There are three more songs to go in this exceptionally
troubled year of 1972, and the first of these was, at the time, already five
years old. By 1972 the Moody Blues were one of the biggest bands in the world,
not least in the States where they were eagerly embraced as the nearest thing
to the Beatles still extant (or at least until Dark Side Of The Moon was released).
But that in itself doesn’t explain the second and greater
coming of “Nights In White Satin,” a song which at the time of its initial
release as a single stopped at #103 on Billboard,
taken from an album which, again at the time, barely scraped into the top
thirty. Why the renewed call for its disturbed sirens? Its reappearance in the
British charts – as a single it originally peaked at #19 in 1968 – was easily
explicable as another symptom of a music scene which, though bolstered by glam
rock, was still in a pretty collapsible state, so much so that most of the
non-glam hits of 1972 were reissued oldies, or well-behaved cover versions.
The answer appears to be that a radio DJ in Washington, DC,
used the song as the playout music for his show; listeners wanted to know what it
was and the interest gradually spread to other stations. Hence its resurgence.
But what did “Nights In White Satin” have to say to the disturbing sirens of an
autumn 1972 audience?
Justin Hayward says he wrote the song aged nineteen,
inspired by his girlfriend at the time who gave him a present of satin
bedsheets. In truth “Nights” is the type of song expressing the type of
sentiment only a teenager would express. Hayward sings it in his characteristic
tones, akin to a vaguely disappointed choirboy. It could have been in the
repertoire of the Wilde Three, the group with Marty and Joyce Wilde of which
Hayward was the third member; even the old Moody Blues, with Denny Laine, could
have performed it without the art trimmings.
But in its original context “Nights” represented part of the
big coda to Days Of Future Passed, an
album allegedly recorded to test the efficacy of Decca’s new “Deramic Sound
System” stereo technology; claims that Decca/Deram originally approached the
band to record a “rock” version of Dvořák’s Symphony
No 9 have little evidential basis of fact. The album mimics the passing of
a day and in its slow, electronically-washed progressions and underlying aura
of desperate uncertainty it is the direct forerunner of New Order’s first
album, Movement, fourteen autumns
later. Billed as a collaboration between the group and Peter Knight’s
arrangements for the London Festival Orchestra, the record actually alternates
between the two until the finale, with Mike Pinder’s Mellotron providing the “strings”
otherwise.
The version most commonly revived on radio and compilations
is the orchestra-free mix, with just Pinder’s Mellotron and Ray Thomas’ flute providing
extra instrumental cover. But to appreciate the song fully, one has to
experience it in its original, intended setting. Beginning with a brief
orchestral flourish from Knight, the song patiently fades in and proceeds as
you would expect until the final verse, when the orchestra dramatically reappears,
and the effect is as though colour and drama have been admitted into the grey
West Hampstead Decca recording studios. The 1968-anticipating orchestral
maximalism blends thrillingly with Hayward’s pop nous.
The song builds to a satisfactory climax, then ends. But on
the album, the most extraordinary thing happens – there is a prolonged, brash
and bright exclamation of orchestral strings and brass which sounds uncannily
familiar. Pinder solemnly reads a poem, of sorts, taking great care to mask his
Erdington diphthongs, before softly striking a gong of closure eight autumns
before “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But I think of this “Late Lament” and wonder about
eleven-year-old Anne Dudley, or eighteen-year-old Trevor Horn, or the
nine-year-old Martin Fry, and how permanently some inspirations cling to
determined minds. I will not comment on the attendant irony of what kept the single at number two.
Date Record Made
Number Two: 4 November 1972
Number Of Weeks At
Number Two: 2
Record At Number One: “I
Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash
UK Chart Position: 9 (in 1972)
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