What Decca got instead was a lushly orchestrated album of the Moodies’ own material called Days of Future Passed.
The brief was to make a pop version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony aimed at hi-fi buffs. In 1967, Decca Records asked them to record an album for their Deram imprint that would show off the versatility of the label’s new Deramic Stereo Sound system. The band conceded that the punter might have had a point and ditched the blue suits and corny nightclub patter, transforming themselves into cosmic troubadours. So lacerating was the verdict that sensitive new guitarist Justin Hayward burst into tears. They had been reduced to a cabaret turn on the chicken-in-a-basket circuit when they reached their nadir in Newcastle – an aggrieved punter came backstage to tell them they were the worst band he had ever seen. It had been 18 months since they got to No 1 in the pop charts with their cover of the Bessie Banks R&B classic Go Now and they hadn’t had a top 10 hit since. By the summer of 1966, the group was all but washed up. They deserve their place in my book Psychedelia and Other Colours – alongside Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and the rest of the psychedelic A-list – not least because it was in the fringes of psychedelia that much of the genre’s best music was made, often by the supposedly drug-free bands who were written off as bandwagon jumpers.Īs with Fleetwood Mac, but without the casualty count and the psychodrama, the Moody Blues story is one of reinvention and renewal. They are certainly not the first band you think of when compiling a list of psychedelia’s great and good, but their achievements were many.
And yet, despite this era-defining performance, they remain one of the last critically unrehabilitated bands of the 60s. They appeared on stage that August bank holiday weekend, just as the sun was going down on the Saturday evening, and, with a twilight backdrop to die for, proceeded to charm the loon pants off the crowd. The event is best remembered now for Jimi Hendrix giving advance notice of his impending demise, and a narcoleptic Jim Morrison grunting his way through a lacklustre Doors performance, but it’s the Moodies who stole the show. I f you watch any of Sky Arts’ endlessly repeated programme output, you can’t have failed at some point to chance upon the Moody Blues’ magnificent performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight pop festival.