I’ve already mentioned the odd decision to release Watching and Waiting rather than Gypsy as the single from To Our Children’s Children’s Children. The former was an ideal coda to the album but not really single material.
The single that came after, Question, was the Moodies most successful in the new era, only being kept off the No. 1 slot by the England World Cup squad’s Back Home. (Oh tempora!) Despite being described as, “One of the world’s most advanced groups,” while promoting the song on Top of the Pops, the LP it prefaced, A Question of Balance, gave the first indication that collectively the band was going off the boil.
Their next single didn’t even make the UK charts despite being a belter. First below is not the album version from Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. This one has a different vocal performance and a more lush mellotron sound. The more familiar album edition follows.
Tuesday Afternoon was followed as a single by Voices in the Sky (with its flute flourishes and distinctive vocal from Justin Hayward) which, like its follow-up, the hard-driving perennial favourite Ride My See-Saw, featured on the next LP, the even more pretentious concept album, In Search of the Lost Chord. That was the first Moody Blues LP I bought – possibly my first ever and there’s barely a dud on it – with the possible exception of the spoken passages and the final track Om. Its standout is the Ray Thomas song Legend of a Mind embedded within the House of Four Doors sequence with its classical pretensions placing the group’s output firmly in Prog territory.
By this time the Moodies were firmly established as my favourite band.
Then we had this song – later to feature on On The Threshold of a Dream – which I remember in its review of the single the NME referred to as “beautifully constructed.” Here the group plays it live.
I didn’t buy the Moodies’ next single, Tuesday Afternoon, a song which – like Nights In White Satin – appeared also on the LP Days of Future Passed but I remember hearing it on the radio and thinking it was almost as good. It seems the single version was edited down to a ludicrous 2 minutes 16 seconds – missing out the repeat of the opening riff and “Tuesday Afternoon” chorus.
This is how it appeared on the LP and so contains the orchestral afterpiece tagged on by conductor Peter Knight. Knight’s “classical music” interludes linked all the songs on the LP – supposedly to demonstrate the record label Deram’s new “Deramic Sound System.” The story that the band were asked to record an album based on Dvorak’s New World symphony but instead recorded their own songs without the label’s knowledge has been disputed.
The Moody Blues: Tuesday Afternoon
Edited (7/6/14) to add:- Those orchestral interludes and the fact that it was a concept album probably make Days of Future Passed one of the first prog rock albums.
I missed the Moody Blues next single after Fly Me High, the Mike Pinder song, Love and Beauty, where his mellotron made its first appearance on record, but I actually bought the one after, the initial issue – on the Deram label, DM 161 – of Nights In White Satin, written by Justin Hayward, which crept into the UK top twenty, making no. 19.
I was impressed by the B-side too, also written by Hayward. That mono version has the harpsichord, which features more prominently on later stereo releases, much lower down in the mix.
The Moody Blues: Cities
This is the stereo version with the more pronounced harpsichord:-
(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.
In a passage in Adam Roberts’s New Model Army (see my thoughts on it a few posts below) one of the characters thinks of Jeff Wayne rather than HG Wells when he hears the words, “War of the Worlds.” He at once mentions Richard Burton, David Essex and the Moody Blues. Well, as another song has it; two out of three ain’t* bad.
The character can be forgiven for the mistake, though. His mind wasn’t working properly at the time and it is understandable. Richard Burton and David Essex were both heard on the recording but it wasn’t all the Moody Blues who contributed to Jeff Wayne’s endeavour but their lead singer, the distinctively voiced Justin Hayward, certainly did. While Richard Burton was the spoken voice of the journalist Hayward took over for the singing and thus gave us the haunting Forever Autumn.
Justin Hayward: Forever Autumn
*Sorry for the inelegant language in the quote there.
This doesn’t fit the arbitrary rules of the category as it wasn’t a single but it would have made a much better choice from the album To Our Children’s Children’s Children than Watching And Waiting which was issued as a 45 and, while atmospheric, doesn’t have the grabbing effect of Gypsy.
The Branch Manager at my workplace had the thought that we workers weren’t having enough fun (thank you David Brent) and came up with the glorious idea of having a competition. We were to name our favourite 1960s hit – that is no purely album tracks were allowed – and pay £1 for the privilege of entering it.* A committee was formed to adjudicate the results. The winner was announced and played over the tannoy – wait for it – after work on the day we broke up for Easter. Some fun!
Runner-up was the now ubiquitous but at the time relatively ignored Hi-Ho Silver Lining as by The Jeff Beck Group. It came second to Daydream Believer by the Monkees. You’ll have guessed I wasn’t on the committee. I will admit to a softish spot for the Monkees but Daydream Believer is a bit twee.
Anyway this all got me to thinking which song I would have considered. I soon realised that choosing just one is impossible but if I had to it would probably be Rupert’s People’s Reflections of Charles Brown but really it depends on the mood I’m in.
I’ve already featured a lot of 1960s songs here and any of them could have been contenders. So pick one from Rainbow Chaser, Tiny Goddess or Pentecost Hotel by the true Nirvana, the real Nirvana (see my category and scroll down.)
Or there’s America by The Nice, with which I started off my prog rock musings, plus their The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon – even if it was a B-side – and The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack,
The Electric Prunes’ I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night and Get Me To The World On Time (both here,)
The Small Faces’ Tin Soldier,
The Who’s I’m A Boy,
Python Lee Jackson’s In A Broken Dream,
Procol Harum’s Homburg,
R Dean Taylor’s Gotta See Jane and Indiana Wants Me.
I would also have included Nights In White Satin by The Moody Blues if it hadn’t been turned into a cliché by excessive re-releasing and overplay.
That’s most, but not all, of the 1960s songs I’ve mentioned before.
But there is a host more, of which I have fond memories and which I might have chosen.
So to start what may be a regular series this is The Easybeats and Friday On My Mind.
*Edited to add:- The money collected was to be split two to one between the respective submitters of the winner and the runner-up.
