage and the excitement and traveling around the world and doing concerts," he said explaining his decision to remain in the band for almost 40 years. "When you go to concerts, and see all those people there, you're on what you Americans call a home run, where everyone is full of excitement. It's just that some are on stage and some are on the floor."

This December, fans old and new will get a taste of the band's new album “December” as part of an upcoming PBS holiday special. The lushly orchestral, rock and pop-infused album, produced by Hayward and Lodge, featuring original songs, cover songs, and one newly arranged traditional tune, is their first Christmas release.

"The Christmas album came about because all of our albums are theme albums," Lodge said. "And Christmas is one of the greatest themes for everyone. Another reason is because we thought it would be nice to show The Moody Blues' commitment to the holiday period.”
Featuring "Don't Need A Reindeer," "December Snow," "Yes I Believe," "On This Christmas Day," "The Spirit Of Christmas," "In The Quiet of Christmas Morning," "When A Child Is Born," "In The Bleak Midwinter," "White Christmas," "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," and "A Winter's Tale," the album offers holiday jingles with the “classical rock” edge that fans have enjoyed since the early recordings of the band's “Days of Future Passed.”

”Christmas is a focus point and it's interesting to be able to contribute our thoughts to that period — not just Christmas presents and parties, but how we relate to what's happening in the world today. And with the Lennon/Ono ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” there was a statement we wanted to make,” Lodge added.

But are The Moody Blues still tastemakers who can effect social change?

“The thing that's most important to me now, because we don't sell millions of records anymore, is being a great live band,” Hayward said. “It's important now to create an atmosphere and magic in a room even if it's fleeting, which is now elusive for us on a record. I don't know if we'll ever be able to do it that same way as we did in the 1960s, because the world has changed, and there isn't that safety net of security anymore. I have a weariness about the world, because the war thing is strange. Are we at war against Iraq or terrorists? I'm not pessimistic about the world. But I think someone's got to get a hold of it and give it a big shake. And I don't know why anyone would want to go to war, when there is a good record to listen to.”

And Lodge added that “Days of Future Passed” is still one of those records, even for the new generation. "When we wrote songs at that age, we were the same age as they are, and although the material world changes, the essence is the same," Lodge said. "Young people have the same frustrations. We wrote what believed in and the beliefs relate to people today, because the thought process remains the same.”

Lodge also credits much of the band's current success to the Internet, the band's website and live chats. “I want even more people to go through on our chats,” Hayward added, “because I like stupid questions as well as sensible ones.”

But it was a senseless comment at a recent show that truly troubled Hayward. “Youth is a most valuable commodity that always fades,” he said. “You can't buy it. And on this last tour, there was a moment that hit me, when some guy shouted out, ‘You can still do it.' And I thought, "Fuck, that's insulting,' because there was a lot of connotation in that one sentence. I've thought about it a lot since. I know we can do it. But it's nice to look pretty as well.”

Web site: http://www.moodyblues.co.uk