Editing Days of Future Passed (section)

==Writing==
In October 1966, the group relocated to [[Mouscron, Belgium]] to write new material and embark on a Belgian tour. Their shows typically consisted of two sets, the first consisting of rhythm and blues covers including "[[Go Now]]" and the second consisting of newly written original songs. Lodge says, "We loved playing together. It was really good. It was exciting when it was our own songs, we weren't playing a song someone had written for us. So every part of every song we'd invented ourselves. We wanted to play each part exactly right and new and like no one else had ever played that particular part to a song before. That was exciting about ''Days of Future Passed'', creating something that no one else ever created before. That gave a great feeling."<ref name="thestrangebrew.co.uk">{{Cite web |title=John Lodge on Days Of Future Passed |url=https://thestrangebrew.co.uk/interviews/john-lodge/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=The Strange Brew |language=en-GB}}</ref> Lodge continues, "We went to a little village in Mouscron to start writing our own songs and we wrote a lot of songs before ''Days of Future Passed''. But ''Days of Future Passed'' dictated its own album, really. When we knew what we wanted to do with ''Days of Future Passed'', we dedicated the songwriting to exactly that album. And everything we did before was just left alone.<ref name="thestrangebrew.co.uk"/>

Graeme Edge remembers, "We designed a stage show which was going to be '24 hours': daylight 12 and night 12, and we had "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights" and I think "Peak Hour" all written for that."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sexton |first=Paul |date=2022-01-09 |title=Remembering The Moody Blues' Graeme Edge: Talking 'Days Of Future Passed' |url=https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/graeme-edge-interview-part-1-50-years-moody-blues-days-future-passed/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=uDiscover Music |language=en-US}}</ref> Lodge continues, "Ultimately, it was agreed that the record would be a concept album tracking a day in the life of Everyman, with original songs relating to different parts of the day performed in chronological order, introduced and interspersed with orchestral music. Considering that all five members of the group wrote material for the album prior to the concept being established, it's remarkable how seamless the execution of it was."<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-04-28 |title=Concert Preview/Interview: John Lodge of the Moody Blues on Reprising "Days of Future Passed" - The Arts Fuse |url=https://artsfuse.org/268351/concert-preview-interview-john-lodge-of-the-moody-blues-on-reprising-days-of-future-passed/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website= |language=en-US}}</ref> Pinder explains the desire for a cohesive theme, "I had always wanted to create something that was conceptual. I loved the works of [[Mantovani]]. I wanted to have our albums on people's shelves...albums that people would want to collect, and play in their entirety."<ref name="Kopp"/>

Keyboardist [[Mike Pinder]] wrote "Dawn Is a Feeling" and Hayward wrote "Nights in White Satin", which served as early bookends for the concept. Hayward explains, "Nights In White Satin" had been recorded quite a long time before it was for ''Days of Future Passed.'' "Nights In White Satin" and "Dawn Is A Feeling" were the two key songs that gave us the idea of the story of a day in the life of one guy, and that's what our stage show was about before ''Days of Future Passed'' was mentioned or thought about. So we had those two times of the day and the idea, then it was just a question of grubbing different times of the day to write about; it was quite frivolous, really ... nothing really too serious. I just put my hand up for the afternoon. So I ended up with "Tuesday Afternoon", and Ray Thomas wrote "Twilight Time".<ref name="Goldmine Staff"/>

Mike Pinder's "Dawn is a Feeling" opens the concept with a sense of optimism.  Its lyrics acknowledge the spirit of the ongoing [[Summer of Love]] and embrace the feeling that society was approaching a new sense of enlightmentment, a new spirituality.<ref>Moerman, Mark J. "Michael Pinder: One Step into the Light". Higher and Higher. Issue 3. Autumn 1984.</ref> Lodge remembers the song as a step in a new direction for the group, and for Pinder's songwriting: "I would think it was like an awakening for him as well. He wanted to be a creative writer. Mike wrote fabulous songs. There's something special about the morning. And I think that was the dawning of the Moody Blues, really."<ref name="Beviglia">{{Cite web |last=Beviglia |first=Jim |date=2017-12-07 |title=Backtrack by Track: John Lodge of the Moody Blues on "Days of Future Passed" |url=https://www.culturesonar.com/backtrack-by-track-john-lodge-of-the-moody-blues-on-days-of-future-passed/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=CultureSonar |language=en-US}}</ref>

The whimsical "Another Morning" was written by flautist Ray Thomas. Lodge remembers, "He sang me the song. Ray plays flute and harmonica. He doesn't play any chordal instruments. And so I remember him singing the song to me. And I remember getting the guitar out and playing it with him in the house. Ray has got this wonderful smiley attitude to life. It's a childlike look on life, which is really nice."<ref name="Beviglia"/>

Bassist John Lodge remembers the inspiration for "Peak Hour": "I wrote "Peak Hour" in the back of a truck. We were coming back from a gig and the rhythm of the wheels on the tarmac were giving a very strong rhythm. I was pounding my foot on the floor and I said to Graeme, 'Could you keep this tempo up for about three minutes? I think I've written a song.'"<ref name="Fessier">{{Cite web |last=Fessier |first=Bruce |title=Moody Blues return to desert to launch 'Days of Future Passed' 50th anniversary tour |url=https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/entertainment/music/2017/05/31/moody-blues-return-desert-launch-days-future-passed-50th-anniversary-tour/357014001/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=The Desert Sun |language=en-US}}</ref> He continues, "That's where I basically wrote it. I got the main part, the rock and roll part of it, from there. And worked out the bass part. But I really wanted to do something different in the song. That's why I broke it into a cathedral choir-type part in the middle. So it could build back up into a rock and roll song. One part of it would go up-tempo and then it stops and becomes really really quiet with the organ sounds and then it starts again rock and roll."<ref>Chambers, Casey. Interview - John Lodge (The Moody Blues). June 25, 2021. The College Crowd Digs Me.</ref>

Hayward recalls writing "[[Tuesday Afternoon]]": "I was a little hung up with doing tempo changes in the middle of songs. If I got bored, in order to open up another door within the song, I wanted to just go to a different type of mood. In fact, "Tuesday Afternoon" was the first time we did that. I knew by then, by the time I had written "Tuesday Afternoon", that we were going to do this stage show that was based on a day in the life of one guy, even before we recorded the album. I already had "Nights in White Satin", and we were already starting to learn that and play it. But there was a gap in this story of the day, so I went down to my parents' house in the west country, and I had a dog called Tuesday at the time. Not that the dog is in the song, in any way. I smoked a little joint on the side of a field with a guitar, and that song just came out."<ref>{{Cite web |last=DeRiso |first=Nick |date=2013-02-21 |title=The Moody Blues' Justin Hayward on "Tuesday Afternoon," "Gemini Dream," new songs: Gimme Five |url=https://somethingelsereviews.com/2013/02/21/one-track-mind-the-moody-blues-justin-hayward-on-tuesday-afternoon-gemini-dream-new-songs/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=Something Else! |language=en-US}}</ref> He continues, "It was just about searching for some kind of enlightenment or some kind of religious or psychedelic experience in life. I didn't really mean it to be taken too seriously, but six months later, there it was: Our first single in America."<ref name="Goldmine Staff"/>

Lodge explains the theme of "(Evening) Time to Get Away": "It's really about, if you can achieve something every day, it doesn't matter how small it is, it just gives you that energy to carry on and have an enjoyable life. Concerning "The Sun Set" and "Twilight Time", Lodge remembers, "We were trying to make sure that every song on the album had a different aspect. That was the most important thing. That every song on the album, no one could say, 'Oh, that sounds like that.'"<ref name="Beviglia"/>

Hayward wrote "[[Nights in White Satin]]" about the changes between one relationship and another, using bedsheets as a metaphor. He remembers the inspiration: "I was the end of one big love affair and at the beginning of another. When you're just 20, as I was, that's quite important in your life. A girlfriend had given me white satin sheets... It was a lovely romantic gesture, and that's what I thought of it. I came home one night after a gig, and sat on the side of the bed, and a lot of these thoughts came out.
I do write letters never meaning to send. I find it a cathartic thing. If I have an issue with somebody or about something, I find it easier to write it down and get it out rather than turning it over in my mind. It's a series of random thoughts and ideas from a very stoned 20-year-old young man who was desperately sad for himself over one love affair, and desperately excited by the next."<ref name="Goldmine Staff"/> Hayward continues, "I came back from a gig one night and sat on the side of my bed. I was sharing a flat with Graeme at the time. It was very early, it was almost light. The verses of the songs just came out. I took it into the rehearsal room the next day and I played it to the rest of the group. I got to the end of it and everybody was like, 'Well, it's alright.' Mike Pinder said, 'Play it again.' I played it again and he played the Mellotron line and suddenly everybody was interested. He put that sort of orchestration to it and suddenly it worked."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Martel |first=Andy |date=2013-02-08 |title=Always Looking West: An Interview with Justin Hayward |url=https://www.moodybluestoday.com/always-looking-west-interview-justin-hayward/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=The Moody Blues |language=en-US}}</ref>

The album opens with the Graeme Edge poem "Morning Glory" and concludes with his "Late Lament". Edge remembers, "I'd written both those pieces of verse because the 'Morning' section appeared rather empty when we first heard it. The latter part of the poem seemed a perfect end to the record. I'd originally written the words as lyrics for someone else to put some music to, but poetry has a rhythmic structure that makes it difficult to turn into a song, so Tony Clarke suggested recording it as a spoken word piece."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> In another interview, he elaborates further, "As musicians, we knew a lot about life after mid-day. But we hadn't seen that many mornings over the years (laughs). So we were a bit blank. And I set out to write a song that covered the mornings, "Morning Glory", and as it progressed, I also did an evening part of it, which became "Late Lament", but I was intending to write the lyrics to a song. I took it in and presented to the boys and said, 'Can anybody put any music to this?' They all read it and said, 'This is fantastic but there's way too many words, you just can't sing that. You have to have spaces where they can hold a vowel and sing instead of just talk.' I went 'Oh yeah, let's see, I can cut it down.' And Tony Clarke said 'No, no, no, that is fantastic. You read it and we'll put music behind it, some strings—make it into something,' which they did. And then they sort of sidled up to me and said, 'You know, it's great, but it's a bit better with Mike's voice.' Like I was going to get upset! I was absolutely thrilled to have something on the album."<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-03-24 |title=Moody Blues drummer Graeme Edge interviewed {{!}} EntertainmentTell |url=http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/39954/breathe-deep-the-moody-blues-cruise-graeme-edge-gets-moody/ |access-date=2024-04-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140324222922/http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/39954/breathe-deep-the-moody-blues-cruise-graeme-edge-gets-moody/ |archive-date=24 March 2014 }}</ref>