| DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED and 'Nights In White Satin' sold tremendously
well and launched you into the front rank of British bands. The album had
heavily orchestrated interludes. IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD was very different,
not least the fascinating range of instruments — 33, to be precise. What
was the idea behind that?
JOHN LODGE: We'd used the orchestra on DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED, and we
inwardly thought the next album must be us on our own. We wanted to ensure
that this new Moody Blues didn't have to rely on anything. That was why
it was called IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD, because we were actually still
in search of ourselves, although we'd arrived with DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED
behind us. So we went into the studio and said, let's see how far we can
actually go, see if there are any limits to music and lyrics. And that's
what we tried to achieve. We said there are no boundaries. What we don't
know how to play, we'll buy a book and work out. We had Ray playing French
horn, I played cello back-to-front, tuning it as a bass guitar when it
should have been in fifths. I never realised! But it didn't really matter
because we were experimenting — from sitar to tablas. We set the studio
up for us permanently, with our equipment. Every instrument we could find
we just left around. It was a great time. We had no idea how it would work.
GRAEME EDGE: We wanted this oboe on a part, so we went out and bought
one and gave it to Ray. We're knocking off for lunch, the part's "da da-da
da, da-da da da". Here, learn to play it. An hour later, when we came back,
his lips were bleeding but he could play it! Put it on the record, you
know — we didn't believe there was anything we couldn't do. We just figured
we'd pick it up and one or the other of us would get something out of it.
RAY THOMAS: I was given a lunchtime to learn to play this piece on oboe
— I'd never seen a bloody oboe before. It was like, oh, you can do it!
Then everybody buggered off down to the pub and came back and said, have
you got it, yet?
What about the Indian feel of the album?
RT: We started getting into transcendental meditation and Eastern influences
then — George Harrison had introduced the sitar and Justin got into it.
Actually, Justin had some great compliments from Indian musicians because
he picked it up relatively easily. I reckon he ought to pop up in his loft
and fish it back out! I love it because the sitar has that big drone, which
works marvellously with the flute. There weren't that many people using
acoustic guitars, even, never mind flutes and mellotrons, so it was a nice
marriage of instruments.
JUSTIN HAYWARD: I bought the sitar, which I learnt to play quite quickly,
and then Mike bought a tambora, which is the one that goes Weeooow weeoow"!
That was fantastic and we really got hung up on that, using it in different
songs in different moods. The first person I saw using a sitar around a
studio was Brian Jones. After that it was Ravi Shankar, who we played with
around that time, and a group called Indo Jazz Fusions. Decca were starting
to have faith in us, so it was a very experiemtnal album. We were given
a lot more studio time because of our success. Our intention was to not
make sounds that that anybody else was making, but to make different kind's
[sic] of records.
GE: They were great days of experimentation. I hit cardboard boxes and
banged tables, to get the right kind of thuddy noises — and regular drums,
of course. I became the quietest guy at breathing because we developed
a technique with maracas, where you just dropped the lead shot really,
really gently. But we had it in an absolutely quiet studio and the microphone
wound up really high, so if I'd have sneezed, I'd have probably killed
them all in the control room! So high that I even had to breathe especially
quietly and make the faintest little "tick" — but it picked up all the
ambience being up so loud. It didn't really sound like maracas, it sounded
huge and distant, like it was in some cavern. We were trying all sorts
of nutcase things.
What drew you to the flute in the first place, Ray?
RT: My grandfather played one as a young man and I just liked its sound,
really. I think the first time I used it on a Moody Blues track was an
alto flute on 'From The Bottom Of My Heart', when Denny was still in the
band.
Wasn't there some overlap between DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED and IN SEARCH
OF THE LOST CHORD?
RT: Yes. 'Legend Of A Mind' was the last track recorded on the DAYS
OF FUTURE PASSED sessions — I'd already written that. It helped spark off
LOST CHORD. DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED only took about 10 days total and we
still had some time left, so we put 'Legend Of A Mind' in the can. The
song was a bit of a piss-take, because we didn't know too much about what
was happening in the States. They had the Vietnam War. Over here, it was
Swinging London and everybody was having a great time — we hadn't the same
pressures. They cottoned on to the hippy Brit invasion and, just like Americans
do, they went completely over the top. I'd heard through the grapevine
about Timothy Leary and the Haight Ashbury scene, so I wrote these tongue-in-cheek
lyrics. I mean, I saw the astral plane as a gayly-painted [sic] biplane
where you paid a couple of bucks and they took you for a trip around the
bay! When I met Tim Leary, he knew that. He thought it was a hoot! It really
appealed to his sense of humour. People were coming up to us and saying
what's all this acid about? And we'd never seen acid. I'd read Tim Leary's
psychedlic prayers and a couple of books he'd written. The lyric "Timothy
Leary's dead" was just a reference to the 'Tibetan Book Of The Dead'.
Some critics have suggested that IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD is the
Moody Blues album which has dated the most.
JL: Well. I think things go in cycles and I've heard quite a few sitars
coming back at the moment. So it could be the LP which is in the forefront
again. The thing about any record which makes a statement, as any of the
pop art did in the 60s, is that it becomes dated because it made a staement
at a particular time. The difference with the Moody Blues, especialy IN
SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD, is the musical and lyrical content which, I believe,
takes it above a date. It takes it out of linear time and puts it into,
well, quad time.
One of the highlights of the album was John Lodge's 'Ride My See-Saw'.
It's one of the band's most strident tracks and has been an encore favourite
ever since.
JL: That was about this freedom which I felt I had achieved. At school,
you're taught a set of values, which are very important. And I think 'Ride
My See-Saw' was saying, yes, I've completed my education at a scholarly
level and I'm now about to enter the education of life. For me, 'Ride My
See-Saw' is a combination of the tempo and the full harmonies in the middle,
which the audience always seems to enjoy singing along with. We don't concentrate
on direct harmony with the melody — it's always counter melodies — which
is the nice thing about 'Ride My See-Saw' in the middle instrumental part.
This is one of the reasons it's an encore, because by then, the lyric doesn't
matter — everyone's having a good time!
Note: As the follow-up album to the Moodies' breakthrough LP, DAYS
OF FUTURE PASSED, IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD was very much a product of
the psychedelia era, with its Eastern influences (sitar, chants) and its
exotic variety of instruments.
Special thanks to: Wyn Mather at Threshold, Bill Levenson, Matthieu
Lauriot-Prevost, David Costa, Phil Smee.
Digitally remastered by Steve Fallone at PolyGram Studios.
Sleevenotes and interview by John Reed.
Cover: Phillip Travers. |
