Justin Hayward: A Long Distance Voyage Through Time

A Long Distance Voyage
Through Time

In the beginning...

Justin Hayward, born October 14, 1946 in Swindon, Wiltshire, England, began his musical career around the age of 7 when he first began piano lessons. But in 1955, he was hooked by the likes of Buddy Holly and the early guitar heros of American Rock and Roll. By the time he was ten years old, he had a guitar and was learning to play.

He was hired by the Moody Blues in August 1966 after Denny Laine left the one-hit wonder band to pursue a solo career.

According to flutist Ray Thomas, they were looking for a guitarist/singer to replace Laine and it was Eric Burdon, leader of a group known as The Animals, who recommended the highly-talented young sprite Hayward to the band.

"He said 'I've got a whole sack full of mail; if you want to come down to the office and pick it up, you're welcome to.' It was just like one of those things -- Justin's name the first one out of a great big sack," Thomas recalls in the Moody Blues' documentary video Legend Of A Band: The Story of the Moody Blues.

Graeme Edge, the drummer for the Moodies from the very beginning, saw Hayward's talent immediately and to this day is grateful they managed to get him; "He seemed to fit in nicely with the rest of the band, and talk about sticking in your thumb and pulling out a plum -- Justin Hayward from an ad in the paper!" he enthuses in Legend.

Hayward, who at the age of 19 already had three years' experience as a serious professional musician, with three singles alone under his belt, applied for The Animals a little too late -- Burdon had already made his choice. Fate had slated Hayward to join the Moody Blues.

"I got a call from Mike Pinder, and he said he had heard I was looking for a gig, and asked if I would mind coming in to meet the rest of the guys...I had a guitar and an amp, so I was in," Hayward says in Legend.

The new lead singer and new bassist John Lodge not only revamped the floundering Moody Blues, they also brought something new to the band, which had built its act around playing rhythm and blues. They brought a whole new sound to the band.

The Moodies had been fairly unsuccessful as blues artists, touring with matching blue suits and playing American blues. Unfortunately, while rhythm and blues had worked for bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, it did not work for the Eastshire-based Moody Blues.

"I've always considered [The Moody Blues] to be a southern, Surrey band," Hayward acknowledges.

With Hayward as a fronter, the Moody Blues did not fit the type of music they played. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Hayward sported a fresh cherubic face that did not suit the hard-edged music they played, and his angelic choir-tone voice did not fit the growling descants that come in blues music.

"We figured where we were going wrong [with our stage show] was that the music we were playing wasn't suited to our characters," Hayward says in Time Traveller[sic], their 1994 compilation box set. "We were lower-middle-class English boys singing songs about people in the deep south of America, and it just wasn't truthful. When we started playing our own songs and expressing our own feelings and developing our own style, things started improving."

Upon the revellation of their newfound sound, the Moodies went to France to develope their sound. According to Time Traveller "John Lodge sold most of his equipment to finance purchase of the necessary ferry tickets." (Time Traveller page 7)

"We had no money anyway, so what did we have to lose?" Hayward says in Legend of the move to France.

During these months in Mucron and Paris, the two new additions to the band formed a partnership that would extend beyond the Moody Blues and would surface during the 1972-77 hiatus. Hayward and Lodge were driving forces and personalities in the band, and their artistic vision began to alter the band slowly.

"It only took a few months for John and I to blend in with the group," Hayward says in Time Traveller, "but it took us a year to change the act to how we all wanted it, using our own songs."

Days of Future Passed

Though it has been credited to the entire band, it is said that Hayward and Lodge concocted the idea that would launch them into stardom: the concept album.

"We decided to build a stage act around a day in the life of one guy," Hayward explains.

This 45-minute stage set later evolved into the revolutionary album Days of Future Passed.

After almost a year of struggling to gain attention and popularity, the Moodies finally got their break when Deram, the record label who signed them, offered them a chance.

"They asked us if we would do a rock version of Dvorak's Nineth Symphony while the London Festival played Dvorak behind us, and we said, 'Yeah, if we can [be] alone in the studio without anyone else coming in.'"

"The Moodies and I went along with [the idea of doing Dvorak]," says Tony Clarke, the band's early producer, "but it was really a device to let us roll a boulder over the door of the studio and run the asylum."

It was ten days of frantic work for the Moody Blues to finish their album. The Moodies went into the studios and frantically laid down the main tracks and shipping them to Peter Knight, who then composed the transitional music and the overtures. Seeing as nowadays, most albums take at the very least a year to complete, that the Moody Blues finished so revolutionary an album in the gestation of ten days is almost infathomable.

"We don't even finish one song in eleven days now," Graeme Edge says in the video The Other Side Of Red Rocks. Of course, this can be attributed to the "bullet-proof"ness of youth. At the time of Days Of Future Passed's release, Edge and Pinder were the oldest at 26, and Hayward was the youngest 21 (with Thomas being 25 and Lodge being 22).

In the privacy of the ten days, the Moody Blues laid down the groundwork for Days. When the Dvorjak project was abandoned, the Moody Blues took the chance of a life-time and presented their idea, which was embraced and tried.

According to Lodge, the album confused the authorities; "[Days of Future Passed] became one of those albums that you had to have in your collection, but that didn't mean people necessarily went out and bought it in the amount of weeks necessary to get it into the charts."

Days of Future Passed includes two compositions from each band member. The album opens with a building tension from the London Festival Orchestra (a fictious orchestra -- what it really was was a group of freelance musicians who were put together to form an Orchestra. It was not, contrary to popular belief, a pre-existing orchestra such as the London Symphony Orchestra or the London Philharmonic Orchestra) that includes selections from each of the eight songs. At the end of the first track is one of two Graeme Edge compositions, this one a poem called "Morning Glory". The track itself is entitled "The Day Begins" but it is Edge's poetry that stands out.

Hard on the heels of the poem is a Pinder composition called "Dawn: Dawn Is A Feeling" that introduces the listener to Hayward's voice, singing with just the touch to make it sound like he's trying very hard to suppress a yawn.

After "Dawn Is A Feeling" is a snappy little spritely tune called "The Morning: Another Morning," written by Ray Thomas. This song is about the joy of childhood, and how carefree it is to be a child. It is followed up by the first of two Lodge compositions, this one called "Lunch Break: Peak Hour."

Hard on the heels of "Peak Hour" comes one of the two most famous songs from the album (as well as from the entire 250+ song catalogue of the Moody Blues), a song entitled "The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)." This song -- which became famous under the colloquial title of "Tuesday Afternoon" rather than the formal "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)"-- is a rollicking ballad about self-examination, looking at life and realizing things aren't so bad in the world.

Lodge's second composition on the album, "(Evening) Time To Get Away" follows "Tuesday Afternoon", and on the CD is, in fact, on the same track -- a short burst of orchestrations is all that separates the two.

Pinder's second contribution, "The Sunset" is a thumping song that bounces along unnervingly and leads almost directly into Thomas's second contribution, a whirl-wind piece called "Twilight Time."

And then there is a series of orchestra strains that lead into the legendary "The Night: Nights In White Satin," a thunderous "wall of sound" styled orchestral masterpiece about torturous unrequited love, cognitive exhaustion and philosphical frustration. "Nights" later became one of the Moody Blues' signature pieces and their highest-charting single in the United States. Often times, "Nights" is released on various compilations with its bookend "Late Lament," Edge's second contribution. "Late Lament" has acheived near-legendary status with its mysticism of "breathe deep the gathering gloom..." and "cold hearted orb that rules the night..." In a way, "Late Lament" is the perfect end to the torture that "Nights In White Satin" is shot through with.

Most prominent in "Nights In White Satin" is its genesis. There is incredible depth to this song, which was spouted off by a teenaged Hayward. To this day, Hayward is stunned by the completeness of his composition.

"I knew when I wrote it that it was like nothing I'd ever done before; there was something kind of naked about it. I was just a 19-year-old kid when I wrote it, and there's actually a lot of wisdom there that I never noticed at the time. The song gave me a chill every time I sang it, and as soon as we started playing it on stage, our whole demeanour and attitude about ourselves changed. People were going crazy for the song long before it was recorded; in fact, we cut it for the BBC several months before we made Days Of Future Passed."

Hayward also has other views of his masterpiece; "It was so long ago. It's a little period of about half an hour that I have had to look at and look at over, and it's to the point where I don't know if what I'm remembering is the truth or not."

Despite John Lodge's implicationg that the album did not do well, the reception of Days Of Future Passed by the British and American public was overwhelming. It even has since been accorded Platinum status in its sales, and "Nights In White Satin" charted at #2 in Billboard, and #1 in Cashbox and Record World when it was released as a single in 1972.

Now it was up to the Moodies to follow up their smashing debut with something equally mystifying and compelling.

In Search Of The Lost Chord

With the success of Days Of Future Passed, it was time by early 1968 for the Moody Blues to consider a follow up. In Search Of The Lost Chord followed on the heels of the initial album.

Time Traveller cites Lodge as the catalyst for the concept of Lost Chord. Lodge was doodling one day, and came up with the concept of the band being in search of something. Legend has it it was Hayward who proposed "lost chord" as the object being searched for.

The album kicks off with more Edge poetry. Days Of Future Passed had used, as bookends, a pair of poems written by Graeme Edge called "Morning Glory" and "Late Lament".

Edge penned what has since become known as "Departure" for In Search Of The Lost Chord, and the poem immediately precedes Lodge's rocker "Ride My See Saw".

"Ride My See Saw" follows up on the tradition of "Peak Hour" from Days in being fast, almost indecipherable, and completely ambiguous.