The song John Lodge said was his “favourite ever”
John Lodge was never looking to simply make a bunch of catchy tunes when working with The Moody Blues.
The biggest names in the world were progressing by leaps and bounds when he first began, and the best music that he could hope to make had to have a bit more power behind it. And while many of the band’s tunes deserve to go down in history as much as the best psychedelic songs of their time, Lodge never forgot about the power of having a great song with no adornment.
After all, the old adage is that any tune has the potential to sound good if it can only be played on a guitar or a soul piano. Even in that bare state, it’s easy for someone to feel the emotion behind whatever the artist is saying, and as much as a record like Days of Future Passed is produced to high heaven, it’s not like there aren’t some cases where they have made that mentality work.
‘Nights in White Satin’ does have an added dimension of drama added to it when those woodwind instruments come screaming in, but the greatest moments of the tune is when Justin Hayward is singing the tune with an acoustic guitar. And it’s not like they didn’t get a firsthand education of how that worked when seeing their colleagues like The Beatles at work on their masterpieces.
If you look at Days of Future Passed compared to something like Sgt Pepper, for example, their massive production details are both extensions of what they wanted to do. The imaginary band that Paul McCartney was talking about could have made for a nice starting point for the group, but in the same way that the Moody Blues’ masterpiece is about a long journey through the day, all of the musical window dressing should only be there to add some more power rather than being the entire appeal of the tunes.
And when John Lennon finally ended the Fab Four, he wanted to go in as far in the opposite direction as possible. Plastic Ono Band was almost boastful in how rough around the edges it was, and while Imagine did have a bit more sugar coating, it wasn’t exactly a pristine production, either. Phil Spector did end up making reverb the star of the show on many of the tunes, but the title track was always going to hold a special place in Lodge’s heart when he heard it.
Even as late as his final tours, Lodge considered it a privilege to play the tune when he was opening for Yes, saying, “In 2019 I did a tour of America supporting Yes. And during the concert, for their encore, Yes played Imagine because Alan White was the drummer with the Plastic Ono Band. They asked me if I’d join them on stage singing ‘Imagine’. So as one of my favourite ever songs, I said yes. So I joined them on stage singing ‘Imagine’.”
While his touring mates were no strangers to Beatles songs, given their cover of ‘Every Little Thing’, giving ‘Imagine’ a more progressive sheen is a different animal entirely. Lennon intended the tune to be one of the most simplistic tunes in his catalogue, but thanks to them reinventing the track from the ground up, it’s refreshing to hear what the tune could have sounded like if it took a few subtle twists and turns.
The arrangement might have been a touch different, but the message wasn’t lost on Lodge. This was a song all about trying to make the world a much better place in every way he could, and if he was put on this Earth to do anything, it was to help people realise the beauty inside this kind of music.
