JOHN Lodge is packing his wardrobe. Not particularly rock'n'roll, you might think. But a vital part of every day life for the bassist in the group that has serious pretensions to take over the mantle of top-grossing album and touring band in existence.
But there again, talking to him on the phone from his home in Cobham, Lodge doesn't strike you as the archetypical out-of-it rock'n'roller.
It would be very wrong to dismiss the 63-year-old as anything but totally committed to the Moody Blues, th
e band he has been a part of since it began to make a serious impact, in 1966.
It was then that the lineup formed that was to go on to create the seminal Days of Future Passed; an album which introduced the world to both the mellotron and one of rock's most enduring singles – Nights in White Satin. Over thirty years later, how does Lodge keep the music fresh?
"I just think it is who we are," he says enigmatically. "All the songs that we perform on stage are our own songs. When we did Days of Future Passed to begin with, there was an energy there, and a reaction with the audience. Providing you still feel the energy and you still get the reaction I think the material keeps fresh. Every night you want to perform to the best you ever performed that song. We want it to be exactly right."
Getting it exactly right is particularly important to the Moody Blues' fans, according to Lodge. There's no room for any free-flowing improvisation in their recreations of the lush orchestrations and scoring of the original records on stage. Moody Blues people are, he says with a laugh, very particular.
"We do try and recreate the sound that is on the records, although sometimes you have to do it slightly differently because it is a stage presence," admits Lodge. "We work really hard on trying to get that right. The mellotron was a very integral part to our sound, but with modern technology today we have sampled everything about the mellotron so we perform with the sound of the mellotron on stage.
"Songs mean so much to so many people," he continues. "The reason someone comes to a Moody Blues concert is because they are either reliving something or reliving an emotion or a memory or a place. As an artist hopefully you unlock that door."
Which might explain why the Moody's fans are willing to travel the world to see them play. Two years ago, Lodge was astonished on arriving in New Zealand for the band's first tour to the country to discover that the airport was already full of their fans who had travelled from all over the world.
What it doesn't explain is the band's success in the first place. The clue to that question lies in Lodge's easy, Brummy lilt. For all the band's successes in the States, he hasn't picked up any hint of the mid-Atlantic drawl that bedevils so many British bands who make it in America. The Moody Blues are still a quintessentially British band and Lodge is still a Birmingham City fan. As he boasts: "How more British can you be than to have a Championship team as your team?"
"It is the Britishness about the Moody Blues that makes it work," he says. "When we started we were singing rock'n'roll, rhythm and blues. You might sing about the delta in America, about Memphis and all these places, but I had never actually been to America. None of us had, so how can you actually know what the influences are, you can only be a facsimile of it.
"When we started to write our own blues – blues in inverted commas meaning the story of our lives here in Britain, who we are and how we relate to what is going on in Britain – that is when our truthfulness as writers and musicians came to the fore. We suddenly realised that it didn't matter which country you came from, all around the world people have the same hopes and dreams.
"As we were travelling round the world we realised that it didn't matter if you were singing about your own parochial living, everybody else had their own parochial living - it is just a scenery change."
And with so many memories, hopes and aspirations riding on his shoulders, Lodge's sartorial decisions seem to be just that little bit more serious.
• The Moody Blues, Edinburgh Playhouse, Greenside Place, Monday, 8pm, £32.50, 0870 606 3424The full article contains 770 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
