The Moody Blues: Veterans of the British Invasion

On February 7, 1964, a Boeing 707 operated by Pan Am touched down at the recently renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport carrying, among other passengers, four young lads from Liverpool, England.

Two days later, The Beatles, as they called themselves, performed live on "The Ed Sullivan Show," marking the unofficial start of what came to be known as "the British Invasion."

The following month, a bunch of talented upstarts named themselves The Rolling Stones and released their self-titled debut album.

Further north, in the UK's second-largest city, Birmingham, a fresh spirit was in the air, with dozens of music venues opening to serve the new teenage market, and countless young people taking up guitars in the hope of one day emulating their heroes.

In May, above a furniture store in the city's Erdington district, a small two-room club ambitiously named The Carlton Ballroom hosted the first live gig of one such freshly formed band, The M & B 5. It would go on to become the venue's house band and, after changing its name to The Moody Blues, rose from its humble beginnings to sell more than 70 million albums worldwide.

The band had a rocky start. As individuals, Moody Blues members had been around the Birmingham music scene for some time, playing together or separately in various groups, before singer Ray Thomas and keyboardist Mike Pinder assembled The M & B 5 (hoping to attract sponsorship from the local Mitchells & Butlers Brewery).

They recruited Clint Warwick on bass, Graeme Edge on drums and Denny Laine on guitar. Changing their name, with a nod to Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" and the influence of rhythm and blues, the band relocated to London and acquired a management company, Ridgepride, that secured them a recording contract.

Their second single, "Go Now," hit No. 1 on sales charts in the UK and No. 10 in the U.S. An album followed, "The Magnificent Moodies" (1965), which featured on its back cover a special poem composed by the singer, Donovan. Paul McCartney and George Harrison attended the record's launch party, but the very next morning it was discovered that Ridgepride had cut and run, taking the band's money and leaving them bankrupt and in debt.

The group rallied, signing to Decca and supporting The Beatles on the Fab Four's last ever British Tour, but declining sales and a missed opportunity to appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (thanks to visa issues) meant that The Moody Blues were in danger of joining the extensive roster of bands which burned brightly and faded quickly.

In the summer of 1966, Warwick quit the music business altogether. In October, Denny Laine also left (he would later join Paul McCartney's post-Beatles group, Wings). The band was on its knees but managed to recruit John Lodge as bassist and Justin Hayward as guitarist/singer.

Still struggling to find a single gig to play in early 1967, band members realized a drastic change was needed. Abandoning the R&B covers that routinely made up their sets, they embraced Hayward's folk inclinations, with Pinder switching to Mellotron, a unique-sounding keyboard (Pinder had previously worked for the company that built them).

Under the direction of Decca producer Tony Clarke, the group began a shift toward a more ambitious psychedelic rock style.

As leaves began to fall from the trees and winter approached, it was make-or-break time. The Moody Blues' Decca contract was set to expire, and the band owed the record company several thousand pounds.

Arranger and conductor Peter Knight joined the project, together with the London Festival Orchestra. Knight was impressed by the band's original songs, and together they made the audacious decision to abandon Dvořák but keep the orchestra and have them record linking interludes. With the Decca top brass unaware of what was happening, The Moody Blues pushed for round-the-clock studio access and worked feverishly across just five days.

The final product, "Days of Future Passed," was an astonishing achievement, a groundbreaking blend of orchestral music with adventurous rock, perfectly ordered so as to guide listeners to the final sung number, Justin Hayward's "Nights In White Satin" — a searing balled of moving intensity.

Hayward recalled Decca executives' reaction to the insubordination. "When we played the finished product to all these old directors at Decca, which is a fine, upstanding old English music firm, they said, 'This isn't Dvořák,' and we said, 'No, but this is what it is.' We had one ally there, and he really stood up for us. He said, 'I think it could be quite interesting,' and besides, we had made a stereo demonstration record — it just wasn't Dvořák. So eventually we got enough of them to believe in it to put it out, and it was an instant hit."

After "Days of Future Passed," The Moody Blues became a household name, traveling the world and producing a string of hit records. The band was still touring, thrilling audiences around the world until 2018, the year in which it was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ray Thomas sadly died that same year, at the age of 76, marking the end of the incredible journey. Graeme Edge passed in 2021, at the age of 80.

I saw them play in the spring of 2000 at the historic Apollo Theatre in my home city of Oxford, England. I vividly recall my amazement at just how accomplished they sounded. For an instant, I had a wild doubt — surely, they must be miming to a pre-recording. But of course, they were not.

As the show went on, and the magnificent Moodies filled the hall with their rainbow-colored sound, I realized this was a special group. In the history of popular music, they still stand out, their music timeless and inspiring.

Justin Hayward and John Lodge are touring separately this year.

Chris Wheatley is an author and music journalist in Oxford, England. He has written for London Jazz News, Longreads, Loudwire, Record Collector, Songlines and other websites and publications. He will tell you he has too many records, too many guitars and not enough cats. Read More