Open Web Player
Even 40 years after its initial release, the Moody Blues' 1971 album "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" stands out as a particularly strong and successful example of the band's work. The Moodies stood out among British rock bands of the 1960's and 1970's not only because of their formidable instrumental proficiency (one got used to seeing, among an MB album's liner notes, the phrase "All instruments played by the Moody Blues"), but also because all five of the band's members were talented songwriters, four of whom could sing, one of whom recited spoken-word poetry. They never got much respect from the rock critics -- as of this writing, they still have not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- but their music has endured.
"Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" was the Moodies' seventh album, and the sixth with what is now considered the band's classic lineup of drummer Graeme Edge, guitarist/vocalist Justin Hayward, bassist/vocalist John Lodge, keyboardist/vocalist Michael Pinder, and flautist/vocalist Ray Thomas. The title of the album derives from a memory cue for remembering a series of notes along the treble clef, and the songs fit together well and showcase well the talents of each member of the band.
The opening instrumental "Procession," written in collaboration by all five band members, may seem ambitious, aspiring as it does to set forth the entire history of music in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. Against the band's chanting of "Desolation!" "Creation!" "Communication..." (all concepts that will return later in the album), we hear a movement from primitive drums, to the chanting of monks, to a sitar, to a harpsichord, to a baroque church organ, to the Mellotron that is so strongly associated with the band's work. Yes, it's a bit portentous, but somehow it works.
A melodic electric-guitar interlude from Hayward provides a segue into one of the band's best-known songs, "The Story in Your Eyes." Forty years of continuous overplaying on classic-rock radio have done nothing to diminish the power of this song, one of the band's best. Hayward's calm, measured vocal line complements well his high-energy guitar (his solo on this song shows how underrated he has been as a guitarist), and Lodge's propulsive bass line, Pinder's piano chords, and the band's ethereal harmonies combine for what could be considered the quintessential Moody Blues song.
Ray Thomas's "Our Guessing Game" is one of his best songs, beginning with gentle piano and Mellotron, eventually energized by Hayward's electric guitar. I've always had reservations about Thomas's work -- a good bit of it seems too self-consciously whimsical for its own good -- but this is a solid and straightforward song, with effective use of multi-layered harmonies. "Emily's Song," written by Lodge for his daughter, is gentle and sweet, like a lullaby -- acoustic guitar and cello work together well in this song. No doubt Lodge's daughter Emily, forty years on, is still happy and proud to know that her dad wrote this song for her all those years ago. And side one of the album (back when albums had sides) ended with Edge's "After You Came," a fine example of the band's four vocalists working well together. All four sing the verses together in seamless harmony, including one of my favorite MB lyrics -- "Come back to earth, for what it's worth/For you've been dreaming of a ceiling, not a home." And then, in a striking turn, each of the four vocalists takes a turn singing a line -- first Thomas, then Pinder, then Hayward, then Lodge. Impressive how much of this album demonstrates an ethic of teamwork on the part of the band's members.
Lodge's "One More Time to Live," which was the first song on the second side, goes from a gentle flute intro by Thomas to pick up on some of the themes of "Procession" from the first side, with contemplative lyrics in which the speaker questions humanity's future prospects, except that now "desolation" and "creation" are followed by a long array of other general-concept words that rhyme: evolution, pollution, saturation, population, annihilation, confusion, et al. One can certainly see here the culture-wide anxiety of those times, particularly with regard to environmental degradation and the prospects for nuclear war. At least this long list of "-tion" words ends with "solution," offering a hopeful suggestion that maybe we humans, for all our failings, won't manage to breed or pollute or nuke ourselves into extinction. And indeed, a biblical forty years after this album was released, we're still hanging on.
"Nice to Be Here" shows Thomas returning to his whimsical ways. "A mouse playing daffodil"? Really? Sounds as though someone has read Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" one time too many. But it's a pleasant tune, and the combination of flute, acoustic guitar, and high-register bass works well. Hayward's "You Can Never Go Home" is a fine song that makes me think of walking long ago through Asheville, North Carolina, carrying a well-thumbed copy of Thomas Wolfe's novel "You Can't Go Home Again"; like Wolfe's novel, Hayward's song deals with the passage of time and the impossibility of returning to the safety of one's earlier life. The song begins slowly, with acoustic guitar; then the Mellotron and electric guitar kick in, and the song picks up in intensity. And the piano-based "My Song," the tune that originally closed the album, shows us Pinder at his most overtly mystical, with that guru-from-the-mountaintop quality that often marked his work. The song has a spacey-sounding break in the middle that combines breathing sounds with Mellotron power chords in a manner that made me think of astronaut David Bowman's trip through the Star Gate in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). But it works as a song, and rounds the album off well.
This release of "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" includes two bonus tracks. An original version of "The Story in Your Eyes" makes for an interesting alternate take on this Moodies classic -- slightly different vocal delivery by Hayward, with more echo on the vocal, and less emphasis on harmonies. And "The Dreamer," a Hayward-Thomas collaboration, is a fine, acoustic guitar-based song with Thomas on vocal, a perfectly suitable note on which to close.
The CD includes helpful liner notes that provide useful information regarding the circumstances under which the album was recorded, lyrics for all the songs except the bonus track "The Dreamer," and a number of photographs of the band. For any fan of the Moody Blues, this album is essential.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries
Ivan C.
Moodies on a mellotron rollercoaster.Up and down!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 9, 2020Outastace
Beginning of the end of one Moodies era
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 29, 2014Blanche Horst
The Story in Your Eyes reprise makes it twice as nice
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 1, 2013Paul Challoner
Brilliant Moodies
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 18, 2019
