Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues.
Speaker 1: Justin so good to have you on the podcast. Thank you,
Speaker 1: my my pleasure. I believe. Okay, you have a new single,
Speaker 1: Living for Love. Tell me how that came to be?
Speaker 1: While I sit down and play the guitar, you know,
Speaker 1: and these things jump out of the guitar. I've got
Speaker 1: a beautiful um Gibson J two hundred and I sat
Speaker 1: down one night and in January this year, and the
Speaker 1: song just popped out. So I had eight percent of
Speaker 1: it within a few minutes. And then I woke up
Speaker 1: the next morning played it again and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this is really nice, so I I finished the rest
Speaker 1: and then I went down to um the studio that
Speaker 1: I use in Genoa, which is not far from here,
Speaker 1: and recorded it and I really love it, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still I'm still loving it now. And he released
Speaker 1: it to two weeks ago. But I've been doing it
Speaker 1: on stage on the UK tour and I'm thinking when
Speaker 1: when I do the gig and I think, um, well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I still like it after singing it
Speaker 1: every night? And then I came back and put it
Speaker 1: on and I thought, oh, it's great. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: That's how it happens. You know what you're asking me?
Speaker 1: How do these How is it? How? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Just I just plick up a plectrum in the guitar
Speaker 1: and these things. I'm a songwriter. This happens. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk about a few things. You talk about your J
Speaker 1: two hundred. Are you a gearhead? Do you have a
Speaker 1: lot of guitars, recording equipment? I have some nice things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm discrim anating, so I don't have a lot of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a lovely Martin D twenty eight that I've
Speaker 1: had since the sixties. And that's an interesting story how
Speaker 1: I got that guitar. But that's another thing. Tell me
Speaker 1: the story of how you get the dw Okay, so
Speaker 1: do you you know d Martin Dwight? Absolutely, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So it's a nineteen fifty seven Dwight. And when in
Speaker 1: the sixties, there used to be when we first went
Speaker 1: to America, there used to be maybe five or six
Speaker 1: bands on the on the bill, and we were never
Speaker 1: top of the bill. But one day we got to
Speaker 1: be headlining but in the early years we weren't. So
Speaker 1: you get five or six bands and even a light shows,
Speaker 1: kind of psychedelic light show on the bill. And there
Speaker 1: was at that time these young uh lads, I have
Speaker 1: to say then because they were boys. Yes, they were boys.
Speaker 1: So boys who used to travel around America and look
Speaker 1: for really beautiful guitars because you could do that then
Speaker 1: in the sixties they hadn't been found or they were
Speaker 1: in it's a hard work for British people to say,
Speaker 1: but pawn shops p A w N or people's homes
Speaker 1: or little music shops tucked away in places, and these
Speaker 1: boys would know these guitars, how beautiful they were, and
Speaker 1: they only chose really the best ones. And when we
Speaker 1: would come off stage, each there's only one guitar in
Speaker 1: the movie Blues, that's me, but some some groups would
Speaker 1: have two or three guitar players. And when you walked
Speaker 1: off stage at these gigs, you were just about to
Speaker 1: be paid, and you'd walk past about six beautiful guitars
Speaker 1: that these boys had in the van and they'd line
Speaker 1: them up as you came off stage on your way
Speaker 1: to the dressing room or whatever they call the a
Speaker 1: synch room, you know in those days, and you and
Speaker 1: I looked at some I looked at this D twenty
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh, that that is really looks so sweet,
Speaker 1: you know, And I picked it up and it was
Speaker 1: the nicest acoustic guitar I've ever played, and it still
Speaker 1: is to this day. So that's how I came by
Speaker 1: a few of these guitars in the sixties. That's how
Speaker 1: it used to happen. But that's how that one happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: when it comes to guitar, certainly D is the acoustic standard,
Speaker 1: but certainly with Gibson's, everyone even of the same model,
Speaker 1: will sound different. Have you found that with your guitars? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: But um I met the guys who made my my
Speaker 1: three three five, My red Gibson three three five was
Speaker 1: made in three I had. I actually had a three
Speaker 1: three five brand new in sixty three, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: afford to keep it then in the Moody Is. I've
Speaker 1: been in the Moodies for about a year and I
Speaker 1: had enough money to put a deposit down on another
Speaker 1: three through five. So I found the prep my present
Speaker 1: three three five, And when I was able to go
Speaker 1: to the US and visit Kalamazoo in Michigan. I just
Speaker 1: turned up and they were like, hey, just earned you know,
Speaker 1: pictures of your three three five and that the serial number.
Speaker 1: And I met the guys who made it, and they said,
Speaker 1: we because we've seen your guitar in pictures on on
Speaker 1: on video on the TV and kind of stuff like that,
Speaker 1: we know your guitar and we will remember it because
Speaker 1: there wasn't that we remember those kind of things. It
Speaker 1: has a big bag Factsbury factory, Bigsby, and two pieces
Speaker 1: of mother of pearl where the stop to help us were.
Speaker 1: So they remembered it. And they said that the next
Speaker 1: one on the line didn't have what mine had. They
Speaker 1: knew that that when they take them off the line,
Speaker 1: they know that one's nice and one's like, you know,
Speaker 1: one was fabulous, and one's like, oh, doesn't quite come together.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the way instruments are, isn't it okay?
Speaker 1: In terms of electrics, you have the three thirty five,
Speaker 1: that semi hollow body. Do you have any other electrics
Speaker 1: that you favor. I've got my telecaster from That's that's
Speaker 1: what I bought when I first joined the mood is
Speaker 1: sixty five and then I've got a Tom Anderson that
Speaker 1: is beautiful. I've got a Parker that is really uh
Speaker 1: really good for recording. How you plug it straight in
Speaker 1: direct into the desk, got beautiful sound. That's about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you said you're in Genuay. Know you cut the record
Speaker 1: in Italy. Are you living full time in Genoa? And
Speaker 1: why Genoa? I'm not living in general. No, I'm down
Speaker 1: the road. Okay, you're you're living. You go to Genoa
Speaker 1: to record, You're living in Italy? What inspired you to
Speaker 1: live in Italy? No, I don't live in Italy. I
Speaker 1: live just across the border, across the French border. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you a different way, what inspired you
Speaker 1: to live in that area as opposed to the UK.
Speaker 1: I had a holiday home in this part of the
Speaker 1: world in the eighties and I was coming back here
Speaker 1: and then I got to know musicians along the Coat Dessore,
Speaker 1: along the Riviera coast from sort of Marseille through to
Speaker 1: live Orno in Italy, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: English musicians in the eighties and early nineties who were
Speaker 1: playing with Italian rock stars or French rock stars who
Speaker 1: all wanted English kind of guitar players and musicians because
Speaker 1: English players got rock and roll, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that the Italians and the French did. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: Italian the French artists wanted really English guitar players because
Speaker 1: they had a different kind of background cultural background. I
Speaker 1: think English with rock and roll music, with the three
Speaker 1: chords and um So I met a lot of people
Speaker 1: musicians along this coast recording and they became really friends, families,
Speaker 1: and and I became part of that group and community,
Speaker 1: and that led me to Italy and to record there.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't say I can actually afford to
Speaker 1: go and record in London because it's like joke, money,
Speaker 1: but where do you live? I live in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: And we could talk about today's economic world and what's
Speaker 1: going on in the UK, but uh, let's let's stay
Speaker 1: with the money. You know you, so, could you could
Speaker 1: you afford to go and rent a studio in l A? Now?
Speaker 1: I will tell you. I will tell you like a
Speaker 1: week l A. Since it's a hot bed of the
Speaker 1: music industry and universal music is located here. There are
Speaker 1: many home studios, and the home studios are so good
Speaker 1: that the only reason someone goes to a big studio
Speaker 1: is to cut basics to get a certain drums sound
Speaker 1: or something. So many times you can go to a
Speaker 1: big studio for a day or two, and except for
Speaker 1: a couple of elite studios, the prices have actually gone down.
Speaker 1: So as far as the old days, you know, locking
Speaker 1: out a studio for six weeks, Um, nobody does that anymore.
Speaker 1: So could someone afford the thousand dollars to dollars to
Speaker 1: record one or two day is in a big studio
Speaker 1: if they are a major label artist, yes, if they're
Speaker 1: in putting out their records independently, they will do their
Speaker 1: best not to do that, but maybe one day. But
Speaker 1: that begs a question of money. You had great success
Speaker 1: fifty years ago in a band with multiple members when
Speaker 1: the royalties were low, So how is your financial situation today?
Speaker 1: Which multiple members? What does that members? No? No? When
Speaker 1: you have the songwriting in your group, uh, there were
Speaker 1: different people who wrote different songs, some acts the same
Speaker 1: person wrote all ten songs. As we know, most of
Speaker 1: the money is in the songwriting unless you have an
Speaker 1: overall deal where you mix the recording revenue in the
Speaker 1: publishing will pay for a minute once. Some people own it.
Speaker 1: Some people don't own it. Some people sold it. Record
Speaker 1: royalties are lower. They have to split five ways. Uh,
Speaker 1: when you go on the road, the money has to
Speaker 1: be split. So it's different from being a solo artist
Speaker 1: who owns all the songs. Never Mind, fifty years ago
Speaker 1: royalty rates were lower. And your question is, well, now
Speaker 1: that it's fifty years later, how good is the income
Speaker 1: stream from the moodies I'm doing Okay. I've spent my
Speaker 1: life on the road as well. Okay, I'm going I'm
Speaker 1: doing all right. Thanks, okay, and you I could I
Speaker 1: could afford, I could afford to speak to you about. Okay,
Speaker 1: And do you still own your own publishing? Um? I
Speaker 1: own the I never did own the copyrights of my
Speaker 1: early material and who who did own it? I own
Speaker 1: a ship up the copyrights? Um the t R oh
Speaker 1: okay and but the the So you're still getting the
Speaker 1: song writing for writing the songs. Some people sell those
Speaker 1: royalty streams. Do you still own yours? I'm doing okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So let's go looking good. Thanks, Okay. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to the song. You talked about your seeing the guitar
Speaker 1: you come up with the sound. Is that normally how
Speaker 1: you write on inspiration? Or is it sometimes a more
Speaker 1: labored process. UM, well, that that's a good question. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that I I, Um, you know, if we
Speaker 1: if song writes us sat around and waited for inspiration,
Speaker 1: I think we're working a long time. I find that
Speaker 1: I if I put my mind to it, if I
Speaker 1: if I decided to sit down, if I decided to
Speaker 1: write a song, and I can, I can do it. Now.
Speaker 1: There was much more pressure in the early days of
Speaker 1: the band because with the first with the albums of
Speaker 1: the mood Is, there was always there was always the
Speaker 1: thing where, oh, Justin will have something because he always
Speaker 1: had stuff ready. You know, I'm the son of two teachers,
Speaker 1: and I always had my stuff ready, so I would
Speaker 1: never studio time was really precious to me. So if
Speaker 1: there was a studio, if there was a session happening
Speaker 1: on the Saturday, on the Friday night, I would have
Speaker 1: something and be ready to go. And the other and
Speaker 1: that was great. The others knew that, oh, Justin will
Speaker 1: have something, and so we could kick. I could kick
Speaker 1: the ball down the pitch and that was that was great.
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of pressure to do that
Speaker 1: because the records kept coming, so I had to just
Speaker 1: move on quickly from one to the other. Now I
Speaker 1: have more time about it because I can. I'm still
Speaker 1: um can I put it. I'm still want to be
Speaker 1: true to my goal goals of making music and earned
Speaker 1: playing music live, so I can. I can take my
Speaker 1: time over that. I'm offered a lot of work on
Speaker 1: the road, which most of it I say, Yeah, that's great,
Speaker 1: and I can be choose what I do and when
Speaker 1: I write it and do it as a pleasure not
Speaker 1: as a pressure. Okay, you talked about seeing the G
Speaker 1: two hundred picking it up when you were not on
Speaker 1: the road. Do you play the guitar every day? And
Speaker 1: how often do you just pick it up and get inspired? Ah?
Speaker 1: You see? You you keep using this word inspired. You know,
Speaker 1: if we, like I said, we sat around waiting to
Speaker 1: be inspired, we you wouldn't do much. So what maybe
Speaker 1: you would, but you know, just looking at looking out
Speaker 1: the window waiting for somebody, or we're looking for a
Speaker 1: girl to come by, and oh that's nice. But I
Speaker 1: find it's you have to put your mind to it.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't remember what you're saying about the guitars.
Speaker 1: What do you say about that? Well, I I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess it sounded like with the new song that
Speaker 1: you were just drumming and something keen to you. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's how it usually works. I enjoy playing so that
Speaker 1: stuff just comes stuff just comes out. And in this
Speaker 1: particular song, you've talked about it being optimistic, harkening back
Speaker 1: to an era there was more optimistic. Is that true?
Speaker 1: Can you amplify that? Um? I think I was lucky
Speaker 1: enough to be in a generation that didn't have the
Speaker 1: weight of constant news bombarding them because there wasn't took
Speaker 1: place to uh you know, I hardly listened to the radio,
Speaker 1: but me and my brother used to listen to Radio
Speaker 1: Luxembourg and we had about three or four records, and
Speaker 1: my brother's friend had three or four and my friend
Speaker 1: and then you could have a whole nights entertainment with
Speaker 1: about world records. But I come from a time when
Speaker 1: the music was particularly wonderful. Now music is great today.
Speaker 1: I would there are kids out there falling in love
Speaker 1: right now to the music that's just being made at
Speaker 1: this moment, and they'll remember that all their lives. And
Speaker 1: it was a time for me when I knew that
Speaker 1: I could get a job. I was in a loving
Speaker 1: family with my brother and my sister, and it was
Speaker 1: a time of optimism under under and a commitment that
Speaker 1: you that another war like my parents had gone through
Speaker 1: would never happen again. So it was a safe, secure,
Speaker 1: optimistic world. And in that world there was wonderful music.
Speaker 1: That was our lives and we were living for love.
Speaker 1: I was living for love and girls and boys around us,
Speaker 1: and I had I had a wonderful school, and I
Speaker 1: lived not in luxury, but I lived in the English countryside,
Speaker 1: which is the most beautiful. And you know, you've only
Speaker 1: realized these things later, don't you, Bob, buttely I realized that.
Speaker 1: So it was. It was. It was really good, you know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of funny. I was laughing all the time,
Speaker 1: and I was living for love and that's it. And
Speaker 1: if if we were able to do that now, I
Speaker 1: think the world would be a better place. I'm full
Speaker 1: bringing love back. That's what I'm for, not against anything.
Speaker 1: I'm just for stuff. Okay, what did your parents do
Speaker 1: for a living in the country side that they were Well,
Speaker 1: we lived in Swindon, which is set in the west
Speaker 1: country of England. It's in the veil of the White Horse.
Speaker 1: My parents both taught in different schools. My father talked
Speaker 1: in quite a rough school. He taught when when I
Speaker 1: was a small boy, he taught Latin. It was just
Speaker 1: but he taught Latin, English and what was quaintly called
Speaker 1: divinity in those days. And my mother taught domestic science,
Speaker 1: and she taught in a girls school. My father taught
Speaker 1: in a boys school. My mother's taught in a girls school.
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to pass the eleven pross along
Speaker 1: with my brother the same, and we went to what
Speaker 1: was known as a grammar school. If you passed this
Speaker 1: exam when you were eleven, you went to a better
Speaker 1: last of school. It was a state exam. It wasn't
Speaker 1: you didn't have to pay anything for it. But that's
Speaker 1: the way it was then. And my brother and I
Speaker 1: went to a beautiful school. Yeah, but my parent, like
Speaker 1: I said, my parents English, English, literature, grammar, um, Latin
Speaker 1: disappeared after you know in the but then my mother
Speaker 1: domestic science. And you reference your brother and your sister.
Speaker 1: Where are you in the family, oldest, middle, youngest, Well,
Speaker 1: my brother died young, but he was in the Royal
Speaker 1: Navy and um, so we lost him. He was only
Speaker 1: forty one when he passed. But I'm the second son,
Speaker 1: and my sister is quite a few years younger than me,
Speaker 1: eight or nine years younger than me. And what kind
Speaker 1: of kid were you growing up? Were you the type
Speaker 1: who played sports and had a lot of friends? Were
Speaker 1: you more introvert? Did? Maybe every child is introverted? Um? Um?
Speaker 1: What was like? I don't know. I always had a
Speaker 1: lot of friends, always had a lot of fun laughs.
Speaker 1: Um fALS a lot with my brother of course, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's the way brothers are, um, jumping on each
Speaker 1: other and trying to get the better of each other.
Speaker 1: My brothers only was only about eighteen months older than me,
Speaker 1: so we were kind of the same. So we were
Speaker 1: punching each other all the time. Um. But I don't
Speaker 1: know what child, or what kind of childer was really,
Speaker 1: But I know that I loved music. I come from
Speaker 1: a family with a very strong faith, and so I
Speaker 1: loved the music of the English hymnal or hymn's ancient
Speaker 1: and modern? Was was was a hymn book in the
Speaker 1: anger look in church, and I love those. We used
Speaker 1: to sing them in in assembly every morning. Every morning
Speaker 1: in school you'd have an assembly and you'd sing those
Speaker 1: and sing them at church, and I got to know them,
Speaker 1: and I love those melodies and the things in Him's
Speaker 1: ancient modern so that it's only about four or five,
Speaker 1: and I can one of my earliest memories as loving
Speaker 1: this music and these and under hymns. So that's that's
Speaker 1: what I grew up with. At what point did you
Speaker 1: start playing a musical instrument? Oh? I My parents knew
Speaker 1: that I love music, so they sent me for like
Speaker 1: one or two piano lessons. I knew that wasn't gonna work.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get the mathematics. I was never good at mathematics,
Speaker 1: but so I couldn't get the mathematics of music is
Speaker 1: beyond me or just to differ us too lazy. But
Speaker 1: I could kind of play. My grandfather had a piano.
Speaker 1: Most houses after the war had a piano. They were
Speaker 1: subsidized form with the purpose of making us do home entertainment,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that was the post war government idea,
Speaker 1: and it was a good idea. So most families would
Speaker 1: have a piano that costs very very little, and my
Speaker 1: grandfather would very kindly just say I go in the
Speaker 1: front room and bash on the piano. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't care, so I was able to do that. But
Speaker 1: I knew that I wanted a guitar, so I pested
Speaker 1: and pested my parents when I was about eight, and
Speaker 1: they didn't buy me a guitar. They bought me a
Speaker 1: ukulele that didn't cost very much, so I could plain
Speaker 1: the uk I knew. I'd played the ukulele straight off.
Speaker 1: It's kind of easy, ding ding ding ding. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether you're a player, but that's so extitute, and
Speaker 1: the spacing is the same as the top four strings
Speaker 1: of a guitar. So it's like, yeah, okay, complay that.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to pester you some more for a guitar.
Speaker 1: So I got a guitar when I was ten, and
Speaker 1: then I was forming groups. Okay, what error was that?
Speaker 1: In popular music? What was on the radio when you
Speaker 1: were forming groups? Buddy Holly? Well, in fact, but Buddy
Speaker 1: died what fifty nine February fifty nine. But in England
Speaker 1: and in Great Britain, it's hard to explain how it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to convey how big Buddy what what a
Speaker 1: huge artist Buddy Holly was and a huge influence to people.
Speaker 1: So Buddy Holly Everly Brothers, thank goodness. And in Great
Speaker 1: Britain we had Cliff in the Shadows, who I love
Speaker 1: then and I love them now today. And then of
Speaker 1: course everything changed. But I was in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: and I was in London in six four. I was
Speaker 1: a professional musician then, because um, I got a job
Speaker 1: when I was about seventeen playing guitar for a rock
Speaker 1: and roll singer. But yeah, so Buddy Holly, the evil is.
Speaker 1: I was never an Elvis guy, you know. I my
Speaker 1: girlfriends always loved Elvis, but it was Buddy for me
Speaker 1: all the way. And a lot of English rock and
Speaker 1: roll heroes as well. So needles say in the US,
Speaker 1: when the Beatles broke really in January sixty four, it
Speaker 1: changed everything. I could delineate the ways, but I won't.
Speaker 1: They broke earlier sixty two in the UK. To what
Speaker 1: degree did the Beatles change the game? And what were
Speaker 1: you inspired? Were you a fan? You use that word again?
Speaker 1: Don't be inspired, don't you, Bob? You want the secret
Speaker 1: to of how to be inspired? No, there are no secrets. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think you can only open your mind, take a shower,
Speaker 1: go out and exercise the inspiration might happen, but if
Speaker 1: you try and a trick inspirit, inspiration can't do it.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, okay, So the Beatles. I remember in my
Speaker 1: hometown of Swindon hearing Love Me Do on the radio
Speaker 1: and I walked out of my house in Swindon and
Speaker 1: I remember this as clear as anything. I walked down
Speaker 1: the street after hearing Loved Me Do and know and
Speaker 1: I knew my life was going to be different. You anybody,
Speaker 1: any kid of that era, particularly a little herbit like
Speaker 1: me playing guitar, would know that something has happened, something
Speaker 1: has changed in the in the way the Beatles made
Speaker 1: that record, and it was monumental, you know, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wasn't disappointed that there's a strange thing. Also,
Speaker 1: I remember that just after Love Me Do, there was
Speaker 1: a guy on the radio. It's quite a nice old gentleman,
Speaker 1: but he was like in charge of what people thought
Speaker 1: about music, was on the BBC and he was on
Speaker 1: lots of programs. It all was wheeling in when they
Speaker 1: wanted to know something about music or discussed music or
Speaker 1: anything like that. And so after we'd as young people,
Speaker 1: we discovered the Beatles and they discovered us I saw
Speaker 1: this man on the on the on the television my
Speaker 1: girlfriend's house, and he and he was saying, my this,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Beatles that will never last, you know,
Speaker 1: I give them like a few weeks, didn't at this
Speaker 1: time next year, they'll be gone. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 1: you are so you are, so you're just your your
Speaker 1: that's it. There's no point in listening to you anymore
Speaker 1: because we all knew different and so what I We
Speaker 1: didn't need to tell us what we were listening to
Speaker 1: because it was so obvious. It was just brilliant. Your
Speaker 1: parents were educators. How did you they feel about your
Speaker 1: becoming a professional musician as opposed to going to university. Well,
Speaker 1: my parents were very enlightened people, almost maybe you'd say
Speaker 1: New age kind of people, and very very enlightened, and
Speaker 1: they were there. The idea was that we should do
Speaker 1: what we wanted to do. And they, of course, because
Speaker 1: they were teachers, they wanted all of us to get
Speaker 1: our school qualifications, so which they were called O levels
Speaker 1: jen Certificates of education under Grammar School. So as long
Speaker 1: as I got my five O levels, they were they
Speaker 1: were good with what I wanted to do. I got
Speaker 1: my phile velos and so you can do what you want.
Speaker 1: I worked in an office for about three months, but
Speaker 1: I was answering ads in the Melody Maker all the time.
Speaker 1: That's how I got my first Jake gig And who
Speaker 1: was there with and how did you work your way
Speaker 1: to Marty Wilde. Well, I was always playing in groups
Speaker 1: in Swindon ever since I was, like I said, about
Speaker 1: ten or eleven years old, because there were lots of
Speaker 1: groups at school. Swindon is a very lively music scene
Speaker 1: still is to this day, very vibrant and lots of
Speaker 1: good places to play. And so yeah, so I answered
Speaker 1: an ad. I was answering ads in the melody Maker
Speaker 1: for jobs. I used to have a job sex and
Speaker 1: situations vacant and so I am fired off a lot
Speaker 1: of replies to had very rarely got any replies. Some
Speaker 1: of them were from the military, because that you didn't
Speaker 1: know that they were going to be from the military. Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to the fourth Battalion, the fierce alerts. I would
Speaker 1: like to come up and but sometimes, but this one
Speaker 1: time I got a reply. I think I think the
Speaker 1: thing it said named artists seeks guitar player. And I
Speaker 1: answered it and I got I gotta reply and I
Speaker 1: went up to a house. I went up on the
Speaker 1: train to a house in East London, nice part of
Speaker 1: East London called black Heath, and Maulti Wilde opened the
Speaker 1: door and it was like, whoa, that's Mattie. Why I
Speaker 1: knew who it was and I did a little audition
Speaker 1: and I got the job. That was it. How long
Speaker 1: did you work from Marty? And were you content or
Speaker 1: were you saying, well, I'm doing this now, but there's
Speaker 1: something bigger for me personally, every teenager he thinks, even
Speaker 1: the moody blues, I think you're every young person thinks
Speaker 1: I'm doing this now, but maybe there's something else. I
Speaker 1: still do it now. I think I'm doing this now
Speaker 1: with Bob. Maybe there's something else though, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: this is going to lead to something that's facetious. I
Speaker 1: don't mean that, but there's always something. But in truth,
Speaker 1: I learned so much from Marty. He was my hero
Speaker 1: and he still is my hero to this day, and
Speaker 1: he taught me some valuable things. Really, he was writing
Speaker 1: his own material and he really said that surviving this business,
Speaker 1: you have to create an identity, and that means writing
Speaker 1: your own material. Just cover versions is never going to
Speaker 1: do it for you, And so I started writing right then.
Speaker 1: But I knew also that Marty and Joyce because we
Speaker 1: were like a little trio and Mary, Marty's wife. Joyce
Speaker 1: has a gorgeous voice. She was one of a group
Speaker 1: of girl called the Vernon Girls Vernon's Girls in Liverpool
Speaker 1: that some English people would know about and remember fondly.
Speaker 1: And but they didn't need me. They didn't need me.
Speaker 1: And so I started writing and kind of saw myself
Speaker 1: as a bit of a songwriter, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going to be. That's I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of songs, you know, here make make demos and stuff.
Speaker 1: And that's also how I got to the Moody Blues
Speaker 1: with my own songs, my own demos. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us about how you switch from Marty to the Moody Blues, Well,
Speaker 1: I did. I did nothing for you for quite for
Speaker 1: a few months, you know, and that I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: what kind of thing that I was wanted to do, really,
Speaker 1: so I did a few folk clubs and things. I
Speaker 1: had a nice twelve string acoustic guitar and um I
Speaker 1: sent off to another advertisement, and the many maker situations vacant,
Speaker 1: and it was for because I knew somebody in Eric
Speaker 1: Burdon's office and he was looking for another guitar player,
Speaker 1: and I thought, maybe, you know, it's like Eric's life
Speaker 1: is changing. I'll send him some of my songs. So
Speaker 1: I sent him up my demos. I never heard anything
Speaker 1: from Eric except about three years later when he said, hey, Justin,
Speaker 1: and I said, your stuff to like. But he gave
Speaker 1: my stuff to like Pinder of the Moody Blues and
Speaker 1: that it uh yeah, and it might liked it. And Mike,
Speaker 1: Mike called me one day and and I came up
Speaker 1: to London, met Mike and with we thought great, Mike
Speaker 1: wants to write it, wants to move the Moodies into
Speaker 1: a different kind of space, away from cover versions, and
Speaker 1: it seemed like a good fit. And none of us
Speaker 1: had anything. In fact, I had more than anybody else
Speaker 1: because I had an amplifier out of Fox, a C
Speaker 1: thirty amplifier, so I was well ahead. You know. Okay,
Speaker 1: the Moodies had had a hit with Denny Lane, who
Speaker 1: had left the group, and you're saying when he left,
Speaker 1: they still to what situation were they in and were
Speaker 1: you worried about joining a sinking ship. Oh, that's the
Speaker 1: that's a that's rather horrid. Say that again, I was
Speaker 1: was I worried about joining a sinking ship? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is when you have a career as a musician,
Speaker 1: unlike being a businessperson. You get one shot. Okay, so
Speaker 1: people are always evaluating opportunities. So I wasn't there. You're
Speaker 1: the only person who was there. In the back of
Speaker 1: your mind, you might have said, well, these guys had
Speaker 1: a hit under this name, maybe there's not as big
Speaker 1: a future as something else. Or did he just feel
Speaker 1: right and said, okay, I'm gonna play this out. Oh
Speaker 1: I wish there was a plan to everything. I wish
Speaker 1: I could give give you. I wish I could tell
Speaker 1: you there was a plan to the whole thing. There wasn't.
Speaker 1: Nobody had anything. Denny had left. Yes, the group was
Speaker 1: put together by a group of money men who put
Speaker 1: people from different groups together around Denny Cordell, who had
Speaker 1: this the song Go Now, which was a wonderful song
Speaker 1: by Bertie Banks sung by Bessie Banks, actually the original record,
Speaker 1: and everybody knew it was great, and the Denny it
Speaker 1: had gone up and down, and then Denny left and
Speaker 1: Clint Warwick left the original bass player as well left
Speaker 1: the group, and they were both I think they were
Speaker 1: both actually good at rhythm and blues. Those rhythm and
Speaker 1: blues kind of covered Redelli had the perfect voice for that.
Speaker 1: Like I said before, Mike wanted to just change things
Speaker 1: and move forward, and I think Graham did as well
Speaker 1: in the band. And um, that's why you know, to
Speaker 1: come back to your your idea of of why it
Speaker 1: would Nobody had anything, Like I said, I had a box,
Speaker 1: a c thamp, So what what's the point of It's like,
Speaker 1: having a philosophy of life doesn't really matter when you're
Speaker 1: just in a van looking to earn the price of
Speaker 1: gas at a a doing a gig. You can have
Speaker 1: all the philosophy and about life and what you want
Speaker 1: to be and as much as you like, but you're
Speaker 1: just sitting in a van and you're allowed to have
Speaker 1: as many opinions as you want. It only matters later
Speaker 1: when you've kind of got stuff. So, um, you know what,
Speaker 1: there was a whole lot of nothing for us, for
Speaker 1: all of us, So I don't think there was any
Speaker 1: ship to kind of sync in that way. What we
Speaker 1: did have was was an agent but but there's some
Speaker 1: some truth in what you say or you remind me
Speaker 1: now really, because there was a promoter that was going
Speaker 1: to give us like half a dozen gigs or something.
Speaker 1: So so that was good. Okay, you're with the band,
Speaker 1: they record one of your songs, you have a mild hit,
Speaker 1: and then you start doing Days of Future Past. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of history written. What is the truth
Speaker 1: about how that album came together? Well? It maybe it
Speaker 1: depends who you are and what you know. Everybody has
Speaker 1: a different perspective. I'm sure the people behind your curtains there,
Speaker 1: if you open the curtains and there was something happened outside,
Speaker 1: a few other people from looking from different houses would
Speaker 1: have a different idea of what happened. But I can
Speaker 1: tell you what I what happened to me and what
Speaker 1: what happened around me was that um there was We
Speaker 1: actually had a debt to Decca, and Decca were a
Speaker 1: wonderful recording company run by elderly gentlemen and with the
Speaker 1: second largest classical catalog in the world. Uh, Josha Gramophone
Speaker 1: had the biggest, but Decca, as you probably know, still
Speaker 1: to this day, has a magnificent classical catalog and they
Speaker 1: also made radar systems, and they had a consumer division,
Speaker 1: and we'd made a couple of records for them, and
Speaker 1: um Gus Studgeon actually was engineer on Flymy High, which
Speaker 1: I think was the song you referenced before, but but
Speaker 1: um that was the one that only but we recorded
Speaker 1: quite a few songs before Days of Future Past, but
Speaker 1: nobody kind of noticed. But and then Tony Clark was
Speaker 1: assigned to us as a man called Tony Clark record producer,
Speaker 1: as a in house producer for Decca, and they kind
Speaker 1: of had a call on us because we owed them
Speaker 1: some money that we had a debt to them, and
Speaker 1: they approached us a lovely man called Hu Mendel, one
Speaker 1: of the eedulderly gentleman, elegant, olderly gentleman at Decca, and
Speaker 1: proposed that we would make a demonstration record to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that stereo could be as interesting for rock and roll
Speaker 1: as classical music. Because, like I said, they had the
Speaker 1: biggest classical catalog, second biggest classical catalog, and they had
Speaker 1: a consumer division, which meant that they had record, um
Speaker 1: you know, the radiograms and stuff, and they were trying
Speaker 1: to sell stereo units and they wanted that they had
Speaker 1: quite a lot of rock and roll up well they
Speaker 1: have the Stones actually, you know, and some other really nice,
Speaker 1: nice um pop and rock acts and they had us,
Speaker 1: so they they Humental proposed this idea of making a
Speaker 1: demonstration record to demonstrate stereo could be as interesting for
Speaker 1: rock and roll as it was for classical music, and
Speaker 1: then they assigned so we said yes, yeah, sure, and
Speaker 1: we'd already started righting. Nights was already actually already recorded,
Speaker 1: and we recorded Nights in White Satin for the BBC
Speaker 1: about six months before it was ever recorded for Days
Speaker 1: in Future part. But we were doing a stage show
Speaker 1: that included some of these songs. There was a song
Speaker 1: called Another Morning that we were doing one of rays songs,
Speaker 1: and a song called Dawn is a Feeling that Mike
Speaker 1: asked me to sing and I loved It's such a
Speaker 1: lovely song. And we were doing this stuff on stage,
Speaker 1: and then he met that they assigned another independent product
Speaker 1: man called Michael, Michael Dacobarti, who is a lovely man,
Speaker 1: very posh, public school and m he really had this
Speaker 1: idea of trying to make it some kind of concept
Speaker 1: on the concept that they proposed was that we should
Speaker 1: make a kind of rock version of Divor Jack two
Speaker 1: juxtaposition against the real Divor Jack. And they already had
Speaker 1: Peter Knight, one of the greatest romantic string arrangers in
Speaker 1: the world, under contract to them. They thought Peter Knight
Speaker 1: could could do it if we could do some rock
Speaker 1: versions of stuff from the New World Symphony, and then
Speaker 1: Peter Knight would play the New World Symphony and we'd
Speaker 1: see that almost rock and roll. It's quite nice in
Speaker 1: stereo going to Classgow and Peter Knight came to see
Speaker 1: us at the one hundred Club in Oxford Street before
Speaker 1: this project was started, and I remember him saying, I
Speaker 1: don't think you boys are ever gonna get the rock
Speaker 1: version of Divor Jack together, but your stuff is great.
Speaker 1: What about if we did it the other way around?
Speaker 1: And Hu Mentel and Michael Jacob Barclay kind of went
Speaker 1: along with this idea. And it was a sort of
Speaker 1: secret from the chairman and the board at Decca because
Speaker 1: they were expecting a rock version of Divor Jack. But
Speaker 1: there was Hu Mendel and Michael Dacob Barclay saying that
Speaker 1: we could have a couple of days studio time to
Speaker 1: put our stuff down and Peter Knight would sketch out
Speaker 1: orchestral arrangements based on our themes, and that's what we did.
Speaker 1: We recorded our songs, about ten songs, you know, in
Speaker 1: a in a day or so a couple of days.
Speaker 1: And then at the in the weekend in the studio,
Speaker 1: Peter Knight came in with the orchestra that didn't have
Speaker 1: a name. I think somebody in our band thought up
Speaker 1: the name the Festival Orchestra because it sounded good. There
Speaker 1: isn't a festival orchestra. It just sounds nice, but you
Speaker 1: know how that goes, that kind of stuff, and that's
Speaker 1: they recorded the themes of Days of Future Past. He
Speaker 1: did all his bits. I was the only one that
Speaker 1: came to the studio. I wasn't allowed in the control
Speaker 1: room because these were the days when you weren't invited
Speaker 1: into the control room. The engineer had a white lab coat,
Speaker 1: the tape operator had a brown lapcoat. A decker in
Speaker 1: sixty seven, and they played it back. They mixed it
Speaker 1: all together, segue between our bits and the orchestra bits,
Speaker 1: and they played it back to us. They invited us
Speaker 1: around to the studio and then not into the control
Speaker 1: room but down on the studio floor. They played it
Speaker 1: back on a couple of big Tannoi speakers and we thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's great. Nice, it's good stereo demonstration record. Nobody will
Speaker 1: ever hear it, but it's cutting a nice And that
Speaker 1: was that. And then Nights in White Satin came out
Speaker 1: to a lot of resistance because a lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't want to. We didn't know, We didn't. I can't
Speaker 1: say that we were fully it was anything to do
Speaker 1: with us. We didn't have any power or any influence.
Speaker 1: It's just these things happened, and Nights came out, and
Speaker 1: there was another interesting thing that happened. Can I ramble
Speaker 1: on a bit more? Absolutely? Okay, So so night that,
Speaker 1: so Days of Future Pass came out, I think it
Speaker 1: was November eventually came out, and Nights had come out.
Speaker 1: Some people just in the in the promo department story.
Speaker 1: You'll never there was a lot of resistance to it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't our idea, but Nights out. It was just
Speaker 1: I think it was Hu Mental who one of the
Speaker 1: lovely gentle gentlemen from Decca who really believed in it.
Speaker 1: But of course the pluggers all said, oh, it's four
Speaker 1: minutes long. It's like slow, no, you never get it
Speaker 1: on the radio, and they were right, we didn't, but
Speaker 1: we came. There was a song festival down in the
Speaker 1: south of France and Can called mead him. And it
Speaker 1: was in the days when song first was used to
Speaker 1: actually play something. It used to have artists on and
Speaker 1: it was about songs, and then now it's about doing business,
Speaker 1: you know, with stuff around the world. And we went
Speaker 1: down to Medham in January and we we were part
Speaker 1: of the live show and the Supremes were due to
Speaker 1: fly in and play live. Now there was union rules
Speaker 1: that you could only go on TV if you played live,
Speaker 1: not miming. Now everybody else except us and long John
Speaker 1: Baudrey were miming. We were actually playing live. The Supremes
Speaker 1: didn't turn up, their flight was late. They didn't turn
Speaker 1: up in time to do the live Eurovision thing on
Speaker 1: for medium across Europe. We went on, played a couple
Speaker 1: of songs and played nights. The next day in France,
Speaker 1: it was like whoa, what what's happened? Set Extra and
Speaker 1: Moody Blues. That does take you know, and suddenly that
Speaker 1: this whole the journey was born with Knights in White
Speaker 1: Satin was remarkable. Star did here in France. In America,
Speaker 1: the first go round. Tuesday Afternoon was bigger. Tuesday Afternoon
Speaker 1: was a hit. How did you write both Tuesday Afternoon
Speaker 1: in Knights and White, Sam, How did I write them? Yes? Well,
Speaker 1: tues Tuesday Afternoon was put out as a single by
Speaker 1: London Records in UM in the US because clearly, like
Speaker 1: the rest of the promo people, they didn't think nights
Speaker 1: at any legs at all. So but Tuesday Afternoon kind
Speaker 1: of too and a half minutes bang, you know it's over.
Speaker 1: And so Tuesday Afternoon UM once Humanel and Michael Jacob
Speaker 1: Barclay Graham our drama and all of us in the
Speaker 1: group had had decided on this conspiracy of of doing
Speaker 1: our own stuff and Peter Night and and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, we knew it was going to be like
Speaker 1: the story of a day in the life of one guy.
Speaker 1: And so I, I said, a couple of days before
Speaker 1: this session, I'm I bags the afternoon. Ray had the morning,
Speaker 1: John had lunch time, Mike had dawn you know, a sunset,
Speaker 1: and I had nights. It just all seemed to kind
Speaker 1: of fit together, you know, Hang on a minute, you've
Speaker 1: got I we've been doing Dawn and we've been doing
Speaker 1: ray Song another morning owned I've got nights. It's it's
Speaker 1: like a perfect kind of thing. So I said, I
Speaker 1: want the afternoon. Just a couple of days before we
Speaker 1: read So I just went down to my parents place
Speaker 1: in Wiltshire. I got my roles string guitar, but my
Speaker 1: guitar out and quite difficult to play that or rolls
Speaker 1: string and stating a stat in a field smoked to
Speaker 1: join and them Tuesday afternoon. Apologies to the the the police.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like busting me sixty years. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Days the Future Past is an interesting album. It
Speaker 1: became more successful. It's time went on the records became
Speaker 1: hits on the chart once again. What was the thought
Speaker 1: now that the album was done, was if you'd as
Speaker 1: this success in the band and what was the inspiration?
Speaker 1: How did you decide to move forward in search of
Speaker 1: the lost court. Well that's assuming that we could. But
Speaker 1: we were had enough influence to move these things forward,
Speaker 1: but we were uh, like I said before, we didn't
Speaker 1: have anything. So it wasn't We'd like to have done
Speaker 1: a lot of things, but there was no plan. But
Speaker 1: I think that Decca had seen that Days of Future passed.
Speaker 1: There was something there. Humantal was loved it forever. You know,
Speaker 1: I loved him as a as a as a man,
Speaker 1: as an elderly man, and he'll be in my memory
Speaker 1: as the sweetest person that I ever knew from that period.
Speaker 1: And he stuck with it. He stuck with it against
Speaker 1: the board of Decca, and it started to be picked
Speaker 1: up by FM radio in America Days of Future past,
Speaker 1: and particularly of course Tuesday afternoon and nights and another
Speaker 1: morning and all of these kind of things, and they
Speaker 1: started to get on the radio. FM radio was needed
Speaker 1: things that were recorded well in stereo. That sadly Abbey Road,
Speaker 1: the studio just down the road from Broaderst Gardens where
Speaker 1: the Decca studio was, we're recording things and I've got
Speaker 1: no idea why George Martin let this go. But you
Speaker 1: had drums on the left, vocals on the right. It
Speaker 1: was not that kind of stereo, whereas everything at Decca
Speaker 1: was done in a kind of cinematic stereo spread which
Speaker 1: just sounded beautiful. When FM radio came along, and drums
Speaker 1: on the left, vocals on the right didn't sound that great.
Speaker 1: It's good in mona hoo, but not in stereo. So
Speaker 1: it just started to break. And then London Records were
Speaker 1: telling the elderly gentleman in England, you know, there's something
Speaker 1: happening here. And then they asked us to go back
Speaker 1: in the studio and you know, well do whatever you want,
Speaker 1: just give us some more songs. Kind of thing. That
Speaker 1: was Decca's attitude. And the chairman of Decca came to
Speaker 1: visit us, I think on about our third or fourth
Speaker 1: album and he came down and you never came to
Speaker 1: the studio. He just was in this lovely office on
Speaker 1: the albert Embankment in London. But he came to the
Speaker 1: student you know, and all the staff were like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it's Sir Edward Lewis and he and he came into
Speaker 1: us stoned Herberts studying lying around in the studio and
Speaker 1: he said, I don't know what you boys are doing,
Speaker 1: but people seem to love it, so just carry on.
Speaker 1: And we we had we had studio time, which was
Speaker 1: like a gold treasure. And so to what degree was
Speaker 1: the melotron a leap forward for the band, because certainly
Speaker 1: the melotron was used on Strawberry fields forever, but the
Speaker 1: Moody Blues were seen as the biggest users of the melotron.
Speaker 1: Well that's uh, thank well, thank you for that. Because
Speaker 1: it's an interest, it's it enables me to point out
Speaker 1: that Mike Pinder actually worked for the company Melotronics, that
Speaker 1: had invented this instrument called the melotron. The melotron was
Speaker 1: really a sound effects instrument, really made for radio, so
Speaker 1: it had it was made up of sound. You pressed
Speaker 1: the key and there was the sound of a sort
Speaker 1: of a cockerel in the morning, and a train rushing
Speaker 1: through a tunnel, and springs going wing and dogs barking,
Speaker 1: and that was of what the melotron and was about.
Speaker 1: But there was um a little bits of it that
Speaker 1: were kind of orchestral strings and a kind of organy
Speaker 1: and if you Mike decided that he was we we
Speaker 1: went up to this place club in the Midlands, he
Speaker 1: and I and somebody else in the band, I don't
Speaker 1: know who it was, and we bought this old melotron
Speaker 1: that they had stuck in a corner for about twenty pounds.
Speaker 1: When we brought it back to London, Mike fiddled with
Speaker 1: it and he duplicated all the parts that sounded orchestral,
Speaker 1: so there was a double manual and then he could
Speaker 1: roll his fingers over the melotron and it gave this
Speaker 1: orchestral sound. And to get back to your point, and
Speaker 1: sorry for rambling, but the it made my songs work
Speaker 1: the that orchestral sound instead of vox continental organ or
Speaker 1: piano or something like that. This, the meltron sound made
Speaker 1: the songs work. That and the voices and the Decca
Speaker 1: echoes that they had at the time echo chambers were
Speaker 1: made it work okay. On the album In Search of
Speaker 1: the Loss Chord, you had had the two most successful
Speaker 1: tracks on these of Future Past, but you didn't have
Speaker 1: the majority of tracks by a long shot on In
Speaker 1: Search of the Lost Card? Was that just democracy? Were
Speaker 1: you happy about that? What went on there? I don't
Speaker 1: think I was just democracy. You know, we had a
Speaker 1: couple of songs each everybody had their go and that
Speaker 1: was That's what it was like in a group. You know,
Speaker 1: it's um. Everybody has the same kind of say. Everybody's
Speaker 1: voice is just as valid as as somebody else's. I
Speaker 1: wish Mike could had been given more because he was
Speaker 1: just a superb writer and a great guitar player as
Speaker 1: well as a good keyboard player. But that that was
Speaker 1: just that's only in hindsight. Now, Okay, the world was
Speaker 1: shifting and the moody Blues were part of it. We're
Speaker 1: on a couple of these next albums. There was not
Speaker 1: some big hit like Tuesday Afternoon, but the albums were
Speaker 1: embraced strongly. What was the view like from within the band? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think we were ever looking to have a
Speaker 1: hit single. I think I might have been after Nights
Speaker 1: and we recorded a couple of things, but they weren't
Speaker 1: released until maybe ten years later. But um, I think
Speaker 1: we were just happy with this. Hey FM radio, we're good.
Speaker 1: We've been asked to America by Bill Graham to come
Speaker 1: over for He offered us a couple of gigs that
Speaker 1: we stayed and we were supporting lots of other people.
Speaker 1: We were kind of, uh, content with what we were.
Speaker 1: We weren't part of any kind of trend or fashion,
Speaker 1: and Decca weren't pressing us to get a hit single.
Speaker 1: They liked the albums in the LP format, They liked
Speaker 1: their stereo spread and their cinematic kind of idea of
Speaker 1: how recording should be. So that I don't think we
Speaker 1: were worried about that. No. In Search of the Lost
Speaker 1: Chord has a huge called following. How does on the
Speaker 1: Threshold of a Dream get made? Oh? I think Threshold
Speaker 1: of a Dream was the happiest and the nicest and
Speaker 1: the most beauty, a full thing because I think there
Speaker 1: was a tension there that we didn't know it was
Speaker 1: going to work days of future past. It's like, whoa,
Speaker 1: Actually people have heard it. We never thought anybody would
Speaker 1: ever hear it, but people heard it and liked it.
Speaker 1: Then we had to go back and make In Search
Speaker 1: of the Lost Chord. That's when the record companies, you know,
Speaker 1: are like, um, yeah, I've got to come up with something.
Speaker 1: So I loved In Search of the Last Chord and
Speaker 1: Threshold of a Dream was the first time that we
Speaker 1: ever felt comfortable actually people really kind of like what
Speaker 1: we're doing. And it was the loveliest of album. And
Speaker 1: we'd found Phil Travers the cover of a sleeve artist
Speaker 1: and he was a big influence as well. You know,
Speaker 1: he'd start to paint halfway through the album. He'd come
Speaker 1: into the control room and listen to it and sketch
Speaker 1: out ideas and it was all one. It was all
Speaker 1: one kind of family of creating stuff off that was
Speaker 1: that was very very nice, and I think it all
Speaker 1: came together on the Threshold of a Dream. It's a
Speaker 1: love it's a lovely album and it's my favorite. And
Speaker 1: on the Threshold of a Dream there was not only
Speaker 1: was it a gatefold cover, there was a huge multi
Speaker 1: page insert of the lyrics. Now, did you have to
Speaker 1: fight with the label or did in that you wanted
Speaker 1: this extensive package or did they charge it to you?
Speaker 1: What went on there? Um? Well, you clearly you clearly
Speaker 1: don't know about that. You wouldn't have phrased it the
Speaker 1: way you did pay people. But um, yes, it was
Speaker 1: an expensive thing that we were doing and to to
Speaker 1: to request that Decca put that gatefold and a book
Speaker 1: of lyrics in it as well, with all designed by
Speaker 1: Phil Travis. So um, I can't say there was conflict
Speaker 1: with the with the with the label, but we realized
Speaker 1: that there was always there was going to be this
Speaker 1: difficulty about sleeves, uh, and we should work towards kind
Speaker 1: of trying to resolve that. Really, Yeah, which Threshold of
Speaker 1: a Dream brought it all into focus, that idea. Well,
Speaker 1: the next album to our Children's Children's Children comes out
Speaker 1: on your own imprint. Threshold. How did Threshold come to be? Um?
Speaker 1: The Threshold was part of It was part of Decca,
Speaker 1: and Threshold gave us one thing. It gave us control
Speaker 1: over those sleeves and what was to be released, and
Speaker 1: that was our idea of yes, just getting control over
Speaker 1: that stuff, and Decca were quite happy that we had that.
Speaker 1: It was it changed the royalty status. Are royalty was
Speaker 1: getting a little better at every time, so um that
Speaker 1: they could afford to do that and have a negotiation
Speaker 1: with us about that and then we would be responsible
Speaker 1: for the sleeves. And actually I don't think, um, what
Speaker 1: which which album was it after Threshold? It was Children's Children?
Speaker 1: Was it correct? So I don't think it was a
Speaker 1: gatefold that I don't think there was a lyrics or
Speaker 1: maybe there was inside it was an insert that went
Speaker 1: into the double gatefold. Because we love sleeves and I
Speaker 1: love sleep. It's just absolutely great that whole thing about
Speaker 1: making sleeves and enjoyed every moment of that. So I
Speaker 1: think it was to do with trying to get give
Speaker 1: us control Threshold, which which it did do. It gave
Speaker 1: us control over the sleeves and what we could do
Speaker 1: within a royalty. It was an agreement that we would
Speaker 1: take care of that. But also acts were signed to threshold.
Speaker 1: The one that got the most traction in America was
Speaker 1: trapeeze Ah was in charge of that. And how interested
Speaker 1: in that were you? You mean the business of it, yes,
Speaker 1: the business of saying, let's build our own little empire here,
Speaker 1: will sign acts will make them a hit? Which acts
Speaker 1: to sign? Was that something you were interested in or
Speaker 1: somebody else did that? So you that's that's an assumption
Speaker 1: that we're going to build our own little empire here.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody thought that. Um. I think it
Speaker 1: was just a question of listen, Deca are going to
Speaker 1: give us some studio time. What they had was studio time,
Speaker 1: fantastic studios, and they were going to give a studio time.
Speaker 1: So let's We knew lots of musicians around London and
Speaker 1: around England that we thought really should be making it,
Speaker 1: and so it was our chance to record those albums.
Speaker 1: Those those people are. There was a young boy that
Speaker 1: I knew that I had seen at a party, because
Speaker 1: that there's the days when you just go went to
Speaker 1: other people's apartments with your records and stuff. And I'd
Speaker 1: seen Time and sitting in a corner this boy called
Speaker 1: Time and T T I M O N. And he's
Speaker 1: such a lovely player and such such a lovely voice,
Speaker 1: and you think, it's studio time. Let's let's just record it,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I think that was a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff with Threshold. It was we were just
Speaker 1: enjoying the fact that we had studio time, we could
Speaker 1: call upon an engineer to record this these things. And
Speaker 1: that's as far as it went on. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: there was any empire building ideas there, but it was
Speaker 1: a it was a nice idea. It's a nice idea
Speaker 1: to income that you bring other musicians in. And what
Speaker 1: was the genesis of to our Children's Children's children first
Speaker 1: came up? Who came up with the name? Um? I
Speaker 1: think that a couple of these things are curiously enough,
Speaker 1: I think from the Bible. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I think Children's Children might even be there's a verse
Speaker 1: in the in the Bible. I don't know whether it's
Speaker 1: to our children's children's children, but it might be. The
Speaker 1: keys of the Kingdom certainly is with them, Peter, I think,
Speaker 1: But who our Lord gave the keys of the Kingdom too.
Speaker 1: But so at the the the the idea of to
Speaker 1: our Children's Children was really from Tony Clark, our producer.
Speaker 1: It was an album that he really wanted to make,
Speaker 1: and um yes, and that that was that was his thing,
Speaker 1: and it's out of space, moon rockets, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Tony Tony Clark was such a wonderful combination with us
Speaker 1: staff producer from Decca, and then became our friend and
Speaker 1: one of the kind of inner circle. But this was
Speaker 1: always I would sometimes be asked up into the control
Speaker 1: room and he and he described what he wanted out
Speaker 1: of a track, say that me or one of the
Speaker 1: boys had written, and he would describe it like so,
Speaker 1: justin what I wanted you, you can see the sun
Speaker 1: coming up in the morning, and as the sun rises
Speaker 1: behind you, there's there's a cool wind is blowing across
Speaker 1: the grass. But in front of you you can see
Speaker 1: some trees and the clouds are parting as the sun rises,
Speaker 1: and there's the most gentle kind of touch on your face.
Speaker 1: And that's how it and he'd described it in these
Speaker 1: wonderful cinematic terms, and then I'd go down the steps
Speaker 1: from the control room, and the other guys will say,
Speaker 1: what what did he say? And I said to E
Speaker 1: A and C sharp minor, Oh yeah, right great, I'm good, okay.
Speaker 1: One of the songs on that albums. I never thought
Speaker 1: I'd live to be a hundred and when you're in
Speaker 1: your when you're in twenties, hundreds is far off. Now
Speaker 1: people live to a hundred. Do you still sing that song?
Speaker 1: And what do you think about it? With a different
Speaker 1: viewpoint from this so close to the number, I haven't.
Speaker 1: I haven't even heard that song mentioned for fifty years.
Speaker 1: It's a cute little song. I think I did it.
Speaker 1: I think it appears twice on the album I know that.
Speaker 1: Tony I was like, I don't think there's anything on
Speaker 1: it except biddy guitar and some echo chamber. I don't
Speaker 1: have any feelings about it. It's just an interesting idea
Speaker 1: about somebody something shooting through space. I never thought I'd
Speaker 1: live to be a million. So you have three albums
Speaker 1: in a row that become more and more successful commercially,
Speaker 1: but there's not a hit single on any of them.
Speaker 1: Was everything going along swimmingly in the band or was
Speaker 1: there a thought that we need to be bigger? Or
Speaker 1: want to be bigger. No. I I wish I could
Speaker 1: tell you that there was some kind of plan and
Speaker 1: some kind of proposal, but I don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think those kind of plans and proposals always came
Speaker 1: from outside of the group. But fortunately with the album
Speaker 1: that we're probably that you're clearly leading to is called
Speaker 1: question of Balance than I had. I had a song
Speaker 1: called Question that was recorded quite some time before the album,
Speaker 1: and Decker put it out within like a two weeks
Speaker 1: of us recording it, and it was a hit. Was
Speaker 1: it fantastic song called Question? And to what degree did
Speaker 1: the fact that it hit change your life or the
Speaker 1: BMS trajectory? Well, I think it probably. I think it
Speaker 1: probably did change our lives insomuch as that it put
Speaker 1: us on television and um the the I think the
Speaker 1: most memorable time for that from me was we played
Speaker 1: at the Isle of Wight Festival in and it was
Speaker 1: a festival that the security broke down, the fences came down,
Speaker 1: became a free fenced festival. It was kind of overrun
Speaker 1: and it got quite alarming and a lot of groups.
Speaker 1: Somebody jumped on stage when Joreny Mitchell was doing her
Speaker 1: thing and bang the mic into her mouth and her
Speaker 1: poor journey her like her lip was bleeding, and that
Speaker 1: I remember. But Richie Havens and I backstage and knew
Speaker 1: Richie and then we were talking about, you know, how
Speaker 1: how is this kind of thing going to calm down?
Speaker 1: The security people had just kind of left and everything
Speaker 1: that it was becoming a massive free festival, and we
Speaker 1: were the whole We were supposed to go on like
Speaker 1: at lunchtime, and of course, like these festivals go, everything
Speaker 1: was late. We went on at sunset and we played Question,
Speaker 1: which had just become a hit, and the whole place
Speaker 1: went romped and everything came down to a calm, serene
Speaker 1: It's like, oh I love this song and it's great,
Speaker 1: and every the whole sort of vibe changed and it
Speaker 1: was an interesting time with that question, and I think
Speaker 1: it made a big impression here in the in Europe
Speaker 1: and in the UK. That's on. We were only kept off,
Speaker 1: We only kept off number one, but by the BBC,
Speaker 1: who had a song out with their football team. I
Speaker 1: think it was called back Home and there was a
Speaker 1: BBC record and they that they had the chart, of course,
Speaker 1: the BBC, and they kept us off number one. We
Speaker 1: were always we were number two for a while and
Speaker 1: you have this great success. Does it change your everyday life? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know change our everyday life that this. Remember
Speaker 1: when I said before that you can have a philosophy
Speaker 1: of life, and when you're going up and down the
Speaker 1: motorway in a van with with nothing and you're just
Speaker 1: living with your girlfriend, you know that your philosophy of
Speaker 1: life doesn't mean anything. But as soon as you start
Speaker 1: to have stuff around you, then you have to kind
Speaker 1: of live out your philosophy. And sometimes that is very different.
Speaker 1: It's okay when you're in a van for somebody to
Speaker 1: be this kind of over there on one side of
Speaker 1: the the spectrum philosophically and you on the other doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: But when you've got stuff family and the house and possessions,
Speaker 1: it kind of matters. So you start to have to
Speaker 1: live that. And I think that was after that. The
Speaker 1: early seventies was the time when you could see the
Speaker 1: the difference in lifestyles and priorities and what people in
Speaker 1: the band really wanted out of their own lives and
Speaker 1: what did you want? Oh um, what did I want?
Speaker 1: I wanted to continue staying in bed in the morning
Speaker 1: playing the guitar. I don't know. I just want to
Speaker 1: make your way in the world and help play music
Speaker 1: and help people hear it and appreciate it. I think
Speaker 1: that's what I wanted, Okay. In this era, especially in England,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of managers who call the shots,
Speaker 1: and we hear stories relevant of the money, We hear
Speaker 1: stories of the main interesting I've booked this tour, you
Speaker 1: have to get back out there. Were you in control
Speaker 1: or were you feeling the whip of either the record
Speaker 1: company or a manager or an agent. No, we never
Speaker 1: did have a manager or an agent, and we never
Speaker 1: did have We had a lovely agent actually no, I'd
Speaker 1: tell her like called Colin Berlin, who was my agent
Speaker 1: just before I joined the Moodies, and we didn't have
Speaker 1: an agent when I joined, and I suggested working with Colin,
Speaker 1: and Colin was absolutely great. Got are some great gigs.
Speaker 1: And then Colin's life changed and he sort of stepped aside,
Speaker 1: and we had a good agent in the US and
Speaker 1: then but we were playing a lot of big places
Speaker 1: in the you know, big arenas in the US, and
Speaker 1: I think there was occasions when I thought I wonder
Speaker 1: who was getting paid for this. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: like twelve thousand people in here, and I know how
Speaker 1: much we're getting, So I wonder who's getting paid. And
Speaker 1: about that time, I suppose about seventy one, so it
Speaker 1: will be every good boy. I suppose that kind of era. Um.
Speaker 1: We met Jerry Weintrobe and Michael Jerry Weintrobe who some
Speaker 1: people might have heard about. And Jerry came to see us,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to. He had an artist called John
Speaker 1: Denver and he could see us playing these venues and
Speaker 1: he wanted to have John Denver open for us because
Speaker 1: we were always having acoustic artists opening for us. Once
Speaker 1: we've become a headliner, we didn't want another group setting
Speaker 1: up in front of our stuff, so acoustic artists would
Speaker 1: be great. And so Jerry's jested John Denver and we did.
Speaker 1: We he did a tour of the UK with us.
Speaker 1: But then Jerry really came to us and he pointed
Speaker 1: out that we weren't exactly being paid for this stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, we were just going through the motions with
Speaker 1: an agent and who also wasn't getting but he was
Speaker 1: still on the agent, only getting his temper cent or
Speaker 1: whatever it was, and he had a different idea of
Speaker 1: way of touring and a way of looking at the business.
Speaker 1: And I think that changed things touring wise for us.
Speaker 1: And then we became part. I always feel that we
Speaker 1: became part of Jerry Wintrobe's movie of his life somehow,
Speaker 1: because it's larger than life character. Wonderful to be part
Speaker 1: of the movie of his life. As far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: it is absolutely brilliant, and he took us on a
Speaker 1: wonderful ride and changed things for us. Okay, the Every
Speaker 1: Good Boy deserves favor. There's another hit, Story in the
Speaker 1: Eyes written by you once again. So that album. What's
Speaker 1: the story of the making of that one? Every Good Boy?
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Um? I can remember recording story
Speaker 1: in your Eyes, because okay, I just remember the guitar
Speaker 1: riff and how I done it at home and and
Speaker 1: then put the basic acoustic track down with with John
Speaker 1: and Graham and Mike on tambourine and then put my
Speaker 1: three three five on top of it. But honest honestly,
Speaker 1: don't remember much about the rest of the album. Um,
Speaker 1: you you you must know that I don't. I know.
Speaker 1: I you know I say this. I know I was
Speaker 1: there in the sixties seventies, But my mind was elsewhere chemically, mystically,
Speaker 1: and emotionally, So I can't say that I have completely
Speaker 1: I have complete recall of some flashbacks of some rather
Speaker 1: strange things, but I can't remember certain details. But I'm
Speaker 1: giving you. I'm doing my best to give you an overview. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you're doing quite a fine job. Then we
Speaker 1: have the Seventh Sojourn, which actually has two hits. One
Speaker 1: Isn't Life Strange? You were one of the singers on that,
Speaker 1: but John Lodge wrote that, And I'm just a singer
Speaker 1: in a rock and roll band. You've been on quite
Speaker 1: a ride at this point, was the band starting to
Speaker 1: run a bit on fumes and get tired, or where
Speaker 1: things as strong as they'd always been. Um, well, it
Speaker 1: goes back to this kind of philosophy of life. I
Speaker 1: think I'm sorry to bang on about that, but that's
Speaker 1: a fact. And then there were people were moving so
Speaker 1: up the far apart in the way they live their lives,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to have that. I could see that
Speaker 1: it was kind of turn running into a mist somehow.
Speaker 1: There was this sort of fog that had descended, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I could see someone through that fog, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I couldn't in the in the band metaphorically, I don't
Speaker 1: mean literally, but I could see that it was not fragmenting.
Speaker 1: But I knew that it wasn't a happy time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a happy time. I think we made some I
Speaker 1: think Mike did a song I think it was called
Speaker 1: Lost in a Lost World that was I thought was
Speaker 1: so beautiful. And I had a song called New Horizons
Speaker 1: that I know that we would as a group we
Speaker 1: would sit and listen to and think, oh, that's nice
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You know, there was a beauty about it,
Speaker 1: and that there was some really nice things, and and
Speaker 1: and and it's in life strange, and it was the
Speaker 1: way that these things were recorded, and there was this
Speaker 1: fog that had descended between us and were that it
Speaker 1: was you could only reach out to someone occasionally and
Speaker 1: and and and pull them in and into focus, and
Speaker 1: then I could see it slipping away. Mike didn't want
Speaker 1: to do it anymore. I think that was the sort
Speaker 1: of point of it. And Tony Clark and I started
Speaker 1: to actually record another album after Seventh Sojourn, and there
Speaker 1: was a phone call from down in the canteen and
Speaker 1: Tony and I were in the control room. I was
Speaker 1: allowed in the control room by this time, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the roadies said here, you know, the other
Speaker 1: boys want to see you and Tony downstairs. So I
Speaker 1: came downstairs and the other guys were sitting there and
Speaker 1: they said, we don't want to continue with this. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't mean the band, it's just didn't
Speaker 1: want to continue with being together kind of thing or
Speaker 1: doing this, and so we just drifted apart. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't that what some asson wasn't a happy time for me.
Speaker 1: It was a very kind of sad, melancholy kind of time.
Speaker 1: So how did you feel in the canteen when they
Speaker 1: told you that, Hey, I'm the guy who always had
Speaker 1: songs ready to go in the studio, remember, so I
Speaker 1: had got stuff kind of ready to do. I was
Speaker 1: good and I was surprised. I can't say that I
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised, but totally, but for this to be pulled
Speaker 1: up that that short, I was surprised at that moment.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was kind of shocking. Really. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: how do you end up working with John Large on
Speaker 1: Blue Jays? Well, I think what what happened was that
Speaker 1: we we had a big tour that we were to
Speaker 1: do and with Jerry Ranchob as well, a world tour,
Speaker 1: so we continued to do that. I knew that Mike
Speaker 1: was unhappy. It was quite clear. And UM, so we
Speaker 1: Mike and I talked about doing something together, and we
Speaker 1: talked about it for a few years. Wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: nice and like a side project, we do it together?
Speaker 1: And um. At the end of the Japanese tour, at
Speaker 1: the end of Yes, we went to Japan, I flew back.
Speaker 1: We might have played in Hawaii, and I came back
Speaker 1: to l A with nothing happening. There was nothing in
Speaker 1: the diary at all. And I was going around to
Speaker 1: say Mike had had remarried and was living How do
Speaker 1: he remarried? I don't know, but he was maybe not,
Speaker 1: but he was married to an American girl and in California.
Speaker 1: I think he was over in Studio City, somewhere the
Speaker 1: other side of the hill, you know how You know
Speaker 1: you got up to Monghowa that far from that right now. No,
Speaker 1: it's very nice. You go down into Studio City. There's
Speaker 1: some really nice stuff done. Mike was living down there
Speaker 1: with his wife, and UM, we were talking, just talking
Speaker 1: about kind of things, how it would be, you know,
Speaker 1: how it would be. And then Mike, I think Mike
Speaker 1: at that same time he got another property out out
Speaker 1: of l a somewhere a bit more kind of hippie ish,
Speaker 1: and I was just hanging out with him, and we
Speaker 1: were starting to make plans for an album because there
Speaker 1: was nothing else happening. The next thing is so the
Speaker 1: next thing, I know, John and Tony Clark turned up
Speaker 1: and suggested the idea that the four of us should
Speaker 1: do something. I didn't really want to do that, and
Speaker 1: I know Mike called me into the kitchen and he said, listener,
Speaker 1: I'm out now. I don't want to do that, and
Speaker 1: I thought, okay then and then so I think we
Speaker 1: went through like a coffee with me and and John
Speaker 1: and Tony Clark, and we thought, well, let's do that instead,
Speaker 1: you know, let's go let's go home, and and we
Speaker 1: did that. No plan, Bob, no plan. These things just happened.
Speaker 1: I hear that, and then how does the group get
Speaker 1: back together? So we did Blue Jay's That was nice.
Speaker 1: Blue guitar was very nice. I'd already recorded that with
Speaker 1: tense C the guy. That was a nice. That was
Speaker 1: a nice time. Then m Wine Show pulled the back
Speaker 1: band back together to do a compilation we've never done,
Speaker 1: a kind of greatest hits, and Jerry was talking with
Speaker 1: the label about the greatest hits. And while he was
Speaker 1: discussing this the greatest hits, which we've never done, we'd
Speaker 1: always go resisted and then um the idea came back.
Speaker 1: But I think I think me and John and Ray
Speaker 1: we're sitting around just you know, because everybody that the
Speaker 1: people in England were still friends, and that where everybody
Speaker 1: was still friends. There's no that nothing was said that
Speaker 1: couldn't be unsaid, Nothing was said that couldn't be unto unsaid.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes things can't be unsaid. But um, so
Speaker 1: I think we thought, well, maybe why don't we do it?
Speaker 1: Jerry was like, yeah, are you guys? Why don't him again? Now? Now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: why did you get back to it? Why don't you
Speaker 1: do this album? So we did, We went, we talked
Speaker 1: about it. Mike didn't want to leave America, so we thought, okay,
Speaker 1: well los Angeles just quite nice. So we all pulled
Speaker 1: over to Los Angeles and started recording the Octave album
Speaker 1: at the record plant in um On, Wilshire. I think
Speaker 1: it was. We recorded quite a bit of that. Wasn't
Speaker 1: a happy sort of time really. Um, some of the
Speaker 1: guys rented houses there. I didn't. I was kind of commuting,
Speaker 1: which was quite difficult between here in Los Angeles or
Speaker 1: this is more the interesting flights used to take much
Speaker 1: quick as Los Angeles to London in the seventies. You
Speaker 1: know that they used to go faster. He played, you
Speaker 1: could do it in eight hours. It was fantastic. Takes
Speaker 1: you about thirteen now. But so, uh, I'm sorry, Bob.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So we were making the album and in
Speaker 1: at Mike's studio actually up in Coral Canyon, and then
Speaker 1: we were there when there were that terrible mud slide.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that when the rains came down seventy stuff?
Speaker 1: And I think it was that that went on all
Speaker 1: the rains. And I'm sorry, but they those big, most
Speaker 1: those big cars, and maybe yet l A drivers don't
Speaker 1: quite know how to drive in the mud, and they're
Speaker 1: not like English people who drive in the mud all
Speaker 1: the time. But so there was a lot of cars
Speaker 1: whizzing around on the Pacific Coast Highway, which was I
Speaker 1: was going up there every day, and um, I could
Speaker 1: see that this album wasn't really working either. Tony Clark
Speaker 1: wasn't There was things happening in his personal life, and
Speaker 1: it's such a lovely man, but things were happening changes
Speaker 1: in his personal life. Mike clearly didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: and so I think there was a moment when it
Speaker 1: came apart then during the Octave album. But at least
Speaker 1: we had the album The Day We Meet Again and
Speaker 1: stuff from that album, and but we that then we
Speaker 1: carried on. I think we carried on because the rest
Speaker 1: of us wanted to and Mike didn't. Mike stayed there,
Speaker 1: so the rest of us came home and moved on.
Speaker 1: So you talk about eight hours were you taking the
Speaker 1: sst the Concorde. I did take the Concorde a couple
Speaker 1: of times, but the Concorde wasn't Concorde. It wasn't called
Speaker 1: duck Concorde. It was called Concorde. But the Concorde was
Speaker 1: was going. Um, I don't believe it ever once in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, I would cut. I took it a few
Speaker 1: times from Washington or New York and Toronto, and I
Speaker 1: once I took it to Dallas. But you could you'd
Speaker 1: have fly sub Sonic over America. But no, I was
Speaker 1: just doing like a seven oh seven oh seven from
Speaker 1: Los Angeles to London. They could do it real quick.
Speaker 1: They really put the pedal to the metal. What was
Speaker 1: it like creating and releasing the moody blues sound when
Speaker 1: the world was changing the late seventies we had punk
Speaker 1: and disco, Then into the early eighties we have the
Speaker 1: new wave sound, we have MTV. Did you say this
Speaker 1: is what we're doing or did you feel a little
Speaker 1: like a fish out of water or do you want
Speaker 1: to change the sound? Um? Well, I don't. We were
Speaker 1: kind of came through that sort of unscared, I think
Speaker 1: because nobody kind of pointed the finger at us and said, hey,
Speaker 1: it's over you guys, because we'd always gone our own way.
Speaker 1: We were never, like I said before, we were never
Speaker 1: kind of chasing a hit. We were never really fashionable,
Speaker 1: so we couldn't really be out of fashion. We were
Speaker 1: just doing troubling our own road and doing our own thing.
Speaker 1: And luckily enough, when they when I think it was Deutcha,
Speaker 1: I think it was not Deutchra Grantville what were they
Speaker 1: called before they bought the Deca catalog in or one
Speaker 1: Redwood was still there and they were still alive. But um,
Speaker 1: there was the record company was refreshed in America and
Speaker 1: that's when we had a chance to They supported us
Speaker 1: going back in the studio in the UK and making
Speaker 1: a long distance Voyager. Yeah. And I think that that
Speaker 1: album really set us up for the eighties and what
Speaker 1: was to come. So do you have a relationship with
Speaker 1: Mike Pinder today? Yes, So there was his family. There
Speaker 1: was no discord over his leaving the band. Not with me, No,
Speaker 1: I've always been loving good vibes all around bub you know.
Speaker 1: I just I'll make it. I'll make a point of
Speaker 1: trying to get my own way by pink pink gentle, persuadediveout. Yeah, sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw Mike at the the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame when we were inducted. It's a lovely time.
Speaker 1: And what was it like having Ray Thomas and Graham
Speaker 1: Age pass Well? Ray had left the group quite a
Speaker 1: long time before he died, and so that was his
Speaker 1: life was kind of separate outside the Moodies anyway, and
Speaker 1: he he didn't want want to go on. I knew
Speaker 1: he was uncomfortable on the road and in the studio. Um,
Speaker 1: so that was that Ray had left it anyway, and
Speaker 1: I loved him. Were always had such laughs, you know,
Speaker 1: there was. That's the thing about the mood is that
Speaker 1: I should mention that I started laughing in in August
Speaker 1: and I never stopped it. Funny all the way, but
Speaker 1: inappropriate and irreverence sometimes but always me so. But but Graham,
Speaker 1: Graham's passing really kind of hit me earlier this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Graham loved the group so much. He was the
Speaker 1: center that he was the thing that held the group together. Well,
Speaker 1: when Ray had left and there was the core three people,
Speaker 1: you continued to tour as the Moody Blues. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: no chance you will continue to tour with John Lodge
Speaker 1: under that name. I don't I don't know, is the
Speaker 1: honest answer. Just have to say, I don't know, is it?
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't know is a good answer. Well, sometimes
Speaker 1: people are against it, that's the but I have your
Speaker 1: answer there. So at this time in your seventies, some
Speaker 1: people might say you you talked about wanting to sleep
Speaker 1: in the morning in your own bed. Um. Some people
Speaker 1: might say I don't like my own bed, which bet
Speaker 1: it is. OK. That's a musicians just want to stay
Speaker 1: in bed anywhere. So what's the what's the motivation to
Speaker 1: still go on the road to share the music? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a musician man musicians, So I just want to
Speaker 1: play music. I want to do a do a gig.
Speaker 1: I love that little bit of magic that can happen
Speaker 1: in a room as simple as that. You know, the
Speaker 1: arc of a musical career is that now today, in
Speaker 1: today's internet world, specific records don't have the impact either
Speaker 1: commercially or in mind share, and audiences are smaller. Therefore,
Speaker 1: some people don't even record new music and they're depressed
Speaker 1: about it. What do you think about the modern environment
Speaker 1: visa via your career, visably my career. I'm not depressed
Speaker 1: about it. I can. I can still. I could still
Speaker 1: pop down to Jenuay and do and do something I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have to employ a great number of musicians
Speaker 1: to do it, because I can pretty much do it myself.
Speaker 1: But when me and Alberta can do it between us,
Speaker 1: I play the stuff and Alberto plays, and you know,
Speaker 1: we we've got all the tools that we need. I've
Speaker 1: got my old I've got my old dear Ex seven,
Speaker 1: my Jupiter eight, which is fantastic. I've got my guitars,
Speaker 1: I've got a time code, and that's about it, really,
Speaker 1: And that's why, you know, we come back to Living
Speaker 1: for Love and there's almost nothing on that record, but
Speaker 1: it's for me. It's just so beautiful. It's so it's
Speaker 1: so simple and so beautiful, and so I'm just fine
Speaker 1: with how it is. And I really feel for the
Speaker 1: young kids with the pressure that they're under now in
Speaker 1: this business to try and become a commodity or a
Speaker 1: personality and to try and promote yourself in that way.
Speaker 1: And I think for me, I'm so lucky where it's
Speaker 1: just I don't I don't want to be a celebrity.
Speaker 1: I never I never was wanted that or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I just want to play some some music. And that's
Speaker 1: what that's I said at the beginning. My goal is too,
Speaker 1: I want to be true to my goal of playing
Speaker 1: music and recording music and playing live. That's what I want.
Speaker 1: How close were you to John Lodge these days? I
Speaker 1: think everybody we're all connected that so that the three
Speaker 1: of us Might and John and myself are connected by
Speaker 1: just such a wonderful catalog and legacy of things. So
Speaker 1: which is always nice. So I said before that that
Speaker 1: not nothing with with Mike or with any with John
Speaker 1: or Graham, or nothing was said that couldn't be unset,
Speaker 1: which is always very nice. It's not. It's not a
Speaker 1: brotherhood because I had a brother and I know what
Speaker 1: that's like. But it's a being in a group is
Speaker 1: a very different dynamic. You were married at a relatively
Speaker 1: young age and your marriage sustained, which is not the
Speaker 1: case with many music marriages. Who is the key to
Speaker 1: having your marriage sustained? I'm away a lot ha, but
Speaker 1: a being we leave it at that or anymore in sight,
Speaker 1: I don't think, so okay. And what about your kids?
Speaker 1: What are your kids up to? Um? Well, they have
Speaker 1: a lovely life. My daughter lives in West Cornwall, which
Speaker 1: is the most beautiful part of England for me. And
Speaker 1: she's a sacred cranial osteopathists, which is gentle and kind
Speaker 1: of manipulation of the spine. It's very beautiful. It it's
Speaker 1: um did great things for her or when she had
Speaker 1: some problems and so. And I've got a grandson who
Speaker 1: is beautiful and fourteen and gets taller every every other week.
Speaker 1: You know, he's different. And I've gotten. You know, my sister,
Speaker 1: I'm very close, and yeah, it's just gotta love. I'm
Speaker 1: so it's so wonderful to have so many nice friends
Speaker 1: and gentle and not to have a pressure to do
Speaker 1: anything outside of that. And yeah, I'm very lucky to
Speaker 1: have a wonderful crew in a tour with the guitar text.
Speaker 1: Steve Chant, my production manager, and I've been together a
Speaker 1: long time. And Mike Dawes, the guitar player that I
Speaker 1: work with now genius genius young man common Gold on flutes.
Speaker 1: And Julie Reagan's who's the most gorgeous as the voice
Speaker 1: of an angel and is the most brilliant musician I've
Speaker 1: ever had the pleasure to be in the company of.
Speaker 1: So these are the people that we love. And the
Speaker 1: Moody sound was unique, but certainly Jerry Weintraub managed other acts.
Speaker 1: Do you have relationships with your contemporaries in the music
Speaker 1: business who were the Moody sort of a self contained
Speaker 1: unit aside from the other acts. Well, if you might
Speaker 1: remember that we talked earlier about you were quite interested
Speaker 1: about how you get how I got my D twenty
Speaker 1: eight because because there was I have a lot of acquaintances.
Speaker 1: In the music business. We have acquaintances, don't we. People say, well,
Speaker 1: do you know somebody. It's like, well, I'm an acquaintance
Speaker 1: of this, but I'm not sure that I would say
Speaker 1: that I know somebody. So I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: acquaintance is in the music, of course, and the music
Speaker 1: business is one of those things. If you're a musician,
Speaker 1: people you go to events or something like that, and
Speaker 1: I'm often asked to, often asked to play turn up
Speaker 1: and play nights, which people love and you know it's
Speaker 1: in their in their hearts, that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: and people but hey, justin that that other artists that
Speaker 1: I don't know and I'm not acquainted with. But you
Speaker 1: can come up and say hey, justin I say, hey, no,
Speaker 1: are you doing love it? And that's the kind of
Speaker 1: the thing is. That's the wonderful thing about musicians and
Speaker 1: the music business. So, yes, I'm familiar with quite a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I have a lot of acquaintances. And
Speaker 1: are you one of those people who thinks about legacy
Speaker 1: and being remembered or you more of the type of
Speaker 1: person says I'm doing this now, I'm gonna diet sometime.
Speaker 1: There's no way afterlife. I live my life. That's it
Speaker 1: is that a choice of I've got to be one
Speaker 1: of those, got to be either one or the Well. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be a choice. It can be both.
Speaker 1: It can be like, Hey, I want to live my
Speaker 1: life having a good time, but I want my songs
Speaker 1: to live on. I want them to pay dividends from
Speaker 1: my family. I want them to bring joy two people,
Speaker 1: that further generations. What I know is that I'll never
Speaker 1: get tired of playing Um the Everly Brothers. I'll never
Speaker 1: get tired of playing Buddy Holly. I'll never get tired
Speaker 1: of playing Buffalo Springfield or Cliff in the Shadows or
Speaker 1: the Beatles, Um or Elvis or a Steely Dan or
Speaker 1: anything so or Shostakovich or you know, Rene Fleming. I'll
Speaker 1: never get tired of it. So that it doesn't the
Speaker 1: personal thing about them, I'm not really bound up in.
Speaker 1: I'm not really bound up about with them as people.
Speaker 1: And I understand that's what music is, that there's there's
Speaker 1: music there and that will be your It will be
Speaker 1: or or not to be. There's nothing I can do
Speaker 1: to make that or get worried about that, whether that's
Speaker 1: a legacy or not. I'll always love certain pieces of
Speaker 1: music and they'll live forever with other people as well
Speaker 1: because that that that's the way I feel. So I'm
Speaker 1: not bound up in thinking about legacy or trying to
Speaker 1: make anything happen. There is there a way to make
Speaker 1: things happen there now less than ever. But you just
Speaker 1: got off of a tour at the end of the summer.
Speaker 1: I know you're doing this cruise coming up at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the year. What are your plans for live
Speaker 1: work in the future. Well, I'm offered stuff, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I had had the best tour have ever had in
Speaker 1: the UK. So I did three things this year already.
Speaker 1: I did the American tour, interrupted by circumstances, but then, um,
Speaker 1: we had a great tour, very successful and all the
Speaker 1: places are asking us back, so that's nice. Um. I
Speaker 1: did the War of the World's tour, which was fantastic, holograms,
Speaker 1: giant screens, explosions, martians, It's just and forever autumn, which
Speaker 1: has been the most wonderful gift to me around the world. Um. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that I'm offered stuff, and I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: say yes. Well, justin I want to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time. I gotta tell you it
Speaker 1: was anxious about talking to you because you know, you
Speaker 1: hear songs on the radio. Yeah, I know that song
Speaker 1: that's iconic. But the Moodies are a thing unto itself,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's uh, it's got a special aura,
Speaker 1: certainly for me and I know for others. So want
Speaker 1: to thank you for talking to me from you know,
Speaker 1: the Cote de Sur and however you pronounce it. My
Speaker 1: French is not good, So thanks again. Justin You're welcome
Speaker 1: until next time. This is Bob left sets h