Happy Birthday Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues  The Moody Blues’ Days Of Future Passed was recently celebrated with an expanded 50thAnniversary Deluxe Edition 

Days Of Future Passed was the Moody Blues’ landmark second album and formally marked the beginning of the band’s psychedelic era. Featuring the London Festival Orchestra, this richly orchestrated album followed in the wake of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour but was in itself a unique and highly original piece of work. The album includes the hits “Tuesday Afternoon” and the ever-enduring “Nights In White Satin,” which established the Moody Blues as true pioneers in the development of progressive rock.

Singer, songwriter and guitaristJustin Hayward was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, England on October 14, 1946.

In 1966 he replaced the departing guitarist Denny Laine after the group had achieved a hit record with “Go Now,” a cover of a Bessie Banks record.

Hayward was initially contacted by Mike Pinder the Moody Blues’ keyboardist, who had received Justin’s letter and demo discs from Eric Burdon of the Animals where Hayward  answered an ad in the Melody Maker. At the same time bassist/vocalist John Lodge replaced another founding member, Clint Warwick, joining another co-founder, drummer Graeme Edge.  Ray Thomas, a vocalist and flute player was then enlisted for their unique sonic mixture.  

Hayward penned “Fly Me High,” a Moody Blues’ Decca single in 1967, and then “Leave This Man Alone,” and collaborated with Pinder on his “Love And Beauty,” the first Moodies record to incorporate the mellotron. This instrument is early version of sampling keyboards.

Harvey Kubernik and Justin Hayward 2012 interview

Q: Take me to the process of writing “Tuesday Afternoon” and then doing it for The Days Of Future Passed LP.     

A: We had the idea for a stage show and then it really came from Mike who had written a song, ‘Dawn is a Feeling’ which I really loved. And then we got round to sort of thinking about this would be quite a good idea for a sort of thematic stage show about the day in the life of one guy. And I just sort of chose, ‘I’m gonna do the afternoon.’  And I had already done ‘Nights in White Satin’ written and recorded.

“So I went back to where my parents lived in the west country in England and with a guitar and went out that afternoon sat in the side of the field and smoked a joint and then came back with ‘Tuesday Afternoon.’ That was about it. I thought it was kind of a cheeky little song that wouldn’t really mean much.  

Q: You debuted “Tuesday Afternoon” on a BBC radio session, before it was done with the band and the London Festival Orchestra conducted by Peter Knight.

A: It meant a lot to do the BBC after going professional. Totally. But I think it comes from us being a kind of reliable bread and butter live band for the BBC. We did a lot of ‘Easy Beat’ and ‘Saturday Club’ sessions for the Beeb. And they were very kind to us. But, you know, they got their monies worth out of us. They hardly paid us. (laughs).

Q: Did your early tunes like “Tuesday Afternoon” and ‘Nights in White Satin” even as you first wrote them and cut them with the Moodies always have such inherent cinematic qualities? Even without the orchestration, they are quite visual numbers. For example, your mono recording of “Nights in White Satin” is included in the bonus disc of the 2006 deluxe edition 2CD set of Days Of Future Passed.

A: I wish I could say I thought of it in those terms. But it was probably more to do with just the sort of, I hope this doesn’t sound too pretentious, I’m sure it is, the kind of search for enlightenment that young people do, and psychedelic experiences that I was going through. And it has more to do with that probably than thinking of it in a contrived way, you know, in a film sort of way. Interestingly enough, Tony Clarke used to think like that all the time.

Q: “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Nights in White Satin” were eventually recorded with the orchestra. Not the original game plan when you wrote them.

A: Not at all. But I have to say the single version of ‘Tuesday’ and the single version of ‘Nights in White Satin’ do not have any orchestra on it. It’s just a Mellotron.

“But I was at the session when they did the orchestra sessions. And they did it in one take. They had already laid out the songs on a four-track machine and they were bouncing to another four track. And so they did one run-though with the orchestra and then the take itself. And so I was astounded when I heard this stuff. And Mike had already done the spoken word stuff. So it was astounding to listen to that.

“But in truth, I thought we were making a kind of arty album that I might get invited to a cocktail party and might meet some nice lady from The Observer, and that’s about it. That was as far as a thought. So I wasn’t completely overwhelmed by it. I thought it was a limited appeal album. And really, the people who were in charge of it were the Decca stereo people. It was their album. A demonstration record. And we weren’t even asked into the control room.

Q: What role did the mellotron, even back then, play or impact your songwriting process and then recreating the Moodies sound on stage?

A: Well, Mike and the mellotron made my songs work. That’s the simplest way I can put it. When he was playing piano it was difficult for me to try and find something that would be percussive on the piano and that would be interesting. And particularly because Mike had already played, you know, the greatest piano single ever, so that was going to be an impossible act to follow. But when he found the mellotron, suddenly my songs worked, you know. When I played the other guys ‘Nights in White Satin’ they weren’t that impressed until Mike went on the mellotron and then everyone was kind of interested. (laughs). Because it really started to hang together from the mellotron.

Q: Days Of Future Passed and your tunes on it, owing partially to radio airplay and constant rotation, have achieved anthem-like status.

A: I don’t think there’s another album like Days Of Future Passed. And really, if you want to test your stereo system chose it because it’s still is one of the great quality studio recorded albums. And the engineer and the production had a lot to do with it.

“It’s just absolutely beautiful. And I would recommend it. The appeal of it was that we went our own way. The appeal was that we did think it was a small limited appeal album. And a lot of people who listen to it feel that way about it. ‘It’s just for me.’ It’s not a worldwide kind of thing. Not everybody liked it. It wasn’t universally liked. So I still like the fact that it was for an exclusive kind of audience. And only certain people would really appreciate or have the patience for it. And I think that’s it, really. That we went our own way and created our own identity with it.

Q: After Days Of Future Passed landed on the charts and sold, it was quite apparent being in this band was going to be your life. And the Moody Blues continued with another album. How do you even create a follow-up to this work? 

A: And the second album we were alone. But fortunately, Decca gave us Derek Varnels and Tony Clarke. And we had a load of songs, including ‘Legend Of a Mind,’ and maybe it might had been ‘Voices In The Sky,’ were done at the time of Days Of Future Passed. Our tracks don’t take up much time when you put them all together, like on Days of Future Passed.

“So, we already had a couple of things, And out of that came this thing that Mike used to do this thing on the piano. And the second album came out of that. And we had a theme early on that we write to and that was it. And then it coincided with our first tour of America. And we decided, well we didn’t decide, it was that we were everybody’s support band. That was the way we worked. We would support anybody and go on tour opening up. We always figured opening up was the best place to be. We’d be back in the hotel by 9:00 pm. Luckily, In Search of the Lost Chord, and ‘Ride My See-Saw’ and ‘Voices in the Sky’ took off.  

Q: I saw the band live a couple of times in the L.A. area in 1969 and 1970, once with Spirit, and I know on occasion there were some technical problems with the Mellotron on stage. These were primitive days in the technological recreation of studio sound. Were there any comical situations where the Mellotron broke down or slowed a show of yours?

A: Even at our Isle of Wight festival show that (director) Murray Lerner shot, there were real problems with the voltage. ‘Cause the voltage affected the mellotron. So if the voltage fluctuated so did the mellotron’s pitch. That’s one. (laughs). There’s a couple of things like that where I’ve mixed live and you hear things that obviously the audience is never gonna hear.

“And then the other one was doing our very first gig for Bill Graham at the Fillmore East and then for the mellotron to pack up in the first song. And for Mike to spend the first set with his head in the back of the mellotron was devastating. I just remember the blues guy, John Mayall, who was also on Decca, and extremely pissed off that we were above him on the bill. (laughs). I just remember him looking across and seeing him in the wings laughing his head off at Mike. And he knew Mike well. And so bless him..

Q: I seem to remember in 1969 the Moody Blues played a Love-In in Los Angeles.   

A: Yes.

Q: I always enjoyed that on your albums there were bits of spoken word and narration integrated in some of the songs. Recitation and talk. Was that part of the process when you were preparing the projects or doing pre-production?

A: It wasn’t so much by design. It was Graeme wanted to contribute. He was a good lyric writer. He was good at spoken word. He was a poet. And we had to get it in there somehow. And he would often try and bring the whole album theme together with his spoken word stuff. And he did that very well. So that’s where that came from.

“Then also that album called The Zodiac Cosmic Sounds on Elektra Records. (incorporating moog synthesizer from Paul Beaver and narration by Cyrus Faryar). That really turned us on. And we have to give that album some credit for really influencing us.       

Q: From your Question of Balance LP, I used to spin a Mike Pinder song, “How Is It (We Are Here)” that followed your “Question.”

A: Oh yes!

Q: Are you even aware that decades ago, those songs chronicled the world of physical existence, and others, like your tune “Cities,” were a comment on ecology and planetary concerns. Akin to the Doors’ “When the Music’s Over.” Some local radio stations used to couple the recordings together. Man, you were making an impact beyond the chart hits. The ecology theme was translating back to us teenagers in Hollywood. 

A: I was absolutely aware of that. I was a country boy and I never really, apart from a couple of times in my life for a few weeks, I never really, you know, lived in the city before. So I was very much in my mind. I love the English countryside. And London was a big kind of frightening place. But I knew it held the future. You had to be in London to get anything done. But it didn’t stop me kicking it.                            

Q: On your 2012 U.S. tour, what is it like singing and performing songs from Days Of Future Passed that you initially wrote and recorded just after being a teenager, and now 45 years later it is you as an adult doing them.  Is the song or the message the same or different? I know you’ve embraced your back catalog, and active in re-mastering and income streams, but are these songs and the recordings now another experience for you?

A: Well, now that’s a good question. Because I think they are relevant today. There’s a naivety about them that I would not, and this is the same for all of us in the band, that I would not have the courage to write today. And it’s as simple as that. I’d be afraid of writing it or exposing something that would be to kind of criticism. So, I’d play it a lot safer now.

Q: What was it like the last few decades overseeing re-mastering and reissues of your first batch of albums?

A: My first reaction was when we went back (1972) to do the Quadraphonic, the 5.1 version of Days Of Future Passed which could only come from the Quad that the late Tony Clarke and engineer Derek Varnals had done it in Quad at the time. In the same studio with the same echoes with the same notes. And Derek Varnals was always good at keeping notes. And I was just astounded. I just thought, ‘How on earth did we do that?’ Because most of it was live and we were bouncing. You had to get it right and then bounce or to double-track the vocals or anything. And my reaction was, how on earth did we do it? I just don’t know, really. It’s like listening to another group of people. I’m far enough away now to be able to separate.

Photo courtesy of Carl Lender/Wikicommons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.The post Happy Birthday Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues   first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.