A Question of Balance

401:"It was to do with the fact that we'd achieved great success in the United States and we were playing a lot of student venues and colleges, and the student audience was our audience. We were mixing with these people and seeing how different the problems were for them and the issues in being a member of the greatest nation on earth: the United States. How different they were from British people. I was just expressing my frustration around that, around the problems of anti-war and things that really concerned them, and for their own future that they may be conscripted, drafted. How that would morally be a dilemma for them and that kind of stuff. So it did really come out of that. And my own particular anger at what was happening. After a decade of peace and love, it still seemed we hadn't made a difference in 1970. I suppose that was the theme of the song. And then the slow part of the song is really a reflection of that and not feeling defeated, but almost a quiet reflection of it, and mixing with a bit of a love song, as well." 405:"Question" was arranged shortly before the recording session. Hayward had been struggling to finalize two different songs that happened to be in the same key, and decided to present the two songs as a single work. He remembers, "That was a song written under pressure. There was a Moody session set at Decca studios on a Saturday. At midnight that Friday I still didn't have anything for the session the next day. I had parts of two songs that were in the same key but were vastly different. About four o'clock in the morning I thought, 'Oh shit, all I can do is try to put them together and make them work, somehow.' I took it into the studio the next morning and I played it to the guys and they said, 'That's great!' They never even thought about it being two songs. There is a lot of social commentary in that song. I was reflecting what was happening in the college circuit that we were playing at the time." 397:", the lead track on the album, was written by Hayward as a protest song about war. The group were influenced by their experiences interacting with Americans on their concert tours, and the fear and anger about the draft during the Vietnam war. He explains, "I'd written "Question" on the morning of the recording session. It was recorded in just a few takes. I was very aware of the anti-war movement in America which had grown thanks to the Vietnam war. It was a protest song about the state of the world, which I feel is still very relevant today." He continues, "I got very angry one night listening to the news about the war in Vietnam. The only reason to have a war to me is to do with starvation...people fighting for their lives. But just for a bit of territory, a bit of land somewhere, was stupid. In my own naive way, I put a lot of those feelings into Question." He elaborates on the song's sentiment: 386:

we can be better, the kinds of things we can leave behind and move forward. The planet earth has its problems, and people live in the left side of their brain. And the right side of the brain is where creativity takes place. Ingenuity, ideas, concepts — all those things come through on the right side of the brain. I've always looked at it that way, from a spiritual point of view, as opposed to a religious point of view. There's a vast, vast difference. And so the emotions were really all about love and peace and everything, but also about intelligence and about consciousness. Trying to wake people up from bad habits. Bad habits in my book are something that hurt other people, innocent people."

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takes its name from the first and last tracks on the album, "Question" and "Balance". According to drummer Graeme Edge, "We very much wanted to reflect what the title says: that maintaining yourself is a question of balance. That was the start of where we were almost treated as semi-deities. It's very hard to maintain your equilibrium under those pressures." Mike Pinder adds, "All in all, it was one of the peaking albums for me. I listen to it now, and I can see why people are still discovering it. We never wanted to be a sock-it-to-me band. We all wanted to just express ourselves. The whole idea of individual growth and being able to transfer that into our music. Much of

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throughout the album: "Oh, they were really superb. Derek Varnals — I have to credit him with my guitar sound in the early days. On those early records, I played acoustic and electric. He captured all of that just beautifully. I'd put the acoustic lines down first, and then we'd do the electric stuff, maybe with the other guys playing at the same time. There's a song called "It's Up to You" where he suddenly nailed it down."

489:, featuring minimal overdubs and an simpler, more natural sound that the band could more readily replicate on stage. Hayward remembers, "With "Question", the song, recorded before the album, there's no double-tracking, just echo and a big old 12-string guitar. We learned to play that the old-fashioned way and just recorded it one Saturday. It was a deliberate attempt to try and pull back to something more real." 318: 313: 308: 303: 298: 24: 423:

Drummer Edge contributes "Don't You Feel Small": "It started basically as a bit of a go about ecology, and then I saw in it a lot of things the way people seem to be allowing themselves to be made to feel very insignificant by establishment things." The song is sung by the band's four singers, though

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remembers the album being more influenced by domestic life as well as global concerns: "We were all getting married and having kids. That was really the difference. We'd settled down. These are not songs that we made up out of thin air. These are all songs that we lived. They were all songs about how

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Hayward's "It's Up to You" was inspired by one of his relationships; he wrote the song on his newly acquired cherry red Gibson. Mike Pinder interprets a broader meaning from the song, one of taking responsibility on an individual level for global problems. He explains, "'It's Up to You' is very much

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Ray Thomas' "And the Tide Rushes In" is a reflection on the impermanence of material things. It was inspired by conflict with his ex-wife. He explains, "And the Tide Rushes In" was recorded after a big argument with my ex-wife. And I say...'You keep looking for someone to tell your troubles to, I'll

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Hayward and Pinder's guitar work on "Melancholy Man" reminded producer Clarke of the type of music that would appear on a French film soundtrack, and he leaned into that feeling during the song's production, limiting the use of echo on the track. Appropriately, the song subsequently became a number

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once again served as producer alongside engineer Derek Varnals. Sessions between 17 and 31 January yielded the backing tracks for "It's Up to You", "Tortoise and the Hare", "And the Tide Rushes In", "Don't You Feel Small" and "Question". "Minstrel's Song" was recorded 10 March. Sessions from 1 to 6

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Hayward reflects on this songwriting process at the time: "A song is a song. There are specific Moody Blues songs that start in that quiet way. I've had so many small parts of songs that I've just enjoyed playing, and it takes me a while to realize: 'This is a song. If I just work at it a bit more,

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remembers, "From the beginning of our recording sessions we were all convinced that we had to record an album of songs that could easily translate into effective live performances. In a way, we almost reverted to performing live in the studio, without venturing too much into the world of overdubs."

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Despite the simpler production overall, the album does feature some unique studio techniques. Some of Hayward's guitar work on "Dawning is the Day" was recorded at half-speed to create a mandolin-like effect. Hayward credits the expertise of Varnals and Clarke in capturing his desired guitar sound

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Pinder's "Melancholy Man" takes a global perspective and lament's society's ability to address its broadest challenges: "The melancholy part of it is the melancholy for the human race and for the planet is what it's about. What was that line? 'I might not make it there with you' the famous line of

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Still, the album does convey a theme of asking questions and finding meaning in the world. Explains Hayward, "On the first side, we were asking ourselves the question, and on the second side, we are starting to answer it. Looking for the answers will keep us going for a long time." The album title

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The collage of pictures of the band in the center of the album's gate-fold was produced by projecting several images onto a single screen. According to Clarke, this method was a creative solution when it was discovered that the preferred method of printing a collage of several individual pictures

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being melancholy. I used that as a way of saying that there are different levels of melancholy, and that this was a melancholy for the whole world because of the impending breakdown of the structure in all things that we have seen happen since the song came out. What we're seeing now is just more

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in the cover collage. The image was of Snell wearing a pith helmet, holding a pistol and pointing it at an elephant. After the album was released, Snell sued Decca Records and the band over the image, saying it was "a source of constant embarrassment over being on the cover." Travers, with the

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The album cover is a vertical gate-fold created by Phil Travers. The bottom of the image features a beach scene with beach-goers enjoying the sun while a menacing storm cloud approaches. Travers explains the meaning of the imagery: "The people on the sleeve are actually just sitting there, on

82: 439:. He sees the song as a metaphor for the band: "It was really a sort of analogy, really, of the Moody Blues. You know, everyone else was racing away. We were just trying to say, 'If we just keep on going exactly what we really believe, we're going to last and everyone'." 510:

holiday, basking in the sunshine with presumably not a care in the world. They just don't notice what's coming up at them and probably won't until it's too late. It's just a symbolic way of putting over what most of us do - we bury our heads until it's too late."

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I've got a whole song here.' Inspiration has to find you working, and not just toying around. So it's a question of prompting myself to actually use some of the bits I've been enjoying on the guitar and make a song out of them."

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a starker reality that people still need to realize, that it's up to the individual to make anything better, whether it be a political vote or in conserving water or in not polluting the planet."

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making light of the fact the situation was productive creatively: "I remember Tony Clarke saying to her that she ought to have more rows with me because he considered it such a great song."

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results of what was being done then and what continues to be done by the industrial giants and governments of the world, and the greedy little cigar-smoking guys like on the album cover."

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The final track, "The Balance," centers around a spoken narration. The accompanying music was originally arranged for Lodge's song, "The Tortoise and the Hare", which was later reworked.

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album...getting back to that place where we could just get a bunch of songs together with a bit less instrumentation going on, that we could just sit around in a room and play."

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The album was an attempt by the group to strip down their previously lush, psychedelic sound in order to be better able to perform the songs in concert. Guitarist

451:. Martin Luther was very much on my mind." He continues, "The single most incorrect interpretation of "Melancholy Man" has been that maybe it was a song about 1195: 2281: 2123: 1704: 416:

sit down and lend an ear yet I hear nothing new.' Just complaining, then the tide rushes in and washes my castle away." He remembers producer

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Gleason, Paul. 2013. “Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues on His Days of Future Passed (and Present).” Rock Cellar Magazine. April 2, 2013.

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Mettler, Mike. Days of SQ Surpassed: The Timeless Flight of Justin Hayward and the Moody Blues | SoundBard. Accessed January 30, 2024.

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Murley, Mark S. "Bringing Cosmic Art Down to Earth: An Interview with Phil Travers" Fall/Winter 1986. Higher and Higher. Issue 07/08.

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Shasho, Ray. An Exclusive Interview with Moody Blues Legend Ray Thomas...Ironically on a ‘Tuesday Afternoon.’ January 30, 2015.

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format and repackaged with six extra tracks. In 2008, a remaster for standard audio CD was issued with the same bonus tracks.

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Lindblad, Peter. Backstage Pass: The Moody Blues and the Mellotron on the Isle of Wight. September 17, 2009. Goldmine.

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Lindblad, Peter. Backstage Pass: The Moody Blues and the Mellotron on the Isle of Wight. September 17, 2009. Goldmine.

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The band promoted the album through tours of the United States and the United Kingdom. The group appeared at both the

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094: The Moody Blues - a Question of Balance (1970). Discord & Rhyme: An Album Podcast. May 10, 2022.

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direction of Decca, changed the image of Snell to that of a man without a pith helmet holding the pistol.

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Martel, Andy. Always Looking West: An Interview with Justin Hayward. The Moody Blues. February 8, 2013.

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Writewyattuk. A Question of Life Balance – the Justin Hayward Interview. Writewyattuk. April 27, 2018.

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Sokol, Tony. 2020. “The Day the Moody Blues Jammed with the Four Tops.” Den of Geek. April 13, 2020.

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http://soundbard.com/days-of-sq-surpassed-the-timeless-flight-of-justin-hayward-and-the-moody-blues/

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June produced "Dawning is the Day", "Melancholy Man", "How Is It We Are Here" and "The Balance".

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