A brief chat with the Moody Blues

The Moody Blues are out on tour again, this time in support of the Timeless Flight – The Polydor Years compilation. They play Red Rocks on Sunday, so we had a chat with original member John Lodge.T

Yellow Scene: The last new material was December in 2003 – are there any plans for more?

John Lodge: I don’t really know at the moment, we’ve been in touring mode for five years. That has taken most of our time up. We’ve been traveling around, doing live concerts. The record industry is really different to what it used to be, where you’re releasing albums regularly. I don’t really know – we’ll just have to see where we are. We’ve got the boxed-set, Timeless Flight – The Polydor Years, that the record company released. That’s our latest offering.

YS: What keeps you guys wanting to tour?

JL: Because it’s our music. We started playing music before we had a record contact. That came along later. Because we’ve written all our own music all over these years, they’re very special to us and I think they’ve become special to fans. If it’s your own material you’re playing, it’s a different thing than if you’re playing someone else’s material. From my point of view, it’s in my blood. I’ve always wanted to play guitar and bass. I enjoy it. I play everyday, so why not get on stage and play instead of playing at home.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

JL: Yeah, we’ve been to Colorado lots of times of course, and we played Red Rocks in 1978 when it had only just opened. It was a very open affair then. There was no covering on the stage, and people were sitting in the rocks all the way up to the top. It was a different world. Colorado’s great. At one stage in the 1980s, I became part of the historical society, which was really interesting, to see all the museums and see the history of Colorado.

YS: What are the plans for the set?

JL: It’ll be like an album. We like to take the audience through a place where, hopefully by the end of the concert, something emotional has happened and they want to come back. We just choose songs that we think take the audience on a nice journey for the evening.

YS: When this tour’s done, what’s next?

JL: I just released my solo album called 10,000 Light Years Ago. I’ll be promoting that for the foreseeable future. I’m very excited about that album. Then we do a Moody Blues British tour, and we’re playing Glastonbury. There’s lots of things going on, and it’s always interesting.