As the blog format places the latter posts at the top, it’s important to scroll down to the bottom to read the story from the beginning, starting with Why You’re Here.

Meanwhile other musicians outside of the group – it is a tight community after all – heard of Justin’s search and the pressure increased. He shunned their offers of help but couldn’t escape the humiliation as year after year passed and he had to admit failure.

It was taking its toll on his psyche and testing his strength. Night after night performing before adoring audiences, applauded by millions, impressive record sales, awards – yet so mired in failure where his heart resided.

It seemed so unfair – to saddle him with such a responsibility and then not to provide a way forward. He felt left to the whims of fate. Or were they whims? Perhaps the trials were part of the requirements. Perhaps it was all part of the plan.

“Is it just a game that we’re playing now? Were we born to win? Can we lose somehow?” he asks in Is It Just a Game.

The full force of this dichotomy blew out in 1981 when the Moodies recorded Long Distance Voyager. Think about that title. Justin speaks of his lost dream and humiliation in Meanwhile when he refers to the fact that he thought it would be easy, that he’d be a hero, and his jealousy. “Meanwhile and far away, as the night draws in, he’s holding her right now and I can feel it all begin.” Graeme Edge penned 22,000 Days, driving home the the fact that there was only so much time in anyone’s life and to “start the show and this time feel the flow and get it right!”

John must have determined that the failure lay in a choice of words, some lyric that turned her away. Justin carried this thought for years and it was, in fact, true. Hence Talking Out Of Turn. Nervous also reflected the level of anxiety at the time.

The Present in 1983 marked a major turning point – Justin whispered the name of his lost love three times and begged her to come home in Meet Me Halfway, perhaps only audible to the person it was directed to (as he’d hoped). In appealing to one, there is always the danger that you will appeal to millions and the message will be misconstrued and in turn, devalued. Having followed the story thus far, you will now appreciate that the title of the song holds two meanings. Justin is a master of the double entendre.

Two years later, with the admirable focus and perseverance that he’d developed over his life, he set off on his own to record Moving Mountains – a collection of beautiful songs dedicated to their mutual growth. In fact there isn’t a track on the original release (including The Best is Yet To Come, written by Clifford Ward) which isn’t. “Who Knows what the morning brings us,” he sings on the penultimate track, “the moment of truth, the power of love. I know where the future leads me. It’s leading me back to you, my love.”

When still she didn’t come forward the Moodies tried again. Though The Other Side of Life in 1986 has many tracks on it that deal with frustration, Your Wildest Dreams puts the truth out there. It is direct and to the point, as is I Know You’re Out There Somewhere which followed in ’88. Justin wrote them despite what it might do to his own personal security. But she didn’t make her way through the crowd as they’d portrayed in the video. She was, figuratively, left behind as Justin was swept away by his fame.

The album – Sur Le Mer (again, an evocative title to the one who knows) – is filled with longing. Want to Be With You. River of Endless Love. Miracle. Breaking Point was written to make her see past everyday life, to look deeper, to reach the breaking point where the past could crash through the protective wall of the present.

Many have interpreted Deep as being sexual. It may be that, but it is also a reference to the death that they now believed was too traumatic for her to recover to memory. At this point they were willing to try anything.

Justin turned to a sympathetic outsider – Mike Batt. Together they selected songs written by other artists that might say things too odd for the Moody Blues but that she would understand. Devotion – MacArthur Park, Scarborough Fair. The art that he could see that she created and the ability to see spirit in everything – Vincent. Death in The Whiter Shade of Pale and Bright Eyes. His double life in Tracks of My Tears. Heaven in God Only Knows and, as the finale, her central role in proving life after death in Stairway to Heaven. Justin’s voice married to the London Philharmonic carried a weight beyond the scope of the Moodies. Surely that would do it.

Nothing. No appearance, no psychic connection from her end. Only from his. Watching her at a distance.