Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee John Lodge will perform the seminal Moody Blues album, Days of Future Passed, along with a selection of classic Moody Blues hits live on November 15, 2024 at BergenPAC in Englewood, NJ.
Formed in Birmingham, England in 1964, The Moody Blues have sold over 70 million albums worldwide. Their 1967 landmark Days of Future Passed album, created by Justin Heyward, John Lodge, Ray Thomas, Mike Pinder, and Graeme Edge, established the band as pioneers in the development of progressive rock and included such hits as “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon.” Additional Moody Blues hits followed including 1971’s “The Story in Your Eyes,” 1973’s “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band),” and 1981’s “Your Wildest Dreams.” In 2018, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Spotlight Central recently caught up with Moody Blues’ co-lead vocalist, bass guitarist, and songwriter John Lodge and asked him about his musical roots, his work with The Moody Blues, and his upcoming live performance of Days of Future Passed at Englewood, NJ’s BergenPAC.
You were born and raised in Birmingham, England. Is it true that growing up you wanted to be a car designer?
Yes! Birmingham was always called the “Second Motor City” — after Detroit, of course — and they made incredible cars there at the time. I was fascinated with cars! When I was seven or eight years of age I drove in my first car and I loved it. But I wasn’t really interested in the engineering or mechanical side of it; it was the aesthetic design of cars that I liked, and I was enthralled by American car design in the late ’50s and early ‘60s.
Given your interested in aesthetics, had you come from a musical family?
No, not at all.
So how, then, did you get involved with music?
Music didn’t really enter my life until I was about 11 or 12 years of age and I heard “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and his Comets — at that age, it really reverberated with me. After a year or 18 months went by, every lunchtime I’d go with my lunch money to a cafe near my school called Eddie’s Cafe where they had a Rockola jukebox and I’d drop the coins into the slot and listen to people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent. That’s when I sort of became hooked on rock and roll.
Did you first start off as a guitarist or as a bass player?
Actually, there was no such thing in England at the time as a bass guitar — it didn’t exist — and, anyway, there was no one who could really teach you how to play rock and roll on a six-string guitar at that time. I was about 13 then and my mother bought me a second-hand Spanish guitar with steel strings — which was very unusual — and I learned to play all the bottom riffs that the pianists used to play on the rock and roll songs. But I didn’t really get that far until Buddy Holly released “That’ll Be the Day” with The Crickets, and it was my “Eureka!” moment when I suddenly realized, “Hey! That’s what I’m gonna do — I’m gonna learn to play like Buddy Holly and then everything else will happen for me!” And I actually saw Buddy Holly play live at the Birmingham Town Hall around that time so I started to learn all the Buddy Holly songs sitting in my bedroom every night and practicing them.
That was on the guitar, but you’re known for being a world class bass player, so when did you start playing bass?
Well, I’d been playing all those Buddy Holly blues riffs on the bottom four strings of my guitar and I started to adapt the blues riffs into chord structures. Then, one day, I went to the music shop in Birmingham on a Saturday morning and in the window I saw an instrument with a sign that said, “Direct from the USA: Precision Sunburst Bass.” I rushed home — I was 15 years of age — and said to my father, “Dad, you gotta help me buy this guitar!” and we went straight back to Birmingham and I bought that guitar from the window.
Was that the same Fender Precision bass you played on all of The Moody Blues hits including “Nights in White Satin”?
Yes, I’ve done at least 90% of all of my recordings with that bass. It seems to play on its own.
Well, we’re not 100% sure about that, but if you say so! [Laughs] But you were becoming an established bass player at the time, so what can you tell us about joining your first band?
That first band was called El Riot and the Rebels — El Riot was actually Ray Thomas, the flute player from The Moody Blues — and if you can believe it, we used to wear Mexican outfits with sombreros! You know, when you’re 15 or 16 you’ll do anything to get publicity, and in England in those days there were a lot of bands like Johnny and the Pirates who dressed like pirates and Nero and the Gladiators who dressed as gladiators, so we were El Riot and the Rebels and we dressed in our Mexican outfits.
You talked earlier about how you were interested in becoming a car designer and we understand that you even went to college to study mechanical engineering. Around 1966, however, you didn’t enter the engineering field professionally and, instead, joined this up-and-coming band called The Moody Blues. How did that happen?
When the Moody Blues formed originally, Ray Thomas said to me, “John, do you want to come with us?” and I said, “Actually, I’ve got 18 months to go at college,” and I told him that I really wanted to finish my degree. About 18 months or so later, Ray called me and said, “Hey, Rocker” — he always called me “Rocker” — and he asked, “Have you finished college yet?” and I said, “Yeah, I just finished,” and he told me, “Well, get down to London and come join us again!”
And that’s just what I did. I went straight down to London and met up with Ray and keyboardist Mike Pinder — I’d known Mike from the Birmingham days anyway and, also, Graeme Edge who was an incredible drummer I knew from Birmingham — and it was a great meeting together; it was fabulous.
And where did the name, Moody Blues, come from?
In Birmingham, all the venues we used to play were halls in public houses, and the two major public houses in Birmingham were either owned by Ansells Brewery or Mitchells & Butlers Brewery. Mitchells & Butlers Brewery said they wanted to sponsor a house band which was going to be called “The M&B Five.” Eventually, they decided it wasn’t a good idea and dropped out but the initials “M&B” stayed. And from the initials, I think, Mike and Ray called the band The Moody Blues with the “M” being for “moody” and the “B” for “indigo blue,” which was a catchphrase in the ’60s just like “kinks,” which was a catchphrase in the ’60s that was used for another band name.
In 1967, The Moody Blues recorded Days of Future Passed. With its unique mix of classical and rock elements, could any of you guys have ever imagined at the time that, someday, you might be recognized as pioneers of a groundbreaking new genre like progressive rock?
[Laughs] No — no idea at all! We were just young musicians following the songs we’d written and everything else came after that. I don’t think we ever really thought about it because what was exciting to us was getting an actual invitation to record in a recording studio. We were thinking, “Wow! We’re in the studio 24 hours a day — no one else has ever done 24 hours a day of recording!” and we were very excited about putting down on a record the songs we had written and were performing on stage at the time.
And speaking about songwriting, you went on to write such classic Moody Blues tunes as “Emily’s Song,” “Steppin’ in a Slide Zone,”“Ride My See-Saw,” “Isn’t Life Strange?” the big hit “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band),” and one of our personal favorites, “Peak Hour.” Can you give us the story behind any of these songs?
Yeah, you just mentioned “Peak Hour,” and that’s interesting because at the time we used to travel in a van which, in England, were called transit vans. And we used to sit in the van with all the equipment and with a road manager who would drive us to gigs. And I remember coming back from a gig one time when Graeme Edge was sitting in front of me and we were driving home really fast along the motorway and there was this rhythmic sound going on really fast which was the sound of the wheels going over the concrete slabs of the motorway. And as I was listening to the tempo of this, I thought it was a fantastic tempo and I said to Graeme, “Hey, could you keep this tempo going for about three minutes?” and he said, “Yes, but why?” and I said, “I’ve just got this idea for a song,” and I basically wrote the song in the van — “Peak Hour” is the speed of the traffic, the rushing about during the day — and it all came together that way.
In addition to working with The Moody Blues, you also had a career outside the group working with many artists we all know including Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Brian Wilson, and many more. Do you have a favorite memory working with any of these legendary musicians?
[Laughs] All of them! Especially Chuck Berry, who was brilliant; I worked a couple of times with Chuck. I was doing a concert with him in Los Angeles and Chuck had come to the end of his set and said, “I’d like to do my new song I’ve just recorded,” and all of us in the band looked at each other and asked, “Does anybody know this song?” and everyone said, “No, we never heard it,” and Chuck just shouted, “You know the song, you know the words, so find out what the key is and just play with me!” [Laughs] That was great!
[Laughs] Now, your newest album is called Days of Future Passed — My Sojourn. Can you tell us more about that?
Yeah, I’m really excited about this album because although it’s the same album as the one from 1967, it’s not really the same because it’s my interpretation of me and who I am right now. I wanted to do Days of Future Passed live on stage because that’s something The Moody Blues had never done. So I worked for a year with my band at rehearsals and went to see Graeme Edge, The Moody Blues’ drummer, and said, “Graeme, would you record the poetry from Days of Future Passed?” and he said, “John, I’d love to — just keep the music alive,” because, at that point, we had stopped appearing as The Moody Blues. And I said, “If you can do that, Graeme, I’ll film you and you’ll always have a place on stage with me,” and that’s what gave me the energy to do the live show.
But as we finished the rehearsals, my daughter, Emily, said to me, “You know, we should record that — not as a live album — but we should go into the studio to re-record that album because the new version with the adaption by the different musicians gives the music a whole different vibe,” and we did.
And, sonically, it’s so amazing what you can do in a studio today compared to 1967, right?
Yeah, and that was so important that, for the vinyl album, I went to five different manufacturers all around the world trying to find one that could master the album the way I wanted it and I found one that could do it and it’s turned out to be a great album.
You’ve been voted one of the Top 10 bass players of all time by Bass Player magazine, you have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and you’ve also been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We understand your motto is “Have bass will travel” because you love doing live concerts. Can you tell us about your upcoming Days of Future Passed appearance on November 15 at BergenPAC in Englewood, NJ?
You know, I am a Moody Blue and I want to keep the Moody Blues’ music alive, so it’s gonna be all classic Moody Blues. I want to pay homage to the rest of the guys in the band because we had 50 years together and we were all very close, so I’ll do a song of Ray’s and a song of Justin’s in the first half, celebrating their music as well as my own from The Moody Blues. And the second half of the show will be Days of Future Passed in its entirety with Graeme doing the poetry and, also, I’ve got Jon Davison, the lead singer of Yes, joining me on stage doing “Nights in White Satin,” which he sings absolutely beautifully.
Is there anything else you’d like to say to anyone who might be interested in coming to the show at BergenPAC, or to your fans in New Jersey who have supported your music for all these years?
Yeah, I’ve just got to say to New Jersey, thank you for keeping the faith! You’ve been incredible to The Moody Blues and you’ve been incredible to me and I just want to thank you. I hope you’ll come out and enjoy Days of Future Passed whether you were there in the beginning or if you’re a new listener and have no idea what Days of Future Passed is all about because perhaps through this version you may discover the original as well!
John Lodge of The Moody Blues performs Days of Future Passed on November 15, 2024 at 8pm at BergenPAC, which is located at 30 North Van Brunt Street in Englewood, NJ. Ticket prices range from $29 to $99 and are available for purchase online at bergenpac.org.
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