With Triumph Comes Pain

Please scroll down and read the previous three posts in reverse order to start from the beginning. And remember – if you ever doubt that what I’m telling you is the truth, keep reading and listen to the music. Listen with your heart and your head as the puzzle pieces fall into place.

The Moody Blues’ first seven albums were produced in quick succession, with all members feeling that they were on the cusp of something big. For Justin the steady flow of love convinced him that they were on the right path, that glory would come to them as well as commercial success. “I thought I’d end up as the hero – thought that glory would be mine, but soon I was to find it wasn’t to be. Cause in this part I’ve got to play, it doesn’t quite turn out that way,” he sings in Meanwhile some years later.

It didn’t turn out that way because in the mid-seventies something happened. The psychic connection between himself and the young woman began to fade on her side, and then was gone. The sudden vacuum was devastating to him. His dreams – his expectations – of being reunited collapsed. Then the Moodies parted ways and he was left without an avenue to reach her at all.

John Lodge empathized and together they created Blue Jays to further the quest. Justin’s pain is evident in so many songs, but most notably in Nights, Winters, Years when he sings “Tell me – how can love be wrong, and feel so right?“

The haunting song I Dreamed Last Night expresses Justin’s realization that the woman he loved couldn’t bridge the gap between them. Despite the connection of souls, real life held her in its grip. Or maybe she didn’t understand. Maybe she was too frightened by the magnitude of the feelings. “And you told me we had the power. And you told me this was the hour. But you don’t know how. If I could show you now.”

“Like a bird on a far distant mountain. Like a ship on an uncharted sea. You are lost in the arms that have found you.” It was true. She was in the arms of another man. She was moving on without him.

If you doubt me at all, listen to Who Are You Now? In a heart-wrenching plea Justin sings “Who are you now, first love of mine? If you could see, you’d reach out for me.”

In that same song he sings “Goodbye to the fields and byways. I remember saying I don’t want to leave – cause you were all there was to know about me.” He’s speaking of their time together in the afterlife, which he remembered, and his departure for this life seven years before she was due to be born.

It is a sad fact that this beautiful, heartfelt song was a turning point for her that would add another seventeen years to their separation. It is these words that did it: “Somewhere on this crazy island a familiar stranger sleeps so far away.” I’ll explain this a little further along.

Justin decided to record a solo album and Songwriter was the result. It lays bare the range of emotions he was battling at the time. Songs like Tightrope and Doin’ Time express his frustrations. Others attempt to change his focus, to shake free of the whole quest. But he lapses back into pain and self admonishment in One Lonely Room. And the little known Heart of Steel vents some of his anger.

At this time he wrote a tribute to his wife Marie (of the same name), expressing his love of and support for her. The earthiness of it is a stark contrast to his other ballads.

The making of Octave in 1978 was difficult for all the band members (for various reasons) with a kind of desperation permeating the music. John Lodge wrote “Steppin’ in a Slide Zone” which alludes somewhat to the manner of Justin’s death in his former life, and Survival, almost as an arm supporting his friend. Mike Pinder wrote “One Step Into the Light” in the same effort, and I expect “I’m Your Man” was Ray Thomas’ gesture as well.

For his part Justin appealed directly to his lost love in Driftwood, urging her to come forward and alluding to her rebirth with these words: “Time waits for no one, no, not even you. You thought you’d seen it all before, you really thought you knew.” He dared to address the night of their death, fearful as he did that the horror of it might cause a further retraction in her mind, but hopeful that by addressing it, she might overcome any doubts that what lay between them could possibly be real. “I don’t remember what we said in the confusion that night. I only know what’s on my mind – what’s in the future, we will decide.”

The name “Mary” is whispered in that song. The significance of that I’ll reveal later.

In Had to Fall in Love Justin speaks of the place he’s in – unable to move forward, unable to let go, unable to escape the responsibility he’d been given. The Day We Meet Again is self-explanatory, but to the person on the other end, listening with a heart overwhelmed, the plea “Hold on. Don’t let go!” has a meaning that drives straight to the center of a long buried memory.