This is a series of posts about the music I play while writing. This time we move on to The Moody Blues and their song, “Nights in White Satin.” Written by Justin Hayward, this song first appeared on the 1967 album Days of Future Passed. The orchestral music along with the simple poetry of the song create a thoughtful meditative state in my mind so it comes early in my play list. Of course, the best version of the track includes the spoken word poem at the end, Late Lament, just tops off the feeling I get from this piece.
Listening to this song also brings back memories. The song was rereleased when I was 12 and I heard it on a local radio station. It made it to number two on the Billboard 100 list and was getting good air play even though it is a long song. That year I had also just gotten my first regular yard job with the elderly lady who lived next door. Actually I inherited the job from my older brother who went off to college that same year. Mostly I just went over every week to mow the lawn, water and put the trash out. I didn’t get paid by the hour, but rather by the job. I never really understood the formula Mrs. Beaty used to calculate want I got, but each week I got between three and five dollars – a lot of money for a 12 year old in 1972.
My mother made sure that I put some in a savings account but I was allowed to spend most of the money on whatever I wanted. I was interested in electronics and stereos and such. Our family owned a TV and a small record player, but not good quality sound equipment. There was no way I could afford to buy a fancy stereo system, but there was an ad for a decent clock radio with a cassette player at the local Radio Shack. I think it was something like $90 and for reasons I never understood myself, I decided I just had to have that radio so I saved my gardening money.
Also I started getting random yard jobs from members of our church, things like pulling weeds, mowing lawns, digging soil in a new bed. Seems like one elderly lady called the church office one day asking if there was a nice Christian boy she could hire for some yard work. My mother was in the office that day and I had nice little summer business going riding my bike around town doing odd jobs. My mother was my agent and she’d tell me where and when to go. She also negotiated payment terms. It wasn’t a bad deal, most places I’d get money, lunch and all the ice cold drinks I wanted —sometimes they’d even drive me home. It didn’t take long and I had my money for the radio.
I went to Radio Shack with the ad and my cash and bought it. I got home and read every page of the manual, plugged it in and set the time. I spent several hours checking out all the stations I could get and eventually found a station I liked. One of the songs they played was Nights in White Satin. One of the features on the clock radio was an integrated cassette recorder/player which could record directly off the air. Well, I liked Nights in White Satin so much that I waited a few hours until they played it again and I recorded it. I knew I could have bought the album, but I never felt the urge to spend my money on records. In fact, it wasn’t until CDs came out that I started buying music.
I played the song endlessly, but eventually tired of it. Somewhere over the years I lost the tape with the song, but I kept that clock radio for decades and used it as my daily alarm clock. It finally stopped working in about 1998 and I replaced it with a cheep $20 thing that I’m still using today. The clock radio manufactures never made much money out of me.
Over the years I’d hear the song from time to time, but it wasn’t until YouTube and Spotify that I renewed my listening to it. Like many people, I confused the title with “Knights” rather than “Nights” and was a little surprised when my search for “Knights in White Satin,” returned, “Nights in White Satin.” At its heart it just a love song. There’s love, loss of love, regret and so on. It is a “moody” song. The poem at the end of the song, Late Lament, is sometimes omitted when played. You can find edits of the song that include or omit the poem. In later releases of the album, Late Lament is sometimes listed as a separate track. It’s that way on Spotify, and on YouTube I found this video that includes the poem as I remember it from 1972:
As much as I like the overall song, it is Late Lament that really draws me to this. It is the kind of poetry that I wish I could write. It just has some great lines like, “Bedsitter people / Look back and lament” and … well just all of it. Go look it up and read it. You’ll see what I mean and know why it’s on my list.
