The Moody Blues

It was at the Red House, when I got stung by a bee outside. I'd seen a bumblebee sitting on a leaf on the rose-bush next door. I wondered, Is it dead? Is it sleeping? I reached out and poked it with my finger to see if it would do anything. It woke up, got onto my finger, and stung me. Damn, that hurt!

Dad was in the living room, playing this album that showed a sheaf of album covers stretching out into the night sky. The Threshold labels were almost matching: dark blue, with some sort of swirly fireball-looking logo. The song that was playing was some sort of ghostly, haunting song about a guy named Timothy Leary who was not only dead, but was "outside...looking in". I was drawn in by the bending Mellotron notes, and the different instrumental sections. My hurt finger was completely forgotten about as I heard some more cuts from this album: "Ride My See-Saw", "Tuesday Afternoon", "I'm Just A Singer In A Rock & Roll Band" and "Nights In White Satin".

This was the only thing that Dad seemed to have by them, though I would see pictures of their other album covers on those London/Deram innersleeves that were inside of albums by the Rolling Stones and Ten Years After. I was intrigued by the cover for In Search Of The Lost Chord, although I wouldn't hear that until some time later.

In that summer, just before entering school, there was a new album by those guys that just came out. A little more poppy than the material I'd fallen in love with, but there were some good cuts on it, such as "The Voice" and "Gemini Dream".

As I was in my final year of high school, I was teaching myself how to play the keyboards, and one of the first things I showed myself how to play was the Mellotron lines from "Nights In White Satin", whilst playing along with the album. My Casio PT-100 was no Mellotron, but it was something to play along with.