They're All Still Breathing #3: The Moody Blues (60s 70s Rock Bands Where All Members Are Alive Who Played On The First Album)

The antithesis of Black Sabbath, The Moody Blues represented everything else Rock n Roll was about - interest in spirituality and science, concern for the world around us, poetry, bad poetry, really bad poetry, and occasionally worse hair. I first got to see The Moody Blues when I was a teenager, back in the 80s.  It was the first concert I went to with old people, my best friends Mom and Aunt.  It was the first time I smoked pot with adults - my best friends Mom and Aunt.

When Graeme Edge stopped to recite a poem, you could have heard a pin drop, could have except my best friend and I were on the concrete laughing our asses off - something about the audience and verses about butterfly sneezes spoken in an English accent just had that effect. Don't get me wrong, we both loved the Moody Blues - still do.  They are my chief musical guilty pleasure. Graeme Edge possess genius - I proudly own European pressings of his solo LPs.  But we just couldn't stop laughing at that audience of old stoned people on a warm California night listening silently to a recitation of the effects of butterfly sneezes.  Could we have had a punk rock moment at a Moody Blues concert? The possibilities of the genius of this band are profound.

And all the members who played their first album, Days Of Future Past (we can leave out the Denny Laine discussion) are all still with us - Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Mike Pinder, Graeme Edge and Ray Thomas.

They have been probably the cleanest living rock band - known experiments in mid-sixties aside. Hayward and Lodge are still married to their first wives. Graeme Edge loves Star Trek, golf and charity work. I don't believe there has ever been a bad word written about their personal lives. No arrests at customs check points.

About the worse hair, here's the Moody Blues from 1970, featuring Justin Hayward - and a helmet: