The Moody Blues - Days Of Future Passed

On the back cover of The Moody Blues’ Days Of Future Passed album, there’s a picture of the Moodys sitting in a conference room of Deram records, discussing the new album. When I was younger, I imagined the band discussing ideas on how to make the album awesome. It also looked like the room itself-probably just another boring, mundane conference room-was a futuristic lab where the band discussed such heavy topics like the phases of the moon and symphonic arrangements.
Today, my cynicism has replaced all of that youthful space-talk. For all I know, they were probably sitting around, discussing ideas of how to take The Beatles’ foray into art a step further, utilizing a willing orchestra and a hare-brained idea of a day in the life, pun intended.
I was duped into believe that Days Of Future Passed was some kind of artistic statement all the way into my first few years of college. It was then that I re-purchased the album on cd-because all works of art should be listened to in the highest of fidelity, right?
Nothing could have prepared me for the magnitude of unchecked pretention that awaited me when I re-interpreted this album. Evidently, I must have picked up the needle whenever the narrator came on at the beginning and end of the album, reciting some bullshit poetry that was probably composed during the same time that aforementioned photo was taken. Bongwater later parodied this with a straight face for one of their albums, only added a sarcastic “Wow.” at the end.
There is no “Wow” at the end of the Moody’s original version. They really believe this shit.
Understand, this was a pop band prior to the recording of this album. Listen to “Go Now” when the band featured Denny Laine and then listen to “Nights In White Satin” featuring a newly appointed Justin Haywood. Haywood clearly had an impact on what the Moody Blues were to become: a counterfeit piece of motel room art packaged under a fraudulent claim to be a classic piece of work.
The two hits, “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Nights In White Satin,” are fine pieces of detailed pop. They stand out as decent pop singles even during a period when artists tended to throw everything in the mix to make it sound “modern” or “psychedelic.” The difference is how the Moodys used traditional orchestration, a mellotron, and a finely structured pop song to convey itself. Great pop? Absolutely. High art? No way.
Aside from those two nice moments of pop single bliss, the rest of is a bloated piece of haphazard filler, hastily arranged and incorrectly attributed. It’s “importance” is essentially the work of the orchestral arrangers who follow the same lines as when they arrange current pop hits for the MOR sect. There’s no redeeming value to the album, it does little to convey the emotion of the time or the passion of the band itself. It’s a novelty that benefited from becoming one of the first few concept records of the modern rock era and one that heavily incorporated orchestration into the song cycle. While it proved to be one of the first to use these strategies in the song structure, it does little to excel on actual songs.
Because when you take away the orchestration, you’ve got about twenty minutes of actual songs. And when you take away those aforementioned singles, you’re left with silly musings of the day (sample verse: “Fishes biting/So Exciting/Lunchtime sounds so inviting”) each one delivered by a different member of the Moodies and, therefore, each one fluctuating in consistency.
I later learned that this album was totally the brainchild of the record company who wanted one of their pop acts to work with a full orchestra so that they could promote the label’s new line of enhanced stereo. Since the Moody’s were already under contract, under debt, and with no real possibility of turning their plight around, they were chosen to assist with the project. As luck may have it, the album took off which then posed a bigger problem: how to follow it up. But thanks to their experience with Days Of Future Past, the Moody Blues learned a very important lesson: they could forge a career one album at a time even when that album only really had a few notable tracks within its pompous sleeve.

True story: I once met a chick that was a total Moody Blues fan. I mean, she would not shut up about them and the more she talked about them, the more I was convinced she was a complete wack job. I have no recollection of her name or where we met-I only remembered to steer clear of her and run away. The memory of her devotion to this bunch of blowhards was something that I'll never forget-or understand why.