The Moody Blues Are Older Than You

The Moody Blues Are Older Than You

by Sylvie Simmons

“Sometimes we’re a little misunderstood and people think that maybe we have a lot of answers which we don’t have. Really,” Justin Hayward leans forward in the office chair; he’s neat and tidy, airbrushed almost, “we’re just singers in a rock ’n’ roll band, and people credit us with a lot of answers to, you know, the Secret Of The Universe. And what can you say to that?”

What, indeed. Though I must say I’m a bit put-out. I was sure Hayward lived on the pyramid-down-the-road from Jon Anderson.

“Probably the biggest misconception about the Moodies is that we’re all sort of cosmic gurus sitting^on some mountain somewhere and just come down occasionally to do tours and make records. You can see that from some of the mail we receive and from some of the very strange types who still turn up in America for us, leftovers from the ’60s and early ’70s. I think a lot of that came from the fact that when we first went to America in 1967, we just happened to be playing in San Francisco when the whole Flower Power thing was going on and we got caught up in it and our reputation was born from that. A lot of those people who were fans then have grown up with us.”

A whole lot more of it comes from the Moodies themselves. There they were, nice little Merseybeaty pop band, had a hit-ditty with “Go Now,” taken over by alien-superbeings-from-outer-space-andclose-personal-friends-of-Jon Anderson, who spraypainted visionary messages over vast, romantic murals and conducted orchestras of transcendentally majestic splendor with vague poetic lyrics. Tha Moodies were the only band I’d met whose groupies wanted their minds probed.

“Moodies fans are nice people!” says Justin. “\^ery nice. We’ve always been very lucky.” Moodies fans are not like Ozzy fans; they don’t make devil signs or throw Ninja weapons (“I don’t know,” says Justin. “I’ve never meet him.”) But they do, or did anyway, take a helluva lot of hallucinogens.

Does (did) he take them to write all this stuff?

“Well, I used to have to be in exactly the right kind of mood, either stoned or whatever—or I thought that I did—and then in the last six or seven years I suddenly thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I just go ahead in my music room and write a song?’ So I literally started doing that. At nine in the morning I would go into my studio and start working. And I feel that my stuff has got better because of that kind of discipline; I’m guaranteed to come out with something.”

So now he’s less of an artist, more of a craftsman, or what?

“I don’t know. Songwriting is always a bit of a mystery to me, because it’s something from nothing, and it’s a tremendous feeling to have something that didn’t exist before.”

Justin, I tell him, is beginning to sound decidedly cosmic.

“I know what you mean.” A vague smile. “Maybe we are vague people! With the most interesting songs there is a kind of double meaning, a sort of ‘l-love-youbaby-come-to-bed’ meaning and a spiritual-universe kind of meaning as well, questioning what we are doing here, and I think that makes it interesting.”

What we’re doing here is plugging the latest Moodies album, The Other Side Of Life—their first release in almost three years and recorded after 18 months straight on the road. Eighteen months. Most bands who’ve been around as long as they have find it tough managing 18 dates.

“Right from the beginning, our success came from the fact that we were a touring band, and I think that’s the only way we know of really putting our music in front of people. I know also in the years where we haven’t had big records, the fact that we’ve been touring sees us through. We’ve always toured with every album. It’s a pleasure”

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Don’t they get sick of the sight of each other, though, after all this time?

“No—we’ve been through those sick of each other stages and gone past it, I think. We seem to have survived a lot of crises that normally break up other bands. We actually did split up in ’74 for about three years and I thought we were crazy at the time, but looking back it was the best thing we ever did. I think it was because we’d got to that stage you mentioned where you know what the other guy was going to say before he said it, and we’d spent so many years before that sitting in the back of the same van which had gradually become a limo as we go more successful, and being in the same dressing room, and there was nothing left to talk about. We needed to go out and develop a life of our own outside of the band.

“I think,” he says of the absent years, “it was a very valuable time. I met a lot of people and I gained so much experience—another approach to recording and working with other people. Which is something I’d never ever done. I was 19 when I joined the Moodies and I’d only really been in one band before that”—playing guitar for Kim’s dad, Marty Wilde—“and it was fantastic. It really opened my eyes.”

To the point where he’d be tempted to do it again?

“Yes, I would actually. I mean, I’m still doing my solo things now outside of the band. I’ve just been asked to do the music for a new BBC science-fiction TV series, which I’m writing while I’m on tour. I’ve done the music for a cartoon series as well, and I did a film soundtrack a couple of years ago for a German filrtr called She, a remake of the old Rider Haggard story. I love things like that.”

But not more than he loves the Moodies?

“The combination of the five people when we get together never ceases to amaze me. I will put the headphones on when we’re working out a new number for an album and we play together and it’s like, ‘Oooh, it’s that sound again...’ There’s just something about the five people that makes a particular sound we can’t get on our own.”

Time to drag the old bigger-than-all-ofus cliche out of the cupboard again?

“Yes, I think it is. There’s also a kind of competitive element within the band that keeps everything fresh and alive. Everybody wants it.”

Is it hard keeping it fresh and alive after so long?

“No. People think that writing songs # and recording is like having money in the V > bank, and if you keep withdrawing it there’s going to be none left. But life isn’t really like that. Because everybody, no matter what they do, they still have their emotional highs and lows, and it’s those emotions the songs come out of.”

No temptation to recycle old songs and save a few braincells?

“I don’t find that. It’s almost like a duty to yourself to keep going and keep proving that you can do it. People are always saying, ‘Well, can’t you write another “Nights In White Satin”?’ and it’s like ‘Oh yeah, I never thought of that’...

“I’m still looking for that song that turns everybody on everywhere.”

But didn’t he find it in “Nights”—the Moodies “Yesterday” or “White Christmas” or whatever. There can’t be one person on the planet who hasn’t heard it.

“It’s funny, that song was big on the Continent first—in France, a girl called Patricia had a #1 song with it before our version, and in Italy I think it was by someone else too. When it was obvious it was ,s a success, our record company said, well, you’ve got to find a follow-up single to that. And we did, we tried ever so hard, in fact we made five or six abortive attempts at it and in the end we just decided, forget it, let’s make the albums we want to make, and trust our judgement, which is what we did. I think we’ve always made music for ourselves, what turns us on. We play what we want to hear, and I think that’s stood us in good stead over the years.”

Is one of them a rock fan, another a classical fan, or how does it work?

“Everybody’s roots—maybe with the exception of Patrick”—Moraz, the keyboard player, and the man who replaced Rick Wakeman in Yes—“are in rock ’n' roll, ’50s and ’60s, with a bit of folk as well that I was doing before the band...and a classical sort of feeling that’s developed with the type of songwriting we do.”

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Is that what he listens to now, old rock ’n’ roll?

“No. I really like the A-Ha album, I like the Pet Shop Boys stuff, I love that Simply Red record, anything by Donald Fagen, who’s my big hero really and always will be the state of the art in music. I’m surrounded by music every day. I’ve got a 13-year—old daughter, and wherever she goes there always seems to be music blaring in dvery part of the house she’s in. I love it!”

Can she sing?

“Yes she can, but I don’t really want ot push her into it. If she wants to do it, she’ll do it.”

Who did Justin impersonate in front of the mirror as a kid?

. “Buddy Holly. Bought a pair of glasses without any glass in them as well, because t’ve never needed glasses.” Shy smile. “He was always the big hero for me. In 1957, when I was at school, as soon as I heard him I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I could see it. I used to go to sleep with the album sleeve right by my head so I could wake up and—‘Hi Buddy!’—there he was.

“Well, see, he was the first really rock ’n’ roll singer who wrote and sang and played guitar. Before that you only did one of the three.

“I always knew I was going to be a musician.” He convinced his parents. They told him to take a few exams to have something to fall back on, “So I got my five O-levels and then during the summer I answered this ad in the Melody Maker and it was for a job with Marty Wilde. I was 16. And it was like a baptism in fire. Straight in...” “Yes, I think it was the time when—it must have been ’72 or ’73—when ‘Nights In White Satin’ got to #1 in America after six years. Seventh Sojourn, our latest album then, was #1 in the album charts, and Days Of Future Past, our first album, was at #3. And we played Madison Square Garden twice on the same day! They gave us a special award for it. That was really the peak. I can remember it distinctly because as it was happening I was thinking, ‘I’m going to remember everything about this so that I can look back on it and relive it.”

While we’re doing business, is there one special to him?

this looking-back Moodies era that’s

Is there anything about Justin’s offstage existence that would alarm his fans? He looks genuinely shocked at the idea.

“Blimey! Mainly that I love to cook. I don’t know whether I’ve got any weird habits or anything like that, but I do enjoy cooking. I usually cook on a Sunday for everyone— traditional English roast. And Mexican cooking.

“And,” he metamorphosizes into Mike Rutherford, “I love horses. I’ve got a stud farm in Wiltshire—we’ve set it up as a proper business, thoroughbred racehorses. I have my own horse which I ride, too. I used to.ride as a child, and then I lost it until 12 years ago I moved down to Cornwall—which is where I live most of the time—and I saw an ex-racehorse for sale. A failed racehorse, but he was only a couple of hundred quid and I bought him and he’s beautiful,” Justin’s eyes glaze over. “A perfect gentleman, 17 years old now, and that got me riding again properly. It’s lovely. A great escape for me.” If a little more earthy than you’d expect from Jon Anderson’s pyramidneighbor.

Any ambition?

“To be honest, my ambition is to carry on at the sam^level that I am now. Because it’s all I ever wanted to do. I would still like to do more film music. But just to stay at the same level,” says Justin, “is ambition enough.”®