In Search of the Lost Chord is the third album by the Moody Blues, released in July 1968 on the Deram label.
Background
The success of the band's previous record, Days of Future Passed, allowed the group additional studio time and creative flexibility in crafting a follow-up album. At the time, keyboardist Mike Pinder told the Melody Maker, "Albums give us a chance to experiment with new ideas. And buyers realize they offer more than just music to dance to. They can sit down and listen – get away on a trip of musical exploration." Guitarist Justin Hayward recalled that In Search of the Lost Chord "was when I feel we found our soul and direction. It was when everything gelled musically."
Writing
Like its predecessor, In Search of the Lost Chord features a conceptual theme. The songs of In Search of the Lost Chord form a loose concept around a theme of quest and discovery, including both world exploration and inner self-realization. Mike Pinder explained, "The Moodies were really the first rock band to do conceptual albums and to work with a symphony orchestra. Because of that, I realized that so many of my ideas were linked-up to this whole area of conceptual thinking and of communicating ideas to people by asking questions musically and through the lyrics."
The album takes inspiration from the spirit of inner exploration that characterized the psychedelic era. Justin Hayward acknowledged the influence of psychedelic drugs on the band's creative process: "Oh, we all dabbled in all sorts of things. Well, all of us apart from John. He never participated. Usually, they were the more psychedelic type of drugs. I must admit we always had a great time on acid. And those trips inspired a lot of our music at the time." He commented, "I think we were able to take those experiences and hopefully pass them on. That’s the only credit, I think, we can take." Keyboardist Mike Pinder said, "Listening to music, you enjoy it most when you're in a meditative state and I think the drug influence was able to put you into that state instantly."
Hayward elaborated on the band's spirit of curiosity and quest for knowledge: "Myself, Pinder and Ray were dabbling in everything, trying to guzzle as much spiritual and psychedelic information as we could possibly get. We were racing toward it all the time - reading every book, investigating every kind of religion, having all sorts of psychedelic experiences. We met Timothy Leary in 1968 on our first tour of America, me Mike and Ray stayed with him on his ranch for a week or so, and we had a wonderful time. We went through a lot of religious experiences together, we tended to read the same books. I remember us all reading the Bhagavad Gita, and The Tibetan Book of The Dead, and doing all of these things together. So what we were saying was sincere, we weren't just picking up bits of information and using them in songs. We were actually living this stuff at the time, I suppose like many other people, but we took it a lot more seriously than most other musicians, and we were able to put it into music in a more accessible way than some of the other musicians who were really seriously into it, but who were inaccessible in their music."
Pinder reflects on the album's themes in a 1976 radio interview: "We carefully considered every word of the lyrics, to make sure it was balanced, that it didn't make statements, as in 'this is the answer'. We're not giving the answers, for it's the asking of the question that brings about the answer, and the answer is always an intelligible thing. I want to try to get across to people that these are just experiences that people are having, put down, and shared on records. I buy records that I'm getting something out of other than just entertainment. I'm hoping to hear somebody say something that I want to hear, and know that it's coming from a person I can trust and believe that they've had that experience."
In Search of the Lost Chord opens with a poem by Graeme Edge, which was spoken by Edge himself (rather than Mike Pinder as in most cases). Its words describe how a sensory experience can serve as the impetus for the beginning of a journey.
The spoken introduction segues into the rock song "Ride My See-Saw", the album's lead single. John Lodge explains the inspiration for its lyrics: "That song was about the freedom which I felt I'd received, both personally and as part of The Moody Blues." He said, "The song was about leaving school and going out into the world and finding out it wasn't what you thought it was and it isn't what you were taught in school. It is actually much bigger than that. 'Ride My See-Saw' was about riding my life and seeing where we go with this thing. I am still doing that now." Justin Hayward remembered, "My memory of it was like a jam session in the studio. We kinda got stuck with it, but it was a great. We had Graeme doing that di-da-da, di-da-da on the snare drum — that's how it started –and the guitar riff. But we had no song, and then John came back with some lyrics and the bones of the song. We recorded that sometime after we'd recorded the backing track." Lodge said, "I wrote that song on bass. For that time, there are some really nice chord changes, the minors and the majors. I wanted the middle to be only harmonies and it was. We had these soaring three and four parts going around. We were trying to find a way to get the rhythm really right, as it has a driving rhythm."
The author of "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume", Ray Thomas, described the song as "a bit of fun amidst all the seriousness of the other songs on the album." He said, "When you open a door, you never know what's gonna come in. You've got to be positive enough to open the door. If you don't know what door you're opening, you're never gonna find out." Bassist Lodge plays cello on the track, tuned as a bass guitar. He remembered, "I played the cello on that track, and tuned it the same way as a bass guitar. I never realized that a cello wasn't actually tuned that way at all, but we got the desired effect!"
The songs on the second side of the album deal with more personal themes of self-discovery. "Voices in the Sky" explores spirituality while "The Best Way to Travel" addresses psychedelic imagination. The lyrics of the latter song question if experience is just "light passing by on a screen", suggesting that if our perception of life is really just an illusion, then meditation can help us understand the true nature of existence.
The album concludes with "Om", featuring a spoken-word introduction by Edge titled "The Word". The poem features the line "Between the eyes and ears there lie the sounds of color and the light of a sigh". Edge explained, "You can listen to your favorite piece of music fifty times and still get something from it. But the best movie you've ever seen, you get ten, eleven, and it's done. Because music is hot and the visual is sort of cold. Music is tempo, form, and pitch. Through the eyes, you've got color, perspective, and form. So you get through the eyes the same way you get through the ears, with really creative vibrations."
"Om" is an ode to transcendentalism and the use of mantras in meditation.
Recording
"Legend of a Mind" was recorded January 13, 1968.
The surprise success of Days of Future Passed gave the group new clout with their record label and artistic freedom in the studio. Hayward remembered, "We were also fortunate to be with a record company, Decca, who were old music men, a lot of the time making radar systems, who were technically superb with a brilliant studio and staff in West Hampstead. Better than EMI in my opinion. After Days, which was a lucky accident, Sir Edward Lewis came to us and said, I don't know what you boys are doing, but it's great. Whenever you want the studio just make a booking and it was a dream to young musicians like us. The sleeves, just do what you want."
One area where the group capitalized on the success of Days of Future Passed was by continuing to employ creative song structures that didn't fit the typical mold of the time. Lodge explained, "We wanted no boundaries within our music. Up until then most songs came along in 2:59 seconds and started at one tempo and finished in the same tempo. Basically, a verse and then a chorus and then a bridge and the chorus. We wanted to break that mold and if it took six minutes to actually say what we wanted to in a song and four or five different tempos then we would do that. 'Legend Of A Mind: Timothy Leary' is a great example of that. Whatever it took to convey the song. 'Tuesday Afternoon,' you know, two different tempos. All is important to try and push the boundaries of what we thought of as songwriting. Each song went into the next song, and we'd be very careful about what key each song was in and what tempo and what mode each song sort of portrayed. It was very important to have things that linked but were different. You couldn't have two things the same because they never linked if they were the same."
Whereas the London Festival Orchestra had supplemented the group on Days of Future Passed, on In Search of the Lost Chord, the Moody Blues played all instruments themselves, a total of thirty-three different instruments. Lodge remembered, "Although we'd used an orchestra on the previous album we all felt that we should be self-reliant with our next work. We had the self-sufficient approach to our recording sessions. If we wanted to use a particular instrument on a track, one of us would figure out how to play it. We had a great deal of confidence in our own abilities."
Lodge further reflected on the influence of classical music on the group's compositions: "I grew up in Birmingham and my school used to have a quiet period where they put a classical record on in the afternoon and we would listen to it. Birmingham has one of the best classical orchestras in the world. I was eight or nine at the time and I never really thought about what I was listening to. Subconsciously, though, the harmonies of orchestral music were going into my head because when I started writing music that's what came to the forefront. I always understood what the different parts were and what different instruments and the orchestra were doing. I could hear it in my head." He said, "And then when we started together in '66, there were four of us that sang and I realized that the harmonies we could make were only really orchestral harmonies. And it developed from there. Of course we had Ray Thomas on flute, so that gave us the woodwinds and then for the harmonies we found this Mellotron that was a string player. So with harmonies and strings and flute, it became orchestral in a way, but with a driving force based in drums and electric guitar."
"Visions of Paradise" and "Om" feature Indian instrumentation, including sitar and tabla. Hayward was influenced to explore the sitar by George Harrison. He remembers, "There was, in the upper Tottenham Court Road, a shop that I'd been past, that I'd walked past that had those tablas and sitars. I'm not sure anybody was actually paying attention to it until George drew our attention to it. And then suddenly, we were allowed to explore it. I think George, in a way, gave us permission. I don't mean he phoned up and said, 'You have my permission.' But because he had just been there and it was like, 'Oh, that's so interesting that you have to find out.' I think most guitar players explore every kind of string instrument that they can get. As soon as I had some money, I was looking into lutes and then I bought myself a double bass, which I played on quite a few Moodies records, a big standup double bass. Probably still in the studio now by the national opera. So I went up there into that shop with Mike one day, and we sat down and I played the sitar, and he played the tambora, which I think is the name for that resonating instrument. And we thought, 'Oh, this is absolutely brilliant.' So we came away with a lot of stuff, and it was a joy to use it on an album."
In the album's liner notes, producer Tony Clarke poetically describes the setting of the album's recording sessions, and the large variety of instruments employed: