I never paid much attention to the Moody Blues in high school. Outside of the truncated single to "Tuesday Afternoon," which was part of the soundtrack of my Summer of 1968, I never really got into them. I liked the singles like "Question" and "The Story in Your Eyes," but otherwise, I didn't know a whole lot about them.
That changed in college in a rather curious way. I had a crush on a girl my freshman year, and after finally summoning up the nerve to ask her out, she rejected me. After that buildup, and that rejection, I was devastated. But life went on.
I had occasion to go to the Harvard Coop and while waiting in line to pay for a book, I heard the most exotic music coming over the bookstore's sound system. I was strange sounding, and it was hypnotic.
It was, as it turned out, the second side of "Days of Future Passed," the Moody Blues debut album (well, the debut album of the so-called "Core 7" albums that elevated them almost to cult status with their fans.
And after hearing that album in its entirety, I became one of those fans ... and part of that cult.
I remained a part of that cult for a long time until, somewhere around the early part of the last decade, I decided that they were starting to mail it in just a little too much. They'd tour every year, but the set list hardly ever changed. To me, they were going through the motions, and after having seen them at least once a year throughout the 80s and 90s, I'd decided I'd had enough.
I never stopped liking their music ... I just stopped paying money to see them.
I've always gone through phases with music, and through the last 10 or so years, I went through plenty of them. I rediscovered Brian Wilson in a big way, as well as Supertramp, Pink Floyd and even Fleetwood Mac.
All the while, I've been communicating since the 90s with a group of Moody Blues fans. And we've all bemoaned, at one time or another, the group's seeming lack of effort to give its fans anything beyond what it gave them last year ... or the year before that. Even the stage banter is the same.
I'm 58 years old, and I've had a feeling for a long time that my rock concert days are numbered. My ears ring from all the shows I've seen, and probably because of all the times I crank my music through my headphones while I exercise. The music I like best can be politely called "classic rock," and the last show I attended was a 2009 Brian Wilson concert where at least half the crowd was even older than I was.
But my son decided to give me two tickets to see the Moody Blues at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, and, well, I'll go anywhere for free. Oddly enough, the show was on Friday the 13th, and that's not exactly the greatest day for gambling (which is what Mohegan Sun is really all about). I blew through my gambling money in roughly the amount of time it takes to walk out of my house and into my car.
I'd never been to Mohegan Sun before. I've never been to Las Vegas, been to Atlantic City once, Paradise Island 35 years ago on our honeymoon, and on a cruise that had a casino. I had this vision of of being in some club-like atmosphere with the Moody Blues on same kind of stage that would accommodate Wayne Newton.
Not exactly. The venue is huge. It's a regular arena, not unlike the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. I guess I have to get out more!!
And I crossed another very important threshold at this concert. For the first time, I saw people -- my contemporaries -- patrolling the floor in Hover round scooters. That's a little disconcerting. Yeah, man, let's rock out in our scooters. It reminds me of a commercial I once saw where there was this group of scooter-riders square dancing. I kid you not. It was supposed to depict how you can live a "normal life" with the help of a scooter. I have to tell you, it was hysterical.
I wasn't sure what to expect out of the Moodies either. Graeme Edge, the only original 1964 Moody still with the band, is 71. Justin Hayward and John Lodge, the primary songwriters, are the only other Core 7 Moodies still performing, and they're both well into their 60s (though someone really needs to tell Lodge that leather pants on 60-somethings have the potential to be really hideous).
Ray Thomas, the flautist, has retired and though I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Norda Mullin, the new flautist, I'm one of those people who has to see for himself.
When I was young and full of angst and pretension, the Moody Blues answered all my questions. They actually reacted to this perception of them with their hit "I'm Just A Singer in a Rock 'n' Roll Band," but it's true. For me,and many others, their songs had an other-worldly quality about them that, if they didn't define life in black and white, certainly helped put restless emotion into some kind of perspective. I still think one of the most brilliant songs Hayward ever wrote is "The Actor," because that's exactly what I get out of it ... a man so pent up with restless emotions and feelings that he doesn't know what to do with himself.
But do the Moody Blues have the answers for middle age? For approaching senior citizen-hood (kind of makes the line in "Late Lament" that "senior citizens wish they were young" kind of ironic)? Perhaps. Once again, it was Hayward, writing "The Swallow," off the "Strange Times" album, wrestling with the notion of slowing down and simply enjoying the fruits of all he's accomplished.
"It's so strange/life in the really slow lane/take it easy/that's what we'll do/just me and you."
But can these "Kings of Classic Rock," well, rock? That was the question I asked myself all while driving down to Connecticut. Was I going to see a rock show? Or was I going to see a series of mid-tempos ballads as a concession to their advancing age?
The Moodies are like a lot of classic groups/acts. They have a coterie of lifers who follow them from venue to venue comparing notes on shows. I'm not one of these people. I've always been content to go to my shows and go home afterward. I'd be more inclined to hang around with John Irving than any rocker anyway.
So all I wanted out of the evening was a good show ... and some indication that these guys who go around the world almost annually aren't still practically stealing money.
Once good thing about being a supen fan: you know all the songs ... even the ones that never get any airplay. So when a group pulls out the chestnuts, you're actually happier than you'd be if it stuck to hits. And to me, this was the most pleasant part of the show. The Moodies performed one song -- "You and Me" -- that I don't think they've ever done, as a group, live (maybe Hayward did it during a solo tour, but I'm not even sure of that).
"You and Me" is off the "Seventh Sojourn" album that was the last of that "Core 7." He wrote it with Edge, and I don't want to say it has religious overtones, but one could take the line "the vision of our father, touched by his loving son" that way.
The reason I like it, and have always liked it, is that it reinforces their plea that fans not look to them as messiahs.
"You're an ocean full of faces/and you know that we believe/we're just a wave that drifts around you/singing all our hopes and dreams."
With all that deep philosophizing, the song rocks. It contains lengthy guitar solos in both the intro and the outro, and Hayward performed them both flawlessly. The Moody Blues always got, I think, more brickbats thrown at them than is necessary, and their reputation for pretension is probably why they're not in the rock 'n roll hall of fame. But Hayward's always been underrated as a guitarist. Maybe that's because he doesn't look tortured enough up there. Has has a casualness that belies his skills. But make no mistake, the man can play that thing!
Another wonderful chestnut was "Are You Sitting Comfortably," off "On The Threshold of a Dream," which may be -- out of the seven albums we've been discussing -- my least favorite. I always thought that album, along with "To Our Children's Children's Children," gave critics the "pretentious" ammunition.
But I like that song, because of the haunting flute that accompanies it. I never though Ray Thomas was a bad flautist, but compared to Norda, Ray's a beginner. Norda brought that song to life in a way I've never heard
Ditto "Isn't Life Strange," which is one of those songs that always sounds better live than it ever did on vinyl. No matter how clear the production is on record, there are some songs that just can't be captured the way they're intended, and that's one of them.
The Moodies always do a splendid job with it in concert, and it was even more splendid this time. The arrangement was just a little different, and Norda does things with the flute that enhance the song even more.
I wish, I wish, I wish they'd done "The Actor," because Norda could have made that special too. As it is, she got huge ovations from an extremely appreciative crowd.
I find with the Moody Blues that I had a tendency to drift off, and get lost in the sound, and the ambiance of their best songs, and miss the message of them completely. I don't care for "I Know You're Out There Somewhere," and tend to zone out whenever I hear it. But for some reason, I listened to the words this time. And they are plaintive. If you've ever been in a situation where you wonder whatever happened to an old lover, or even a girl/boy you once had a crush on, the song has some significance.
I've always thought the lyrics to "Isn't Life Strange" were somewhat ponderous, and for that reason, it was never a favorite of mine (though, as I said, I do like to hear it live). But usually, in any song, or any good piece of art, there are moments that kind of sum them up. Whatever the songs may mean to someone else, I zero in on parts that have relevance to me and that's what I take from them. Such as ... "to throw it away/to lose just one day/the quicksands of time/you know it makes me want to cry."
It may not have been what John Lodge thought he was writing, but as you get older, you realize how precious time is ... and how unresolved issues, and lingering anger, do nothing except waste precious time. For whatever reason, that's what I was thinking about when Lodge was singing that song.
Edge seems to be cut out of different cloth than Hayward and even Lodge. Edge has a bawdiness about him that kind of makes him a little less mystical (even if he's the guy who wrote all the hippy dippy poetry of the pretentious days). He stepped out from behind the drum kit to chew the scenery through a hellacious rendition of "Higher and Higher," the opener of TOCCC, and the one that introduced the album as a tribute to the 1969 moon landing.
And it kind of looked as if Edge has hit the gym lately. Even though Gordon Marshall has taken over the bulk of the difficult drumming, Edge did his share of it. He also looked very spry for a septuagenarian, jumping around the stage during "Higher and Higher."
He has a standard joke about his senior citizen hood, saying he recorded "Higher and Higher" when his teeth were white, his hair was brown, and the V sign meant "peace." Now, he says, his hair is white, his teeth are brown, and the V stands for viagra.
The Moodies always do "Tuesday Afternoon," and it's a song I never get tired of hearing. It's the first song I ever heard by the Core 7 group, and it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I still love it today. Maybe even moreso these days.
"Nights in White Satin" is one of those songs I have to stop and really listen to whenever I heard it, even if it's for the 1,000th time. Hearing it at Harvard University back in 1972, after having been rejected by the girl of my dreams, added to my melancholia big-time. And I suppose there's a part of me that just gets transported back to those days in 1972 whenever I hear it. It's another one of Justin's "restless songs," I think ... where he totally nails the emotional passion of falling in love. There's a reason it's become a classic. It's hard to believe he was 19 when he wrote it.
If I have a criticism, it's that they continue to play some songs as breakneck speeds, such as "The Story in Your Eyes," the fast part of "Question," and "Ride My Seesaw." I'd just like to see them slow those songs down so they can be savored.
But on the othr hand, the audience sings the slower part of that song in much the same manner McCartney fans sang "na na na na-na-na-na" when he performed "Hey Jude." It's reverential. And you really understand, when you hear the multitude of people singing, how much those songs really mean to people ... and I include myself in that.
Seeing that show tonight was like reuniting with an old friend who I'd, shamefully, lost touch with over the years. I came away wondering why I'd ever been so rigidly unwilling to make them a part of my life for the previous 12 years. What made them special to me in the 1970s is still what makes them special to me today ... they have that ability to speak to the soul, which is a difficult thing to do. Anyone can provide logic. It takes a special person to bore through all the masks and all the pretensions and connect with the soul.
They Moody Blues still do that better than any group I've ever listened to. There's no age limit to connecting with a person's soul ... which means that my most plaintive question was answered. Yes, the Moody Blues have something to offer to people like me, who have to add the words "at heart" next to the word "young."
