The Moody Blues will play the Brady Theater Thursday at a sold-out concert.
Clearly classic
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By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
2/28/2007
The Moody Blues play the Brady Theater this week
What is it about classic rock that makes it classic? Is it just another term for old, or is it classic as in the sense of "dude, that's classic?"
Graeme Edge, the drummer of the Moody Blues, knows a thing or two about classic rock, which he defines as any pop music preceding disco. If that's what it is, then much of that sprang from the so-called British Invasion of which the Moody Blues are early members. The band plays the Brady Theater Thursday in a sold-out concert.
The British Invasion bands, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Moody Blues, from Birmingham, England, made their names off American R&B and blues that Edge said at the time was losing popularity in the United States.
"We got all the R&B, three or four generations of R&B, blues, all that stuff, all released in the space of a couple three years, which is why we were able to sort of repackage it and sell it back to you," Edge said.
The Moody Blues' hits have stretched from their first album, 1967's "Days of Future Passed," to the 1986 pop album "The Other Side of Life." The members made their living being one of the first popular bands at the time to merge the old rock staples of love songs and dancing with a darker and more expansive turn on classical music.
The band, these days featuring Edge, bassist John Lodge and guitarist Justin Hayward, recently released a live CD and DVD from a 2005 performance in Los Angeles called "Lovely to See You, Live."
"I saw something that said we'd sold 50 million albums worldwide. I thought, 'Where's the money?' Then I remembered I've been divorced three times," said Edge, laughing. "Oh yeah. That's where it went. Oh, dear."
But Edge, Lodge and Hayward aren't starving. Edge lives south of Tampa Bay, Fla., and owns holiday rental properties on some nearby islands. He plays golf, donates to charities and used to take long sailing trips, but the sailing part got to be too much like work, he said.
Hayward lives in Monte Carlo, and Lodge divides his time between homes in London and Barbados.
Despite its past touring with orchestras, the band hasn't toured with one in years, Edge said, preferring instead to have the free-form style of a rock concert.
The lack of an orchestra gives the Blues a chance to switch up the performance a bit outside of their usual repertoire of hits, Edge said.
With songs from "Nights in White Satin" to "Isn't Life Strange," the show can get a little heavy, Edge said, and that's when he hits the stage for a bit of comedy.
"I'll go down in the front, and I'll do a bit of a poem and a little bit of dancing. That usually gets a bit of a storm. I'm like the comic relief," he said.
"The show needs a little bit of irreverence by that time. It's all getting a bit too ... 'serious' is the wrong word, but you know it needs to lighten up a bit, right about where I get up there, and believe you me, I am light."
"Strange Times" in 2000 was the band's last studio album except for a 2003 Christmas CD, its press bio states. Its newer material hasn't come close to the popularity of the band's hits from the 1960s to the 1980s.
The Moody Blues would like to record a new album, but Edge wonders if there's a record label out there that's interested, Edge said.
Otherwise, the band will keep touring until either people stop showing up for their concerts or "something breaks," he said.
Matt Elliott 581-8366
matt.elliott@tulsaworld.com
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