I saw my first Moody Blues concert in the early 1970s. What really impressed me was how much they resembled their records. Many bands do a good job recreating their sound in concert, but Moody Blues, my pick for the Godfathers of Progressive Rock, had a very orchestrated sound. What I didn’t know as a teenager was the existence of a keyboard instrument called the Mellotron. Appropriately named, the Mellotron looked like a small organ, but it was actually a great recorder. Each key triggered an eight-second tape recording that was quickly rewound. These tapes can be of pretty much anything, from the introduction of the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever flute sound to a full symphony orchestra. The tapes allowed the “attack” at the beginning of a violinist bowing a string to the final decay and gave a credibly accurate reproduction. The Musicians Union of Great Britain banned them out of fear that they would put musicians out of work, which, to some extent, they probably did.
There were several serious drawbacks to using a Mellotron in addition to irritating local session players; they were notoriously prone to failure. The audio tape tends to stretch, which on a normal cassette tape is not very noticeable as the entire band flattens out and slows down at least in unison, but when the particular tape represents a single instrument playing along with one live band, you better stay. in tune and in tempo. The tape also tends to break, and the key mechanism, triggers, and electronics didn’t travel as well, which is a real drag on the touring musician. It also had the eight-second limit and the delay time required for the tapes to rewind in time for the next note. This made playing fast lines not recommended, but for soft pads and against slower melodies in arrangements it was ideal. With a Mellotron bands like the Moody Blues could sound like they had the whole orchestra that they recorded in the concert hall with them, and it was magnificent.
Many bands used the Mellotron like Lynyrd Skynyrd on their classic hit, Free Bird, and they didn’t have the ethereal feel of Moody’s, so what made them the veteran “cosmic” rockers? Certainly the fact that they are essentially English, singing with British accents even though they started out imitating American rhythm and blues with their first hit, Go Now. Once singer Denny Laine was replaced by “The Cosmic Child” Justin Hayward and they ruined their record label by recording the symphonic concept album, Days Of Future Past, instead of recording the rock and roll versions of classic compositions that the label He thought they would be modern (due to the popularity of Walter Carlos’ Switched On Bach) and profitable (because classical music is not copyrighted), they headed for a future of their own.
Hayward had the romantic voice and the looks to go with it, which added to his other worldliness, but it was the message of the songs themselves that gave the Moody Blues their spiritual air. Are You Sitting Comfortable conjured the specter of Merlin the Wizard and when they entered the psychedelic age, Legend of a Mind used the image of Timothy Leary as a symbol of inner space travel.
Of all the members of Moody Blues, it is perhaps Ray Thomas, the band’s flute player, who best manages the perception of the band by fans. He is the author of Veteran Cosmic Rocker, who directly recognizes the band’s image, and songs like My Little Lovely with references to “fairy dust and pixie glue” help cement his image as a fairytale character. While John Lodge could write a song titled I’m Just A Singer In A Rock And Roll Band, denouncing the image that the band has of them as people who have some esoteric knowledge that is only mockingly dispersed among their followers who expect something from “true”, Ray acknowledges that perception without giving it any credit, but having fun with it anyway.
Finally, there is a great irony in the song Nothing Changes from the CD Strange Times released in 1999 and perhaps the last album in the Moody Blues discography on which Ray appears. In it there is a litany of dates and events predicted throughout literature as times of omen; 1984 (George Orwell), 1986 (the passage of Halley’s comet) and 2001 (A Space Odyssey or as M2K, fear of the millennium at the end of time), and through all of them, they profess; nothing changes. The irony is that after September 11, 2001, everything changed. Too much for the Moody Blues knowing something that we do not know.