Lodge and Hayward.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images, Steve Thorne/Redferns
The band name should’ve made this obvious, but still, dang. Two months after John Lodge died “suddenly and unexpectedly” at the age of 82, the last remaining member of the Moody Blues, Justin Hayward, told Rolling Stone that his relationship with his bandmates was far more C-suite than what you were hoping for in your wildest dreams. When asked if he talked to Lodge in the final years of his life, Hayward admitted that they weren’t in contact following what became the Moody Blues’ final concert in 2018. And perhaps more dispiriting, despite their decades of shared history, they weren’t even chums. “I don’t think so, no,” he explained. “But then, I didn’t speak to Graeme Edge either much. I maybe had one call with him, or something like that. What we had in common was the group. That was what we were good at. That was our relationship. It wasn’t a group of friends.” (Edge died in 2021 at the age of 80 after a battle with metastatic cancer.)
Hayward insists that there was “no plan or strategy about falling out” — both he and Lodge frequently toured as soloists in the aftermath of the pandemic, emerging from that era as a “little bit different” — it’s just that there was never a basis of friendship to begin with. “I think with certain groups, Bono and Edge, it probably is true,” Hayward noted of bands who consist of actual BFFs. “There was a time when it was wonderful, and then there was a time when it wasn’t so. No, I don’t miss anything.” We’ll need a somber flute solo and some musings about the passage of time to see us out.
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