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>> MOODY BLUES
I
am associated with the Moody Blues as the producer of two and a half
of their albums. One warm afternoon I sat with John Lodge and Justin Hayward in my sparse bachelor kitchen at Harley House on Marylebone Road in London. The three of us were having a "cuppa" (tea). Only a few days before I'd heard from a representative of the Moodies that they would like to meet me and discuss the recording of their new album. Now I was sitting across a table from the two front men of a group whose career spanned two decades, a group that had made some of my favorite recordings. I hadn't heard anything new from them in recent years and had assumed they'd split up, so I was curious to hear what they had in mind. I learned that Mike Pinder was no longer in the group and they had employed ex-Yes keyboard player Patrick Moraz in his stead. I was told he had the most incredible collection of modern keyboard equipment and that the band wanted to reestablish themselves as a cutting edge group, as they'd done earlier with their symphonic rock tracks and the use of the Mellotron. They wanted to know what I could bring to the table and I ushered them into my hi-tech home studio, which consisted of a 24 track analog machine and a 40 channel console which really impressed them. Their eyes also lit up when I showed them my latest toy -- a four channel sequencer, the Roland MC4, which was changing the way records were being made in the mid-80s. They said this was definitely the way to go for them: they liked the sound of tightly sequenced records and it would make them sound more contemporary.
We spent a few hours playing around with one of their cowritten songs called "Running Out of Love". Every element I programmed from the keyboard or drum machines would be greeted with an enthusiastic smile -- they were loving it! A week later I was sitting in my Soho studio office waiting for the Moodies to arrive for a lunch meeting. Suddenly a short, white-haired gentleman burst into the office and introduced himself very quickly, mentioning the Moody Blues. Judging from his appearance I said to myself, "He must be someone's dad!" I didn't realize at first this was Graeme Edge, the group's drummer. Then the rest of the group arrived and we walked to a Vietnamese restaurant and ordered a huge feast. Soho is fabulous for diverse cuisines and great restaurants. Of the bunch, Ray Thomas was the quietest. He was the Moodies' third singer and flautist. It was a very convivial lunch and I guess I passed the audition because we were in the studio, my Good Earth studios, within a week or two. Patrick Moraz's gear arrived in an articulated truck that could barely maneuver in the narrow streets of Soho. Usually a keyboard player sets his gear up in the control room, but Patrick's took up almost the entire studio area. All we could fit in the control room was his master Kurzweill keyboard, and a multitude of midi and audio cables ran between the control room and his module/keyboard bank. We had little room for vocal mikes. No drum gear arrived at first, just Graeme Edge's Linn Drums, the programmable drum machine flavor of the 80s! Justin Hayward's guitar gear consisted of maybe three guitars, and a guitar amp simulator -- but no amp. He also brought along his vintage Linn Drum 1, the one with which he used to start most of his compositions. John Lodge brought a small collection of basses. Everyone in the band had his own technician, even Ray Thomas (I had never met a flute technician before and this one was called "Mother" and weighed more than 300 lbs.). I kept my unassuming MC4 sequencer hidden from sight when I saw Patrick's two Macintosh computers coming out of their boxes. He had a program called Performer which was the absolute state of the art in sequencing music. Patrick impressed us with a midi playback of a short orchestral piece he wrote for Swiss television and it sounded quite impressive. Then he did something which got a big laugh: he said he could print out that music and proceeded to hit the print command. You must remember that in 1985, this was virtually science fiction. As Patrick's nine pin Apple printer started chugging pages and pages of gigantic notes, he realized he had done something wrong and couldn't reverse it. So we all sat and watched the printer churn out over a hundred pages of big, blotchy notes for the next hour. Of course he wasn't able to use his keyboards during the hour the computer was printing. Over the next few days Patrick admitted the program had some bugs and only then was I allowed to pull out my MC4 and start to program the simple stuff, like drum patterns and bass lines. But Patrick is such a brilliant live keyboard player, he never felt the need to program. And in the ensuing two albums the programming chores were left to me (Keys Of The Kingdom was programmed by Bias Boshell) and Patrick played live with magnificent chops.
The Moodies were very pleased to accept this award backstage and a spokesman for Caesars Palace said that this was "Rock and Roll history." The event was covered by local newspapers and one television station. Executive Directors Jon Marcus and Erin Riley from the New York and North East chapters respectively, also attended the ceremony. Tony says it was the best casino gig by the Moodies that he's ever attended. The reason it was not announced onstage was due to Caesars' policy to keep the show to an exact time. For more information about the Recording Academy and recipients of the Grammy Hall Of Fame Award, visit their website. |
The
recording of "Nights In White Satin" by the Moody Blues has been
inducted in the Grammy Hall Of Fame. This was announced during Grammy
Week starting February 23rd, 1999. Tony Visconti is a former producer
of the Moody Blues, producing the CDs "The Other Side Of Life", "Sur
La Mer" and half of "Keys Of The Kingdom". He is also the current
chapter president of the New York Chapter of the Recording AcademyŠ.
He had planned to attend one of the Atlantic City gigs at Caesars
Palace anyway, but since he made those plans this famous recording
had been inducted in the Grammy Hall Of Fame and it seemed appropriate
to deliver the award to the band in person.