The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed - Alternate Version (1967)

In 1967, the Moody Blues released the album "Days of Future Passed." It was a groundbreaking album in many respects. Previously, they had been a British R&B band, but that musical genre had fallen out of favor due to rapidly changing musical trends, especially the rise of psychedelic music that year. This album established a whole new sound for the band that they would stick with for the rest of their career. It also was one of the first rock concept albums, and an early form of "progressive rock."

That said, I've always felt the album is a mixed bag. It has some truly great parts to it, most especially the songs "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin," which are all time classics. But in my opinion the album was saddled down by the fact that it was a collaboration between the Moody Blues and the London Festival Orchestra, a symphonic orchestra. This was pretty much hoisted on the band by their record company Decca, who wanted an album that mixed rock and classical music to best demonstrate the company's new stereo recording techniques. I've always felt the orchestral sections dragged the album down. I strongly suspect the band would have never had those sections except they had to go along with the record company's demands in order to get an album out.

It so happens that the band recorded some other songs at the same time that are quite good. Furthermore, the album had a concept about a day in the life of an ordinary man, and many of these other songs fit that concept. So I've attempted to make a version of this album that minimizes or eliminates the orchestral aspects whenever possible, and replaces them with the other songs that fit. In my opinion, this makes for a much stronger album overall. 

Let me get more specific about what I did. The names of the songs on the original album are somewhat tricky, and even differ on different editions, because sometimes more than one song is lumped together. Suffice to say that I've removed all of the purely orchestral songs. In their place, I've added "Cities," "Love and Beauty," "I Really Haven't Got the Time," and "Long Summer Days." The first three were released in 1967 and A- or B-sides, and the fourth one was an outtake. Additionally, in some cases I've used alternate versions or BBC versions where the orchestral elements were lessened or removed. 

In an attempt to cut the orchestral elements even further, I found a 5.1 mix of the album, which means it was mixed for surround sound and thus has five channels instead of the typical two stereo channels. I hoped I could find channels with just the orchestral parts on them and then remove them. Unfortunately, that didn't work out in most cases, because the orchestral parts were mixed in with the rest. This only worked for the last song, "Late Lament," which is actually a poem recitation over music.  Using the 5.1 mix, I created a special edit that lessens the strings swelling in the background, but doesn't eliminate them altogether.

So this isn't the ideal version I'd hoped to make. Hopefully someday a true multitrack mix of the album will emerge and allow me to reduce the orchestral element even further. The two best known songs, "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin," aren't changed at all. Maybe that's for the best, since these are the versions that people are familiar with. But in any case, I think the major improvement here are the four added songs, and the removed songs, or parts or songs. It's rather amazing to me how well they fit into the conceptual theme of the album. I suspect the band wrote songs about that concept and had more than they were able to use. Since the album more forward chronologically through a typical day, it usually was fairly straightforward to figure out where the additional songs fit in.

There are three more songs from this time period that I wanted to add: "Fly Me High," "Leave This Man Alone," and "Please Think about It." Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to get them to fit into the theme. Instead, I've created a stray tracks album for the band that includes this time period, and I've put those songs there.

The official version of "Days of Future Passed" is 41 minutes long. After all the additions and subtractions I made, this version is 40 minutes long.  So it's essentially the same.

01 Dawn Is a Feeling [Alternate Version] (Moody Blues)
02 Cities (Moody Blues)
03 Another Morning (Moody Blues)
04 Love and Beauty (Moody Blues)
05 I Really Haven't Got the Time (Moody Blues)
06 Peak Hour (Moody Blues)
07 Tuesday Afternoon [Forever Afternoon] (Moody Blues)
08 [Evening] Time to Get Away (Moody Blues)
09 Long Summer Days (Moody Blues)
10 The Sun Set [Alternate Version] (Moody Blues)
11 Twilight Time [BBC Version] (Moody Blues)
12 Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues)
13 Late Lament [Edit] (Moody Blues)

https://www.imagenetz.de/f5vKK

At first glance, the album cover may seem the same as the officially released one. But there's a key difference: the art is turned 90 degrees. That's to show how the seemingly random psychedelic art style actually makes up a large human face.