Tuesday Afternoon with The Moody Blues' Justin Hayward

The famed Isle of Wight Festival of 1970, held, not surprisingly, on the UK’s Isle of Wight, was by far the largest and most popular of the three Isle festivals, reportedly surpassing the attendance of Woodstock and including such performers as The Who, The Doors,  Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Jethro Tull, Chicago, Donovan, Joni Mitchell and an arty little English band from the city of Birmingham known as The Moody Blues.

Justin Hayward, the band’s lead singer, guitarist and composer, remembers the gig—at least parts of the gig—quite well, and was happy to speak with me about it in a phone interview last Tuesday to promote last

“It was a kind of dark festival – a lot of things went wrong there,” Hayward remembers. “Remember, it turned into a free festival at one point--the fences came down and everyone came in. The people who were there and quietly enjoying it were overrun.”

The Moody Blues’ 11-song set from the show included virtually all of their hits up to that time, including “Question,” “Ride My See Saw,” ”Tuesday Afternoon,” and the seminal “Nights in White Satin.” Up until only last year, Hayward had only seen a few choice parts of the filmed concert.

“I only saw it for the first time next year,” he laughed. “I didn’t know that they filmed the whole concert and certainly didn’t know that band’s entire set had been filmed.”

Hayward’s involvement with the Eagle Vision release included his mixing the sound for the DVD, which he found to be “quite fine.”

“I was surprised by the quality of our performance, though I can’t say that I remember it that well,” he said. “But it sounded quite fine.”

“There are very few genuine pieces of us from that era--bear in mind that we had only released four albums by that point--and our performance at the Isle of Wight could certainly be considered to be a snapshot of the era.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on June 23, 2009 | Comments (2)