We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.

—John F. Kennedy, Rice University Moon Speech, September 12, 1962

I chose to open this review with JFK’s vision to remind readers that the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions were not only based on the desire to beat the Soviets in the space race but a quest “for all mankind.” An estimated 500-650 million people all across the globe watched Neil Armstrong take “one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind,” and many of those viewers chose to stay awake at ungodly hours to witness that historical achievement. Even civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy, who argued that the money spent on the space race would be better used to eliminate poverty, “prayed for the safety of the astronauts and said he was as proud as anyone at the accomplishment.”

The five members of the Moody Blues were also caught up in the excitement. In Higher and Higher issue 26/27, Graeme Edge remembered, “It was a very exciting time. Man had just gone to the moon and we thought of the album as a sort of time capsule—all our thoughts and feelings about living in such an epoch-making era.” Mike Pinder shared his belief that “This was the beginning of maybe discovering man’s true legacy” with Robert Silverstein of MWE3 Features. Justin Hayward told Tony Sokol of Den of Geek that “To Our Children’s Children’s Children . . . was really driven by Tony Clarke, our producer. It was something that he really wanted to do, and I’m glad that we were able to share that with him.” Clarke confirmed his involvement in the H&H issue, explaining, “I very much wanted us to make a space album, and at the time I was very immersed in that sort of thing. Now that was my frame of mind, and I rather pushed it in that direction, so everybody capitulated.” “Everybody” includes John Lodge and Ray Thomas, whose views will be shared as we work our way through the songs.

The point is that the Moodies embraced JFK’s idealism and truly believed that the exploration of space represented a large step in the evolution of the human race. I take pains to mention this because a few years after the final Apollo mission, idealism began to give way to short-sightedness, exploitation and competition. Nixon slashed the NASA budget and killed the moon base project designed to facilitate travel to Mars. Reagan wanted to militarize space with his stupid Star Wars initiative. Today, countries and supranational entities like the EU are in a new space race, largely competing instead of collaborating, with little interest in space exploration. In addressing the competition between the USA and China, Prof Kazuto Suzuki of the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo noted that international agreements don’t allow for national appropriation of resources on the moon, but in reality, “it’s the wild, wild west.” Private enterprises have entered the picture, focused on exploitation, not discovery. The fall from JFK to Elon Musk is comparable to a plunge from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

To understand To Our Children’s Children’s Children, you have to abandon the cynicism of today’s world and travel back in time to an era when despite Cold War tensions and wars in the Middle East and Vietnam, there was still plenty of hope for a better future, and the sense of wonderment was alive and well.

*****

As I am obligated to share any latent biases, I should note first of all that I fell in love with this album at the ripe old age of eight, and along with the usual analysis, I will be sharing some reactions from my childhood. And despite having missed all the fun, excitement, drama, wonderment, close calls, and tragedies of the American race to the moon, I have read several books covering the space race and have watched every documentary available. As most of you know, I am a fervent Trekkie whose fondest wish is to live on Deep Space Nine, working as a dabo girl in Quark’s Bar to allow me the opportunity to have sex with all kinds of aliens, especially Klingon men and women. As that dream has no relation to the content of To Our Children’s Children’s Children, I promise not to mention it again.

“Higher and Higher” (Edge): The Moodies wanted to open the album with a simulation of a Saturn V rocket blasting off into space, so they contacted NASA and asked them to share any liftoff tapes they had lying around. In the liner notes of the SACD edition, John Lodge noted, “We actually got NASA to send over a recording of a real rocket taking off, but when we listened to the tape, it sounded like a damp squib! We had to set about creating our own rocket sound, which ended up sounding more authentic.” In the issue of H&H (ibid), genius engineer Derek Varnals described how they pulled it off:

“The rumbling sound of a rocket blasting off was several layers of instruments. We had guitar amplifiers turned up really loud with no instrument playing. You can get the sound of a general white noise roaring away on an amp. We had a Hammond organ and Mellotron motors going with microphones right by the motors. We had muffled drums being rolled and maybe a couple of electronic things in there. I think we had the Hammond and Mellotron gradually working their way up [the scale] to give you the idea of a crescendo. The idea is to give you the impression that you are going up into orbit, leaving the [booster] behind, as we’ve all seen film of the third stage separating and falling back to earth.”

The sound also included the addition of an angelic chorus announcing the ascent into the heavens. As the melotron peaks in sync with the roar of engines, Justin Hayward begins to emerge from the background, playing a wild guitar riff noted for its unbridled excitement. Lodge marks the transition with a few well-placed bass notes, followed by a key change and Mike Pinder’s delivery of the opening lines of Graeme Edge’s poem:

Blasting, billowing, bursting forth
With the power of ten billion butterfly sneezes
Man with his flaming pyre
Has conquered the wayward breezes
Climbing to tranquility
Far above the cloud
Conceiving the heavens
Clear of misty shroud

The line that caught my ear when I first heard the song was the “butterfly sneezes” line. There was no internet back then, so I couldn’t Google “do butterflies sneeze?” I asked my parents, and they said they didn’t know. Butterflies don’t hang out much in San Francisco, but whenever one landed in our yard, I watched it closely, waiting for it to sneeze, and I never had to break out the Kleenex. Later on, I found out that butterflies can’t sneeze because they breathe through their abdomens and are unable to sneeze, cough, or burp. I was so disappointed.

After the rousing chorus of “Higher and Higher/Now we’ve learned to play with fire/We go higher and higher and higher,” Pinder returns to deliver lines that echoed JFK’s firm belief in the value of space travel:

Vast vision must improve our sight
Perhaps at last, we’ll see an end
To our home’s endless blight
And the beginning of the free
Climb to tranquility
Finding its real worth
Conceiving the heavens
Flourishing on Earth

The second rendition of the chorus introduces an intense instrumental passage where the Moodies keep on rocking before fading into the next track (a feature that continues throughout the album). I think it would have been a nice touch for the Beatles to lend the Moodies the clip of Ringo’s lament that closes “Helter Skelter,” because I’m 99% sure that Justin would have wanted to shout, “I’ve got blisters on me fingers!”

“Eyes of a Child I” (Lodge): Each member of the Moody Blues approached the concept of an album about space from their own perspective, and John Lodge made a major contribution by stretching the group’s thinking beyond the Apollo mission:

“I remember the To Our Children’s Children’s Children album was ‘What would it be like if we were the people on the rocket ship going out into space . . . going to the moon, going to Mars. What would we think? What would be our thoughts?’ And that was what the album was about. I really thought if you were out there what would you expect, what would you see if you were on the spaceship going out. And I suddenly realized if you went up there with all preconceived ideas and preprogrammed ideas in your mind you’d probably miss everything. And I realized then, that’s how a child works. When a baby is growing up, everything is wonderment. He’ll find a piece of paper and spend hours with it. Or he’ll find some cloth. Or a flower. Or a tree. Whatever it is. And he’ll spend ages looking and learning. And I thought that’s really how we’d have to see it. You’d have to see everything through the eyes of a child.” (Silverstein, ibid).

“Eyes of a Child I” is a remarkable composition with an equally remarkable build. The flip from massively intense to welcome calm begins with the sound of Pinder’s harp, soon joined by Ray’s bass flute, creating a lovely passage that allows the listener to catch their breath and switch to reflective mode. The verse-and-chorus pattern that follows is unusual in that it follows an ABC structure with each part a different length and in a different key. The opening verse consists of four lines divided into two couplets in the key of A minor; Lodge sings the first couplet at low volume, supported by faint bass and Justin’s soft acoustic guitar arpeggios. The gap between the couplets is filled with Pinder’s harp, then John’s voice picks up additional volume in the second couplet.

Listen, hear the sound
The child awakes
Wonder all around
The child awakes

The build strengthens in the three-line B verse with the entry of three-and-four part harmonies featuring Lodge singing lead and overdubbing his falsetto to make it a foursome.

Now in his life, he never must be lost
No thoughts must deceive him
In life he must trust

The voices gradually increase in volume throughout the verse, but the real strength of the build comes from the unusual chord sequence, a pattern of C-Bm-A-B-G-F#m-F-C-D, with the D positioned as the transition chord to the chorus in G major—a brilliant bit of compositional thinking that when combined with raised voices and the entry of Edge on drums makes the chorus feel like a moment of blessed triumph:

With the eyes of a child
You must come out and see
That your world’s spinning ’round
And through life you will be
A small part of a hope
Of a love that exists
In the eyes of a child you will see

The chord pattern in the chorus alternates between G major and A minor, with a C chord cueing the return to the A minor key of the verses. The build and pattern of the second half of the song mirror the first, while the lyrics describe what had once been indescribable: the feeling of leaving Earth and entering the unknown, seen through the eyes of a child:

Earth falls far away
New life awaits
Time it has no day
New life awaits

Here is your dream
And now how does it feel?
No words will go with you
And now what is real?

With the eyes of a child . . .

Listening to this song for the first time as a child was one of the most memorable moments in my life. My parents never talked down to me or treated me like a stupid kid; whenever I did something that didn’t make sense to them, they displayed curiosity and asked me what I was feeling and thinking. That was not the case in grade school, where some of the teachers were control freaks who believed in right-and-wrong answers, had no patience with what they felt were silly questions, and refused to encourage my imagination or consider my point of view. “Eyes of a Child” taught me to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and follow their stupid rules while refusing to let them dampen my imagination and creativity. I knew then that their minds were closed and my mind was open, making me as smart as they were but in a different way. Listening to “Eyes of a Child” helped to build my self-confidence when engaging with adults and was an extraordinarily validating experience for an eight-year-old girl.

And that’s why when I heard of John Lodge’s passing, I played “Eyes of a Child” over and over and cried like a baby.

“Floating” (Thomas): In the H&H issue, Graeme Edge shared his insight regarding the song: “My favorite track on To Our Children’s Children’s Children is ‘Floating’. As always, you can count on Ray to poke a bit of irreverent fun just when we are all strutting around a little too pompously!”

It’s one of my favorites, too. Sometime before I became familiar with the song, little me sat on the couch between both parents while we watched a documentary about the Apollo mission. When the astronauts started bouncing all over the moon, I giggled with delight and shouted, “I wanna do that!” Maman explained that only special people with special knowledge could go to the moon, and anyway, no one was flying to the moon anymore. “That’s not fair!” I cried, not having learned “fuck that shit” just yet. Maman consoled me by reminding me that things change, then played “Floating” and sang along with Ray when he reached the line “Guess you’ll all be up here soon.”

I’m still . . . watching and waiting.

The arrangement is as perfect as perfect gets, combining the cheerfulness of play with the imaginative magic of outer space. I love the decision to let John Lodge handle the central motif near the top of his bass fretboard, supported by sweet arpeggios from Justin on acoustic guitar. “Floating” is the kind of song that the mellotron was made for, and Pinder’s figures come close to visualizing the astronauts floating up and down as they enjoy the freedom from gravity. Ray’s vocal tone captures the playful anticipation of a father describing the wonders that await the child on Earth’s only true satellite:

Floating free as a bird
Sixty-foot leaps, it’s so absurd
From up here you should see the view
Such a lot of space for me and you

Oh you’d like it
Gliding around get your feet off the ground
Oh you’d like it
Do as you please with so much ease

Now I know how it feels
To have wings on my heels
To take a stroll among the stars
Get a close look at planet Mars

In the closing verse, Ray sweetens the pot by promising the one thing that every kid wants more than anything else: candy!

Bouncing about on the moon
Guess you’ll all be up here soon
The candy stores they’ll be brand new
And you’ll buy a rock with the moon right through

Disneyland on the moon! While Ray’s imagination outran the reality of politics, it’s always nice to dream, and though as an adult I am “inclined to acts refined” (thank you, Ian), a part of me will always be the little kid who yearns to travel among the stars.

“Eyes of a Child II” (Lodge): Why is there a part two, you ask? Because John Lodge “thought it’d be a great idea to do it in a choral version where everyone’s singing like the finale in a stage play, and I thought that’s how it should be done.” (H&H ibid). I suspect that Lodge also felt it necessary for the band to rock the fuck out after back-to-back mellow pieces, and boy, do they ever! My only complaint is that they went to the fade too soon, shortening one of John Lodge’s strongest rock vocals. The choral aspect is equally strong, and apparently Justin took care of the blisters on his fingers, enabling him to rip out a series of hot riffs. Play it again, Sam!

“I Never Thought I’d Live to be a Hundred” (Hayward): This is the first of several pieces where the Moodies stretched the boundaries of their exploration of space to include time. Not a bad idea, but it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t fully understand the space-time continuum, so their thinking on the subject remained stuck in linear time. Since physicists have a hard time explaining spacetime in a way that most people can understand, I think we should cut the boys some slack and give them credit for at least giving the matter (pun intended) some thought.

That vague understanding of the General Theory of Relativity is best demonstrated in Justin’s interview with Tony Sokol, where he reveals that his thinking on the “I Never Thought” pair of songs was rather muddled: “I never thought I’d be a hundred and I never thought I’d be a million. Just seemed like something that was kind of an atmosphere and the time that I did something to those recordings, just a small voice on those albums. I don’t think I meant any more than that. It was just something that I thought needed to be there in some way to give it some distance, to add to the distance that the album was providing.”

Huh? Say what?

It may have or may not have been his intent, but it seems to me that the first of the pair is a glance into a future a century away, when knowledge is accessible to everyone and freedom of thought is encouraged instead of repressed.

I never thought I’d live to be a hundred,
I never thought I’d get to do the things
That all those other sons do, and they do.
I never thought I’d ever have my freedom,
An age ago my maker was refusing me
The pleasure of the view.

Although it is not expressed directly, we can assume from the context that Justin believed that exploration of space would open minds and result in a better future for us all. Even if you don’t buy into that hypothesis, the song is quite lovely and Justin sings it well.

“Beyond” (Edge): Edge got the credit, but it was Pinder who did most of the work. The boys were trying to mimic the feel of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and did a fair job thanks to Pinder’s customized mellotron (christened the “Pindertron”) and the many studio tricks up Varnalls’ sleeve. The dependence on studio wizardry and oodles of overdubs would come back to bite them in the butt, because it was impossible to reproduce many of the songs on To Our Children’s Children’s Children in concert—a problem that would be forcefully addressed in A Question of Balance. 

“Out and In” (Pinder, Lodge): Mike Pinder needed no encouragement from Tony Clarke to do a space album, as revealed in his commentary on the creation of “Out and In”: “This was written ‘within me’, and draws from the experiences I had as a kid looking up into the night sky.” (H&H, ibid) In an interview with Pinder on The Classic Rock Music Reporter, author Ray Shasho opened the piece with this bit of insight into Mike Pinder’s mindset:

Michael Pinder was affectionately labeled “Micky the Moonboy” as a youth for his preoccupation of the moon, stars, music and electronics. But who could have predicted that a silly nickname perhaps more suited for a sci-fi cartoon superhero would actually forecast his destiny. Pinder’s fascination with the cosmos and a life-changing realization that we are not alone in the universe became the basis for composing intricate and surreal musical masterpieces.

Some of Pinder’s nighttime experiences involved UFOs and a possible sighting of an alien being. I don’t discount UFO sightings, but I imagine that visitors from other planetary systems might stop by to check things out and conclude that the inhabitants were too stupid to bother with.

What I love most about this song is the relaxed, confident tone of Pinder’s vocal, imparting a calm sincerity regarding his belief that the future of humankind lies in the cosmos. While he makes the argument that the exploration of space will lead to higher levels of consciousness in the verses, he wisely avoids turning the song into a sales pitch. In fact, he does just the opposite in the bridge:

Wonders of a lifetime,
Right there before your eyes.
Searching with this life of ours,
You’ve got to make the journey,
Out and in,
Out and in.

If you think it’s a joke,
That’s alright, do what
You want to do.
I’ve said my piece
And I’ll leave it all
Up to you.

The syncopated hiccup that introduces the bridge immediately grabs the listener’s attention, conveying that an important message is on its way. While it should come as no surprise that the mellotron dominates the instrumental aspect of the piece, the rough electric guitar textures are equally important in terms of grounding the song in terra firma.

“Gypsy (Of a Strange and Different Time)” (Hayward): The most popular song on the album is also the most essential. Up to this point, the songs have celebrated the wonders of space travel while ignoring the equally important aspect of space noted by JFK: “Its hazards are hostile to us all.”

The gypsy in the song is a space traveler of unknown origin who finds himself hurtling through the heavens due to some kind of failure in his navigation system. Worse still, his communication system has also failed, so he is left with no one to help him correct his trajectory or comfort him with conversation, for “darkness is the only sound to reach his ears.” Justin’s lyrics depict a man trapped in an unimaginable state of fear and loneliness.

The gypsy of a strange and distant time
Traveling in panic, all directions blind
Aching for the warmth of a burning sun
Freezing in the emptiness of where he’d come from

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Left without a hope of coming home

Speeding through a shadow of a million years
Darkness is the only sound to reach his ears
Frightening him with visions of eternity
Screaming for a future that can never be

The impact of the lyrics is strengthened tenfold by Justin’s justifiably emotional vocals that successfully capture what our lost soul must be feeling. Justin’s expressions of empathy mirror the gypsy’s panic, fright and the utter hopelessness of his situation. At times it sounds like Justin is on the verge of tears as he imagines the man facing an existence bereft of all hope and companionship. The intensity of the song is enhanced by the urgency expressed in the music, a rock-based composition in E minor marked by sharp rhythmic cuts, unrelenting drive, a rich stew of instrumentation featuring mellotron, flute, electric and acoustic guitars and solid rhythmic support from Lodge and Edge. Though the song is essentially a horror story, it’s also one helluva rocker that the Moodies employed to open their concerts for the next couple of years.

Given the twists and turns of history, we might remember To Our Children’s Children’s Children as something of a puff piece if “Gypsy” had not appeared on the album. A mere six months after its release, a crew of space travelers found themselves subjected to the hostility of outer space and came close to facing a “Gypsy Moment.”

“Houston, we have a problem.” At some time in the hours that followed that terse announcement from Apollo 13, many of us in NASA’s Mission Control Center wondered if we were going to lose the crew. Each of us had indelible memories of that awful day three years before when three other astronauts sat in an Apollo spacecraft firmly anchored to the ground . . . Now, three equally brave men were far beyond us in distance, far out in the vast absolute zero world of space, the most deadly and unforgiving environment ever experienced by man.

Kranz, Gene. Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (p. 11). (Function). Kindle Edition.

With their ability to navigate their way back home compromised by the explosion, the Apollo 13 astronauts never would have made it without the ship’s communication system. The ingenuity and determination of Gene Kranz and the NASA engineers saved the day, due in large part to the ability to send and receive messages from the crew, which enabled them to check the validity of their ideas with the men struggling to survive the storm.

Amazingly, Justin’s obvious empathy for the gypsy was mirrored in the public response to the Apollo 13 near-disaster:

The three astronauts were unaware they had become the center of attention for almost the entire planet. More than a billion people listened avidly to every scrap of news about the extraordinary effort to save three men in a disabled spaceship far from home. People filled religious centers as the world gathered to pray for Lovell, Haise, and Swigert.

Shepard, Alan; Slayton, Deke; Barbree, Jay. Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Apollo Moon Landings (p. 240). (Function). Kindle Edition.

That response tells us that a whole lot of people in every corner of the world believed that the American space effort was indeed for all mankind. Alas, the insanity of America First ensures that the USA will never earn that kind of trust from the world’s population in our lifetimes. The beacon of hope has run out of power.

One last tidbit: I learned that the crew of Apollo 15 brought a copy of To Our Children’s Children’s Children into space with them. I hope they had enough sense to skip “Gypsy” when it came up on the tape.

“Eternity Road” (Thomas): The “travel” depicted in this song is the journey through life with all its burdens getting in the way of “searching to find some peace of mind.” The only reference to space is “Speeding through a charcoal sky/Observe the truth, we cannot lie,” which seems to come out of the blue. The melody is strong and memorable, but the lyrics suffer from too much repetition. With a lyrical overhaul,  I think this song would have been a better fit for In Search of the Lost Chord.

“Candle of Life” (Lodge): Like its predecessor, “Candle of Life” has little or nothing to do with space travel, and the lyrics do get a bit repetitive, but it’s clearly a much stronger composition. The song combines two themes: one involving the fleeting nature of existence, as represented by the burning “candle of life,” and the other the scourge of human loneliness. The basic message is that we should cherish each precious moment and spend our time making meaningful connections with other lonely souls:

Something you can’t hide says you’re lonely
Hidden deep inside of you only
It’s there for you to see, take a look and be
Burn slowly, the candle of life

Something there outside says we’re only
In the hands of time, falling slowly
It’s there for us to know with love that we can go
Burn slowly, the candle of life

Justin sings those first two verses, as his voice is suited to the deeper notes of the melody. John Lodge takes over the vocals in the bridge, delivering a passionate plea to listeners to embrace the power of love:

So love everybody and make them your friends
So love everybody and make them your friends

That is one gigantic challenge. It sounds nice in principle, but I find it impossible to love those who spew hate and prejudice and there’s no way in hell I can love a rapist or a pedophile, so it’s best to steer clear of such beasts. I firmly believe in the power of love to brighten our lives and heal our pain, and my stable of friends is quite diverse, but I have no patience with or empathy for those who wreak harm on their fellow human beings. That said, I think we need more people like John Lodge to champion love’s amazing power in the hope that someday we will reach a tipping point when love truly conquers all.

“Sun Is Still Shining” (Pinder): The Eastern-influenced arrangement of this piece is quite compelling thanks to the combination of John Lodge’s sinuous bass runs, Justin’s sitar and Mike’s mellotron. Pinder plays the role of sage once again as he employs his velvety deep voice to encourage us to open our minds and hearts to the magic of the universe:

Sun is still shining, look at the view
Moon is still dining with me and you
Now that we’re out here open your heart
To the universe of which we’re a part

Everything’s turning, turning around
See with your mind, leave your body behind . . .

The song takes a surprising turn in the bridge, where Pinder temporarily abandons the “I’ll leave it all up to you” stance of “Out and In” and expresses disappointment regarding the slow pace of human enlightenment:

But if you want to play
Stay right back on Earth
Waiting for rebirth

In discussing the line “Stay right back on Earth” in the H&H issue, Pinder described it as a “wake-up call,” then bemoaned the human tendency to seek comfort in commercial technological progress: “It’s come to represent the drudgery of the mediocrity in life of our civilization. All of this [technological] greatness has only resulted in the sense of the mundane that prevails.” Whether it means anticipating a trip to the better place known as heaven, or hoping that reincarnation will improve your lot the next time around, “waiting for rebirth” ignores the endless possibilities for meaningful action in the here-and-now. As the purpose of reincarnation is “a process of spiritual evolution, where the soul undergoes multiple lifetimes to learn, grow, and ultimately achieve liberation or enlightenment,” hoping you’ll do better by doing nothing to improve yourself will likely result in a repeat of your current shitty life.

I can speak about reincarnation from experience, for I had a past-life reading with a psychic when I lived in San Francisco. The results were rather disappointing:

• Most recent past life: I was a male aviation expert in Nazi Germany who helped design planes for the Luftwaffe.
• Second most recent past life: I was born to a family of seventeen children in Indonesia and gave birth to twelve children myself.
• Third most recent past life: I was apprenticed to an innkeeper in Cologne, took over the business after he croaked, and wound up an alcoholic.

The whole thing may be total bullshit, but it does explain why I loathe right-wing politicians, why I’ve never wanted to have children and why I drink in moderation. I think the über-lesson here is “lead the best life you can live because the next life may seriously suck.”

“I Never Thought I’d Live to Be a Million” (Hayward): The only way this song makes sense is if you interpret “I” not as a single human being but the human race as a whole.

I never thought I’d get to be a million
I never thought I’d get to be the thing that all these other children see
Look at me

And given the state of the world today, it may take a million years for the human race to grow the fuck up.

“Watching and Waiting” (Hayward-Thomas): This beautiful song was chosen as the only single release from the album, and much to everyone’s surprise, it bombed.

“People were always telling me that I needed to write another song to equal ‘Nights in White Satin’. When I came up with ‘Watching and Waiting’ I thought it was one of my best songs at the time, and we all felt sure that it would be a certain hit. When the single failed to sell we were all mystified, although with the benefit of hindsight I do see why it didn’t capture the public’s imagination in the way ‘Nights in White Satin’ did.” (SACD Liner Notes)

Justin’s “benefit of hindsight” produced two theories as to why the single died a horrible death:

• The mastering of the album was “too quiet,” and the song “didn’t jump” on the radio. (Digital Trends interview)
• He had written the song before the advent of the space theme and had to alter the lyrics to fit. “Probably I made it much more obscure than it needed to be, but it still moves me, and I’m not sure that I can explain why. I feel every single word of it; it invokes images within me that I find particularly moving. It does have a spiritual dimension to it, a religious-almost dimension to it.” (Outre Magazine via Wikipedia)

Mike Pinder believed that the single flopped due to social programming. “It embodied so much of what is good about being a human being and living on this planet in this solar system in this universe. How can I put it? It was just too much quality. It was like a Rolls-Royce that was affordable to everyone, but everyone was programmed into thinking that they could never own a Rolls-Royce.” (H&H, ibid)

The truth is that “Watching and Waiting” never should have been released as a single in the first place. Most successful singles have a strong hook centered around the song’s title; the words “watching and waiting” appear in the opening line and in the first line of the closing verse. The opening verse prepares the listener for a story song about a lonely man seeking friendship but the story falls apart in the second verse when a mole pops out of the ground. The chorus fails to do what any decent chorus should do: summarize the meaning of the song so that listeners understand the main thrust. While it’s obvious from his superb vocals that Justin found the words particularly moving, the goal of the vocalist is to evoke emotion in the listener, regardless of how the singer feels about the song. Patsy Cline hated “Walking After Midnight,” but she did her best to ensure that it clicked with her audience. Pinder’s implication that people were too stupid to appreciate the song is off the mark; the main problem is that the lyrics lack coherence because Justin “made it much more obscure than it needed to be.” You can suss out meanings in each of the verses and the chorus but trying to connect those meanings is a hopeless struggle, and the connection to the space theme is tenuous at best. The lyrical passage that moves me the most is the chorus, for while we may not know where “here” is, Justin paints a picture of a world where people are free to be who they want to be:

‘Cause here there’s lot of room for doing
The thing you’ve always been denied
Look and gather all you want to
There’s no one here to stop you trying

Lyrical jumble aside, the song is an exceedingly pleasant listening experience, in large part due to the always compatible pairing of Justin’s voice with Pinder’s mellotron. The mellotron-drenched fade allows listeners time for reflection, and To Our Children’s Children’s Children gives us plenty to think about.

*****

I am writing this epilogue on Saturday, October 18, while millions of Americans are gathering in all fifty states in the No Kings protest. As the people in power have already labeled the protestors as far-left lunatics, it’s unlikely to have any tangible impact or arrest the country’s plunge into darkness. The wimp-ass Speaker of the House has renamed the movement as “Hate America,” which tells us that the GOP’s vision of America is the polar opposite of JFK’s vision of a country determined to help make the world a better place. My only hope regarding the protests is that none of the protesters are killed by MAGA nuts who know they will be pardoned of any crimes they commit.

The problem with the Trump opposition is that they have yet to unveil a positive vision of the future; the phrase “No Kings” is itself a negative, defensive, visionless message. As an extended ode celebrating the power of a positive vision to pull people together, To Our Children’s Children’s Children reveals a pathway out of our current state of misery, and we would be fools not to follow that path. Trying to prevent a lousy future is a weak argument compared to trying to build a better future . . . for all mankind.

Nearly sixty years after its release, To Our Children’s Children’s Children is more relevant than ever.