Farewell, John Lodge

I first heard The Moody Blues on the radio in 1981, as their Long Distance Voyager album came out in early Summer. It got heavy airplay on Top 40 radio stations in the US, courtesy of The Voice and the disco-influenced Gemini Dream. You'd think that with my love of Rock music I'd have been exposed to The Moodies earlier, but I switched radio station loyalties a few years later, and only then became exposed to their extensive back catalog. 

A neighbor* pointed me in the direction of one of their early "Greatest Hits" compilations, This Is The Moody Blues, and two of the songs from that album that I really loved were (I'm Just a) Singer in a Rock and Roll Band and Ride My See-Saw. It's with sadness that I saw that the composer of those two songs (plus the aforementioned Gemini Dream), John Lodge, died yesterday.

If Justin Hayward is the voice of The Moody Blues, John Lodge held down the bass lines. Sure, there are other characteristics of what makes up a classic Moody Blues song --strings, anyone?-- but they'd be nowhere without John Lodge's bass. That he wrote some of my favorite Moody Blues pieces was just a cherry on top of the sundae. 

They finally got a "golf clap" award by being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, and although their voices and sound had faded quite a bit by then (as evidenced by their rendition of Ride My See-Saw above), you could tell that they still enjoyed playing together.

I'll miss you, John. Thanks for all the years of playing and recording.

*This is the same neighbor who fed my interest in what is now Classic Rock by providing me album suggestions for bands such as Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Cream. He strongly emphasized listening to albums because you got to hear the entire context of songs together, something I put to good use with bands who released concept albums such as The Who, Pink Floyd, and Rush.