The Psych Rock Lounge

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

The greatest psychedelic rock album of the sixties:
The Moody Blues: Days of Future Passed 1967.

I've come to expect the mainstream notion (or the selective memories of older folk) that Psychedelic rock in the nineteen sixties was solely defined by the albums Sgt. Pepper's and Are You Experienced in the U.S., or Sgt. Pepper's and Piper Gates The Gates of Dawn in the U.K. Occasionally, someone will throw a nod to Donovan for his hits Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow.

However, from my personal experience, these were the albums you wanted to play first at any informal party or more formal Freak In (Zappa killed the term Freak Out) in the States in 1968. Others thrown in the mix would be Tommy by The Who, In-a-godda-da-vidda by Iron Butterfly and Surrealistic Pillow By the Jefferson Airplane, along with many others.

But the album that would always wind up such gatherings as the grand finale and closer went exclusively to the Moody Blues orchestral epic Days Of Future Passed. With it's dramatic symphonic opening, the incredible spoken word poem written by drummer Graham Edge and eloquently conveyed by keyboardist Mike Pinder, you were off on a journey through the events and the passing hours of a day.

Although heavily orchestrated, it was Pinder's eerie and icy sounding Mellotron that supported the songs melodically until the album climaxed with the double barreled grand finale of Nights in White Satin which by it's end would be transform via an additional orchestral bridge into Edge's final spoken word poem The Night. You felt chills as Pinder began to speak: "Cold hearted orb which rules the night..." that concludes with coup de gras of two orchestral crescendos that are finally silenced by a fading crash of a gong.

Many people enjoyed the magic of listening to proceeding albums like Are You Experienced with Puple Haze referencing an acid high or the studio trickery of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's, but these were clearly Psychedelic tricks  performed by  musical magicians. Days of Future Passed was not such an exercise. It was brilliant experimental but organically conceived work of art, and as such, it stood out hands and feet above everything else until the Beatles created Abbey Road which would take it's place as the 'show closer' in 1969. It's funny how Abbey Road was also solely created to be a musical work of  art instead of a psychedelic album.

Incidentally, an album called In The Court of the Crimson King would often be the new party opener in 1969. An album that owes a great debt to Days of Future Past, as would later albums such as 1973's Ashes Are Burning from Renaissance.

So to me, Days Of Future Past will always remain the greatest Psychedelic Rock album ever made. Something that will always strike me as ironic, because unlike following Moody Blues albums that are chuck full of sitar and period studio effects, DOFP was never meant to be one. 

Edited by SteveG - February 23 2015 at 12:27