“That bloke’s right – we are crap!” The insult and the instrument that turned a failing pop act into prog giants

In 1966 The Moody Blues’ new line-up were trying to survive in the afterglow of Go Now, which had been a hit two years earlier. They had a new instrument in the form of a Mellotron – but they weren’t sure what to do with it, until they were told a cold harsh truth after a show. In 2022 they told Prog how that moment led them to the creation of epic album Days Of Future Passed and a globetrotting career.

“When the five of us were together at last, I think the other three guys were happy that me and Lodgy were there,” Justin Hayward says of the Moody Blues line-up cemented in 1966, consisting of himself, John Lodge, Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas and Graeme Edge. “We looked quite nice, a couple of pretty boys and some serious blokes. It was fun and funny. We had a lot of laughs.”

Another enormous and defining change occurred around the same time: the introduction of the Mellotron. A piano-style instrument with pre-recorded tape loops fixed to each key, it was being used to offer social clubs and cabarets access to a pantheon of lead instrument sounds on the right side of the board, with backing and rhythm tracks on the left. It was effectively the one-man band idea turned up to 11 – and the birth of sampler systems.

Made by Streetly Electrontics. yhey were bulky, weighed a ton and were cost around £1000 (over £20k today). Pinder had worked as a tester in the Birmingham factory and he really wanted a Mellotron. “I grew up listening to the music of Mantovani and the layers of rich and melodious string arrangements that were his trademark,” he said in 2018. “The Mellotron enabled me to create my own variations of string movements. I could play any instrument I wanted to hear.”

By chance, Pinder heard that a Mark II was for sale, for cheap, at the Dunlop Factory Social Club back home. He snapped it up, and it was an immediate hit with Hayward.“It was wonderful,” he recalls.”It just made my songs work.”

Moody Blues - Go Now [HD] - YouTube

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The Mellotron went out on the road with the new Moodies as, uniformly suited and booted, they crammed into a van to fulfil a batch of dates in northern clubs during the autumn of ’66. They were contracted for two 45-minute sets, the first of which was R&B and included Go Now – but that was, according to Hayward, “lousy”.

The second set featured new material that brought Thomas’ flute-playing to the fore. “He played from the heart,” says Lodge, “and it was beautiful.”

“Unfortunately our material went down like a lead balloon,” Hayward says. “Our price had dropped to £25 a night and we had to put on a bit of cabaret, adding a few jokes and so on – not really our strong point.”

Lodge tells how a single moment changed everything: “One night, after our set at the Fiesta club in Stockton, one of the crowd came and knocked on our dressing room doo. We thought, ‘Here we go – photos, handshakes.’ But it was a man who said, ‘I’ve brought my wife for a night out, and you’re the worst band I’ve seen in my life. You’re crap.’”

Hayward remembers his “bottom lip trembling” as the Moodies’ van headed south in silence, until about half an hour into the trip home. Graeme Edge piped up from his position in the back, on top of the Mellotron: “That bloke’s right. We are crap!”

The Moody Blues - Nights In White Satin (1968) - YouTube

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Next day the matching blue suits were ditched. It was time for a new visual, as well as musical, identity. “We said, ‘Let’s get clothes that feel right for the music,’” Lodge recalls. “We got some great outfits! We had to assert our individuality. It’s is also what drove our music – that expression of personality.”

“We were going to give it a few months and see if things worked out once and for all,” says Hayward. In that time they’d find a new audience in Europe and find inspiration from The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album, sowing the seeds for Nights In White Satin and Days Of Future Passed.