Moody Blues Hall of Famer to play Music Pier

OCEAN CITY – Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Lodge is bringing the songs of the Moody Blues to the Music Pier stage Monday, July 25.

Lodge joined the Moody Blues on bass and vocals amid lineup changes just ahead of their seminal album “Times of Future Passed.” 

He played with the band throughout its iconic run and keeps its legacy going to this day.

He spoke with the Sentinel as he kicked off his summer tour.

“I’m really excited to get going,” he said. “Summer concert tours – everybody is in a great mood, the weather is great, so I’m looking forward to it.”

A phrase that always comes up regarding the Moody Blues is “Prog Rock” which is funny because it wasn’t really a descriptor before you guys. How does it feel to be considered a pioneer of an entire genre of music?

“It’s really strange actually,” he said, “because when we started I suppose the media wanted to put the Moody Blues somewhere. We were called symphonic rock, psychedelic rock, underground rock, but at no time was it prog rock. Prog rock didn’t exist. It’s strange – all the things we were called have gone by the wayside now. People say we were one of the pioneers of prog rock; it’s quite strange that we’re one of the pioneers of something that didn’t exist.”

I read that you’ve been playing the same Fender P- (Precision) bass for 60 years now. Is that true? How is it holding up?

“It’s fantastic. I bought it in 1959 or 1960 and I record with it all the while. I think I recorded nearly every Moody Blues song on it, I’ve recorded all my solo albums with that bass, and somehow it plays on its own. I know it sounds strange, but when I pick it up it’s like magic. It’s like a magic broom taking me everywhere. I use flat-wound strings on it and it just gives me the sound I want every time. It’s also the magic, I think, of owning something that’s yours – that you’ve grown up with. When I take the bass out of its case, I can still smell that same smell of when I bought it. It conjures up incredible memory. So I think there’s something in there; it’s an extension of my life, you know? When I bought that bass, inevitably, 24 hours a day, whenever I could, I was playing it. So it is an extension of my life.”

I am a bass player and, like many others, I ended up there because I’m just a lousy guitarist. How did you come to the low end?

“Because when I was growing up, when I was in school, every lunch time I’d go the cafe and they had a jukebox,” Lodge said. “They had all the rock n’ roll songs – Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis – and I wondered what really turned me on to these records. And I realized all these artists were iconic performers, iconic singers, but what was it that made it all work? And I realized it was the left-hand side of the piano, that’s what hit me. It was the left-hand side of the piano. So, on my guitar – bass is different – I was learning all the bottom riffs I could. For me that’s what rock n’ roll was about. I was just listening to the bottom end. I became infatuated with how it all worked. Before then, double bass players used to, in rock n’ roll, hit the root notes of the song. But with electric bass you could explore and I realized exploring on the bass, for me, was really what I wanted to do. I tell people who come to me talking about music – they say, ‘I have my son practicing piano and he doesn’t like it that much.’ I say to tell them to listen to a song they love or a recording they like and see what instrument hits them. With me it was the bass part; I can’t explain it. It was amazing to me. James Jamerson, I remember any time he came to England I would go and see him. Whether it was with Diana Ross or whoever, I would watch him on stage just controlling everything. For me bass playing has always been – if you listen to the bass, could you tell what the song is? For me, that’s what was important.”

I talked to Jack Casady from Jefferson and Hot Tuna a few years ago and he explained to me that in the ’60s the electric bass was a new instrument and so there wasn’t a lot of influence to draw from. What was it like finding your footing on this new instrument and finding its role?

“Yeah, there was no one,” Lodge said. “I remember the first person I ever saw play electric guitar bass – which it was called back in those days – and it was a guy in the Treniers. They were in a film called ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ and I was probably 11 or 12 years old when I saw it. I couldn’t understand what that person was playing in the back. It was like Stratocaster but it wasn’t a Stratocaster. So when the Fender bass came to Birmingham and it was in the shop window, with the help of my father we bought it. But there was no one you could watch play bass; there was nobody. You just had to make it up, really, and I think that’s what I was doing all the while. I was making it up. I wasn’t working on scales or anything, just saying, ‘What notes go with this song?’ And that’s what I do.”

You joined the band during a period of major changes in personnel and sound. What was that period like for you? It must have been a whirlwind.

“It’s an interesting thing,” Lodge said. “Ray Thomas, the flautist in the Moody Blues, and I had been working together in another band for years before the Moody Blues. Actually, in that time Mike Pindor had joined us for a short time as well. So Mike rang me one day and he said, ‘Hey ‘Rocker,’ which is what he called me, ‘have you finished college yet?’ because I was a few years younger than them. I said, ‘Yes, I’ve just finished,’ and he said, ‘Well, get down to London then. I need you.’ And that was it, really. I met Justin Hayward down there in the summer of ’66 and that was it. The meeting was – we’d all played everybody else’s songs up until then, all American songs basically. We should start writing our own songs and perform what we called, with our songs, English blues – because the blues is about where you live, growing up, parents, and everything else. We thought we should do that growing up in the Birmingham area, you know? It’s still the blues. And that’s what we did. We started writing our own songs and when the opportunity came, recording ‘Days Of Future Passed.’”

And when that record came out there had been ambitious records like Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds but you guys really did create was something brand new. I’m curious about the process of that. Was there concern that people wouldn’t get it or that you were sabotaging yourselves with something so different?

“Well, we’d been playing some of this stuff on stage for a while,” Lodge explained. “Not for very long, but we knew what the reaction was. I met an agent the other day who booked us pre-‘Days Of Future Passed’ and he said to me he could always remember me saying to him, ‘Why isn’t everybody sitting down?’ He said, ‘Well, everybody wants to dance.’ I said, ‘Well, they’re not really going to be able to dance with our songs.’ He said that wasn’t very good. But he couldn’t believe that when we started playing the audience all just stood still and watched. People started sitting down on the dance floor, listening to the music. I think that’s what spurred us on, really, to say, “OK, we may not be successful, but this is what we want to do.’ In fact, when we played the record back for the record company, they basically dismissed it. They didn’t know what to do with it. But we were very fortunate because the vice president of London Records from New York was there and he heard it and another guy from Decca was there who was from their classical side, and they knew what we were on about. They knew what we were trying to do. They really became our mentors in a way and it was a great time.”

A theme I see come up in your interviews is the idea of “keeping the music alive.” What does that mean for you and does it carry even more weight with Graeme Edge’s passing last year?

“Yeah, I was with Graeme just the week before he passed away,” Lodge said, “and we had a nice time. We lived a few memories, had a few laughs, and obviously a bit of sadness. But I first met Graeme when I was 15 when he was in a band and I used to go see his band play. I used to say, ‘I’m going to play with this guy one day.’ Fifty-three years later we had a career together which was an amazing time. What it means to me is – before these songs, before the bass parts are played on these songs or or guitar or whatever,  they don’t exist. It’s my journey through life, my journey through my life, and I want to keep playing them. It’s just part of me, it’s who I am.”

A thing I admire is you seem to have a mentality of always looking forward. That’s not always easy in life or work. How do you do it and what do you see looking forward?

“I don’t really want to look back on anything,” Lodge said, “because I believe in the non-hypothetical. I believe in that – non-hypothetical. People say, ‘What would happen with this…?’ and I say, ‘Why do you want to think about that? It hasn’t happened or it’s not going to happen.’ So my most positive thing is to keep doing what you’re doing. I love what I’m doing. I play my bass or my guitar or piano every day, and i just enjoy and look forward to going, ‘What can I do to perform this music?’”

An experience you got to have recently is making music with your family. That had to be a beautiful thing for you.

“It’s fantastic,” Lodge said, “particularly going through lock-down. I wrote a song called ‘In These Crazy Times’ and I got my wife to come sing backing vocals for me and she’s never sang on a record before. And my son – I sent the files to him because we were all in lock-down and he played guitar for me. Then I sent the files to Jon Davison of Yes and said, ‘Jon, sing on this for me,’ and he sang on that and we ended up with a new record. It was all fantastic and I sent it all to my daughter Emily – she manages me – so it is really a family affair. They have been the best supporters of me and also the best people to say, ‘Dad, that’s not very good. We like the other version better. Try something else.’ And it’s great because I respect their opinion. They’re all music people; they don’t play instruments professionally but they love music.”

It sounds like a lot of your good fortune and good times have come from just having a really positive outlook.

“It is,” he said. “It’s fantastic. I’m doing the concert in New Jersey, in Ocean City on the 25^th of July. And it’s all down to my daughter, Emily. We’ll go there and we’ll have a great time, and I hope everybody who goes there really enjoys it because it’s me playing the Moody Blues and my family have really helped me maintain that.”

To purchase tickets, go to ticketmaster.com and search for John Lodge, Ocean City Music Pier.

By KYLE McCRANE/Special to the Sentinel