The Moody Blues - "Days of Future Passed" (1967) - Deram Records
Hello Friends,
August is in full swing and we've got a certified classic on our prog-rock turntable this evening!
After their blue-eyed soul debut record, The Magnificent Moodies, The Moody Blues shuffled their lineup and totally changed their approach to music. No longer were they interested in two to three minute R&B pop songs (think "Go Now") and instead they wanted to explore the LP as a larger art form.
Days of Future Passed was unlike anything that had been released up until that time and it could not have sounded any different from anything the band has done before! Its not only an important precursor to the fledgling prog rock movement, but its also one of rock & roll's earliest concept records: a song cycle, told in words and music, that covers a typical day in the life from dawn 'til night. It is also probably the first rock & roll record to utilize an entire orchestra (The London Festival Orchestra, conducted by Peter Knight) as an accompaniment to the band.
Its also probably the first album to use the Mellotron throughout! In fact, maybe for this record it should have been called a "Mellowtron" because this is a very, very laidback listen. Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids, but Tiki T. and I are going to need to inject ourselves with some much needed caffeine in order to make it through this!
Side One begins with an Overture of sorts appropriately titled "The Day Begins" which concludes with a spoken word poem read by keyboardist Mike Pinder. Lush and cinematic. Proggy, sure, but not very rocky!
"The Day Begins" fades into "Dawn: Dawn is a Feeling" featuring guitarist Justin Hayward on lead vocals and Pinder (who wrote the song) singing the bridge. A slow, lazy, lush symphonic pop song featuring orchestra as well as drums, guitar, bass & mellotron. Very English-sounding, but then again, mostly everything by the Moody Blues sounds particularly English.
The wispy and wistful, "The Morning: Another Morning" featuring the band's flautist, Ray Thomas, on lead vocals is next and that leads into a Gershwin-inspired musical interlude which concludes with the record's most upbeat rocker, "Lunch Break: Peak Hour" written and sung by bassist John Lodge. Actually, "Peak Hour" is probably our favorite track on the record. A great little 1960's pop song. Great harmonies reminiscent of The Zombies with music reminiscent of some Syd Barrett-era Floyd.
Side Two opens with Justin Hayward's lush-sounding baroque pop song "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" better known simply as "Tuesday Afternoon". One of the bands most recognizable hits. Its quite a pretty song with Justin Hayward's genteel vocals complementing the soft acoustic picking and wavering Mellotron chords. Never realized before how much this song probably owes to The Beatles' "A Day In the Life" which came out earlier in 1967.
Tuesday afternoon blends into John Lodge's "(Evening) Time to Get Away" a dark counterpoint to "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" that starts out sounding a little like Greg Lake-fronted King Crimson and winds up sounding like Something Else-era Kinks.
Mike Pinder's "The Sunset" sounds more like something we'd hear on a Martin Denny record. An exotic, tribal-sounding chant with vocal effects, mellotron, flute and Pinder plucking a Bulgarian tambura.
The third "evening" song on the record is Ray Thomas's "Twilight Time", a short, brooding, psychedelic song that again sounds very Syd Barrett-like, if Syd Barrett smoked pot instead of scrambling his brain on massive amounts of hallucinogenics.
The album's climax, "Nights in White Satin", became the band's biggest hit since their "Go Now" period and would do even better (reaching # 2 on the Billboard charts) when it was re-released in 1972.
The song fades out into "Late Lament", a final flurry of orchestration in which Mike Pinder reads part two of the poem he started on the album's first track. Things have come full circle, friends!
Days of Future Passed was unlike anything that had been released up until that time and it could not have sounded any different from anything the band has done before! Its not only an important precursor to the fledgling prog rock movement, but its also one of rock & roll's earliest concept records: a song cycle, told in words and music, that covers a typical day in the life from dawn 'til night. It is also probably the first rock & roll record to utilize an entire orchestra (The London Festival Orchestra, conducted by Peter Knight) as an accompaniment to the band.
Its also probably the first album to use the Mellotron throughout! In fact, maybe for this record it should have been called a "Mellowtron" because this is a very, very laidback listen. Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids, but Tiki T. and I are going to need to inject ourselves with some much needed caffeine in order to make it through this!
Side One begins with an Overture of sorts appropriately titled "The Day Begins" which concludes with a spoken word poem read by keyboardist Mike Pinder. Lush and cinematic. Proggy, sure, but not very rocky!
"The Day Begins" fades into "Dawn: Dawn is a Feeling" featuring guitarist Justin Hayward on lead vocals and Pinder (who wrote the song) singing the bridge. A slow, lazy, lush symphonic pop song featuring orchestra as well as drums, guitar, bass & mellotron. Very English-sounding, but then again, mostly everything by the Moody Blues sounds particularly English.
The wispy and wistful, "The Morning: Another Morning" featuring the band's flautist, Ray Thomas, on lead vocals is next and that leads into a Gershwin-inspired musical interlude which concludes with the record's most upbeat rocker, "Lunch Break: Peak Hour" written and sung by bassist John Lodge. Actually, "Peak Hour" is probably our favorite track on the record. A great little 1960's pop song. Great harmonies reminiscent of The Zombies with music reminiscent of some Syd Barrett-era Floyd.
Side Two opens with Justin Hayward's lush-sounding baroque pop song "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" better known simply as "Tuesday Afternoon". One of the bands most recognizable hits. Its quite a pretty song with Justin Hayward's genteel vocals complementing the soft acoustic picking and wavering Mellotron chords. Never realized before how much this song probably owes to The Beatles' "A Day In the Life" which came out earlier in 1967.
Tuesday afternoon blends into John Lodge's "(Evening) Time to Get Away" a dark counterpoint to "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" that starts out sounding a little like Greg Lake-fronted King Crimson and winds up sounding like Something Else-era Kinks.
Mike Pinder's "The Sunset" sounds more like something we'd hear on a Martin Denny record. An exotic, tribal-sounding chant with vocal effects, mellotron, flute and Pinder plucking a Bulgarian tambura.
The third "evening" song on the record is Ray Thomas's "Twilight Time", a short, brooding, psychedelic song that again sounds very Syd Barrett-like, if Syd Barrett smoked pot instead of scrambling his brain on massive amounts of hallucinogenics.
The album's climax, "Nights in White Satin", became the band's biggest hit since their "Go Now" period and would do even better (reaching # 2 on the Billboard charts) when it was re-released in 1972.
The song fades out into "Late Lament", a final flurry of orchestration in which Mike Pinder reads part two of the poem he started on the album's first track. Things have come full circle, friends!
Good record. Probably pretty mind-blowing at the time of its release. In our opinion, however, it loses a little bit over time. It definitely sounds dated and doesn't quite hold up as well to modern ears as bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis or Crimson. Obviously, we're pretty cynical but some of the orchestrations tend to sound a little light and airy. If the album took more darker turns, we think it would have held up better! Oh, and those spoken word bits... geesh... what did they rip off some 13 year old's math notebook?
RATING: 4 cold-hearted orbs that rule the night out of 5
