When I first listened to Seventh Sojourn way back when, my reaction was “This doesn’t sound right or feel right.” Some of the arrangements were crowded and out of balance, while others showed a lack of effort and imagination. The album contained only eight tracks, and some of those tracks included unnecessarily long introductions or extended codas to fill space. I was left with the impression that they were either trying too hard or not hard enough. The album title seemed rather dull in comparison to the first six of the classic seven, as if they couldn’t be bothered and went with the first suggestion that popped out of someone’s mouth. Phil Travers’ Gouache-watercolor cover was superbly executed, but why did the Moodies agree to such a bleak and barren landscape? What the hell was going on here?
I was unable to find a suitable answer to that question until I read the liner notes on the 2007 SACD release several years later:
Hayward: “The album took a long time to make and I found it a painful experience. It became obvious to me that the five of us wouldn’t make another album. We didn’t argue, it was just an unhappy time. No one was really enjoying the creative process and it was a struggle to get things done.”
Edge: “It was a strained and awkward period for us. Mike Pinder, particularly, found it difficult. We were all exhausted and had become prisoners of our own success.”
Thomas: “By the time we began the sessions I think we needed a break from each other. Up to that time everywhere one of us went the others would be there too. All my experiences were their experiences.”
Lodge: “Unwittingly, we’d called time on ourselves via the title Seventh Sojourn. According to the bible, ‘thou shalt rest’ on the seventh day. The word “sojourn” means to call a halt. We needed to escape from our cocoon and get out and meet ordinary people once more to return our lives to something more recognisable as normality.”
Pinder: (No comment).
The notes also mention that the initial recording sessions took place in Mike Pinder’s garage, transformed into a home studio. I think Justin spoke for everyone when he said, “It was a ludicrous situation; we could afford to record anywhere in the world, and there we were in our keyboard player’s garage. We were so frightened of failure that we just tried to make ourselves smaller and smaller.” In a review of “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band),” Lindsay Planer of AllMusic noted, “Getting down to brass tacks, the Moodies actually recorded the basic tracks in Mike Pinder’s (keyboards/vocals) garage. This may account for the decidedly raw sound that punches through the orchestrated instrumental bridge between the verses and chorus.” Though the Moodies eventually adjourned to record in a real studio provided by Decca, the basic tracks remained in the final mix, hence the rough patches.
Irony of ironies, Seventh Sojourn became their first album to hit #1 in the United States, spending five weeks at the top of the Billboard chart. I attribute that success to past performance: The Moodies had reached the stage when their fanbase would buy any new release the second it hit the shelves. Jethro Tull achieved similar success beginning with Aqualung, eventually losing that status temporarily when Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die failed to break into the Top 10. Of course, the Beatles never missed the mark, and even rip-off albums like the American version of Help! and crappy albums like Let It Be made it to the top of the charts.
Seventh Sojourn has its moments, but it’s not Days of Future Passed or Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. It says a lot that the two singles released from the album were outperformed by the reissue of “Nights in White Satin.” Despite the general sense of exhaustion, they continued to tour and even attempted to record a follow-up album, but quickly realized that the magic was gone. It was time to give in to that irresistible pull toward normality, as explained by John Lodge:
“By then we were subject to lateral pressures which we’d brought on ourselves that were outside of music. On our 1973 tour we had our own Boeing 707 aircraft which was decked out with a sitting room and a fireplace. There were two bedrooms, some twenty individual TV’s, sound systems everywhere and we had our own butler and our name written on the outside of the plane. I had a very empty feeling knowing that things had got this excessive. By 1974, we had touring companies, we had our own record company, we had offices, a string of record shop stores we had across the south of England. We had forgotten the most basic thing, we stopped talking to each other! We shared all the same emotions and experiences together, we really didn’t have anything to say to each other. We said, let’s take a break and get rid of the clutter. We did!” (ibid)
Now that I’ve been reminded why I never want to be rich or famous, it’s time for me to assess the last of the classic seven. I should have said “re-assess” because I’m happy to report that both the 2007 SACD remaster and 2008 standard remaster cleaned up most of the rough patches and re-balanced some (but not all) of the arrangements. That means my bitching will be kept to a minimum except when I run into space-filling efforts, weak lyrics, and the song I consider the worst Moody Blues song of all time.
*****
“Lost in a Lost World” (Pinder): Part of me desperately wants to believe that UFO-sighter Mike Pinder was also a time-traveler who wrote this song about his visit to the MAGA Republic of Trumpistan. He could have even turned part of it into a new national anthem in a few minutes by changing the pronouns and making a few small adjustments. I will demonstrate this in italics and parentheses:
I woke up today, I was crying
Lost in a lost world
‘Cause so many people are dying
Lost in a lost world(New Anthem in parentheses and italics)
Some of them are living an illusion (All of us are living an illusion)
Bounded by the darkness of their minds (Bounded by the darkness of our minds)
In their eyes it’s nation against nation, against nation (In our eyes it’s nation against nation, America First!)
With racial pride sad hearts they hide (With racial pride and happy hearts we stand for white supremacy)
Thinking only of themselves (Thinking only of ourselves)They shun the light (We shun the light and the woke)
They think they’re right (We know we’re right)
Living in their empty shells (Living in the empty shells we call our brains)
Unfortunately, the evidence indicates Mike was talking about the state of the world in 1972. The year was particularly tough in the U.K., with unemployment and crime rising in lockstep, and both the IRA and the Angry Brigade resuming their terrorist activities. Pinder does offer a solution to the growing madness, but it’s not much of a solution:
Everyone is looking for the answer
Well, look again, come on, my friend
Love will find them in the end
Come on, my friend, we’ve got to bend
On our knees and say a prayer
Sorry, but whenever I hear someone offer up “thoughts and prayers,” I think of the Republican response to mass shootings. Yeah, that did a whole lot of good.
I’m not sure why they chose to place this song in the pole position, because it’s a terribly depressing way to open an album. Even worse, the remaster did not fix the obvious problem with the recording: the chamberlin is so loud that you can barely hear the lyrics at times, a situation aggravated by the overuse of response vocals.
“New Horizons” (Hayward): Both Wikipedia and Songfacts insist that this song was motivated by the death of Justin’s father. They must have gotten their wires crossed because Justin’s father passed away around the time of Our Children’s Children’s Children. While one line in this song may be a reference to that sad experience (“‘Cause I’ve shed tears too many for me”), it’s highly unlikely that Justin would have considered his father’s passing a “new horizon.”
If only they’d read the opening verse . . .
Well, I’ve had dreams enough for one
And I’ve got love enough for three
I have my hopes to comfort me
I’ve got my new horizons out to sea
Yes, Justin and Ann Marie were expecting a child who arrived in the form of a daughter two months after the release of Seventh Sojourn, a life-changing event certain to lead to new horizons as noted by John Lodge in “Emily’s Song.” Many of Justin’s songs are reflections on his life at a specific time, where he reviews his current circumstances, then looks back to his past to measure his growth as a human being. We often find him in a state of “beginning to see,” as expressed directly in “Tuesday Afternoon” and “New Horizons.” After all the pain he endured during his years of loss and uncertainty, Justin finally found someone he could always depend on—someone who would be there for him as he continued to expand his horizons:
Where is this place that we have found?
Nobody knows where we are bound
I long to hear, I need to see
‘Cause I’ve shed tears too many for meBut I’m never gonna lose your precious gift
It will always be that way
‘Cause I know I’m gonna find my peace of mind
SomedayOn the wind, soaring free
Spread your wings, I’m beginning to see
Out of mind, far from view
Beyond the reach of the nightmare come true
This exceptionally beautiful song is blessed with a lovely melody, supported by spot harmonies. The arrangement makes good use of shifting dynamics, moving from soft to loud and back again in sync with the song’s emotional valleys and peaks. Justin’s soaring guitar solos combine with Graeme’s Ringo-esque drum patterns to remind us that the Moodies were indeed a rock and roll band, and the properly balanced chamberlin provided solid evidence that it could reproduce the sound of an orchestra far more effectively than the trusty old mellotron.
“For My Lady” (Thomas): Ray Thomas told Ray Shasho of Classic Rock Here and Now that “For My Lady” . . . that was really just after my divorce. Basically, I’m saying I’d give my life for a gentle lady.” Shasho shared his opinion that Ray’s two songs involving his quest for relational happiness (“The Tide Rushes In” and “For My Lady”) were “incredible tracks,” but I would describe “For My Lady” as a pleasant little tune and a bit on the dull side. The flute pattern is elementary, and the lyrics seem to wander from the core theme as the song progresses. I don’t skip the song when it comes up, but it doesn’t trigger much of an emotional response.
“Isn’t Life Strange” (Lodge): In an interview with Songwriter Universe, John explained the origins of the song he identified as his finest composition:
A friend of mine was Lionel Bart, who wrote major musicals like Oliver. He wrote everything on a baby grand piano, and he suggested that I buy this [same] piano. So I bought a piano and put it in my house. Then one night, I was having dinner with my wife and some friends, and I suddenly heard this melody in my head. In the middle of dinner, I went to the piano—it probably wasn’t the right thing to do to leave the dinner table (laughs). So I sat down at the piano and I wrote the music and I came up with the title for “Isn’t Life Strange” in about 15 minutes. I had the song (mostly) finished, and then I went back and had dinner (laughs). Then I said to my wife, “I think I’ve written a song.” Then the next morning, I played it to see if it still had the same feeling, and it did. I then wrote the lyrics, which came straight away. The song is all about how life sort of keeps repeating itself . . . Isn’t life strange? It is strange that life keeps repeating itself. You can’t really ask what the future’s got for you. You just turn the page over, move on, and see what happens.
The melody in his head (used in the verses) was actually a fragment from Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel’s Canon In D that he might have stumbled on in his wanderings and found its way into his subconscious. As to John’s assertion that “It is strange that life keeps repeating itself,” it really isn’t all that strange when you consider that humans have a poor record of learning from past screw-ups. This fundamental truth applies to mistakes made in one’s personal life due to our habit of doing the same old shit and expecting a different result, and in public life, due to the tendency of leaders who are concerned primarily with self-preservation to ignore, misread, or misrepresent historical events that offer valuable lessons. We can usually do something about correcting the course of our personal lives, but we can’t control everything, and John’s advice to “turn the page over, move on, and see what happens” is a welcome piece of advice—much better than banging our heads against the wall. You’re going to have a tough time in this world if you lack improvisation skills.
The deeply melancholy opening passage highlighting the chamberlin threw me for a loop (pun intended), and I wound up quadruple-checking the credits to make sure that I wasn’t hearing a string quartet. Listening more closely, I could make out the too-seamless note changes, but I was so impressed by the sound that I searched for chamberlins for sale and learned that I could buy a used chamberlin on Reverb for $10,000.
Well, I may never own a chamberlin, but I’ll always have “Isn’t Life Strange.”
After a brief pause, John enters to deliver the opening verse with the chamberlin continuing to provide background. The warble applied to his voice at the ends of the lines expresses fragility as he ponders the nature of existence. Justin moves forward to deliver the second verse in a steadier voice, beginning a highly effective pattern that will continue (with some variation) throughout the song.
Isn’t life strange?
A turn of the page
Can read like before
Can we ask for more?Each day passes by
How hard man will try
The sea will not wait
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry
The first seven lines appear to be quiet and peaceful, but if you listen closely, a slow build starts during the second line of Justin’s vocal with more complex and slightly louder support from Pinder on the chamberlin. The volume increases very slowly on the third line, where we also hear a touch of Ray’s flute . . . followed by a faint bass and a rising drum roll as Justin follows the melody up the staff, then . . . boom! The dam breaks as four Moodies sing “cry, cry, cry” in unison harmony, and continue to join their voices in the rousing chorus:
Wish I could be in your heart
To be one with your love
Wish I could be in your eyes
Looking back, there you were and here we are
Some of the lyrical sources on the internet render the opening word of the chorus as “wished,” but I don’t hear any of the singers ending their parts with “ed.” The second pair of verses suffers from forced rhyming, but it does express the Moodies’ continuing frustration that their message of love isn’t getting through (John’s verse) as well as their determination to keep reminding listeners that love is the solution to many of the world’s problems (Justin’s verse).
Isn’t love strange?
A word we arrange
With no thought or care
Maker of despairEach breath that we breathe
With love we must weave
To make us as one
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry
The final pairing reminds us of the urgent need to stop wasting time, change our ways and embrace love and understanding before it’s too late.
Isn’t life strange?
A turn of the page
A book without light
Unless with love we writeTo throw it away
To lose just a day
The quicksand of time
You know it makes me want to cry, cry, cry
The impact of the song is weakened somewhat by the decision to repeat the chorus four times in the fade, an obvious attempt to fill space, but it’s still one of their best songs.
“You and Me” (Hayward, Edge): Speaking of filling space, when I first heard this song, I assumed it was an instrumental because the intro lasts fifty seconds with Justin repeating the same riffs ad infinitum while the chamberlin screams in the background. I breathed a sigh of relief once they got to the vocals, but the weak lyrics and excessive layering turned my relief into irritation. Even worse, they end the song with another lengthy instrumental passage similar to the opener.
“The Land of Make-Believe” (Hayward): The song begins pleasantly enough with an arrangement featuring acoustic guitar, chimes, warm flute and a touch of cello and bass. “Oh, this is going to be a nice song,” I thought. Alas, soon after Justin begins his vocal, he creates an uh-oh moment with an incompatible electric guitar riff that signals an unfortunate turn into a much heavier arrangement. The lyrics turn out to be a combination of triteness and confusion, topped off by a desperate belief in the power of prayer. These guys really needed a break.
“When You’re a Free Man” (Pinder): Oh, for fuck’s sake. This open letter to Timothy Leary is the ultimate in album filler, the worst song the Moody Blues ever recorded, and proof positive that the Moodies were running out of gas. This verse is particularly embarrassing:
You left your country for peace of mind
And something tells me you’re doin’ alright
How are the children and Rosemary?
I long to see you and be in your company
No, Leary didn’t leave his country for peace of mind; he left his country by escaping from prison with the help of the terrorists known as The Weathermen. No, he wasn’t doin’ alright because Eldridge Cleaver held him hostage in Algeria, and after he got out of that mess, he and Rosemary flew to Switzerland, where they were essentially imprisoned by an arms dealer. How’s Rosemary? They separated and she headed back to the USA right around the time this album came out. Wanna see Leary? The Feds captured him in Afghanistan and put him back in prison where his sorry ass belonged. You may want to call first to verify visiting hours.
Incredibly, this piece of alternative reality is the second-longest track on the album, inflicting six minutes and five seconds of damage to the brain. If you find yourself feeling dizzy after listening to this crap, do NOT remove your headphones just yet, because John Lodge will arrive to repair the damage.
“I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)” (Lodge): It was inevitable that young people seeking enlightenment during the 60s would have turned away from un-hip Christianity and looked elsewhere for answers. Some began serious explorations of Buddhism and Hinduism, but others found a convenient shortcut in the music of the two rock bands noted for translating Eastern beliefs into song while simultaneously hailing the wonders of psychedelics: the Beatles and the Moody Blues.
The Moodies cannot claim obliviousness regarding the consequences of singing songs about enlightenment, as while they were working on Days of Future Passed, George Harrison decided to pay an unscheduled visit to the new mecca called Haight-Ashbury. Derek Taylor talked about the experience in a piece from the Beatles Bible:
We went into a shop and noticed that all these people were following us. They had recognised George as we walked past them in the street, then turned to follow us. One minute there were five, then ten, twenty, thirty and forty people behind us. I could hear them saying, ‘The Beatles are here, the Beatles are in town!’
We were expecting Haight-Ashbury to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with Beautiful People, but it was horrible – full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains. Everybody looked stoned – even mothers and babies – and they were so close behind us they were treading on the backs of our heels. It got to the point where we couldn’t stop for fear of being trampled. Then somebody said, ‘Let’s go to Hippie Hill,’ and we crossed the grass, our retinue facing us, as if we were on stage. They looked as us expectantly – as if George was some kind of Messiah.
It took the Moodies a bit longer to become victims of mass delusion, but when it arrived on John’s doorstep, he was understandably flabbergasted:
“Somehow, some of our fans attributed us with having the answer to the universe,” he recalls. “I remember coming home from a tour of the US and when I got to my house I saw all these people camping out in the front yard. I asked what they were doing and they said, ‘We’ve been told you’re going to fly the spaceship that’s going to save us all.’ I actually don’t like flying! I respected that young people at that time were looking for answers but like I said in the song, ‘If you want the wind of change to blow about you/And you’re the only other person to know, don’t tell me/I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band.’”
I love the way this song opens, with the chamberlin far, far away, soon joined by and eventually overwhelmed by Graeme’s rolls and crashes in 4/4 time. Graeme gradually raises the volume and tempo until he arrives at a speed that satisfies John and Justin, who launch into a duet of syncopated bass and rhythmic guitar chords. The four singers jump in, with John’s voice a tad louder than the others— a vital bit of mixing that allows the guy who encountered all those itinerant squatters on his lawn to permeate the vocals with urgent anxiety. The opening verse attempts to equalize the playing field by arguing something along the lines of, “Hey, we’re just like you, trying to figure this life thing out!”
I’m just a-wandering on the face of this earth
Meeting so many people who are trying to be free
And while I’m traveling I hear so many words
Language barriers broken, now we’ve found the key
And if you want the wind of change to blow about you
And you’re the only other person to know, don’t tell me—
I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band.
After a few quick blasts from the chamberlin horn section and Ray on sax, the boys move quickly to the next verse, where they remind listeners of the inherent ambiguity of art and demonstrate an eagerness to pass the guru moniker onto somebody—anybody else:
A thousand pictures can be drawn from one word
Only who is the artist? We’ve got to agree
A thousand miles can lead so many ways
Just to know who is driving—what a help it would be
So if you want this world of yours to turn about you
And you can see exactly what to do, please tell me
I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band.
A transition from the base chord B minor to F#m-F#7 signals a key change to the complementary F# for the bridge. Here Lodge appropriately veers from the central theme to decry the increasing violence of the era’s protests and the continuing destruction of the planet. In keeping with their stated desire to rid fans of the belief that they have all the answers, the Moodies offer no solution—a hint to their followers that maybe they should turn off the music, get off their asses, and take positive action to restore peaceful protest and prioritize environmental protection.
How can we understand
Riots by the people for the people
Who are only destroying themselves
And when you see a frightened
Person who is frightened by the
People who are scorching this earth.
Scorching this earth
After a reprise of the opening verse with the Moodies continuing to rock away, Justin gets a shot at a guitar solo and nails it with urgent passion expressed in a series of power-packed riffs. Following a repetition of the bridge, the Moodies return to the music of the verses, truncating their length and substituting the two opening lines with “Music is the traveler crossing our world/Meeting so many people bridging the seas.” That couplet mirrors the message of EGBDF’s “Procession,” when the Neanderthals turn to drums, and the Moodies announce the birth of “Communication.” I may be biased, but I firmly believe that communication through music is superior to any other form of communication because it has the power to evoke emotion with or without language.
Sincere kudos to John Lodge for coming up with the only two songs on the album that remind us of the Moodies’ greatest strength: full group collaboration.
Using the old traditional method of determining excellence, 3 hits in 8 at-bats results in a batting average of .375, a figure that any ballplayer would have bragged about in the good old days when batters weren’t completely obsessed with home runs and OPS. 3 out of 8 on an album is another thing entirely. Seventh Sojourn is certainly the weakest of the classic seven, and part of me wishes I had ended this exploration on a positive note and stopped after reviewing Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.
Nonetheless, reviewing the classic seven in sequence was an enjoyable and enlightening experience for me. Most of the Moodies’ music qualifies as timeless, and their belief that love can change the world should never be dismissed as naïve or written off as an impossibility. We cannot survive in a world of “hate and death and war” or a “world of persecution that is burning in its greed.” If the Moodies’ message doesn’t work for you, perhaps the words of a recent birthday celebrant will convince you: “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.” Just to be clear, that means “He loved them despite all their faults and failures.” Love has to be unconditional, or it is not love.
Whether you follow that advice supplied by an atheist or by reading John 13:31-38 is up to you, but I would argue that the message is more pleasurable coming from the Moody Blues.