The Moody Blues created a new sound, combining the best of psychedelic , progressive rock instrumental (also called 'art rock') with the London Festival Orchestra to provide full orchestral backing throughout their early first two hit albums, Days of Future Past and In Search of the Lost Chord.
Todate I've been unable to locate high quality videos of the Moody Blues from the 60's except for a very few like GO NOW (below)and NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN (above). These are rare video's recently made public of the Moody Blues singing in Paris 1970 to a small audience instead of the usual large college campus audience settings. At the very bottom are recent video's of the Moody Blues legendary singer, songwriter and guitar player Justin Hayward. Justin, may look the part of a rock and roll singer but he's as humble and nice as apple pie. Nights in White Satin he wrote about his wife of 35 years.
This song started the Moody Blues Band Brand
The Moody Blues are an English band originally from Erdington in the city of Birmingham. Founding members Michael Pinder and Ray Thomas performed an initially rhythm and blues-based sound in Birmingham in 1964 along with Graeme Edge and others, and were later joined by John Lodge and Justin Hayward as they inspired and evolved the progressive rock style. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their seminal 1967 album Days of Future Passed.
The band has had numerous hit albums in the UK, U.S., and worldwide. They remain active as of 2009. The Moody Blues have sold in excess of 50 million albums worldwide and have been awarded 14 platinum and gold discs.
The Moody Blues formed on 4 May 1964, in Erdington, Birmingham, England. Ray Thomas, John Lodge, and Michael Pinder had been members of El Riot & the Rebels, a regionally-popular band. They disbanded when Lodge, the youngest member, went to technical college and Pinder joined the army. Pinder then rejoined Thomas to form the Krew Cats and enjoyed moderate success. The pair recruited guitarist/vocalist Denny Laine, band manager-turned-drummer Graeme Edge, and bassist Clint Warwick. The five appeared as the Moody Blues for the first time in Birmingham in 1964. The name developed from a planned sponsorship from the M&B Brewery and was also a subtle reference to the Duke Ellington song, "Mood Indigo".
Soon, the band obtained a London-based management company, 'Ridgepride', formed by ex-Decca A&R man Alex Murray (Alex Wharton), who helped them land a recording contract with Decca Records in the spring of 1964. They released a single, "Steal Your Heart Away" that year which made it onto the charts. But it was their second single, "Go Now" (released later that year), which really launched their career, being promoted on TV with one of the first purpose-made promotional films in the pop era, produced and directed by Wharton. The single became a hit in the United Kingdom (where it remains their only Number 1 single to date) and in the United States where it reached #10
Their first album, Days of Future Passed (released in November 1967, became one of the most successful pop/rock releases of the period, earning a gold record award and reaching #27 on the British album chart (five years later it was to reach #3 in the U.S./Billboard charts). The making of the album is a story of conflict that resulted from the need to repay a record company debt and produced a hybrid music style that record executives were very skeptical about, given it had not been done before. In production and arrangement, the album drew inspiration from the pioneering use of the classical instrumentation by The Beatles, and took the form to new heights, using the London Festival Orchestra to provide full orchestral backing throughout the album, combined with rock instrumentation centred on Pinder's Mellotron.
The album plus two singles, "Nights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon" (as a medley with "Forever Afternoon," listed as "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" on the album), became massively popular, as was the 1968 follow-up LP, In Search of the Lost Chord. Also included on this album is the song "Legend of a Mind", a song written by Ray Thomas in tribute to LSD guru Timothy Leary which encompassed a masterful flute solo performed by Thomas. Justin Hayward began playing sitar and incorporating it into Moody Blues music, having been inspired by George Harrison. Graeme Edge found a significant secondary role in the band as a writer of poetry, and nearly all of their early albums from the late Sixties begin with Mike Pinder reciting poems by Edge that were conceptually related to the lyrics of the songs that would follow. The band's music continued to become more complex and symphonic, with heavy amounts of reverberation on the vocal tracks, resulting in 1969's To Our Children's Children's Children — a concept album based around the band's celebration of the first moon landing. The album closes with "Watching and Waiting", composed by Ray Thomas and Justin Hayward.
Although the Moodies had by now defined a somewhat psychedelic style and helped to define the progressive rock (then also known as 'art rock') sound, the group decided to record an album that could be played in concert, losing some of their full-blown sound for A Question of Balance (1970). This album, reaching #3 in the American charts and #1 in the British charts, was indicative of the band's growing success in America. Justin Hayward began an artful exploration of guitar tone through the use of numerous effects pedals and fuzz-boxes, and developed for himself a very melodic buzzing guitar-solo sound. For their next two albums, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971) and Seventh Sojourn (1972) (which reached #1 in the U.S.), the band returned to their signature orchestral sound which, while difficult to reproduce in concert, had become their trademark. Edge, the long standing drummer-poet, started writing lyrics intended to be sung, rather than verses to be spoken
Once Upon A Time
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