Widget ImageThe Moody Blues: Still out there somewhere

March 19, 2012

The Moody Blues

The Moody Blues

 

By Melissa Ruggieri,  The Alanta Journal-Constitution

The Moody Blues are celebrating the 45th anniversary of their revolutionary album,“Days of Future Passed.”

Want to feel inadequate?

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Justin Hayward was 20-years-old when he joined the band and contributed the elegant “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon.”

And that was the launching point of a career that has encompassed 70 million albums sold, more than 25 “hits” (the band has always been more about cohesive albums than radio singles) and incessant touring for The Moody Blues.

Original member Graeme Edge is still keeping the beat for Hayward and bassist John Lodge, who both joined the Moodys in 1966, two years after the band formed. And the trio is back on the road again for “The Moody Blues: The Voyage Continues – Highway 45” tour, in honor of the “Days of Future Passed” landmark.

At this point, crafting a set list to satisfy all generations is impossible, but Hayward and his bandmates spend significant time combing through the trove.

“It’s tough because we’re a band with a huge catalog. We were an album band, so I’m not saying we were brilliantly prolific, just that people love those album tracks. It sort of becomes, it’s not what to play, it’s what to leave out is the real dilemma. To make it fair and to make it flow, you have to resign yourself to saying, ‘I LOVE that song…but we can’t play it this time around,’” Hayward said last week from his hotel room in Sarasota, Fla.

The tour launched last week with six dates in Florida and, according to set list reports, the shows span the band’s career fairly – from the aforementioned classics on “Days” to 1969’s “Are You Sitting Comfortably?” to ‘70s fave “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)” through their ‘80s return with “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere” and “Your Wildest Dreams.”

In its time, “Days” was a landmark, one of the first acknowledged rock albums to include symphonic elements.

It was born out of an idea to make a rock version of Antonín Dvo?ák’s “New World Symphony,” which the band agreed to do as a way of paying off their debts from album advances.

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