This Is The Moody Blues is one of those almost mythical greatest hits albums from the 60s or 70s where every single cut was killer, the cocaine had not yet taken its toll and the group or artist had not yet begun their inevitable middle-aged 80s creative decline. It’s an album in the company of Endless Summer, Hot Rocks, the red and blue Beatles anthologies, Neil Young’s Decade and things like that. Albums that absolutely everybody had in the mid-70s.
Although they began as a straight ahead R&B band in their earliest incarnation, The Moody Blues were one of the first groups to integrate classical music with rock (novelty act Bee Bumble and the Stingers beat them to that claim by a few years with Kim Fowley-produced hit, “The Nutrocker,” back in 1962). Initially the group had been approached to record a rock ver"sion of Antonín Dvořák’s “New World Symphony,” by their label, Deram, eager for some product for the stereo high fidelity market and their “Deramic Sound System” offerings. Instead the group offered Deram their newest compositions, a projected song-cycle titled Days of Future Passed, about the events of a single day, with orchestral music and the sound of the Mellotron woven into the proceedings, and used as links between numbers.
Despite the label’s reputation for cheapness, they agreed.
The first single from the album, “Nights in White Satin,” was released on November 10, 1967. The song’s desperate, yearning lyrics were written by then 19-year-old Moody Blues vocalist Justin Hayward, inspired by a gift of white satin sheets at the end of one love affair and the beginning of another.
“Nights in White Satin,” probably marks the beginning of the prog-rock era. (Keith Emerson’s The Nice would soon follow down the classical-rock path with their first single, “America, 2nd Amendment,” in 1968, which adds an un-credited snatch of Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 9” from New World, to Leonard Bernstein’s “America” from West Side Story.)
I had This Is The Moody Blues on LP when I was a kid, on CD as an adult and recently I was even gifted with a quad 4.0 mix of the album (a bootleg sourced from a reel to reel tape) titled “This is The Quadraphic Moody Blues.” I’ve been playing that a lot around the house lately and decided to do a sort of “This is The (YouTube) Moody Blues,” or at least get as close to that track listing as I can using vintage video clips.
“Question” on The Lulu Show in 1970:
“Visions Of Paradise” and “The Actor” in 1968:
“Legend of A Mind” (aka “Timothy Leary’s Dead”), 1968:
“Lovely To See You” live at Taverne De L’Olympia, Paris 1970
“Never Comes The Day,” 1969
“Have You Heard” and “The Voyage,” the final suite of On the Threshold of a Dream performed live on Jazz Bilzen-Belgium,1969:
“Ride My See-Saw” on the BBC’s Colour Me Pop program in 1968.
“Tuesday Afternoon”
“I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)” in 1972
“Melancholy Man” at the Isle of Wight:
“Nights in White Satin” promo video, 1967: