The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed

Miraculous, essential prog DNA traces back to Days of Future Passed – but is it actually prog?

Justin Hayward: lead vocals, guitar

Mike Pinder: Mellotron, gong, co-lead vocals on “Dawn is a Feeling,” lead vocals on “Sunset,” spoken word on “The Day Begins” and “The Night’s Late Lament”

John Lodge: bass, lead vox on Peak Hour and Time To Get Away

Graeme Edge: drums

Ray Thomas: flute, lead vocals on “Another Morning” and “Twilight Time”

Special guests: the London Festival Orchestra, conducted by Peter Knight

Produced by Tony Clarke, with arrangements by Peter Knight

art by David Anstey

“I wish I could say there was some master plan about the Moodys, but it was sort of a series of blundering coincidences and accidents that kept us going, really, through the first ten years of the band.”

quoted from: Will Romano, Mountains Come Out of the Sky: An Illustrated History of Prog Rock (2010)

Picture this: you’re 19-year-old Justin Hayward. You’re under the predatory royalties contract of a washed-up skiffle singer and you've been rejected by the Animals. Though you’ve been accepted into the Moody Blues, an ex-R&B group you really jive with, no one's coming to your gigs. You’re so broke you have to move back home. As if all that wasn’t enough, though you have a wonderful girlfriend who’s gifted you a beautiful set of sheets, you’re lying awake on them...because you miss your ex.

So you write your new band’s greatest hit, “Nights in White Satin.” So was the birth of Days of Future Passed. It was a rock-and-roll album unlike any other: inspired by obscure studio project The Zodiac’s Cosmic Sounds, Holst’s Planets, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it was a concept album about “a day in the life of the everyman.”

But quite literally everything about this would be an uphill battle for the Moodys. Firstly, Deram Records had commissioned them to make a rock-and-roll adaptation of...Dvorak’s New World Symphony?

Yeah, no.

All five Moodys, plus their manager, producer Tony Clarke, arranger Peter Knight, and Deram’s head of special products Michael Dacre-Barclay – who later double-crossed them all by forging the Redwave/Knight partnership to ciphen royalties to himself! The drama! – all conspired to mutiny Deram.

Then there was the trouble of promoting the thing. The Moodys had been certified flops for two years post-“Go Now!” As drummer Graeme Edge described, “You must realize that at the time we were stone cold. The Moody Blues were a bubblegum group that had one hit record two years before and we were dead on the scrap heap. People were waiting for us to go home and be butchers and bakers and candlestick makers.” They come back with a new lineup and a positively un-promotable new record. It’s not pop, it’s not rock-and-roll, and it’s definitely not classical. Despite promotion from Deram, it did just okay in Britain and completely failed to make an impact in the States.

Pictured: full-page ad for Days of Future Passed in the 11/18/1967 issue of Record Mirror.

...but then something interesting happened. Five years later, the Moodys were gearing up to release a new single:“I’m Just A Singer In a Rock and Roll Band,” off Seventh Sojourn. But at the last minute, they got a call from the US branch of Decca Records saying, “Wait a minute, you’ve got a local hit in the States. Hold off on yoursingle so we can see what this one does.”

As the story goes, an FM radio DJ in Seattle played the full “Nights in White Satin”...so he’d have time to sneak out for a bong rip.

Ray remembered, “The second time he did it, the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree.” In response to “Nights in White Satin” randomly popping off in the States, Days of Future Passed was rereleased. AM stations still weren’t down with playing the whole “Nights in White Satin,” but the rereleased single got an extra minute of run time. It seems that extra minute made all the difference: where it only peaked at number 103 before, it now peaked at number 2.

Call it the Layla Effect.

The million-dollar question: is Days of Future Passed prog?

When asked how to describe Days of Future Passed to those unfamiliar, Graeme said it was “Classical – in the music term, not classic meaning very old rock – performed by a bunch of guys who were too stupid to know that we weren’t supposed to be able to do it.” He has a point. I hear Dvorak, Holst, Ravel, Stravinsky, even Gershwinin Days of Future Passed. So we can safely say Days is not prog, but progressive.

If you ask me, it can best be described as “Fantasia Rock.”

Before I confirmed Days was, in fact, intended to be a concept album (the ’60s seem to be full of “concept albums” that aren’t) – I noticed its cyclical nature. This is, after all, a concept album based on “a day in the life of the everyman,” as touted by the promotional campaign. Wake up, go to work, lunch break, come home, eat, sleep, repeat. Days starts and ends with Mike Pinder hitting the gong.

Don't adjust your dials, folks: the London Festival Orchestra really doesn't come in for 32 whole seconds! Instead, we have to wait for a long fade-in on the gong; making it sound like it’s been reversed. It starts off small, then grows in intensity; like the first rays of sunshine before the sun spills over the horizon. You’ll surely be dazzled by the horns, bells, harp, timpani, and obviously the strings – Peter took a very George Martin-esque approach to handling strings for a rock album – but listen to how the clarinets come in. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but they quiver like leaves. We’ve had a few “sunrise” moments on past albums: A Love Supreme, Eat A Peach. The Day Begins is the grandest of all. The words “cinematic” and “theatrical” are altogether overused in reviews of this album, so I’d like to throw some more adjectives in the mix: energized, hopeful, romantic, whimsical. “The Day Begins” is all the makings of an overture: the first composition in a suite or musical where all the themes are played by the orchestra. This arrangement teases out the “Dawn Is A Feeling,” “Another Morning,” and “Nights in White Satin” sections; just as a Hollywood movie overture would. You draw out the themes of your big songs to get the audience excited.

Bells and an anticipatory chord played by the strings cues us into Days’s first of the Graeme-written, Mike-read poems, Morning Glory.

“Cold-hearted orb that rules the night,

Removes the colors from our sight.

Red is gray and yellow white,

But we decide which is right,

and which is an illusion.”

“Morning Glory” first describes the night. The “cold-hearted orb” being the full moon, “pinprick holes in a colorless sky” describing stars in the night sky. A quieter blend of instruments is used to portray night: oboe or bass clarinet (damn you Trout Mask Replica for ruining my perception of that wonderful instrument forever,)harp, bells, and chimes.

“Brave Helios, wake up your steeds,

Bring the warmth the countryside needs.”

In Greek mythology, sun god Helios and his horses would drive a chariot carrying the sun across the sky. Notethe ascending string swells as our narrator summons “the mighty light of ten thousand suns.”

A playful woodwind piece called Dawn pushes the key of “Morning Glory” into that of Dawn is A Feeling. Though we’ve heard their themes in the overture, the Moodys themselves make their first appearance on “Dawn is A Feeling.” Of course, they come with their famous Mellotron in tow; thanks to Mike working for the company that made them. He removed the “less useful” tapes from the cabinet and replaced them with strings; thus changing the course of music history. The Mellotron is Days’s secret weapon. An instrument meant to sound like strings helps the band blend with actual strings.

The Moodys have not jumped the gun. They took careful consideration to write about daybreak; just a split second before the morning begins. Dawn is quiet. The birds haven’t called, the bugs have ceased chirping, the sky is pale. “Dawn is A Feeling” is quiet, too. Mournful, even, with Justin’s romantic, sweet vocals. But the optimism in the lyrics is subtle and powerful. “Do you understand/That all over this land there’s a feeling? In minds far and near/Things are becoming clear with a meaning...” Ah, that late ’60s Age of Aquarius mindset. Everyone’s really waking up to the powers that be, man! “Dawn”’s overall message is to live in the moment and not worry about things you can’t change. “It’s true, life flies faster than eyes could ever see. You’re here today, no future fears/This day will last/A thousand years…” I love the ambiguity of keeping the phrase open. “If you want it to.” It’s all up to you. An inspiring, typically ’60s humanist approach from the Moodys.

“Dawn” transmutes into another gorgeous orchestral section; with the strings and clarinet carrying its theme out just a little longer. Flutes, clearly a very important instrument to the Moodys, start Another Morning. This is one of the lesser-successful blends from Peter’s arrangements. It just kinda crossfades to Graeme’s drums; the two parts are mismatched. I know the orchestra was crafted to sound like the Moodys, but the Moodys do an awfully good job at sounding like an orchestra here. Ray Thomas’s flute takes center stage. The tambourine, happy, marching snare, and Mellotron sound joyous; like some pastoral village festival. “Another Morning” is a little cutesy for me. It’s definitely an artifact of the midcentury-medieval craze as far as its sound goes. That’s not to say I don’t like midcentury-medieval, I’m a known fan! It just has to come from the right person: Donovan, the ISB, Pentangle, the occasional Fairport Convention or odd Matthew’s Southern Comfort deep cut. “Morning”’s lyrics describe an active morning in town, specifically a child’s. “Balloons flying, children sighing/What a day to go kite-flying!” Boys going fishing, girls wearing cotton dresses and playing with dolls, and I think the “cowboys fighting out a duel” is meant to be boys playing cowboys and Indians. The moral of the song is buried in the lyrics: “Watch children playing, they seem so wise.” Children aren’t stupid. They’re more open, expressive, and insightful that adults give them credit for.

Lunch Break has Gershwin written all over it. Under Peter’s direction, the orchestra becomes a city during the week. The kiddies stay in town with their nannies, but their parents have gone to work for the day. The bell trills, string accents, and dialogue between woodwinds and flutes invoke images of bustling streets filled with commuters. The brass even sounds like car horns! And of course, Peter sneaks in themes from past songs; like “Dawn is A Feeling.”

“Lunch Break” fades out before Peak Hour, which honestly sounds like a Who castoff. The harmony, insistent drums, groovy bassline and keys, and poppy riff. All that’s missing is Moonie with headphones duct-taped to his head! “Peak Hour” is very ’60s British pop music. I don’t know how well it would’ve fared come the ’70s – or in America at all – but “Peak” could’ve fared well as a single in Britain. I can picture one of those psychedelic boutiques on Carnaby Street playing it.

“I see it all through my window it seems, never failing like millions of…” These? Leaves? I know for a fact Genius is wrong, there’s no way in hell it’s bees.

Whatever it is, if Days of Future Passed was getting too saccharine for you, “Peak Hour” breaks it out of that. This song is John Lodge’s statement against the 9-to-5 grind, the straight-man life. “Minds are subject to what should be done/Problem solved, time cannot be won.” Just take every day as it comes, man! I imagine a dandy-dressed narrator standing outside, looking in at endless rows of beige cubicles. “It makes me want to run and tell them they’ve got time/Take a step back look out and look in, I’ve got time.” Tell me the bridge doesn’t sound like the bridge of the Beatles’ “Dr. Robert”! The harmonies do the same thing.

“Peak”’s bridge is followed by a rave-up; first spilling into Justin’s guitar solo with a surf-rock tone, then Mike’sMellotron solo which plays with some Eastern elements. I don’t know if the Moodys looked at the run time of their other songs and specifically picked “Peak” to be side one’s closer, but it certainly makes good use of its closing spot. It slows before crescendos into a proper ending chord.

About Days’s other big radio hit, “Tuesday Afternoon” – or Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?) as Tony insisted it be titled on the LP for some reason – Justin said:

“I was going back to my parents’ house in Wiltshire. I smoked a couple of joints, went out into a field with a guitar and sat there and wrote that song. It was just about searching for some kind of enlightenment or some kind of religious or psychedelic experience in life.”

quoted from: David Beard, “Revisit the Moody Blues’ Landmark Album, ‘Days of Future Passed.’” Goldmine, 6/12/2012.

Please don’t be mad at me: I’ve never been crazy about “Tuesday.”

I like it much better when it saunters into the middle section. The Mellotron is quiet and smooth as Justin, the band, and the Mellotron strings lope through the clearing; a little stoned. It’s blissful, like sleeping the afternoon away in the sun.

“Tuesday afternoon,

I’m just beginning to see, now I’m on my way.

It doesn’t matter to me, chasing the clouds away...”

“Tuesday” is the youthful propensity to waste the days away without a care; and the juvenile ideal that there’s wisdom to be found in idle time. Our young protagonist hears the call to adventure: “Something calls to me/The trees are drawing me near, I’ve got to find out why/Those gentle voices I hear/Explain it all with a sigh...”

One of the best orchestral transitions links “Tuesday” to Evening (Time to Get Away.) Though it was thoughtfully-crafted, it makes us feel like our precious day has been ripped away by wasting it away or working it away, depending on your age. Cold piano chords and somber vocals mimic that first chilly breeze you feel in the afternoon. Golden hour is coming to a close, evening has come to pass. Written and sang by bassist John Lodge, “Evening” laments wasting life away at work. “Toiling has brought too many tears/Turn round all those past years.” We’re ruminating the quality time you lost with loved ones. John warns us once again to look at the bigger picture and make the most of our lives. “Live, all you people/You can see where you’re at...” Holy falsetto! What an underrated moment on Days. Beautiful Mellotron playing by Mike, wonderful flourishes by Justin on acoustic guitar, and great harmonies on those last “Evening, time to get away”s. The Moodys haven’t got much of a chance to be a harmonies band before this moment on the record.

The orchestra extends the last section of “Get Away” into Days’s most exotic number, Sunset. Thankfully, therehave no white guys doing politically dodgy Middle Eastern accents. But we’re absolutely hearing those “exotic” motifs. It seems Peter had fun composing for this number; “Sunset”’s use of percussion is unlike anything else on Days. And tell me what the clarinets are doing isn’t directly ripped from the Adoration in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Tony had some fun with this as well, slapping psychedelic effects on Mike’s voice. This is one of the most effective blends of band and orchestra – I say “one of” because you all know what’s coming. The Mellotron plays fake strings under the real strings, and Ray’s flute is soft and waxy, like the petal of a jasmine flower.

The guys bring a burst of urgency for Twilight Time – oh hey, we’re suddenly a ’60s R&B band again! Wild switch-up. It builds anticipation for what you know is coming, with Mike driving away on piano. The orchestrastretches “Twilight”’s melody. The strings whistle away like cool night air. The strings bloom like a night blossom before dancing like bells.

And then, that iconic waltz time.

“Nights in white satin, never reaching the end,

Letters I’ve written, never meaning to send.

Beauty I’ve always missed with these eyes before,

Just what the truth is, I can’t say anymore.”

At a glance, my mind is blown that Justin wrote Nights in White Satin when he was 19. Then I think of something Jackson Browne said about These Days. He wrote that when he was a teenager. I’m paraphrasing this from a documentary I haven’t seen in a long time, so forgive me if I’m not quite there. But he said something along the lines of, “Kids have feelings, too.”

“Gazing at people, some hand-in-hand/Just what I’m going through, they can’t understand.” You have a few breakups in your teens, but around 19/20 is your first true heartbreak in your first real adult relationship. I can attest to this: the worst breakup I’ve ever been through was the week after my 20th birthday. So much of Days is about youth vs. adulthood. When you’re in that transitional period all the drama feels so real. “Nights in White Satin” feels like coming of age.

"Nights" is the best blend of orchestra and band. This simply has to be one of the most iconic string parts in rock-and-roll. The 1968 version I think fades out through Ray’s cool, very ’60s flute solo. In all the radio edits that didn’t have the extra orchestra overdubs, the song is truly diminished. I remember the first time I heard the 3rd verse as the Moodys intended. I was shocked. That crescendo into the last chorus (if you can call it that) is show-stopping. Justin soars over this song, with his grand, hopeless professions of “And I love you, yes I love you, oh how I love you!” sounding like a pained wail out into the cold night.

Days closes with a voyeuristic look into a city night; like walking by and seeing mini-lives through the windows. “Watch lights fade from every room,” people sitting on the ends of their beds unable to sleep like Justin was. “Impassioned lovers wrestle as one/The lonely man cries for love and has none.” Graeme’s “Lament” poem ends with the same stanza which “Morning Glory” began with:

“Cold-hearted orb that rules the night,

Removes the colors from our sight.

Red is gray and yellow white,

But we decide what is right

And which is an illusion.”

All these little lives carry on. The orchestra takes one final gasp of air before a spectacular crash; like the moon rising high in the sky. (And someone knocking over the chimes!) Finally, the gong. A perfect circle.

You have to remember there wasn’t anything like Days of Future Passed out there upon its release. Pet Soundshad a lot more pop, the subsequent Sgt. Pepper’s was more psychedelic and Beatle-y. Love’s Forever Changes more eclectic and flavored by Southern California. The only other album I can think of that uses Mellotron as well as Days is The Zombies’ Odeyssey and Oracle, and that was a whole year out!

Where the Pretty Things invented the rock opera in ’68 and honest-to-goodness prog outfits opened the floodgates in ’69, the Moodys established principles prog would operate by in the decade to follow. Namely, they pioneered the rock suite, which prog took and ran with. In a few short years, you have songs that take up whole sides of LPs, or very close to. “Echoes.” “Starless.” "2112" later down the line. Insert Topographic Oceans here. Thick As A Brick! DARK SIDE OF THE FUCKING MOON! This was an idea only classical music employed before. Essential prog DNA traces back here.

Days was a perfect storm: just the right creative input from all the Moodys, the support of Tony Clarke and Deram, and the one and only time Decca lent them the London Festival Orchestra with Peter Knight at the helm, at a time when no one was stupid enough to do what the Moodys had done. Each song perfectly renders a color on David Anstey’s cover: the pinks of dawn, the reds and oranges of morning and sunset. Yellows and greens of the afternoon, the blues of the evening, and all the rich indigo of nights in white satin. No other act has captured a day in the life quite the way the Moody Blues did on Days of Future Passed.

Personal favorites: “Dawn Is A Feeling,” “Peak Hour,” “Sunset,” “Nights In White Satin/Late Lament”

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode above!

Beard, David. “Revisit the Moody Blues’ Landmark Album, ‘Days of Future Passed.’” Goldmine, 6/12/2012. https://www.goldminemag.com/articles/revisit-the-moody-blues-landmark-album-days-of-future-passed

Bowman, Bill, dir. Legend of A Band: The Story of the Moody Blues. An Image Pie: Polygram Records, 1990. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7691c53B3oQ&t=2s

Cushman, Mark. Long Distance Voyagers: The Story of the Moody Blues, Volume 1 (1964-1979). Kindle Edition. San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2017.

Evans, Allan. “LPs By Allan Evans: ‘Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed.’” NME, 11/25/1967. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/New-Musical-Express/1967/NME-1967-11-25-S-OCR.pdf

Hennessey, Mike. “Moody Blues Stage Well-Paced Concert.” Billboard, 3/16/1968.

Kropp, Bill. “Moody Blues’ Ray Thomas: His Final Interview.” Best Classic Bands. https://bestclassicbands.com/moody-blues-days-future-passed-interview-8-31-1777/

Romano, Will. Mountains Come Out Of The Sky: An Illustrated History of Prog Rock. Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2010. https://archive.org/details/mountainscomeout0000roma/page/13/mode/1up

“Album Reviews.” Billboard, 3/16/1968. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/60s/1968/Billboard%201968-03-16.pdf

“Cashbox Album Reviews: Pop Picks.” Cashbox, 3/23/1968. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/60s/1968/CB-1968-03-23.pdf