Reelin’ in the Years 255: I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band.) RIP John Lodge
Posted in 1970s, Events dear boy. Events, Reelin' In The Years, The Moody Blues at 12:00 on 13 October 2025
I discovered on Saturday that John Lodge, bassist, vocalist and songwriter of The Moody Blues has died.
Long-standing readers of the blog will know the Moodies were my favourite 1960s band.
This was the band’s second incarnation though, after Denny Laine and Clint Warwick had left and Lodge and Justin Hayward become members. This presaged a switch from playing blues and R&B to the more prog rock sound with which the band is now principally associated. Indeed the Days of Future Passed LP could be claimed to have started off the prog boom.
Lodge was a major contributor in a song-writing sense, penning at least two songs on each of the band’s LPs and of course even more to Blue Jays, his collaboration with Hayward at the beginning of the brief hiatus when the Moodies took a collective break in the mid 1970s. I actually saw the pair play in Glasgow on the Blue Jays tour which promoted the album and the subsequent Hayward written single Blue Guitar.
Given the prog emphasis above it might seem perverse that I’ve chosen this song, but it shows that the Moodies could rock with the best of them and it features Lodge’s bass heavily.
The Moody Blues: I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)
John Charles Lodge: 20/7/1943 – 10/10/2025. So it goes.
Tags: Blue Guitar, Blue Jays, Clint Warwick, Days of Future Passed, Denny Laine, I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band), John Lodge, Justin Hayward, The Moody Blues
