Dec 14

The Moody Blues

Greatly Appreciated

THE MOODY BLUES

 
The Moody Blues  are an English rock band.  Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, as heard in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed.  The Moody Blues have sold more than 55 million albums worldwide and have been awarded 18 platinum and gold discs.  As of 2015 they remain active with one member from the original 1964 band (drummer Graeme Edge) and two more from the 1966 lineup (bassist John Lodge and guitarist Justin Hayward).   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
In 1978, Chris Spedding was a key musician in one of the most ambitious concept albums of all time (and the best selling British concert/cast album ever), Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.  Actor Richard Burton handled the narration, and the musicians are a virtual Who’s Who of the British rock scene of that era:  Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, bass guitarist Herbie Flowers (that’s him playing the prominent bass line on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”), David Essex (“Rock On”), and actress/vocalist Julie Covington; she and Essex had been appearing together in early performances of the rock musical Evita.  The album tells the story pretty much as The War of the Worlds was written by H. G. Wells (much of Burton’s narration is word-for-word from the novel) decades before Steven Spielberg’s film basically did the same; I consider War of the Worlds to be one of Spielberg’s best movies and certainly his most disturbing. 
 
(November 2011)
 
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Stiv Bators, the front man for one of the best punk rock bands the Dead Boys was trying to reinvent himself as a pop singer and released one excellent album in 1980 called Disconnected and a lot of other singles.   
 
In about 1985, Stiv Bators was recording a new version of a Moody Blues “B” side, “The Story in Your Eyes”; and the flip side was going to be a cover of the Richard Berry anthem “Have Love, Will Travel”.  
 
(September 2012)
 
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The Rolling Stones were from London, as were the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds.  The Animals came from Newcastle, an industrial backwater like Liverpool, though on the opposite coast.  The Hollies were formed in Manchester, though the bandmembers came from East Lancashire.  The Moody Blues were from the Birmingham area; Birmingham, Alabama (one of the first major industrialized cities in the American South) is named for the British city. 

 

(July 2013)

 

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In 1969, Mick Farren “liberated” the earliest large-scale rock concert in the U.K., the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival by encouraging the fences to be torn down.  This concert – which took place the month after Woodstock (and with many of the same acts) – featured the Who, the Band, Free, Joe Cocker, and the Moody Blues.  But the real excitement was caused by the inclusion on the bill of Bob Dylan, who had been little seen since his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966.  When Dylan took the stage, audience members included three of the Beatles, three of the Beatle wives, three of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Syd Barrett, and Elton John.   

 

One of the main reasons for the location of the original Woodstock was to lure Bob Dylan out of hiding – the idea was to throw a huge party practically on his doorstep that surely he couldn’t resist attending.  Woodstock is the name of the town where Dylan lived (and also members of the Band); the festival itself was in Bethel.  But resist he did; Bob Dylan instead signed up to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival and set sail for England on August 15, 1969, the day that Woodstock opened.

 
(March 2014/1)

 

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Meanwhile, Ginger Baker was putting together a supergroup and a double album of his own.  Ginger Baker’s Air Force – described in Wikipedia as a rock-jazz fusion band – was organized from the ashes of Blind Faith and featured the other three musicians in the band besides Eric Clapton:  Ginger Baker (drums, percussion and vocals), Stevie Winwood (organ and vocals), and Rick Grech (violin and bass guitar).  Others on hand in the 10-piece band include Baker’s former bandmate Graham Bond, Denny Laine (one of the original members of the Moody Blues – he sang lead on their early hit “Go Now” – and later a key member of Paul McCartney and Wings), Chris Wood (another founding member of Traffic), and Wood’s wife Jeanette Jacobs (previously in the New York band the Cake). 

 

(May 2014)

 

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For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active, from the Rolling Stones, to the Who, to the Kinks, to the Moody Blues, to the Hollies – to this day, even Herman’s Hermits has never broken up. Among the big English bands, only the Beatles and the Animals were gone by the end of the 1960’s.  The top American acts were still going strong as well, and many major stars arrived in the 1970’s. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
(December 2016)
Last edited: March 22, 2021