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Do you know? Did you ever?

Time to sharpen your pencils and test your memory banks about classic rock music!

Some of you who struggle to recall the words to even your most favorite songs may be relieved to hear this is NOT a lyrics quiz. It’s a rock trivia quiz, where I ask you 10 multiple-choice questions about bands, solo artists, singles, albums and other information from the classic rock of a half-century ago. Even if you weren’t around back then, or weren’t all that into the details of the music you listened to, the music has lived on, and I find it entertaining to see what we know about those days.

Study the choices for each question, mark your best guess on a piece of paper, then scroll down to find out the right answer and learn more about the subject under consideration.

Good luck!

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1 Which of these four rock groups does NOT have a Canadian member?

The Band

Buffalo Springfield

The Mamas and the Papas

The Doobie Brothers

2 Which of these four Beatles hits was not written by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, or Starr?

Who was the first of these female artists to have a #1 single in the U.S.?

“I Feel Fine”

“Twist and Shout”

“Love Me Do”

“Yellow Submarine”

3 These four artists all had big hit singles in the 1970s. Three of them also scored a second Top 40 hit, but one artist failed to make a return appearance and therefore became a “One-Hit Wonder.” Which one?

Norman Greenbaum

Redbone

Five Man Electrical Band

Maria Muldaur

4 Which of these is Meat Loaf’s real name?

Vincent Furnier

Marvin Aday

Reginald Dwight

Melvin Houser

5 Which of these early Elton John singles failed to reach the Top 40 upon initial release?

“Daniel”

“Tiny Dancer”

“Honky Cat”

“Levon”

6 Which hit single was written by the composer when he was only 12 years old?

“My Generation” by Pete Townshend of The Who

“Lucky Man” by Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

“Proud Mary” by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival

“You Really Got Me” by Ray Davies of The Kinks

7 Of these four hugely popular double albums, which is the only one to reach #1 on the U.S. charts?

“Tommy,” The Who (1969)

“Tusk,” Fleetwood Mac (1979)

“Exile on Main Street,” The Rolling Stones (1972)

“Eat a Peach,” The Allman Brothers Band (1972)

8 Only one of these lead singers was an original member of the band that made them famous. Which one?

Steve Perry of Journey

Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues

Jon Anderson of Yes

Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane

9 Which artist did NOT die of a gunshot wound?

Marvin Gaye

Terry Kath

Sam Cooke

Keith Moon

10 Which band’s album cover includes a reference to a different rock band?

“Axis Bold as Love,” Jimi Hendrix Experience

“Physical Graffiti,” Led Zeppelin

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” The Beatles

“Stand Up,” Jethro Tull

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1 The Doobie Brothers

The Doobies were a bar band formed in San Jose, California. Their two guitarists (Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons) and bassist Tiran Porter were from the West Coast, and their two drummers (John Hartman and Michael Hossack) were from Virginia and New Jersey. Even the later members to join the group (Jeff Baxter, Keith Knudsen, Michael McDonald, John McFee) were all from the U.S.

The Mamas and Papas came to symbolize the California sound, and while Michele Phillips came from Long Beach, Cass Elliot was actually from Maryland and John Phillips from South Carolina. Denny Doherty, however, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and sang in bands there until moving to Hollywood at age 23.

Buffalo Springfield had three Canadians on their roster: Neil Young from Toronto, Bruce Palmer from Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and Dewey Martin from Chesterville, Ontario. (Stephen Stills and Richie Furay were from Texas and Ohio, respectively.)

The Band was 80% Canadian: Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko all hailed from various cities in Ontario, while drummer Levon Helm was the lone American, born in Arkansas.

2 “Twist and Shout”

This iconic rocker was co-written in 1961 by Phil Medley and Bert Berns, who also wrote other hits like “Hang On Sloopy,” “Piece of My Heart” and “A Million to One.” It was first recorded that year by a vocal group called The Top Notes as “a Latin-tinged raveup,” as one critic put it, but it failed to chart. The Isley Brothers’ recording in 1962 offered a better R&B groove and added the ascending vocal parts that made it so memorable, helping it reach #17 on the U.S. pop charts (and #2 on the R&B charts). The Beatles used almost the same arrangement as The Isley Brothers’ version when they recorded “Twist and Shout” in 1963 for their debut LP, “Please Please Me.” It was not released as a single in the UK, but in the US, the single reached #2 in early 1964, held from the top spot by another Beatles song, “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

“I Feel Fine” was written mostly by Lennon with help from McCartney.

“Love Me Do” was one of the earliest Lennon-McCartney songs, and the first ever to chart in the UK.

“Yellow Submarine” was another Lennon-McCartney collaboration, written as a children’s song for Ringo Starr to sing on the “Revolver” album.

3 Norman Greenbaum

Upon hearing country artist Porter Wagoner sing a gospel song on TV, Greenbaum thought to himself, “I can do that,” and within 15 minutes, he’d written the lyrics and basic chords to “Spirit in the Sky.” Greenbaum had been in an unsuccessful psychedelic jug band in the late ’60s but somehow won a solo contract, and when he recorded songs in a San Francisco studio, he employed friends who were in other bands. When the record became an unexpected international #1 hit, Greenbaum had no band available to go on tour, and subsequent attempts at follow-up singles fell short. So he reverted to his previous calling as a pig farmer.

Redbone was a California-based band comprised of musicians of Native-American and Mexican heritage. I always loved their #5 hit from 1974, “Come and Get Your Love,” but I hadn’t realized they were the group that already had a minor hit with “The Witch Queen of New Orleans,” which peaked at #21 in early 1972.

Five Man Electrical Band was a Canadian pop rock group that scored eight hit singles in the Top 20 on the Canadian charts between 1965 and 1975. In the US, they had their breakthrough with “Signs,” which not only reached #3 here in the summer of 1971, it was also #1 in Australia for nearly two months. Later in 1971, the group did modestly well here with the spirited rocker “Absolutely Right,” which peaked at #28.

Maria Muldaur had a big hit with the sexually suggestive “Midnight at the Oasis,” which reached #6 in the spring of 1974. I wasn’t aware until recently that she had a second hit less than a year later when “I’m a Woman,” a gritty blues tune that sounds like something Bonnie Raitt might record, reached #12.

4 Marvin Aday

A Texas woman named Wilma Oday gave birth in 1947 to “nine pounds of ground chuck,” as Wilma’s husband Orvis described the infant’s reddish appearance. For most of his childhood, Marvin went by “M.L.” which stood for “Meat Loaf,” and the name stuck as he became a bruising football player, then an actor and singer of international fame, thanks to his delivery of the dramatic rock songs of Jim Steinman on the multi-platinum “Bat Out of Hell” in 1977 and its much-delayed follow-up, “Bat Out of Hell II” in 1993. Oday died in January 2022.

Vincent Furnier is the real name of shock rocker Alice Cooper.

Reginald Dwight is the real name of Elton John.

Melvin Houser, well, that’s just a name I made up. Apologies to any real Melvin Housers out there.

5 “Tiny Dancer”

Originally released as the leadoff track on Elton’s fourth studio LP, “Madman Across the Water,” this gorgeous song ran over six minutes, which hurt its chances as a Top 40 single. In fact, it stalled in the U.S. at #41 and wasn’t even released as a single in the UK, although it reached #19 in Canada and #13 in Australia. Over the years, the song slowly became one of John’s most popular songs on American rock radio stations, and got a big boost of popularity after having been prominently featured in the 2000 film “Almost Famous.”

“Daniel,” released in 1973 as the second single from “Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player,” reached #2 that spring.

“Honky Cat,” the second single released from his 1972 LP “Honky Chateau,” peaked at #8.

“Levon,” the first single from “Madman Across the Water,” did modestly well, topping out at #24.

6 “Lucky Man” by Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Lake’s mother, a pianist, influenced his early musical leanings, and bought him a modest guitar when he turned 12. Once he’d mastered his first four chords (Am, Em, G and D), he wrote his first song, which he called “Lucky Man,” which he described as “sort of a medieval folk song” when played on acoustic guitar. The lyrics describe a privileged man who went off to battle and died, but for Lake, it referred to himself. “My mother bought me the guitar when she couldn’t really afford it, and I felt that I was a lucky boy, a lucky man indeed,” he recalled. It became ELP’s breakthrough hit in 1970.

“My Generation” sounds like it could have been written by a defiant 12-year-old Pete Townshend, but he was actually 19 or 20.

“Proud Mary” was written by John Fogerty shortly after he was discharged from the Army Reserve in 1968 when he was 23.

“You Really Got Me” was the fourth or fifth song Ray Davies ever wrote, in the spring of 1964 at age 20.

7 “Exile on Main Street,” The Rolling Stones

Although the Stones were more of a singles band during their first eight years, every one of their albums released in the 1960s reached the Top Five on U.S. album charts. Beginning with “Sticky Fingers” in 1971, they put together a string of nine consecutive #1 LPs, some of which, in my opinion, didn’t deserve it, and 1972’s “Exile on Main Street” is one of them. It’s a double album with a lot of filler, the production is muddy and the performances substandard, but The Stones were on a roll throughout the ’70s as far as the U.S. record buyers were concerned.

“Tommy” was certainly consistently strong enough to be a #1 album for The Who, but it peaked at #4.

“Tusk” was a strange collection of songs, and a step down from the appeal of “Rumours,” but it still managed to reach #4 for Fleetwood Mac.

“Eat a Peach,” which is half studio and half live, was the first released following the death of Duane Allman. It, too, topped out at #4.

8 Jon Anderson of Yes

Anderson and his school chum Chris Squire were the founding members of Yes in 1968. They recruited guitarist Peter Banks, drummer Bill Bruford and keyboardist Tony Kaye, and were off and running in the progressive rock sweepstakes fashionable in the UK at the time. Yes had a virtual revolving door of members come in and out over the years, but Anderson’s ethereal vocals are perhaps the defining element of the group’s sound.

Steve Perry didn’t join Journey as their lead vocalist until 1978, five years and three albums after they were founded by keyboardist Gregg Rolie and guitarist Neal Schon, formerly with Santana.

Justin Hayward joined The Moody Blues in 1967 when they recorded the landmark “Days of Future Passed,” but the band had been around since 1964.

Grace Slick brought Jefferson Airplane their biggest success with two 1967 singles, “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” but she was preceded as lead vocalist by Signe Anderson in 1965-1966.

9 Keith Moon

Moon was notorious for excessive and destructive behavior, which made him a phenomenal drummer but eventually a danger to himself. He drank and drugged too much, and when he tried to quit, he was prescribed a powerful sedative, on which he overdosed and died in 1978.

Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father in 1984.

Terry Kath died from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot in 1978.

Sam Cooke was shot and killed in an altercation with a motel manager in 1964.

10 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles

This 1967 album cover has been scrutinized and interpreted more than probably any other rock album in history. In addition to the 50-odd likenesses pictured behind the Fab Four, several props appear in front of and next to them, one of which is a doll propped up on a chair. The doll, a gift to Mick Jagger from the winner of a contest on Memphis radio station WMPS-AM in 1964, was brought to the photo session by photographer Robert Fraser, a friend of Jagger. If you look closely, the sweater the doll is wearing says, “THE WMPS GOOD GUYS WELCOME THE ROLLING STONES.”

Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti” featured a tenement building with various faces peeking out, including those of Hollywood icons and the Zeppelin band members themselves, but no one from different rock bands. Jimi’s “Axis: Bold as Love” and Tull’s “Stand Up” included all sorts of nooks and crannies within the designs for them to hide words or images of other bands, and you can search all you want, but you won’t find any.

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The music to the story in your eyes

Posted on November 19, 2021 by brucehhackett

Periodically, I use this space to pay homage to artists I believe are worthy of focused attention — artists with an extraordinary, influential, consistently excellent body of work and/or a compelling story to tell. In this essay, I take a detailed look at one of the most important British bands involved in pioneering the challenging genre known as art rock, or progressive rock, in which elements of rock music and classical music merge. Thanks to a substantial fan base, plenty of critical praise, and considerable commercial success with Top Ten singles and #1 LPs in the US and the UK, they grew from modest beginning in the mid-1960s into a bonafide musical legend: The Moody Blues.

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*The Moody Blues in 1970: Ray Thomas, Mike Pinder, Graeme Edge, Justin Hayward, John Lodge*

Popular music is full of stories of rock groups that were lucky enough to have a #1 single almost right away but then unable to duplicate their success. The record label might stick with them for a year or two, but without sales, the groups lose their contracts and are never heard from again. You’ve no doubt heard such artists referred to as “One-Hit Wonders.”

The Moody Blues, who went on to become one of the most successful British progressive rock groups in history, came pretty close to being saddled with that dubious distinction. They signed a deal with Decca in early 1964 and, before the year was out, they topped the charts in England with “Go Now,” which also broke into the Top Ten in the US. Like much of their repertoire at the time, “Go Now” was a cover version of a rhythm and blues song recorded by an American soul singer, Bessie Banks, with lead singer/guitarist Denny Laine as the front man. But then they struggled unsuccessfully for nearly two years to come up with another hit.

*Their 1964 #1 single, with Denny Laine on vocals*

Decca was ready to drop them from the roster. But the group had built up a debt that Decca wanted to recoup, so they came up with a plan: Use the Moody Blues to create a rock music version of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” to help promote the label’s new subsidiary, Deram Records, and its new high-end sonic development they called Deramic Stereo. The band had little choice but to go along.

The band quickly reached the conclusion that the project wasn’t going to work. Instead, with support from their producer and engineer, they boldly proposed to write a cycle of original songs about “everyman’s archetypical day” (dawn, morning, mid-day, late afternoon, evening, night) which would then be expanded and connected by classical music passages, written and conducted by Peter Knight and recorded with a session “orchestra” that called themselves the London Festival Orchestra. To their everlasting credit, the label agreed.

The album they got, “Days of Future Passed,” was fairly astounding. It is regarded as one of the very first concept albums, released in 1967 in the wake of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” and Pink Floyd’s “Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” neither of which utilized classical music structures and instruments as comprehensively as The Moody Blues did. Although Decca had little hope that the album would sell much, it became a surprise hit, reaching #27 in the UK on the strength of its two singles, “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon (#19 and #24 respectively).

It should be noted that the album tanked badly in the US at the time, and critics savaged it. Rolling Stone said, “The Moody Blues have matured considerably since ‘Go Now,’ but their music is constantly marred by one of the most startlingly saccharine conceptions of ‘beauty’ and ‘mysticism’ that any rock group has ever attempted. They are strangling themselves in conceptual goo.” Truth be told, I’ve found the album to be a bit tiresome to listen to all the way through, and the orchestral sections seem rather heavy-handed. But “Days of Future Passed” stands as a landmark LP in its creative blending of rock and roll arrangements with classical song structures and instrumentation.

In the UK, the album’s success gave the group the green light to continue their experimentation. Fortunately, Mike Pinder, one of the group’s founding members, was exceptionally well versed in the Mellotron, an analog antecedent to the synthesizer. It was designed as an organ-like device that used tape heads activated by the touch of keys, and tape loops comprised of the sounds of horns, strings and other instruments generating an eerie, orchestra-like sound. Pinder, who not only knew how to play it but also once worked for the company that developed and built them, was able to perpetuate the group’s use of orchestral sounds without the expense of hiring classical musicians for the recording process.

*“In Search of the Lost Chord” cover, 1968*

The next Moodies LP, “In Search of the Lost Chord,” revealed the depth of talent of the band’s five multi-faceted musicians. Pinder worked the Mellotron and added piano, harpsichord, autoharp, tambura and spoken vocals. Ray Thomas provided flute, oboe, sax and French horn and vocals. Justin Hayward, who had replaced Laine as their primary singer, played acoustic and electric guitar, sitar and keyboards. John Lodge handled bass, cello and vocals, and Graeme Edge chipped in on drums and percussion. All five were songwriters as well, giving the album a wonderful diversity within the group dynamic. Lyrically, the songs examined themes like higher consciousness (Thomas’s ode to Timothy Leary and LSD, “Legend of a Mind”), spiritual development (Hayward’s “Voices in the Sky”), quest for knowledge (Lodge’s rocker “Ride My See-Saw”) and imagination (Pinder’s “The Best Way to Travel”). All this proved to establish the group as darlings of the counterculture on both sides of the Atlantic while also showing robust sales in the mainstream, reaching #5 in the UK and #23 in the US.

Over the next four years, The Moody Blues honed and embraced this formula, offering five rich, diverse, sonically engrossing albums that achieved ever-higher positions on the charts in both the UK and the US, and Canada and Australia as well. “On the Threshold of a Dream” and “To Our Children’s Children’s Children,” both released in 1969, cemented their reputation as an “album band,” with tracks that segued into one another. Their trippy album cover art further sealed the deal, giving their attitude-adjusted audience something to look at while the music played on. “A Question of Balance” in 1970 and “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” in 1971 brought The Moodies back to the singles charts with two vibrant Hayward compositions: the melodramatic “Question,” with its frenetic acoustic strumming, and my personal Moodies favorite, the hard-rocking “The Story in Your Eyes.”

The band toured incessantly throughout this period, and because some of their pieces proved too daunting to attempt on stage, they found themselves consciously writing tunes that could be more easily recreated in a live setting. Consequently, “Question,” “It’s Up to You,” “Melancholy Man,” “Dawning is the Day,” “The Story in Your Eyes” and “Our Guessing Game” from the 1970-1971 LPs became regulars on their concert setlist.

*Re-release single of “Nights in White Satin,” 1972*

An unusual thing happened in 1972. While the group’s accurately titled album “Seventh Sojourn” became the first to reach #1 on the US album charts, its two Lodge-penned singles — “Isn’t Life Strange” and “I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band)” — made the Top 40 but were completely overshadowed by the re-release of “Nights in White Satin.” A disc jockey in Washington had been signing off with the five-year-old song, and listeners began clamoring for it. Interest spread to other US markets, and soon Decca/Deram chose to re-release it as a single. It not only reached #2 on the US Top 40, but also brought “Days of Future Passed” to #3 on the US album chart, giving The Moodies TWO albums in the Top Five in December 1972.

Non-stop touring and recording took their toll, and The Moodies chose to go on hiatus for a few years, much to the displeasure of the record label. Pinder had grown tired of England and relocated to California to start a new family there, and Hayward, under pressure to come up with new Moody Blues-like material, teamed up with Lodge and their longtime producer Tony Clarke to make “Blue Jays” in 1975, which reached a respectable #16 in the US and #4 in Britain, even without any noteworthy singles.

The whole band reunited in 1977 to record the so-so “Octave” LP with the below-average single “Steppin’ in a Slide Zone,” but Pinder was so dissatisfied with the result that he refused to participate in the subsequent tour and officially left the group.

Various solo projects by Hayward and others filled the gap for a spell, but by then it seemed the music scene had moved on. Audiences became more fragmented, craving disco, punk, New Wave and heavy metal.

In 1981, though, The Moody Blues came roaring back with “Long Distance Voyager,” a synthesizer-driven #1 pop/rock album carried by two Top 20 Hayward hits, “Gemini Dream” and “The Voice.” A triumphant return to touring, including songs from throughout their catalog, was made possible by the industry’s improved technical improvements in concert sound.

This album, and those that followed over the next decade (1983’s “The Present,” 1986’s “The Other Side of Life,” 1988’s “Sur La Mer” and 1991’s “Kings of the Kingdom”), bore only a little resemblance to the psychedelia and mind-expanding albums of the band’s prime, but the accessible melodies, crisp production and Hayward’s ever-present voice kept the band in the limelight. Indeed, Hayward’s catchy pop song, “Your Wildest Dream,” and its apparent sequel, “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere,” got as much exposure as anything they’d ever done. Still, there were precious few memorable deep tracks behind the singles, certainly a discouraging development to older fans.

*The Moodies in 2002, L-R: Edge, Hayward, Lodge, Thomas*

The band’s last time in the recording studio was in 2003 when they cobbled together a Christmas-themed album called “December,” which came and went quickly, like most seasonal records. The Moody Blues, augmented by additional performers on stage, continued performing well into the 2010s, with Hayward and Lodge carrying the load. First Thomas and then Edge were forced to reduce their participation due to health issues. Thomas ultimately died of cancer in 2018, and Edge passed away of cancer last week, effectively bringing the story of The Moody Blues to an end.

I can’t think of any other rock band that had the audacity to offer tracks of cosmic poetry, spoken rather than sung, on almost every album. “In the late 1960s we became the group that Graeme always wanted it to be, and he was called upon to be a poet as well as a drummer,” said Hayward about Graeme Edge in the wake of his death. “He delivered that beautifully and brilliantly, while creating an atmosphere and setting that the music would never have achieved without his words.”

There’s a song on “Long Distance Voyager” that, while not one of their better efforts, perfectly describes how The Moody Blues are perceived these days — “Veteran Cosmic Rockers.” Their spacey music and intelligent lyrics mesmerized a sizable fan base during their 1967-1974 era, and their 1981-1991 period perpetuated The Moodies brand as a worthy rock band that absolutely deserved their long-overdue induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

As Edge himself put it in a 2008 interview, “I never get tired of playing the hits. I think we have a duty. You play ‘Nights in White Satin’ for them. You’ve got to play ‘I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band),’ and you’ve got to play ‘Tuesday Afternoon’ and you’ve got to play ‘Question.’ It’s your duty, and the audience’s right.”

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