John Lodge, who performed bass and sang within the Moody Blues — together with on the English band’s “Nights in White Satin,” a No. 2 hit in america in 1972, and on “Your Wildest Dreams,” which cracked the highest 10 greater than a decade later — has died. He was 82.
His demise was introduced in an announcement by his household, who mentioned he died “suddenly and unexpectedly,” however didn’t specify a trigger or say when or the place he died.
“John peacefully slipped away surrounded by his loved-ones and the sounds of The Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly,” the assertion mentioned. Based on Lodge’s web site, he had tour dates scheduled this 12 months beginning Dec. 4 in Cerritos.
Born in Birmingham, England, in 1943, Lodge joined the Moody Blues in 1966 together with singer Justin Hayward; the 2 changed Denny Laine (who went on to kind Wings with Paul McCartney) and Clint Warwick.
The group had began out as certainly one of numerous younger English acts aping American R&B within the mid-’60s. “We were originally a rhythm and blues band, wearing blue suits and singing about people and problems in the Deep South,” Hayward recalled in an interview with The Occasions in 1990. “It was OK, but it was incongruous, getting us nowhere, and in the end we had no money, no nothing.”
Having been requested by their report firm to give you an LP that might showcase the hi-fi prospects of its new recording tools, Hayward and Lodge pushed the band towards a extra ornate sound that blended rock and classical music.
In 1967, the band launched “Days of Future Passed,” an elaborate idea album that includes the London Competition Orchestra; at this time it’s extensively considered an early landmark of the progressive rock sound that might later embody the likes of Sure and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Along with “Nights in White Satin” — heard lately in a sultry Chanel business starring Timothée Chalamet — the album spun off “Tuesday Afternoon,” a pastoral orchestral-rock quantity about “gently swaying through the fairyland of love.”
Neither single was a smash on the time. But regular FM radio play saved the songs in rotation by the early ’70s, by which period rock was filled with proudly bold outfits comparable to Genesis and Electrical Gentle Orchestra.
In 1972, the Moody Blues topped the Billboard 200 with its album “Seventh Sojourn,” which included a success single, “I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band),” with Lodge on lead vocals.
The band broke up after “Seventh Sojourn” — Hayward advised The Occasions that “we were getting more and more enclosed and introverted, and there was just nothing left to talk about” — although he and Lodge launched a duo album, “Blue Jays,” in 1975; two years later, Lodge put out his first solo LP, “Natural Avenue.”
The Moody Blues reconvened in 1977 and went on to search out success within the synth-pop ’80s with songs like “Gemini Dream,” “The Voice” “and “Your Wildest Dreams,” the final of which grew to become a success on MTV with a music video starring Hayward as a musician wanting again at his life.
The band toured by the late 2010s, acting at England’s Glastonbury competition in 2015 and on the Hollywood Bowl in 2017. Ray Thomas, a founding member of the group who performed flute, died in 2018; Graeme Edge, the band’s founding drummer, died in 2021; Laine died in 2023; Mike Pinder, who performed keyboards within the band till 1978, died final 12 months. Hayward wrote Friday on Fb that he was “very sad and shocked to hear of John’s passing” and mentioned he had “such happy memories of making music together.”
In 2023, Lodge launched a solo album that he mentioned represented a reimagining of “Days of Future Passed.” His survivors embrace his spouse, Kirsten, two kids and a grandchild.
In 2018, the Moody Blues had been inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame by Coronary heart’s Ann Wilson, who mentioned the band “took me from childhood to adulthood.”
“The Moody Blues are not cool or ironic — they’re not a construct,” Wilson added. “There’s a beautiful and approachable honesty about the poetry and a natural intelligence in the music.
“You can lie back and listen to any one of the albums, beginning to end, and go out of the world.”
