Jon Murray is taken back to his youth with a slick performance of the Moody Blues

  • The Moody Blues
     
  • New Theatre, Oxford

Looking around at other members of the audience at The New Theatre last Wednesday, it was impossible not to brood over the cruel pace of life’s passage of time.

Justin Hayward’s famous blond mane may have worn well, but a large proportion of those who had come to watch him and The Moody Blues at the start of their The Voyage Continues — Highway 45 2013 UK tour were considerably more folically challenged.

But then this is a band in their sixth decade of performing, and they still do so with impressive energy to go with their undoubtedly fine musicianship.

Wednesday’s gig began slowly, I felt, until You and Me, Say It With Love and the classic Tuesday Afternoon got everyone warmed up.

Hayward, born in Swindon, admitted between songs that it was a long time before they played in Oxford, though he distinctly remembered doing one May Ball, and recalled a woman with a very posh accent saying: “Can You Play [The Troggs’] Wild Thing?”

The seemingly ageless Graeme Edge reminisced about when the band lined up alongside Jimi Hendrix, and other legends at the Isle of Wight Festival — they appeared there in ‘69 and ‘70 — before the band fast-forwarded in time with Peak Hour and I Know You’re Out There Somewhere.

The second half began with the slower-paced and melodic Isn’t Life Strange, which really fired up The Moodies’ large loyal following, before Edge explained how different this all felt to their last gig, in March, on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, where he celebrated his 72nd birthday. As if in defiance of that, he then showed how sprightly he could move around the stage, and how dynamically he could drum.

Driftwood and the raucous Higher and Higher, from the To Our Children’s Children album, which, he said, was inspired by Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing, were followed by the brilliant Nights In White Satin which, even to this day, for its composition, ease-on-the-ear, appeal and sheer perfection, seems in a different league to the other tracks, even if its 2013 rendition lacked the power of its late Sixties’ version.

Then for an encore out came the great 1970 rock song Question.

Of which there can be no question is that The Moody Blues remain perfectly harmonised. And, despite the passing years, still very slick.