![]() I was very aware of the anti-war movement in America which had grown thanks to the Vietnam war. He explains, "I'd written "Question" on the morning of the recording session. The group were influenced by their experiences interacting with Americans on their concert tours, and the fear and anger about the draft during the Vietnam war. " Question", the lead track on the album, was written by Hayward as a protest song about war. So it's a question of prompting myself to actually use some of the bits I've been enjoying on the guitar and make a song out of them." If I just work at it a bit more, I've got a whole song here.' Inspiration has to find you working, and not just toying around. I've had so many small parts of songs that I've just enjoyed playing, and it takes me a while to realize: 'This is a song. There are specific Moody Blues songs that start in that quiet way. ![]() Hayward reflects on this songwriting process at the time: "A song is a song. Bad habits in my book are something that hurt other people, innocent people." Trying to wake people up from bad habits. And so the emotions were really all about love and peace and everything, but also about intelligence and about consciousness. I've always looked at it that way, from a spiritual point of view, as opposed to a religious point of view. Ingenuity, ideas, concepts - all those things come through on the right side of the brain. And the right side of the brain is where creativity takes place. The planet earth has its problems, and people live in the left side of their brain. They were all songs about how we can be better, the kinds of things we can leave behind and move forward. These are not songs that we made up out of thin air. Much of A Question of Balance did exactly that." Writing Īpart from the desire to record songs with simpler arrangements, Mike Pinder remembers the album being more influenced by domestic life as well as global concerns: "We were all getting married and having kids. ![]() The whole idea of individual growth and being able to transfer that into our music. We never wanted to be a sock-it-to-me band. I listen to it now, and I can see why people are still discovering it. It's very hard to maintain your equilibrium under those pressures." Mike Pinder adds, "All in all, it was one of the peaking albums for me. That was the start of where we were almost treated as semi-deities. ![]() According to drummer Graeme Edge, "We very much wanted to reflect what the title says: that maintaining yourself is a question of balance. Looking for the answers will keep us going for a long time." The album title takes its name from the first and last tracks on the album, "Question" and "Balance". Explains Hayward, "On the first side, we were asking ourselves the question, and on the second side, we are starting to answer it. Still, the album does convey a theme of asking questions and finding meaning in the world. In a way, we almost reverted to performing live in the studio, without venturing too much into the world of overdubs." He continues, "It was quite refreshing, actually, doing the A Question of Balance album.getting back to that place where we could just get a bunch of songs together with a bit less instrumentation going on, that we could just sit around in a room and play." Guitarist Justin Hayward remembers, "From the beginning of our recording sessions we were all convinced that we had to record an album of songs that could easily translate into effective live performances. The album was an attempt by the group to strip down their previously lush, psychedelic sound in order to be better able to perform the songs in concert. A Question of Balance is the sixth album by The Moody Blues, released in 1970.
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