The Lost Chord
In Search of the Lost Chord
Ah, The Moody Blues. Bonkers in a way only a British band can be.
Between 1967 and 1972 the band released a series of seven studio albums, classics one and all.
Time has not been good to the group and their reputation has diminished over the years.
Yes, it’s true that some of their 1980s albums were pretty awful (as were almost all 1980s albums by their peers), but that should not diminish how we think about the band. And as ever, the true worth of any group is in their music. And what music…
Probably the band’s most famous album was 1967’s Days of Future Past. But this week we’re going to look at its follow-up, 1968’s In Search of the Lost Chord.
It is certainly an album of its time, with songs about Timothy Leary and an almost six minute closing track called Om, but look beyond the hippy mists and you’ll be rewarded by an LP of some truly great tunes. After the rather barmy opener, Departure, the first real song is the wonderfully rocking Ride My See-Saw. Some biting guitar playing backs a song with real driving force.
House of Four Doors is one of those tracks that may look a bit mad on paper, but the actual delivery is excellent and the musical backing evokes a spectral feel that the lyric does nothing to dispel. It’s melodic and slightly detached and seems to be saying much more than the lyric states. There are moments of true beauty here, like a Glastonbury sunrise over a Pagan dawn.
It comes in two parts, separated by Legend of a Mind about the afore mentioned Mr. Leary. Astral planes and the like certainly date the track, but that’s no bad thing. It is resplendent with its slightly deranged harmonies which give the sense that it all made more sense back in 1968. Taking a marijuana leaf out of the Beatles’ Day in the Life book, it’s a song of many parts all of which feature some lovely instrumentation.
Voice in the Sky is relatively straight forward with its three minutes being taken up by a melody carried along on the wings of an ethereal flute that seems to swoop in and out of the tune like a lost child looking for its mother. It’s actually a very good song which repays repeated listens.
The Best Way to Travel features the great line, “Thinking is the best way to travel”. Half way it drifts off into a world the listener isn’t privy to, but then returns to take us on the second leg of the journey. Cosmic, indeed.
The album’s penultimate proper track is the fantastic strangeness that is The Actor. For this magazine’s money, The Actor is the band’s greatest ever moment. Even when we consider the times the LP was recorded in and the almost other-worldly nature of much music of the time, it’s still at turns both a truly mystical and absolutely mysterious song.
The lyric traverses a path from the mundane to the spiritual, but the track’s real magic comes from Justin Haywood’s career best singing. His voice doesn’t just ride the carpet of melody, but actually seems to soar beyond our dimension to some other time and place. Yes, that may sound fanciful, but only if you’ve never heard the track. Listen to the song from 1:06 as the vocal begins to glide free of the song and then as Haywood sings, “Oh, darling, you’re almost part of me”, he seems to have left the confines of our normal world and ascended to some spiritual nirvana that never fails to make your heart surge. It’s powerful, emotive, strange and mystical. It’s also the best moment of the band’s career.
As if this was too much, the album ends with Om. It must be heard to be believed. Beautiful, baffling and without a doubt bonkers.
