Seventh Sojourn [1972]

Transcript of the 1997 CD Sleeve Notes Interview

JOHN LODGE: The album was very loosely based on the idea of 'The Canterbury Tales' by Chaucer. In 'Canterbury Tales', everyone talks about what happened to them and tells stories. This is how SEVENTH SOJOURN evolved: we told stories, but musically. When they stopped on their pilgrimmage to Canterbury, this was called a sojourn — and it was our seventh album. It was only afterwards that we realised we'd pre-empted ourselves, because we must have sensed it was going to be our last album for a long time — although we hadn't acknowledged it ourselves. 

I'd read that the recording process wasn't a happy time.

JL: Yeah, it's funny, because I never saw that. Mike Pinder had built a studio in his garage and we recorded some of the music there. We were using different studios. But I look on SEVENTH SOJOURN as special, actually — there's often something special about the number seven. 

RAY THOMAS: I don't have fond memories. By then, we needed to work with other people because, everywhere I went, they went. All my experiences were their experiences. We had bugger all to talk about. We used to have a joke in the dressing room. Somebody would say "number 6" and that was the No. 6 joke — we had a catalogue. Mike didn't want to come up to the studio and he was married to an American girl and thinking about moving to the States — she wanted to go back home. 

GRAEME EDGE: This was my least favourite LP because, personally, I found it so difficult and almost heartbreaking because I could see that the group — I thought — was splitting up permanently. But, years later, when I had to approve a new CD and I'd totally forgotten about the LP, I came to it fresh and was quite surprised because it's really a rather a good album! But it took me years to forget the hard times that were going on emotionally — but we weren't fighting or arguing, we were just empty. 

Two of the strongest songs, which were lifted as singles, were written by John: 'Isn't Life Strange' (issued six months prior to the LP) and 'I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock 'n' Roll Band).

JL: This goes to show the difference in the recording world today and then. Justin and I were finishing some vocals on a Friday night. We then took the tape with us to the United States and within a week, 'Life Is Strange' was released as a single. I don't think you'd get that today! We did a major tour of America and then we had to return home to finish the album. 

'Isn't Life Strange' clocked in at around six minutes, one of your longest singles.

JL: London Records in America, and particularly Walt McGuire, had faith in us and said let's go with it. I was having dinner one night with some friends and I heard 'Isn't Life Strange' in my head while I was eating. I went straight to the piano and within 15 minutes, I'd got roughly the whole song finished — except every line was 'Isn't Life Strange'! It didn't have any other lyric. 'Isn't Life Strange' is about when you try and analyse your life and some things always seem the same. And so you're asking that question: can you really expect it not to be the same in yourself? So many people just think that, because life goes on, it should get better, but it's something you have to put in that makes it better. Also, on top of that, it's a collective idea, that when you're looking one way, suddenly what's really going to happen comes from the other way. At the end of the day, isn't life strange?! 

SEVENTH SOJOURN has always been popular with Moody Blues fans.

JUSTIN HAYWARD: I think that's because of its great quality of recording. We'd found a new instrument, the Chamberlain. It was made by the guy who originally invented the Mellotron. It works on the same principal [sic] only with with much better quality sounds — great brass and strings and cello. It gave us an edge on record that we'd never had before, a punch. With the Mellotron, you had to overdub and overlay it to get it to sound nice, with lots of echo. The Chamberlain you could stick right up front, in your face. With the old line-up with Mike Pinder, SEVENTH SOJOURN was the height that we'd got to. 

Obviously, you re-united in 1978, but why the five-year break?

JL: We've all got our own reasons why and our own reasons why we went along with it. From my point of view, when we began, there was just five of us. By 1972, the responsibility we had now put on our shoulders wasn't just the music, which we could handle. It wasn't the case that we stopped writing — because Justin and I went on to BLUE JAYS afterwards,which was incredibly succesful. It was the lateral pressures. I remember our last tour of America. We had our own Boeing 707, all decked out with a sitting room and fireplace. There were two double bedrooms, some 20 individual televisions, sound systems everywhere, our own butler and our name on the side of the plane. I think, the last time we used it, the plane was stuck in Switzerland — it was called Starhip! I remember there was just the five of us, the tour manager and his assistant, a butler and two stewardesses. One day, I had to walk to the back of the plane to got to the toilet — and it was a very empty feeling. It was the excess of Rock and Roll. 

JH: I think that with the band as we were, that was as far as we could possibly go. Unfortunately, for me, it's a very painful album. It took a long time to record. It was becoming obvious that we weren't going to do another LP. We didn't argue, it was just unhappy. No-one was really enjoying it and it was a struggle to get things done. It's strange how success has changed us — instead of making our world better and easier, it had made it smaller and more difficult. 

GE: It was a strained asnd awkward period. Mike Pinder, particularly, found it difficult. He was going through a personal spiritual seach — every other week, he tried a new religion. Philosophically, he was in a bad way. We were all exhausted. We'd become prisoners of our own success. We were trapped at home, trapped in hotels, and we weren't seeing any of real life any more. To a much larger degree, the same problem happened to The Beatles. They got strangled by their own success. 

RT: We just needed a break. Business-wise, we were involved with each other, anyway, with Threshold and various companies we'd formed. 

JL: It was getting out of control. We had a retail division in the UK, the Threshold record shops across the south of England and one in the centre of Birmingham, and our own publishing and record companies. We had an office in London, which I never visited. It was becoming a huge concern and what we'd set out in the beginning as the Moody Blues to accomplish musically was no longer the most important thing in our life, because we ended up having meetings about Threshold. We got to a situation — and I recommend this to anyone — where we made paper hats and wrote on them, 'Threshold' or 'Moody Blues', so if anyone wanted to discuss something in a meeting in the office, we'd put one of these paper hats on to make ourselves look silly. But it was very important because it meant that, if we were discussing a point we knew we were going to argue about, then we were arguing, say, under a Threshold hat, not as Moody Blues — so it didn't become personal. When you put the Moody Blues hat on, you knew it was safe! 

So the pressures built up. When we got together, we were late teens/early twenties, and in 1972, we were still only in late twenties. We had now all got married and begun families. Some of us had got married with children. It felt as though, listen, we need to relax this for a while. I knew we'd get back together but this SEVENTH SOJOURN was really important to our lives. 

Note: After seven albums with the same line-up, the Moody Blues bowed out, albeit temporarily, with SEVENTH SOJOURN. Although commercially successful, the LP doesn't hold fond memories for the band and it would be a half a decade before they would record together as a group.

Cover art: Phil Travers.

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.