On this date in 1964, The Moody Blues were formed in Birmingham. 10 facts about the Moody Blues.
The original line-up was Graeme Edge (Drums), Denny Laine (Guitar/vocals), Mike Pinder (keyboards/vocals), Ray Thomas (multi-instrumentalist/vocals) and Clint Warwick (bass/vocals). Laine and Warwick left the band in 1966, and were replaced by Justin Hayward (guitar/vocals) and John Lodge (bass/vocals).
The various members had been playing in other bands in Birmingham, including El Riot & the Rebels (Thomas and Lodge), Danny King & the Dukes (Warwick), Gerry Levine & the Avengers (Thomas and Pinder) and The R&B Preachers (Warwick, Edge and Laine).
When they got together to form what would become the Moody Blues, they were hoping for sponsorship from the local Mitchells & Butlers Brewery but despite naming themselves the M&B5 to this end, the sponsorship never happened. So they changed their name, keeping the initials. Moody was a reference to the Duke Ellington song Mood Indigo and also the ability of music to affect a person’s moods. Blues was a reference to the type of music they were playing on the club circuit at the time.
Their first single wasn’t a hit. It was a cover of Bobby Parker's Steal Your Heart Away with B side was an original song, Lose Your Money (But Don't Lose Your Mind). It was released in September 1964. The band's big breakthrough came with their second single, Go Now, a cover of a song by Bessie Banks, released in November 1964. It reached number one.
However, it wasn’t a lasting success. They had no more hits for over 18 months and at one gig, a member of the audience went backstage to tell them they were the worst band he’d ever seen.
Things changed again in 1967 when Decca Records approached them about a project they had in mind – a pop version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony to showcase their new Deramic Stereo Sound system. Somehow the album evolved into Days of Future Passed which was original Moody Blues songs accompanied by an orchestra. This album, though sales were modest at first, has been called "one of the first successful concept albums".
The Moody Blues were the only band to regularly use a Mellotron, which is an early sort of synthesizer that used tape loops instead of electronic tone generators in their concerts. Mike Pinder had worked for the company that had invented the Mellotron, so he was especially familiar with how to use it.
In an interview around the time of the release of their album Seventh Sojourn, Edge told Rolling Stone: "We've got two Christians, one Mystic, one Pedantic and one Mess, and we all get on a treat."
They started their own label, Threshold Records, in 1969, one of the first bands to do so with only The Beatles and the Beach Boys beating them to it. The aim was to develop and promote new talent including bands called Trapeze and Providence, but none of the new acts really took off. By by the late 1970s they’d gone back to more traditional recording contracts.
The Moody Blues toured the UK and US in 2015, including their first appearance at Glastonbury. 2017 saw the 50th anniversary of Days of Future Passed, so they went on tour performing the album in its entirety together with other songs. Ray Thomas died on 4 January 2018, at the age of 76, so didn’t live to see the band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At time of writing, only two Moody Blues survive, Justin Hayward and Patrick Moraz, who joined in 1978 after Pinder left.
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