In January 1972 the Moody Blues were one of the biggest bands on earth and could have booked any studio in the world. They started their new album in Mike Pinder’s garage. Hayward has called it a ludicrous situation and given the reason without flinching: they were so frightened of failing that they kept trying to make themselves smaller. Nine months later the record was finished, it went to number one in America for five weeks, and the five of them did not make another together for six years. Seventh Sojourn closes the golden run, and it knows it.

The short version

Seventh Sojourn came out on 23 October 1972 on Threshold. It is the band’s eighth album overall and the seventh by this line-up, which is what the title is counting. Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas and Graeme Edge all write on it, as they had on the two before. Tony Clarke produced, Derek Varnals engineered everything except Isn’t Life Strange, which Clarke recorded himself, and Phil Travers painted the cover. Sessions began at Beckthorns, Pinder’s home studio, in January and moved to Decca’s Studio 4 on Tollington Park in north London, running from February to September. Eight tracks, thirty-nine minutes. It reached five in Britain and topped the American chart for five weeks from 9 December 1972 — their first number one there.

Prisoners of their own success

Every account of these sessions agrees, and none of them is happy. Hayward says the album took a long time and that he found making it painful; there were no arguments, just an unhappy stretch in which nobody was enjoying the work, and it became obvious to him that the five of them would not make another. Edge’s phrase is the one that sticks: they were exhausted and had become prisoners of their own success. Thomas simply says they needed a break from each other. A great deal of early material was scrapped — Isn’t Life Strange is one of the few songs from the first attempts that survived to the finish. There is a loose organising idea underneath, which Lodge has explained as the Canterbury Tales done musically: the band telling stories, hence a sojourn. Whether you hear that is another matter. What is unmistakable is the tone. This is the least cosmic and most earthbound record of the seven, and its questions have a harder edge than the ones on A Question of Balance.

The sound

The Chamberlin is the story. Pinder brought in the American cousin of the Mellotron and used it alongside the original, and Hayward has been explicit about why: the Chamberlin was louder, cleaner and better sounding, with brass and strings and cello that did not need overdubbing and echo to be usable. The result divides people to this day — some hear the finest keyboard textures the band ever put on tape, others hear the loss of the Mellotron’s rough edge, and both are describing the same thing. Otherwise: eight songs, no spoken poem, no reprise, no linking narration, the first Moody Blues album since 1967 with none of that furniture. It is also, in places, the hardest-rocking record they made, and the production is the best of the run. Where it falls short is togetherness. This is an album written by five individuals rather than a group, which is precisely what they had become.

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The songs

Lost in a Lost World opens with Pinder at his most sombre, a bass-driven state-of-the-world piece that sounds like nothing they had recorded before, and it is either a superb opener or a bleak way to start an album depending on your temperament. New Horizons is Hayward’s most romantic song since Nights in White Satin and has a coda that earns every second. For My Lady is Ray Thomas’s only contribution and his finest hour, a sea-chantey that carries its chivalry without embarrassment. Isn’t Life Strange is Lodge’s six minutes of four-part harmony; he wrote the music in one night on the strength of a single line, then the words the next morning, and the story of its release is a period piece in itself — vocals cut on a Friday because they were flying to America, tapes handed to London Records in New York on the Saturday, single out the following Friday. You and Me is Edge and Hayward together and the most energetic thing here. The Land of Make-Believe is lovely. When You’re a Free Man is Pinder’s and is addressed to Timothy Leary, who had befriended the band after Legend of a Mind. And I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band) closes it: Lodge’s flat refusal of the guru role their audience kept trying to hand them, and still an FM staple.

Reception and legacy

It arrived in American shops the day before Nixon’s landslide re-election and spent the turn of the year at number one. Both singles charted — Isn’t Life Strange reached 13 in Britain and 29 in America, I’m Just a Singer 36 and 12 — and both were then comprehensively outsold by a five-year-old song, because Nights in White Satin had just been reissued and went to nine and two, the highest American placing any Moody Blues single ever managed. Then it stopped. A 1973 follow-up was abandoned almost as soon as it was begun; the surviving fragment, Island, turns up as a bonus track. The band toured Asia in 1974, Pinder’s last, and went their separate ways until Octave. Among the seven, this one is argued about more than any except Every Good Boy: the most consistent and best produced of the run to some, the moment the depth drained out of the sound to others.

The verdict

Come here last, and come here for the songs rather than the spectacle. There are no poems, no orchestra, no suite and no concept to hold on to — just eight pieces by five people who had run out of road together and made something quietly excellent on the way out. New Horizons and For My Lady are as good as anything in the catalogue; I’m Just a Singer is the best three minutes of rock and roll they ever cut. Play it once through in order and then read Hayward’s comment about the garage again. Bands rarely tell you they are ending. This one did, in the sound of the record.

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