PipemanRadio Interviews John Lodge About DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED – MY SOJOURN

0:00 Hi, you have unto censure. Wow for you young Wake up America. It's time for the Adventures of pipe Man on W four c HY dot com. West pomp Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man. Will see it is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm extremely excited about our next guest because listening to his music goes back to when I'm so little. I probably wouldn't have known about music if it weren't for older brothers as it was back then. So let's welcome to the show, John Lodge, how are you very good? Thank you nice. Yeah. So, the first time I heard the Moody Blues was stealing one of my older brother's albums. He's like eleven years older than me, so I was rifling as a little kid

1:32 through his albums. I'm like, oh, this one looks cool. Let me listen to. This's grateful for everyone with an older brother, right, because it was like that back then, right, you know that's how you got into it. Yeah. My sister, who was four years older than me when I was sort of ten years old, she walked out of the house with a new boyfriend and said see you later, alligator. What on earth is she on the bed? And that was my first sort of introduction to rock and roll in a way, I have no idea what you've been.

2:23 I found out three years later. Wow, see, and it's pretty cool. And man, where does it feel like to be making music all these years? I'm sure when you first started you could never imagine, you know, talking about your music this many decades later. No, you know, when rock and roll really hit me, hit me like a sledgeowman when I was thirteen. Before then, I had no music all. But when I first heard rock and roll rhythm, it took over and that it was really like a sledge dammer, and I had to be part of it, you know. I bought a guitar or my mumble me and the guitar for about five dollars, segad and German guitar acoustic. But I learned by going into my bedroom playing these guitar hour after hour. I found out how it worked. There was no one at that time in the UK there was teaching rock and roll. It didn't exist. You could not find anyone to teach you, so you had to learn yourself. And I remember you used to sit watching like the Perry Como Show, because on the the every Brothers or

4:01 Ry Orbison and I used to watch what they were doing with their guitar, how they're playing it and trying to copy it like that is interesting times. Yeah, you know, it is interesting to hear that, and even I think to this day the whole thing of rock and roll is experimenting with your musicianship. And I think that's what you did way back then because there was nobody to really teach, so you had to experiment and figure out your own sound. Yeah, I remember playing I like the cello, I love the cello. The sound of a cello. I've got a cello in my band now is fantastic. But I remember playing the cello on two songs for the Moody Blues right by Cecil and the Balance, and I didn't realize until four years later when I actually hired a cellists. I've been hunting the cillo wrong all those but it didn't mutter. You know, we were experimenting. It's it's like, yeah, playing the six st guitar upside down and right.

5:20 You know, it's experimenting, finding what works for you and what what sound you can get out of your instruments that no one else can really. I love it. I love it. Yeah, And I find people from your era that are musicians, they did develop new sounds, like even you know, you take several bands from that era and they just created sounds you never heard before. You know. Well, we grew up, of course with people who make it. Amplifiers. Jim Marshall started a Marshall and that was the sound of English rock really and I was I've bought one of the first amplifiers if it built, And it was amazing because we talked to these guys and said, we want something that we could play four hundred watts through and the speakers will make the bass sound fantastic. And it came up with these four speakers enclosures with celestium speakers twelve age speakers, and it was brilliant time, you know, finding new sounds that you could take into the studio and record. Yeah, And I find so no matter what genre of rock and

6:53 roll somebody is in today, whether they're a musician or just a listener, I don't care if it's the most extreme heavy metal or the softest rock. Everybody the common denominator with even the gatekeepers is to love bands from your area and to love like the Moody Blues. Like we can all agree on that. We may not agree on certain bands nowadays, like oh they're not this or that, but we all believe that bands like yours was the core of all rock music today. I think it didn't exist between us before then.

7:35 You know, in England in the late fifties and early sixties, it was all American iconic artists like Little Richard Jolie Leo's first dominant geene Vincent Eddie Cochran. We couldn't emulate those people, they're icons and English people couldn't do that, and we had to find our way of portraying our music, and that's what it becomes. We realized it was the music that was important, not the iconic person. And you know, on the Moody Blues, we never ever put a photograph of the band on the front cover of any other albums because it was the music we want to get over to an audience, not us individually. I love hearing that. And speaking of albums, Okay, you just released Days of Futures, Pasted My Sojourn, and man, there's it blow your mind that it is so popular that, you know, first release in the UK, but then there is such a demand in the US that now we have it here in the US. It's fantastic, unbelievable, and you know, I want once. I was going to go on the road a couple of years ago, and I thought, how can I do something which continues the music of the Moody Blues. And I called my musical

9:11 director, Alan Hewitt, who was my keyboard player, and said, Alan, could we do Days of Future Past live on stage? And he said why not? Just like that? Why not? And I thought, how do I do? I thought, I know what I should do. I should call Graham Edge, go see Graham Edge. And I went to see Graham and said, Graham, I want to do Days of Future Pass live on stage. Would you re record your poetry for me and I'll film you. He said, John, I'd love to I've never recorded my own poetry.

9:52 I'd love to be a part of the album. So I filmed him and I thought that was a blessing I had. And when we were rehearsing the concert, I suddenly thought, ah, just a moment, this is like a history of my life. Here from sixty eight when we released Days of Future past sixty seven and till today, and I thought, yeah, I'm going to record this not a live album. I thought we've made too much effort to make it a live album. I wanted to go in the studio, So I went to do the studio, and I asked John Davison from Yes to join me singing a couple of the songs, and we recorded Days of Future pass my sodiern and that's your fact. My daughter all took the photograph on the front of the album as well. It seemed to sum up the whole album for me. That photograph right there, that's the one.

11:03 It is cool. I'm somebody, you know, I'm old school, so I love album covers. I think it's part of the whole experience. You know. That's how I bought albums when I was a kid. You couldn't hear them like we can now. It's like, oh that album looks cool, let me buy that. You didn't even know if it was going to be good or not. Absolutely yeah, so that. I love the artwork on this album, So it is something that I would look at that if I never even knew who the movie Blues were, which would be virtually impossible. I would still want to buy that album and listen to it, thank you very much. It's strange because when I was I didn't realize it at the time, but when I was like eight or nine years old, there's a really old lady used to live next door to me, and she was on her own all the while, and I used to go around there and talk to her as eight and on the wall there was a picture almost the same as my album sleeve, without my wife and myself being on it.

12:11 It looked almost the same, and when I saw the picture, it just gave me an enormous flashback to that time. I thought, oh, the circle is complete. Yes, yes, I love it. And what makes it even more complete is that we have some rescheduled dates that you're going to be doing here during the summer, especially I'm in South Florida, so I'm pretty excited. You're going to be in Fort Lauridel on August third, and you'll also be in even me in Florida. I'm not sure if I pronounce it right, but Emma Cole, yeah, yeah, it's a strange wood, is it, ye? Yeah? Yeah? But and man, it's so cool too. I love seeing artists that have been like great musicians still touring to this day. You know, to me, I think the difference between your generation and these newer generations of bands is that I think if you weren't on stage doing it live, you wouldn't like you might not be here, like I take a lot of people like I look at so many artists that people are like, well, how they keep doing it? And my answer is because they can't afford to not keep doing it. It's just such a passion. Absolutely. I play every day, even today, I played this morning. I play every day of being in the studio during the

13:46 last year, and I've recorded four new songs which will be released later this year. I love rock and roll. As I say, the fire Ignite You when I was thirteen. The pression has been with me ever since. I just love music. See that just proves your true musician because there are two types, as you know, there's the people that are in music for the passion the music, and then there's others like they get into it for other reasons like they want to be a rock star. And going back to what you're saying before, they're the ones that put their face on them and on the album. You know. So I love what you said. And you can always tell, I know I can. If I go to a show, you can tell if the musician is up there because they just love playing music, or if they're doing it for another reason. And yeah, there is no other reason but passion for music, to be honest. Yeah, I love picking my bass up and playing and finding something. Always something new. You could find always there's not many notes, but you could always find something new, and it just turns you on it. It bridgs a wave of joy to you. You know, Oh, listen to this.

15:13 Yeah, and you know, I find musicians of your age. They played all different types of instruments. That's why there were true musicians. And then it's also interesting I found a lot like even as an example, I didn't even know and I was a huge Beatles fan. I didn't know that Paul was originally a guitarist and he basically drew the short straw to be the Bassis. It's really interesting because when I grew up where I was at school, there was a cafe called Eddie's Cafe and like a soldier shop, and every lunchtime when I was I used to go in there because he had a rock called the juke box, and I used to drop my money in the slot, which my mom had given me for lunch. I used to play records and I used to listen to fat stummin Lem a little Richard Gerealy loose, and I could hear that left hand boogie playing on the piano, and that's what turned me on. I didn't hear the rest of the songs, really, I just heard this throbbing left down boogie piano. And I learned on the guitar all those riffs. And when I learned it, because there's no

16:45 electric bassis in England, it'sar so I learned everything on the bottom four streams of regular guitar. And when basical guitar turn up in England and I bought one, it was I was suddenly playing all these riffs on the bass, and he turned me on. I thought, that's what I want to do forever. And I was in my music shop one day on the Sunday morning where all musicians go over Saturday with all the other musicians, and there in the window he said, direct from the USA Precision Sunburst base. And I was fifteen and I remember dashing home to my dad and said, Dad, you've got to help me. I've got to buy this base. And he did. He helped me, and I bought that bass and I've recorded nearly every Moody Blue song on that base and I still use it today for recording.

17:57 Wow. Well did dad know? I'm sure that now today you would be considered one of the ten most influential bass players on the planet. So lood fantastic. Yeah, love it. Well, everybody should go to your website, John Lodge dot com and I believe there as connects to everything for you and tour dates, music merge, all that good stuff. I look forward to you being here in Fort Laurerdale on August third. And hey, thanks for giving us such great music and musical therapy for all these years that we desperately need and to keep it alive. And thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Thank you for pint Man and good luck. And thank you to all your listeners for keeping the faith. Thank you, oh yes, absolutely, thank you for listening to the Adventures of plate Man.

18:59 I'm w for CUI Radio. Hey, this is John Launch and you're listening to the Adventures of Pyman of W four c Y