#RocknRollHallofFame | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hmel78 · 4 years ago

Text

In conversation with John Lodge ...

JOHN LODGE – 10,000 LIGHT YEARS AGO

Formed in Birmingham, UK, in 1964, “The Moody Blues” are one of the longest serving Rock Bands in modern music history. Today the core line-up still see’s founding member Graeme Edge, alongside Justin Hayward, and John Lodge – who both joined the band in 1966, following the departure of Denny Laine, and Clint Warwick. John Lodge was actually the first choice of bass player for ‘The Moody Blues’, having already been in a band with (Moodies founding member), Ray Thomas. However, Lodge made the decision to finish his apprenticeship as an engineer, before committing himself to a career in music : he laughs, “People would say to me – ‘aah you’re loving this now, these little bands that you’re in, but what are you going to do when you’re 21 and it’s all over?” Ironically, John Lodge was 21 when he joined the Moody Blues, and he hasn’t looked back. With another landmark birthday in sight for both himself, and the Moody Blues, Lodge has also just launched his 2nd solo album. “10,000 Light Years Ago” is an eclectic mix of songs, (the track "In My Mind" – co-written with Alan Hewitt - nominated for Best Anthem at the Prog Awards 2015), that marks a long awaited return to solo recording for Lodge (who plays acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and sings all the lead vocals on the album) ; Featuring guest appearances from ex ‘Moodies’ Ray Thomas, and Mike Pinder ; current ‘Moodies’, Alan Hewitt, Norda Mullen, and Gordy Marshall, alongside Bad Company’s Brian Howe, and veteran session musicians Mike Piggott, Brian Price and Chris Spedding - who adds some classic lead guitar. I met up with John for a chat during the recent Moody Blues “Timeless Flight” tour ...

HR : You’re often referred to as a living Legend.

JL : [laughs]

HR : I don’t suppose it’s something you envisaged for yourself but, am I really sat here - in a private dressing room - with a living Legend?

JL : [laughs] NO! No, not at all! As a boy, I was really not interested in music. I never thought that it would be part of my life. There was nobody in my family who was at all musical. And then I saw a couple of movies when I was about 12 years old - ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’, and ‘Rock Around The Clock’ ; there was just something about that movie - something clicked with me, and I thought “ hang about, I would really like to do that!”. I was quite fortunate then - one of our neighbours sons had been in the armed forces, and had returned home with a guitar, which he couldn’t play – so his mother asked my mother if I would like to buy it, which I did – for about £2 and 10 shillings! I was 13. It was an awful guitar but it had steel strings, which was brilliant, because up to that point all I had seen were Spanish guitars with nylon strings. The challenge then was to learn how to play it, because there was nowhere where you could go and learn. Nobody was teaching Rock n roll! So I watched American TV shows like Perry Como, who had acts come on like ‘The Everly Brothers’, and ‘Eddie Cochrane’, and I’d try to work out how to play the chords from them. Then I found Buddy Holly, and that was it. As soon as he came along with ‘That’ll Be The Day’ and ‘Peggy Sue’ and all those songs – I sat in my bedroom religiously every night playing these songs over and over again, trying to work out what a 12 bar was! I actually saw Buddy Holly - He came to Birmingham Town Hall, and I had front seats in the circle! It was brilliant! He was a Legend!

So talk about a Legend, or a living Legend – no, it never occurred to me that I would ever be referred to as that. [laughs]. I’m just really pleased that people have liked my music, and the Moody Blues, and that’s what it’s about for me. In 1966, when we all got together, I became a Moody Blue, and that’s who I am ...

HR : Your new solo album, is entitled ‘10,000 Light Years Ago’ - does it seem that long since those first days in Birmingham?

JL : Do you know?It doesn’t at all, time flies and It’s really funny because I think I know what “Alice In Wonderland / Alice Through The Looking Glass” was about now! I look back and it’s as though it’s a different person. It’s like you see it from a different perspective somehow ... That’s why I wrote that song on the album “Those Days In Birmingham” because I do remember standing looking in the window of Jack Woodruffes music shop, staring at a Fender Precision bass guitar with a poster that said ‘Direct From America’ – but when I’m looking at it, it is as though someone else is looking at it ; it’s not me looking at it now – it’s really strange.

HR : Was that the first bass that you bought?

JL : No actually – when I was listening to all the early Rock n Roll records (Gene Vincent, Gerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard) I realised I was listening to their left hand, on the piano, and that’s what intrigued me. I really enjoyed the drive of Rock n Roll, and I’d spend days learning these different riffs, but on guitar, because there was no electric bass then! The first bass that I had was a Tuxedo Bass – it was a solid bass, and I didn’t have it long because it wasn’t very good ; then Hofner brought out a bass called the ‘President’ (in actual fact I still have the catalogue) so I got one of those; a blonde, semi acoustic – really nice, but of course it wasn’t the bass that all of the Rock n Roll people from America were using! So, I got that first Precision bass in 1960, and it cost £115!!! That was a huge amount of money. You could by a new mini for £400 - but it has played on nearly every Moody Blues recording, and in the album sleeve of ’10,000 Light Years Ago’ there’s a picture of me as a 15 year old boy standing with that bass, and next to it, a photo of me with that bass now.

HR : Well, you got your money back on it!

JL : [laughs] I have! Great!

HR : You say time flies - Is it difficult to believe, that it’s actually 38 years since your last solo album?

JL : I know ...

HR : What prompted you to do this one now, after so long?

JL : I’d been wanting to do a new album for a long time, about 10 years, and I thought it may be a Moody Blues album so I was waiting to see if the right time came about for that first. About 3 years ago I was approached about re-releasing my first solo album on 180 gram Vinyl, which I did. I went into the studio and remastered it. Whilst I was listening to it, I thought Wow, this is the sort of sound that I really like – not a cd or a digital download, this is a real sound! Full frequency bass! None of this MP3 rubbish. [laughs]. And then the record company asked me if I’d be up for doing a brand new album, and I thought about it ... But! Recording in the studio has changed so much since the last time I made an album, and I don’t particularly like it - for me it’s not intimate any more. When I’m in the studio I like to have my own space – to create something, whether it’s on the bass or acoustic guitar, which no one else would have done for that particular song. Over the last few years it seems to me that most records are made in the control room – there’s a producer in there, and an engineer, and everybody is talking, and making cups of coffee, and suggestions are thrown around like scraps of paper – and for me it’s not conducive to the process. You need to listen to the track and create something there and then. There’s a magic in that. A song can end up completely different to how you first demoed it if you’re given that ‘space’. There’s a song on the new album called ‘Simply Magic’, that until I went in the studio I hadn’t even thought about the bass part – I’d written it on acoustic guitar – but as soon as I heard it, I got the bass straight away and the basic track then, was done in one take - If I’d just been sat in the control room with all of those other people, I know I wouldn’t have heard it like that. We might have messed around talking about it for days ... So I had to find a way to record, that made me feel really good about making the album, and gave me that creative space ; and I suddenly realised that the 4 people I wanted involved, myself included, all have our own studios, and I thought “I Know!”. So I made the demo at home first, then sent it over to Alan Hewitt in L.A to give me a rough idea of what he thought – and then he’d send it back to me, and we’d talk about it - and everything is on email, or face time or Skype, right – it was brilliant! We’re sitting in our studios, and I can see him like he’s just across the way, but we are thousands of miles apart. We are in contact, but there is no one else!

HR : You got your space!

JL : Exactly - I got my space! And there’s no one else involved, which I absolutely loved! [laughs] Then I’d take it to Gordon Marshalls studio, not too far from me, and I’d say that I thought we should try a Springsteen type drum feel, or A Vince Gill type thing, and he would do his best to realise my ideas - put his drums on, send it back to me ; then we would tweak it ; then I would send it back to Alan because he made sure that the sound quality was great – then I would send it to Chris Spedding (who is ALWAYS on the road working!) and he would put the guitar parts on when he had time – so there was no pressure on him, and again we Skyped about it whilst we perfected stuff. It was a very space age project, for me! When I had finally collected all of these parts together, I did actually book some studio time out in Florida, in Naples, at the Mix Factory. There’s a fantastic engineer there called Doug Tracy. I put all the bass guitar on then, and the acoustic parts ; we recorded the vocals. My friend Brian Howe from Bad Company came along and did the backing vocals and harmonies, with Alan. We put it all together there, but what was really good is that Doug is an old fashioned kind of engineer, and he would collect it all in protools or whatever, but he has all of this outboard equipment, so we would put it all back through there, and back into the studio, and record some bits of it again so we got a real live experience. A proper album.

It was the best of both worlds really – freedom and space ; all that equipment, combined with all of the state of the art technology. And it was perfect, to me. I got the buzz that I had, at the very beginning, when I couldn’t wait to get in the studio and record a new song and play it to people! All those years ago ...

HR : So there may be a 3rd album in a shorter space of time?

JL : Well you never know!

HR : Do you stockpile songs with solo albums in mind? When you’re writing for the Moodies, have there been songs that you’ve thought “I’ll hold that one back ...”

JL : I think probably ‘10,000 Light Years Ago’ was going to be a Moody Blues song, but I knew that the title of MY album had to be called ‘10,000 Light Years Ago’, and that the title track had to be the last song on the album. It’s a big statement for me, about who I am.

I do write a lot of other stuff though - for friends, and for charity, and just for my own satisfaction sometimes - I think I’ll do something with it one day, but then getting musicians to commit is difficult ...

HR : No comment!

JL : [laughs]

HR : Did you write ‘10,000 years ...’ from scratch, or is it bits and pieces that you’ve saved up?

JL : No I wrote it from scratch. The whole thing. The title track is an interesting song – the point of the song is to get your mind to think a bit .. The album just seemed to write itself. Hard to explain, but it did, just write itself.

HR : That means It must have been the right time to do it ...

JL : Oh yeah, definitely.

HR : You reunited with ex Moodies Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder for the album, and also involved some of the current line-up ; Alan Hewitt, Norda Mullen, Gordy Marshall – has that been a good thing working with new and old band mates on the same project? JL : Oh yeah! I like drummers ... I’ve always liked drummers. A lot of my best mates are drummers ...

HR : Presumably because they’re the other half of the rhythm section?

JL : [whispers] As far as I’m concerned, you don’t need anyone else. Honestly, you can make anything work just bass and drums! I actually did a gig once – just bass and drums. I play a lot of golf, and one night there was a Gala night that people had paid a lot of money to be at, and the band didn’t show up. So they came to me and asked if I could do anything – I’m not sure what they expected – but a mate of mine was there ; Kenny Lynch [Comedian] - and he’s a drummer, so I asked him and he agreed that if I play bass and sing some harmonies, we can probably pull this off, and we did! I don’t know where they borrowed the bass guitar and amp from, but we ended up – the two of us – doing Drifters song, and things like Lucille. You don’t need anyone else! [laughs]

But going back to your question. I really like Alan Hewitt. His spirit is in the same place as mine, and we both like a lot of the same things ... and you need that when you’re trying to create music. Norda Mullen is always around, has always got her flute, and she’s fabulous, so that was an easy call to make. But when I wrote the track “Simply Magic” I realised there was a flute part on it that only Ray Thomas would understand. We’ve been friends since I was 14 – we had a band together before the Moodies . So I called him up. I told him I’d written this song for my Grandson, and asked would he come and play on it – which he did ... and he asked if I’d thought about asking Mike Pinder to record Melotron on it too. I hadn’t seen Mike in 30 Years. We had corresponded once or twice but not physically been in touch. So I called him up too, and he was over the moon to be asked, so I sent him the track and he added his layer to it, and then I actually saw him recently, when the Moodies played in the USA. It was really good to see him , and his family – you don’t realise how much time passes by ... and we all grew up together, It was an important time for us.

HR : So no disrespect to the afore mentioned personnel, but if you could have put a dream band together to record or perform, who would be in it? JL : The people I chose! HR : That’s sweet - but what about Buddy Holly?! Would you have recorded with him if you’d had chance?

JL : ABSOLUTELY! Absolutely would have recorded with him. I would have loved to have anything to do with that. Over the years I have managed to perform, and record, with a lot of my heroes. In fact, and this is coming out soon! I formed a band for Gene Vincent and wrote a song for him in 1964, and there’s an album coming out this Summer - a Gene Vincent album - and that song is on it, recorded by another band. I’ve recorded a song for the album too, called “Important Words “, with Chris Spedding on guitar. So you know, I played with Gene, with Chuck Berry, Brian Wilson, Gerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley – it’s been great! But I think – in a dream band, the people have to want to be a part of you, and Someone has to be in charge ... and you know if I’d have had people like Buddy Holly involved, then out of respect, I would have wanted them to be in charge, and then it wouldn’t have been my album! [laughs] So no – everyone who played on the album, Brian Price and Mike Piggott too - who came to me through Chris Spedding ; When you get the right people, you share the vision. There has to be someone at the front, but it has to be a shared vision. I’m absolutely thrilled – even with the people who mixed it or me, and mastered it. I actually cut the vinyl version of it myself at Abbey Road studio – with an engineer who was probably the same age as me! - but it was brilliant to have that. It was important that everyone got excited about it! And hopefully the fans will too ... HR : Talking of shared visions – You, Ray Thomas, and Justin Hayward – all cite your “2 Shows in One Day” at Madison Square Gardens, as your favourite memory of the Moodies – was that a real turning point for you? Did you ALL believe that’s when you’d made it?

JL : Yeah! We got a gold ticket award for one day from Madison Square Gardens – I don’t think anyone else ever got that. Well in fact they never let it happen again because there were 20,000 plus people trying to leave after the first concert, as another 20,000 were trying to get in to the next one, and the traffic in that part of New York is congested anyway! We couldn’t believe it, It was absolutely amazing!

Then, about 6 or 7 years later someone asked us how we thought we could beat the Madison Square gigs, and I said to our manager at the time – Tom Hewlett (lovely man who’s no longer with us) – why don’t we do Madison Square Garden, then cross the river and play the Meadowlands, and then fly straight to Los Angeles and do the LA Forum. They were the 3 biggest gigs in America at that time. And we did!

HR : Wow!

JL : In those days, it seemed as though you could do anything , and it would work. And it wasn’t just the band – it was the whole excitement of the record industry; record stores, kids going to concerts. It was very different to how it is now. Going to the concert was a really exciting, really big big thing – it wasn’t because mum and dad had bought you the tickets like seems to happen now for all the pop idol type things. You went to see artists back then because you’d bought all their records, and saved up for the tickets ... There was a whole different buzz about it. People seemed to experience such different musical journeys, somehow.

HR : “10,000 Light Years Ago” is very much about your personal journey - looking back, is there anything you would do differently?

JL : Aaaaaah. I don’t know. You know – I’m very much about the now. People have asked me a few times why I don’t write a book and include all my stories and such, but I’m not interested in spending hours thinking about it – if I did that, then I wouldn’t be spending time thinking about making a new album, or what I should be looking towards in the future. The whole album came about because I had this saying that was going through me for ages “the future is always in reach but the past is gone forever” and I kept thinking to myself, ‘what does that actually mean?’. We use the word ‘now’ but there’s really no such word because as soon as you say, “now”, it’s gone! [laughs] So it doesn’t exist, and I thought, ‘well the past doesn’t exist, because it’s gone’ – but it did exist of course, and it’s made me who I am today, but like I was saying earlier – with reference to “Those Days In Birmingham” – it’s like I am looking at someone else doing all that. I don’t see myself there anymore, but all of those influences have brought me to where I am today, and that’s what’s interesting. That’s what’s important ... the ‘now’ ... that’s just gone! [laughs] HR : Looking to the future then - You have some time off from the Moody Blues for a while. Any plans?

JL : Well, we have to see how the album does, but I would love to tour it, I really would love to play the songs live. Try to play places where the Moodies don’t go, like Scandanavia ... There’s the cruise coming up too ... HR : Ah yes, you and your Wine!

JL : You make me sound like a wino!

HR : I’m curious about the Wine ... JL : MY Wine, yes, well that’s a long story ... but I got interested in wine in the mid 1970s, for real. Good wine. In the years after that I bought nice wine, and enjoyed it with dinner and all of that, and there are 3 areas of the world which I really love – Burgundy in France, Bordeaux in France, and the Nappa Valley in California. I really like California, so I’m over there when I met a guy called Bob Hitchcock who has a winery, and he asked me if I’d like to make a boutique wine, in 2002, and it was fantastic. And it’s gone on from there. I have 3 wines in the range now ; It’s named after my son and daughter – “Krisemma” – Kristian and Emily. Emily sort of got involved in the wine trade in a way, and met some folks from Bordeaux and mentioned that I would love a wine from that region, so we had a wine made out there too in 2011, which is 2 cabernet sauvignons (one from Pauillac, one from Margaux), and a merlot from Castillon – and we just WON at the international trade fair, a bronze medal! I can’t believe it! And then we’ve just had a white wine ; a Chardonnay, made by Richard Kershaw down in South Africa who makes these exceptional Chardonnays. It is currently at the port waiting on me picking it up, and we’re going to launch it on the river cruise on the Thames. There’s something really magical about having your own wine, and I love the whole thing. The French have a word for it – “Terrior” - and it doesn’t just mean land, it means everything about wine; where it’s grown, the seasons, the vineyard ... It is quite special. When you open it and let it breathe - it’s really exciting, and it’s ours ; It’s great fun ...

HR : Can you make a single malt next please?

JL : Well, someone wanted me to make a gin!

HR : Living Legend Gin! JL : [laughs] Now, That’s Rock n Roll!

#john lodge #the moody blues #moodyblues #bass #rocklegends #rocknrollhalloffame

3 notes · View notes