Justin Hayward’s favourite cover of The Moody Blues ‘Nights In White Satin’
As a unique member of the British invasion that followed once The Beatles cracked America, The Moody Blues blended progressive and symphonic elements into their music that transcended their seemingly simple blues-rock beginnings. Their richly orchestrated sound and introspective lyrics left an enduring impact on the music landscape.
One of their most impressive contributions was the 1967 song ‘Nights In White Satin’, a track which typified the group’s outlook, using poetry, pop music and vivid imagery to create a song that landed on the airwaves with aplomb and pushed The Moody Blues into worldwide fame. Released on Days of Future Passed, the single is regarded as their defining tune.
“I wrote our most famous song, ‘Nights in White Satin’ when I was 19,” shared Justin Hayward when speaking of the track. Hayward joined the band in 1966 to replace the late Denny Laine, who would later join Paul McCartney in Wings. Like many pop songs of the day, Hayward wrote the song based on a compilation of different concepts: “It was a series of random thoughts and was quite autobiographical. It was a very emotional time as I was at the end of one big love affair and the start of another. A lot of that came out in the song.”
Hayward had already been cited as a songwriter with great potential, having signed a deal with Lonnie Donegan’s publishing company when he was just a teenager. Donegan had been a huge inspiration for bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin and saw Hayward’s potential early on. He was proved right when the 19-year-old penned ‘Nights In White Satin’.
Perfectly fitting in with the concept of Days of Future Passed, a record which uses every song to chronicle the times of the day, the track is based on a mysterious motif. “It’s the listeners who bring the magic and the interpretations to these songs,” noted Hayward when asked to deliver his own view of the song’s lyrics.
The song has been endlessly covered over the years. From punk band The Dickies in 1979 to 1960s contemporaries Procul Haram and countless artists in between. But while Il Divo, Nancy Sinatra and Eric Burdon all provided great renditions of the song, for Hayward, one stands out. The near-perfect cover from Bettye LaVette, about which Hayward said: “She covered ‘Nights,’ and somebody sent it to me as an MP3, a link,” he explained.
“I was sitting in bed with my laptop, waking up to my emails, and I clicked on this link, and I burst into tears,” he continued when speaking to Songfacts in 2013. “My wife came in, and she said, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ And I said, ‘You’ve got to listen to this.’ She didn’t cry. But I heard the lyric for the first time. There have been hundreds, maybe thousands of covers of ‘Nights in White Satin,’ but that was the first time I heard it for real.”
There are few compliments as high as when an original songwriter truly cherishes a cover. Listen to Bettye LaVette’s cover of The Moody Blues song ‘Nights In White Satin’ below.
