Did the Moody Blues Save Alec Baldwin from a Life of Crime?

on me. And Hayward is still creating great music, just a more modest kind, trying, as he says, to age gracefully. I like quiet. I've kind of had enough of loud. I do a solo show that's just acoustic, which I really love, and I can hear every nuance. So I'm trying to do it with a bit more dignity, and that means quieter, I think. So here, But back when you were beginning loud, you know, I was very lucky.

I mean, I come from a sort of middle class background, and I had parents that were very understanding and encouraged me all the way. And as long as I got They were both teachers, so they got me through the exams, so I had the qualifications that I needed from I was lucky enough to go to a grammar school and um then um, they said, well you can do what you want as long as you get your five O levels. So I did that, and then I went to work

for in an office for a while. For a couple of months, while I was answering ads in the Melody Maker, which was a newspaper that all musicians took that had two or three pages of of situations, kind of vacant, and I was firing off answers to ads all over the place, and I had a reply from one and it was it was said named singer once guitar player. And I pitched up at this place in East London and a guy called Marty Wilde opened the door, who

was one of my heroes. It was a rock and roll singer from the late fifties early sixties, so lower he was in a band, so he he had He was a singer that like like an Elvis, like an English Elvis, you know, because we act, yes a solo person, we had lots of English elvis is because we didn't have Elvis, you know. So we had with Cliff in the Shadows, who are always my favorite, and we have Marty and people like Vince Eager and Billy Fury. They hold names like that, and Tommy Steele, of course, and

I thought wow. And he was six ft five Marty and I'm six ft two, and it was so wow, it's Marty wild. I had no idea, but I got the job at seventeen playing for Marty and it put me in London in ninety four, and um, that was of course, I was to find out that was exactly the place where you needed to be in Swindon, not in Swindon. No, I never looked back, you know. I was in London when that big whole swinging sixties, when the Beatles arrived and suddenly it was all unfolding before me.

You were there, I was there, yes, in it. So when you perform, how long are you with Marty and you're doing you're just playing guitar from Marty. Yes, I was playing guitar from Marty and watching him and learning from him and trying to edge myself in to do a song in his sets, which he very gracioshly help me do wrote, And it's not something I wrote. I think it was a cover version. Are you doing any songwriting them? The most important thing Marty told me was

that he was a songwriter and he'd been. Um he was writing under a different name because he had a lotusy deal. But I he told me then that to survive in the business, you must have your own identity, in your own style that people recognize, and it must be unique to you. And that doesn't work, I get it, you know, go back and do something else. So um living obscurity, Yes, yes, yes, I was quite compared to do that. You were you? Really? I think I still am.

People know them some of the music, but I'm a bit obscure. So I started writing songs when I was with Marty. And you're known as much as a great songwriter as you are as a guitarist and vocalist and performer, and windows songwriting become well using Marty in a cruel way is Marty is still my hero, and I still know him and I love him very much actually for what he gave to me. But from that moment on, I was always looking for a stepping stone and how

to push this forward. And so as soon as I got the job with the Moody Blues in sixty six. In the summer of sixty six, I was looking to do my songs with a that was the vehicle. I thought, here's another vehicle that I can use. Since two years

before that, Yeah, I made a couple of records. They were lousy, but I've done a lot of demos and things like that, and a lot of demos that we did then with the Moodies in a couple of my songs right early on, one could Fly Me High and another one called Cities and me and Mike the got the guy who brought me to this rhythm and blues

bland that was the Moody Blues. We're trying to get our songs done, but we would do to forty five minutes sets, one with rhythm and blues stuff and it just wasn't very good at it, and then another set with all our own material, and the rhythm blue set would go down quite well because people knew it, but the original material be like it was very memorable. No, well, I thought it was good, but it needs a following

with the band had formed and you were brought in. Yes, that's right that the band had been going and someone left, and then two guys left. I sent some songs again to Eric Byrden because I knew somebody in his office. And Eric must have thought these are quite interesting and gave them to Mike because he'd met Mike at a club and Mike I said, we're looking for somebody, and well, Eric must have said, well, here's all this stuff I received from this guy, with all these songs and some pictures.

And the next thing I know, I had a call out of the blue from Mike Pinder. How does that evolved? Once? You do? They have hit records by then? Yes, they had one Go Now, which was a song was a cover of Bessie Banks record. And who becomes the decider? What goes on? Days of future past? Well, in that time, we're just grabbing at straws. Anything. We might not continue. But you've just got to pay the rent, that's all. I just got to pay the petrol to get in

the car. You know, I don't know whether I'm going to be in this group for two months. I don't know where there's a stepping stone. I don't know whether it has any future. I'm not sure whether I like them, and I don't think they like me. I'm from a very different background, you know. I mean, all of these things to go through your mind. I mean I'm at nineteen, Yes,

all of these things in your mind. Of course. Yeah, you're just a kid, and you just wonder if there's a door out of here that's maybe opens to something better or something like that. But we made fly Me High, which was a song of mine, and in sixty six and BBC took that up. Then we had a debt

to death Care, the recording company. They bought us some equipment, so they had a call on us on our time, and they came to us with an idea of making a demonstration stereo record that would demonstrate their stereo systems. They had consumer division that made stereo systems and they

wanted to sell them. They had the biggest, the second largest classical catalog in the world apart from Deutsche Grammophone, which was why in the end they were bought by Deutsche Gramophone, so they now Deutscha Gramophone, Phillips Phonogram Universal now has all of the great master works, classical masker books and um So they wanted to demonstrate that rock and roll could be interesting in stereo as well as classical music because it was confined to classical music at

the time. And then UM, so they asked us to make considered to think as they're kind of house band, to make UM a rock version of Divorce Jack. So we kind of said that, what what does that? What does that mean? It's like, well, you get some time in the studio because they had these beautiful recording studios with great engineer. So it's like, okay, okay, anything you know to try and get in the studio. Anything. And there's a bit of a car crash. A lot. Five

different people have five different versions of what happened. This is what I believe happened. Peter Knight, the Orchestral and You came to see us at the one hundred Club and he saw us doing our second set where people were like that, and he said to us afterwards, maybe you're not going to get Divorce checked together. Maybe we

do it the other way around. We record your songs and I take the themes from those songs and do an orchestral romantic treatment of them, and then we've got this juxtaposition with classical and it's like, okay, that sounds a great idea, because then we we just we get in the studio and do our own songs, which we did. We went in the studio, we had we gave ourselves. It was very sort of diplomatic things. You get two songs,

you get two songs, then knock something up. And we'd already recorded Nights in White Satin six months before have been released. No, no, it had been released by the It was recorded for the BBC. That's a rather strange story because we recorded it for the BBC for a program called Easy Beat, and we were listening to it on the in our van going up the motorway, and me and some of the others were a bit stoned. So we're listening to it and and we were thinking.

We pulled over onto another row and we thought, there's something spooky about that, you know, it's kind of spooky that song, something weird about it. It's kind of empty. And so when we got to the gig, we phoned up the BBC and we got the engineer and we said we'd go vinced ourselves, we'd never do it any better. We'd convinced ourselves you must do this. Then it's a moment in time. It's a magic and I can never

do it again. And we got to the game and we found them up and we said, you know, we did that session this morning with that song Nights on it. And they said yeah, and they said could we We said could we have a copy, and they said, oh no, we we used the tape. We re record over the tape because this tape, you know, that's what it's for, so you can rerecord over it. I was like, oh my god, oh my god, We'll never be able to

do it again. What happened, Well, or six months later, we did record it for Decca and in a better studio. I hope in a better studio. I was never sure it was better until about five years ago and some old radio guy came up to me and said, you remember that tape that you did. He said, well, actually they did a transcription for overseas broadcast for they used to do military broadcast overseas. And he said, and I've got a copy of it. You got the original back?

Got the original back? And which was better? Were you right? The original was better? I think it probably was a thing simpler, Dick Cavitt told me on this show. The talk show host Dick Cavitt said that when he finished his seminal show you know five years on ABC, that his great run he had with that original show, he said them was over. They said that all the shows were on these boxes in a room with these tapes, and they said, do you want them? We're changing formats.

We're not going to be able to reuse these tapes some of the shows they had recorded over. Uh. And then then but when the show ended, if I remember him correctly, he said, we're just gonna throw this stuff in the garbage. We're just gonna burn it and we're going to just throw it in a in a disposal. We just have no use for we we don't know

what to do. There was no aftermarket. Then they said do you want this stuff, you can have it, and he boxed up every single one of them, had him all released on DVD years later, and he held onto everything and that's his legacy now on the internet and beyond. Now. So then, did this show really that's great? So the but when you get back to the Divorceaque and the decade in the studio and the and the classical thing, did you guys ever do the divorce Jaque New World

Symphony lift. Did you ever make a no? No? And we just did our own songs. We were selfish, you know. We saw it as a way full away in and it was released. So no one's got a tape of that land around. We can listen to the Divorce Act sessions. Absolutely not no no. When did you realize that? When do you sit there and say I think I'm gonna stick around with these guys in this works? Well after Nights came out, Yeah after Well After Night Nights was

a hit immediately in France. Then it was resisted over here because it's just not an AM record, so they really they could make a two minute ten second version of Tuesday Afternoon, which they released and actually it was a hit here in the in the US a song called Tuesday Afternoon from the same album, and only about six months later did they release Nights, and then it just stuck around for ages, so then we had to

Then Decker was run by wonderful, elderly gentleman. It was owned by a man called Sir Edward Lewis, who was charming but would say things like you'd be talking to him about something and he and he said to me one day he novited me to lunch, and I was trying to persuade him to keep the studios open. And then halfway through my spield, he said, like to drive fast? Do you? He came to us after days of future passed and said, listen, I don't know what you boys

are doing. People seem to like it. So here's the studio. All of the staff are yours, lousy royalty, fantastic studio. Best. Yes, And so that's where we stayed for the next seven years, and we made several great albums. It was the song called Question in that finally got to the top of the chart arts, and it happened all at once, and that's when I suddenly thought, maybe maybe this is it, you know, maybe I'm meant to be with this group for four years into it? Yeah, four years into it, Yes,

maybe that's it. Was everybody getting along. Question really is everybody wants the best for everybody, the best for the project, the best for the group, and the best for themselves. And that's sometimes difficult to reconcile with a group of men. There's always egos that are involved, and a dynamic where some people rise up and some people diminish, some people retreat right out. Of the door, who was calling the shots and the band, who was in charge? A manager?

You fired Epstein, right, he was your manager first, Yes, fired? Yea. It was now. He was in love with the Beatles and that with them, that was that was where he belonged. And he was a lovely, elegant, beautiful man. Nothing to do with us at all, you know. And we didn't really have a manager, and that was going back to you one of your points. We didn't have an A and R guy, so we didn't have anybody to please.

We didn't have to make hit records. We just had these elderly gentlemen saying, you do what you don't want, I'll get on with it. People seem to like it. People are buying stories. Stereo and FM was just starting, you know, in America. Your stuff is perfect for that. Who would have thought it no kind of thing. And we had no A and R guy standing over, no pressure to make singles to have success, just albums. And those albums weren't prog rock. They were just nice, romantic

songs that were from the heart. Most of the time they failed, but there were some things that really are kind of magic in there, and not everything was like that. So that brings us to like when the whole business is starting to change, change in that way, as far as you're concerned, it's starting. People are starting to realize there's big money, and I'm moving on our guy eventually. Um no, no, we never, no. No. The closest I got was to work with one of my heroes, which

was Tony Visconti in the eighties. And if I could have one decade of music only to listen to, it would be the eighties with artists, Tears for Fears to all of that wonderful stuff that was made in the eighties. And he was the producer. No, I don't think he did them. He did, um David Bowie and he was an American living in London, very attractive, and I met him on a project that I was asked to do for the BBC, and I thought, this is the guy and that I could actually have what I want, but

I personally wanted. This doesn't sound as if I'm aiming very high and I'm not discounting everything that went before it, which is which is wonderful, which is wonderful. But then we made Wildest Dreams together, which for me was the perfect pop record, and that's what I really wanted. Why Why was it the perfect one compared that the mix was right and there was some lovely programming in it. Tony had such a wonderful ear and made such beautiful

sounds and still one of my greatest friends. And that everything came together right then. So when you guys, would you would all record together? Describe what recording the early albums like Days of Future. It was all five of you in the room together, yes, but it was Days of Future pass with songs that we'd rehearsed beforehand, and we were ready, and I think we did. We did our songs in three days. We already had nights. The other thing, I chose the afternoon because it was the story.

We decided to do the story of the day in the life of one guy, and I'll have the afternoon. Already got nights, you know, so and Tuesday afternoon Nice and Mike had this lovely song that he asked me to single, Dawn is a Feeling. So that was the top and tail in the middle of it, and we we did our stuff in maybe three days, and it introduced us to Tony Clark, are record producer and a great engineer called Derek varneldso was a real kind of nerdy kind of bar. The producer was Tony Clark. And

what did he do for you? Was he have any value to you? Yes? He was one of those record producers that you must know how this goes as a as a as the actor that you are. But Tony wouldn't talk about the music about you should do that cord and you should play that instead of do you know?

He would say, well, I see the sky darkening and then in the corner there's a pin of light and and and the image raine through onto this side of your face and you you turn and yes, And I'd go downstairs and they say, was he stoned out of his mind? No? I was. I go downstairs and they said what's he want needs to do? Then? Just and I said, well, I'll play E, A and G. Remember, but I loved that whole thing, and I would have that in my mind. Pretty useless is when it goes

to the chords. But he was that kind of producer And was three days you burned off that album? You did? Yeah, are part of that album? And then the orchestral part. The orchestra never plays with us on our songs on days of future past. The sounds that you hear on nights and Tuesday afternoon and dawn is a feeling and another morning. The orchestral that things that sound like orchestral are that instrument called the meloitron. They have that. Orchestra

it has that orchestral sound. And so the orchestra did the links between us. The orchestra was recorded on a Saturday. On the Saturday, our stuff was done like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as the orchestra recorded in a three hour session on the side today, I was the only one that was there from the group because I had nothing else to do, and they let me sit in the studio. You couldn't go in the control room in those days. You weren't invited. You have to be invited into the

control room, which really happened. They would play it back to you on the studio floor and I watched them. The orchestra, this bunch of gypsy is like Eastern European string players. They were fabulous, fabulous, and they rehearsed it once through live. They took a tea break for half an hour, then they recorded it live in one take. Bang that's it with Peter Knights sitting at the piano, conducting with one hand and just strings. No, the whole orchestra.

The whole orchestras. The gyps is were the important part because they were the string section that was going to create this mood. The rest of it was filling in the background and stuff like that. It's it's it's a trip tike, it's the it's the moody blues. It's an orchestra and the melotrin at its own it's the sixth member of the orchestra, of the band. Sort of how does that? Where do you find that? Tell people what it is? Who designed it, who developed it, who played it? Okay,

Mike Pinda played it. He worked for that company for a while, Melotronics. It was designed as a sound effects instrument to be used where in radio shows and things like that. Had Spike Jones kind of sounds on it, so like playing and trains rushing through tunnels and cockerells and spaceships, yes, whish and things like that. Had four manuals, but a small part of it was orchestral sounds. Was the an eight minute tape loop of things like strings, brass, flutes,

and organ and a corral kind of thing. It was just one small section, and Mike remembered this instrument because we couldn't get our songs to work. Mine and his didn't really work with piano and or vox continental so we said, I remember this instrument called the melotron had these orchestral sounds. So he knew there was one up in Birmingham at a social club. So actually he and I and the road he went up there and we it was stuck up in the corner. They'd forgotten about it.

We paid them twenty five pounds for it and we brought it back to London and Mike got rid of all of the Spike Jones type sounds and replace them with the orchestral sounds. So there was like four small manuals on it, keyboards like that, a couple of octaves each, so you had eight seconds to hold this note down and then the tape would stop and it would spring back. Was on the spring loaded, so you had to roll your hands over this instrument to cover it all the time. Dirt.

The other guys weren't really interested when I played them nights until Mike went on the melotrons and nights of my sentiment dirt. Oh that's interesting. Moody lose a singer and songwriter Justin Hayward. In his song Tuesday Afternoon, you can hear him playing around with the motifs that eventually would come to characterize the band the trees. I've got to find out those gentle voices explain it all with

the side that's the melotron. You can hear Hayward's signature genre mixing too, from folky ballad to a hockey talk happy trails bassline. All this influenced another musical hero of mine, John Anderson, the front man for Yes, but that band almost never got off the ground because of the pragmatic parents of legendary drummer Bill Bruford. He left the bond after months. His parents said he had to be a lawyer.

Wait a minute, were just started. So Bill went to Leeds University and two months later we played there and he stood in the audience thinking this is really a great band. What am I doing here at university? And within two weeks he was back in the band. My interview with Yes frontman John Anderson is in our archives at Here's the Thing dot org coming up. Justin Hayward inspires me to sing a few bars of his anti war song You and Me. I'm Alec Baldwin and you

were listening to Here's the Thing. My guest, Justin Hayward sings and plays guitar on this track. I'm just a singer, but the title is a joke. You can hear the bomb bast in his guitar solo, unusually showy for the Moody Blues, matched by lyrics about the power of musicians to change the world anyway exactly when we left Justin Hayward, it was ninety seven and The Moody Blues had just released their classic album Days of Future Past. The album as a hit. No, it's not even even modestly kind

of it. It was no, not really when you were pleased with Were you pleased with it? I wouldn't say pleased I was. I listened to it back and I thought, this is so beautiful. Nobody's going to buy this. There's nothing commercial on it at all. It's something for sort of classical boards and people who like romantic things. There's not nothing there. It's not like I'm baby told me yesterday, I've got I can't get nothing like that in front of a bunch of girls. Yeah, nothing, so very nice

and very very beautiful. What was it? What happens that it keeps going forward? But did start this thing where people started becoming interested in stereo, and you had the birth of FM in America with London Records and suddenly FM radio instead of having records. I'm ashamed to say actually that I was always a bit disappointed in George who was working down the road with at Abbey Road with Beatles. Would his idea of stereo was the drums on the left and the vocals on the right, you know,

George Martin. Yes, And whereas our stuff was a beautiful stereo picture, beautifully recorded, and of course for FM radio it's like, wow, this is what we need. This is kind of more cinematic thing. Yes, it's itch and deep and wide and everything is in an interesting place. And it was just lucky that it that had happened like that. So it started to take off slowly. Decca recognized this stereo thing is rock and roll is gonna work. So then they it's like back in the studio, boys, and

we need another album. And so within three months we were back in the studio. We know, we know, as time goes on, and when do you or any members of the band started to get itchy, they want to maybe do something else, They want to go on their own,

as is inevitably. And then were there were any judgment of the people in the band because the band begin to outlive its usefulness to you or to other members, or do they stay solid for a long time, all of those things that you've just said, because it's about people. It's not so much about the music and the band. It's about people and people's lives change. You know, I didn't have anything at the beginning. I just heard a girlfriend done a car, nothing to lose. You know, it's

people with money that worry about money. It's millionaires that worry about money, isn't it. It's not guys with nothing. A couple of famous bands, very famous bands. People would say to me who were in the bands, there were there were two things they thought was the beginning of the dissolution of the band. One was they made a lot of money, and some of these guys would rather stay home and play music for themselves or with their friends. It wasn't they were like, hey man, I've had enough music.

I've had enough of going to work, and the next thing you know, they're in their castle outside of town, on their estate, and they were in their own studio going boom boom. They're just smoking a joint and relaxing and having a glass of wine. And also the drugs were a big part of the dissolution of some bands because people just made them less disciplined. Did you see that around you? Absolutely, You've described it perfectly, and not

particularly me myself. May I have a kind of I feel a kind of jew people say to me now I still It was like you still going, yeah, well, you enjoy it, don't you. I said, no, I don't enjoy it. As an overused word, you know, why should I enjoy everything all the time? And I'm enjoying this now, my god, it's ethic Baldwin, didn't they You know? Yeah, But I don't have to enjoy it. I do feel a kind of duty to do it because I can, and it's something it's all kind of all I've got, really,

so I have to do that. And I always felt that there was a time, yes seventy four, when I could see things slipped. One of the guys just didn't want to do it anymore, and we just made no plans. Nothing was said that couldn't be unsaid. Fortunately it was said a few years later, within four years it was said that couldn't be unsaid. But we just drifted apart for a while. And you were married at the time, by seventy four in did you when? When did you have?

You have one child? And you had your child when seventy two, so by seven for your your husband and a father got responsibility, and did I started to affect the work as well. You're sitting there going I don't necessarily want to go on the road. No, not really, No, No, I don't think that did um Now I was. I was also selfish. I just wanted if you are this is all very curious, and I don't want to stop you in mid flow, but I I'm going to say this,

it's a curious. I've been I'm contemplating my own ghost for most of my life, and because there's always that, I always have to look. I'm being reminded here we are now talking about the Justin that was from seventeen years old to thirty years old. So this ghost is always with me and I use him all the time. I see pictures of him all the time. I discussed him all the time. I use his experience. I draw on his experiences and the love and the emotions that he had all of the time. But it is a

curious thing. I don't mean to stop you in your tracks, but it is a true thing. And um it's the same for most people of my age in the in this business, because the most valuable commodity in this business, as you know, is youth. And um. So although it's always interesting to talk and people of course want to know about these old things, it's still that I have to contemplate this ghost of justin every day. Does it trouble you? Does it eri? Does it irritate you? I don't.

You don't have to say if you don't want to. But people have much more of an identification with music and songs and sound, and they with movies. If they lay there and they die, you say to them, what's the thing you remember most, and they'll hit They're going, there's a leaveless tree and age. That's what they remember. Songs, music, songs. You can never forget that, that there's that ghost that you are, But that guy made music that lives forever.

People are cooling. Yeah, so, and really, really what you're saying, and you've you've just set me right back here, because who cares about your bloody ghosts? Mate? You know, it's the music. And I absolutely agree with you, because I can listen to body or the evil Is or a knacking coal and it doesn't matter. I'm not thinking about them, you know, as people. I'm just thinking about actually me and what it means to me in my heart and how it makes me feel. And and that's it. Yes,

So disregard that that stuff. I would send you a bill for this therapy session. Now when you guys, you guys eventually stopped performing, eventually stopped for about four years. Yeah, who caused who? And says let's try. Well it was. It was a wonderful time for me because I became a father and I discovered I actually started having a life outside of the group. I hadn't had a life

outside of the group. I've just been this guy. I had just been that ghost and that people wanted to photograph, you know, and a kind of pretty boy from the sixties or whatever, and you made nice music and I was that character. But suddenly I had a life and I became me. It's like, whoa what would be me?

And I was and um and that was great. And I was lucky enough to have a big hit solo hit with a song called Forever Autumn, which was from the H. G. Wells story a musical version of the hdu L story at the War of the World, and that kind of put me on top of the pops every night, and suddenly people were saying, oh, you're you're just and I would you know, you got that blonde air that cos you know, like and that was that

was real fun. What happened when we came back together was that a guy called Jerry Winetrobe made the phone call. We met Jerry Wintrobe in the early seventies when music started becoming into stadiums, and he walked into our dressing room once in about ninety two and said, you don't need these promoters. Why didn't you promote yourselves? Look at all those people were You're getting five thousand bucks, there's you know, there's eight thousand people here. What are you doing?

And so we were like, oh, yeah, well all right, and he said, if we lose money on one gig, we lose it, but we can make it on these other things, that we had a new way of touring, And of course he was desperately disappointed when we um Um decided to drift apart, so he was always calling, did you stay in touch with the band when the band drifted apart? Not really? You didn't you you you'd you'd exhausted that not not really. It's just you don't

have to be friends. There's just you're in a group together, you've had success together. You often can't choose that we your friends, but they probably were. I'm probably the group member from hell because I'm the guy always just I don't want to do it my way. I'm not going to tell you how what it is, but I'm going to do it. Yeah that's all right, but do this better if you do it this way. See, I look at other bands where they're in each other's lives so much.

They spent so much time together than when they drift apart. They've kind of had enough. Yeah you were best friends with any of them? Not really, But I wasn't certainly wasn't enemies. There's no we were no we we we were we We had this common bond that's unbreakable. We had the same cathartic experience every night, and that's a very powerful thing to have to share between between people.

Let's talk about that for a second. When you would perform, I'm sure when you perform live, it's very similar to the theatrical experience versus the film and television experience, where you're doing take off to take off to take in films and you're trying to kind of buff those edges and make it just so. When you do it live, get one shot at it, and I want to make

it right in the middle of the note. And then if you get right in the middle of the note, it creates a kind of magic that sprinkles down and the audience brings something to it that's affecting and life enhancing, and that's absolutely wonderful. But when it's gone, what was your preparation? Do you have to warm ups and baby your voice and no smoking and no this and no alcohol and no, no, no you didn't No, I'm afraid not. No. I've always I'm such a lazy person. I've always considered

my voice should look after me. I don't have to look after my voice. So you come back after four years wine trap gets you to come to have you've been performing since then? Off and on. Yes, I did a couple of solo albums and um, then I had this War of the Worlds, which was suddenly but you know another I actually played a character. I played a journalist in this concept album, which I went on later

to do on stage actually quite recently. Until I got I just felt I was too old to have a gooirlfriend in it, so I said, maybe I'm not the right guy for this. But it was a lovely song called Forever Autumn, a big hit all around the world. I don't go anywhere in the world and play it. So oh, I love that, you know kind of thing. There was a solo album for you. It was a solo thing. And what is and I say the same thing to all these legacy bands that come back together octave.

I mean, I just love when guys pull this out of there. You know what seventy eight. You guys have been recording now for fifteen years or you've been together and your albums, this is like, this is just like your eighth album or something that exactly where you had stepping in a slide zone and there that was in seventy eight. Did you like that album? There? Was some lovely songs on it. It was a lovely song called drift Would. That's why okay, that's why you bring it up.

That's a beautiful song. I love that. Thank you, Thank you meant a lot to me. It's a difficult album because things the chemistry between us wasn't particularly good. I knew Mike didn't want to do it anymore. Tony Clark had a lot of personal problems. The producer he'd come to and blessing his marriage was at an end, and it was it was he only made a few appearances

and Driftwood Would he couldn't listen to it. He would come into the studio and I'd put that on just to do something at lower dub and the tears well up, poor Chap and he and he'd have to leave, you know. And also during the album there were things said they couldn't be on said and so one. So then we lost from the group Tony and Mike and then Wine Troube Who's particularly what you gotta go on? And it was like, okay, you know, really replaced Mike with who um.

We replaced Mike with a series of people, but a lovely player called Patrick Mraz and fantastical. It was. It was. It wasn't replaced. Nobody could replace Mike, but it was paid pick up musician for that. Yeah, it was a great musician. Yeah. They contributed a lot to the records after that. Patrick Morass who also played who did he play with? Did he replaced Wakeman? And yes, exactly, Yeah, that's right Morass, because we had we had a John

Anderson came in here. You try to keep up with music, You listen to all kinds of music as advanced to do. Curiously enough, I've probably gone back to my childhood where I just hear a song and I buy it. You know, I'm back to buying singles that turned me on. You know, I'm a bit hung up on a young boy called Trevor Hall at the moment who's kind of hippie player, and I'd love to be I'd love to be him.

He loves you. Not really, There's there's always a kid walking down the street Alec He's got a song that's gonna turn me on. That's the way I think about music. And I can still go back to any old piece of music that I love. I still return every couple of weeks to Danny Williams singing moon River. It's opposed to Andy Williams. Danny Williams was an English singer. Listen

to that version of moon River. I met him. He was with the same stable as Marty Wilde when I was a boy, and he was just I'm doing with you, as if you hear scribbling on the mic, I'm doing with you what I did with Joe Jackson. Joe Jackson did the show and at the end he just riffs on the music he's listening to. I'm sitting there and literally just had this urge this instant and like, holy sh it, I gotta write down every world that comes out of Joe Jackson's mouth as to what music is

he digging right now? You know? So, um yeah, we're not have much time left. We'll just take one tableau where I'm sixteen or seventeen years old, probably sixteen. I'm hanging out with a crowd of guys in my kind of working class neighborhood, and these really tough bastards I grew up with would all sit there and be like someone would put on a moody blues song and everybody be like shut up, like these violent, awful people we're gonna go beat the shift out of people and steal

their beer in a parking lot. Will would be like, shut up, and they had to listen to that song. That was the beautiful music that we kind of cleared our head with. Was your music. You were the palate cleanser from more the nastiness we had as our quote Titian diet there. So endless leaves were pretty nice too. You could constant plate those while you were being quiet. That was nice. Thank you for coming doing this with me, great pleasure. Thank you. Cool. That was the brilliant singer

and songwriter Justin Hayward. His music was both timeless and of his era. The leafless Tree and a your line you heard us sing is a reference to the napalm defoliated trees of Vietnam. It's been forty six years since he wrote those words. Next month, Heyward, along with the Moody Blues, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing