There now follows a transcript of that portion of the show.
DT: Now to the Moody Blues, the band that have sold over 60 million records world-wide, since they began enjoying serious success thirty years ago. 'Nights in White Satin' has been recorded by more than a hundred other artists, and it still forms the centrepiece of Moody Blues' concerts. They are one of the few bands in the world who have toured extensively with every album they have released. Next month they start a tour which will take them right across the UK, more than a dozen dates in all. And today Justin Hayward and David Lodge, er, John Lodge rather, are my guests.
'Nights in White Satin' plays in its entirety.
DT: From the Very Best of the Moody Blues, Justin Hayward and John Lodge, a warm welcome to the programme.
Both: Thank you very much
DT: I don't think you'd be allowed out of any concert hall if you didn't play them that one, would you?
JH: No. It means a lot to so many people, and that's a wonderful thing to be able to share.
DT: So you're off on the road again, Manchester the first date, most major cities I think including two nights at the (Royal) Albert Hall, and wherever you go, the World Festival Orchestra goes with you. An orchestra is very much part of the scene now?
JH: Yes it is. We had a very successful episode in our lives which happened in 1992 in America at a place called Red Rocks in Colorado. For the first time in our careers we played with an orchestra, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and that was on public television in America, and it proved to be so popular that all the promoters asked us if we could come and do that in their town. And we found that we could in America because in America every local town council will subsidise an orchestra, a professional quality orchestra locally, something that used to happen in Great Britain, so we were able to do that and have a different orchestra every night.
DT: And I gather from what you've said in the past that some of these classical musicians have egos to dwarf even the most petulant of rock musicians. I mean, when they saw the special treatment you were getting, that's what they wanted a bit of too?
JH: We found that if we did one night with an orchestra they were great. We'd get in and out, treat them a bit like schoolchildren. But it's only so that they know what the rules are; but if you play a little bit more than that they start to see the things that we have and would want some of that. Quite rightly, too.
JL: Absolutely. The interesting thing is when we are on tour, particularly in America, is that our conductor rehearses with the orchestra in the afternoon, and we normally fly in from wherever we were the night before, and the very first time we actually see the orchestra is when we walk on stage for the concert, and that means we are pretty on the edge there, everybody is, the orchestra as well. So they are thinking more about what they are playing and not what is actually happening around them, because they've got a conductor putting them in place. But I think what happens, as Justin was saying, is if you did more than one concert with the same orchestra, they know now their nerves have gone by and they know what's happening so they start looking round and it becomes different then. But it really does work having a different orchestra every night. But just to go on about the British tour, unfortunately we can't have an orchestra at all the dates because financially and the size of the venues it is not possible. So it's just really the Albert Hall, NEC Birmingham and Brighton where we are performing with the orchestra.
DT: Composition-wise nowadays, have you grown accustomed to that lush orchestral sound that when you're composing you're imagining them in the background as well?
JH: Well, I suppose that does come into it, you do consider whether the songs would work with the orchestra, and we found that, fortunately, within our show, we have the basis of the very first album we made, 'Days of Future Passed', the one with 'Nights in White Satin' on, and there were a lot of orchestral themes on that record that people will recognise. So that's the basis of the show. We do also a lot of the newer material with an orchestra as well and some things work really well and others don't and there's no real predicting that. We've often found that people always assume that the things that you've got , sort of mellotron strings or synthesiser strings on, will work with an orchestra, but it's not necessarily true; in the real environment the more kind of brassy and dynamic things work better with an orchestra than something with just a string line in it and that's not when an orchestra is at its best, strangely enough.
DT: Mellotron - tell me about this instrument.
JH: The Mellotron is an instrument that we found back in 1966/67 that really complimented the songs we were writing and gave us what people perceived to be an orchestral sound right back then in the sixties, pre-synthesisers and it became very much the character of the Moody Blues.
DT: Let's just go way back to the beginning for a moment. Justin, you were recruited in, what, 1964? John, were you already a bass guitarist with the line-up by then?
JL: In 1966 was how we are today. Justin and I sort of came together in the early summer of that year, and we went off from there, went across to Belgium and started writing our own songs, and out of that came 'Days of Future Passed'.
DT: And how soon had you got to the point where you'd formulated this kind of lyrical, almost mystical music that people associated so much now with the Moody Blues?
JH: I was in songwriting really since I left school, or ever since I became a professional musician, and so I was writing those kind of songs but then when I came to the Moodies we were a rhythm and blues band and the songs that we were all writing individually didn't quite fit into that rhythm and blues image, and then as we realised that rhythm and blues just wasn't our forte, we could sort of bluff it for so long but then it wasn't gonna work, so I think we came to a turning point really when we just had to be honest with ourselves and to just survive we had to say 'right, we're gonna forget this because it's not working, let's do our own songs'. So we started just doing all our own material that coincided with the whole era of the beginning of the psychedelic era was happening, and of course London was the place to be during that summer, particularly all the whole year of 1967, and I suppose that it was borne out of a lot of ideas that were in that particular musical society, right in London at that time.
DT: What was the actual story behind 'Nights in White Satin'? What gave you the impetus to write it?
JH: Well, it .....Mike in the band had written a lovely song called 'Dawn is the Feeling' and I really wanted to kind of do almost the opposite of that in feeling. Then there was the inspiration that at that time in my life I was at the end of a powerful love affair, and at the beginning of another, and I wanted to write that particular night...It's funny how you look again at four minutes of your life so many times because so many people ask you and try and remember it. I remember feeling that I wanted to...I was in the mood to write a dramatic kind of song, and lyrically I just put a lot of ideas together that meant something to me. I do write letters never meaning to send. Actually I find it quite a cathartic thing to do, and I think also looking back now there's a line in the song where I said 'Just what you want to be you will be in the end'. I think you do actually get what you want in life, and people do become what they actually want to be. So there's a strange amount of truth in it and maybe unknown to me that's what struck a chord in a lot of other people.
DT: You must have heard quite a few cover versions of that by now, and got quite a lot of quiet amusement out of some of them, I imagine?
JH: Yes, it's usually 'Bert Cringe and his Strings in the Night plays romantic favourites' but there's been some good versions as well: Eric Burden, Ramsey Lewis. Elkie Brooks had a hit with it a couple of years ago. I was very pleased about that.
DT: Well, curiously enough, I'm gonna play a piece of music now that features you both but isn't actually strictly speaking the Moody Blues. It's 'Blue Guitar' featuring both of you, let's hear it now.
'Blue Guitar' plays in its entirety.
DT: 'Blue Guitar' featuring Justin Hayward and John Lodge, my guests in the studio this afternoon. Let's just talk about that period when you split up, I mean, at the time you were quoted, Justin, of saying 'We're bonkers, we're mad'. So clearly there was a little disagreement going on, was there?
JH: I think there was, yes, but I've come to realise now that it was the best thing that could have happened to us actually. I think we would have probably stumbled on for a couple of years and then split up probably never to have come back together. It's true that we were sort of victims of our own success, particularly in America when it coincided with a time when we were kind of mega, and at 'mega time' it also come about at a time in my life, particularly when I was at my most unhappy. Strangely enough the success had made my world smaller instead of giving me freedom, the way it usually happens. And also there was one of us, Mike, who didn't really want to carry on....
DT: That was Mike Pinder?
JH: Michael Pinder, our keyboard player, who was reluctant to carry on, and that was a feeling that kind of infected everybody else, it dampened everybody else's enthusiasm. That was only relieved after we'd been apart for about three years and then the four of us came back together and realised what a lot of fun it was.
DT: Did you split thinking 'This is it, we are splitting for all time', or did you say to yourselves 'Let's go off and do a few solo projects and see how we feel in a year's time or a few years' time'?
JL: I don't think we made any conscious decision about what would happen either way. It was just the fact that it had come to the point ....I mean, when we got together originally, you know, there was just the five of us and a road manager, and by 1972, 1973, we had ten record shops across Southern England, we had two offices, one in Central London and one out in Cobham, we had a secretary and someone running the office that I've never even met. In actual fact I never even knew the office existed. I don't think any of us did. So things were going on which were totally out of our control, and our touring had become really strange. Touring would be three weeks on the road, that's all. And we'd do twenty one concerts in three weeks. We'd fly to America and get back straight away.
DT: So it was just too intense?
JL: It was intense and also, there is some strange fun about being on tour, it's what you do. That's why we do it today, because we enjoy playing live, it's not just a case of recording or writing; it's everything. We do enjoy playing live, it's one of the highlights, and we were sort of neglecting that - the playing live became an end to someone making money, not particularly us, but someone making money or being not committal to being on the road and touring. The things we really enjoyed, the things I really enjoyed doing, were disappearing completely and so the alternative much better, not to actually do anything, I mean do anything collectively. I always had the thought, we all must have done really, that when all the dust settled, and everyone who had sort of protected us from everyone else just by protecting their own jobs and they weren't actually protecting us, they were not letting anyone come to meet us. As soon as they saw there was no future for them they would disappear as well, which really is what happened by about 1977. Most of the sort of debris had cleared and we could see through and we made an album in America called 'Octave' which was not really going to be the album that re-invented, if that's the right word, the Moody Blues, because for me the album after that, 'Long Distance Voyager' which became our new 'Days of Future Passed' and that set us up for what we are doing today.
DT: Lots and lots of column-inches have been devoted to why it is you have managed to stay together and work together so successfully. What reasons do you give for it?
JH: I think probably because we've overcome a lot of the crisis points that happen in other groups. I think because the music is unique to perform and to play and we're the only people who can do it. We're four very different people, very different personalities, and it's a lot of fun, we make a lot of money out of it and we enjoy it.
DT: So you remain very passionate about the music, spreading good vibes around the world?
JH: Absolutely, as we said at the beginning, this music means a lot to people and that's something we don't give up wanting to share easily because it's such a wonderful thing to have the audience create that magic for you. Wherever we go we can feel that.
DT: Just one final point, I know when people look back at their careers, and particularly if you look back at a career in what is a very cut-throat industry, and you look at all the people who you probably knew very well who've been casualties of this, what are you actually grateful for?
JH: Me, I'm grateful for the marriage that I've had; I've been married for 27 years. And I'm grateful for the lessons that I've learned really. I'm grateful to be a songwriter that has enhanced peoples' lives.
DT: John?
JL: I think trying to be as truthful as you can for yourself, and for your family, because you have to have an inner peace to associate and relate to everything when people are talking to you about your songs. They're talking in an openness, you know if people really go out of their way to talk to you about a particular song, this means a lot to them for a very particular reason. It's always an emotional one, it may be a total trauma, it may have been a high, it may be the highlight of their life. You have no idea what it is, but if they're coming to you with that, you've got to be receptive to it as well, you know. If you have got the strength of your marriage behind you, and your family, I really think that helps.
DT: Well, I wish you all the best for the forthcoming tour. The Moody Blues kick-off in Manchester on March the 1st. Justin Hayward and John Lodge, thanks very much.
JL: Pleasure.
JH: Thank you.