No sooner had I heard the news on the radio that Duane Eddy had died (and Richard Tandy of ELO too) than I opened the Guardian’s obituary page to find that Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues has made his final voyage.
Pinder was the last of the original five members of the Moody Blues still standing. Now only Justin Hayward and John Lodge remain of the later classic line-up.
Pinder’s contribution to that classic line-up was immense. It is fair to say that without his ability on the mellotron (an instrument he personally brought to the attention of The Beatles) The Moody Blues would not have sounded as they did, nor had the same success.
His piano solo on the original group’s biggest hit Go Now was no small part of its effectiveness.
This song written by Pinder was the B-side to Ride My See-saw but later appeared on the odd album Caught Live + Five. It was later a hit for The Four Tops but as usual Levi Stubbs shouted his way through it.
The Moody Blues: A Simple Game
This is another of my favourite Pinder songs:-
The Moody Blues: The Best Way to Travel (from In Search of the Lost Chord)
I always loved the piano ending to this track which was sandwiched between Have You Heard Part 1 and Have You Heard Part 2 on the LP On the Threshold of a Dream.
The Moody Blues: The Voyage
Michael Thomas (Mike) Pinder: 27/12/1941 – 24/4/2024. So it goes.
Previously all my Moody Blues posts have been of Justin Hayward songs. Neither he nor the writer of this, John Lodge, were original members of the band when it had its number one hit Go Now but replaced Denny Laine and Clint Warwick after a subsequent lack of chart success led to that pair leaving the band.
It was the arrival of Lodge and Hayward though which coincided with a change of direction – to which they made a significant contribution.
This video is a clip from the BBC2 late night programme Colour Me Pop partly introduced to showcase the then new colour TV broadcasts. Note the psychedelic effects. The Moody Blues’ appearance on the show was on 14th September 1968. I either watched it at the time of its first broadcast or on a reasonably quick repeat. Despite doing nothing but singing (or miming) on the clip Ray Thomas still manages to give an extravagant performance.
Though this track was written by Lodge it is Hayward’s guitar solo and the group’s signature vocal sound which stand out. The song quickly became a staple of the group’s live shows, more or less the band’s signature tune.
After their next LP, Seventh Sojourn, which spawned two singles in Isn’t Life Strange and I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band) both of which – unlike The Story in Your Eyes – troubled the charts, the Moody Blues broke up.
During the five years they spent apart most of them released solo LPs but the most successful venture was a collaboration between Justin Hayward and John Lodge which produced the LP Blue Jays but most memorably the song Blue Guitar, a no 8 hit in the UK. According to the Wiki article above Hayward actually recorded this with 10cc rather than Lodge but nevertheless the two took “Blue Jays” on the road mainly – as I recall Lodge introducing the track on stage – because of Blue Guitar.
Here they are performing it (ie miming) on Supersonic.
(This is the way my mind works. One word different from last week’s title.)
This single comes from the time when Denny Laine and Clint Warwick had quit The Moody Blues and John Lodge and Justin Hayward had just joined the group. The change signalled a new direction in which they would play only their own songs, develop a more harmony based approach and an “orchestral” sound. Fly Me High was the new line-up’s first single and was something of a transitional song as Mike Pinder had yet to acquire what would become his trademark mellotron.
The hairy guys in the picture below would only appear a few years later. At the time of this recording they were much more clean-cut.