Justin Hayward wasn’t yet a teenager when the music of Buddy Holly hit the airwaves in his native Swindon, England. The lanky musician with the horn-rimmed glasses from Lubbock, Texas, helped bring everything into focus for the young singer-songwriter.
“I knew I couldn’t be an Elvis,” says Hayward, 71, best known as the voice of art-rockers the Moody Blues. “But Buddy was the first one who wrote, sang and played his own music, and I eventually developed a whole repertoire of songs by Buddy and the Everly Brothers.”
Hayward eventually left Holly behind, and played some of his earliest gigs as a member of the Marty Wilde Three. In 1966, he joined one of the early iterations of the Moody Blues. After a couple of years of changes, the band solidified to include Graeme Edge, John Lodge, Mike Pinder and Ray Thomas. The group’s 1967 album Days of Future Passed, a rock/classical blend recorded to satisfy a debt owed to Deram Records, helped usher in the era of progressive rock.
In addition to playing with the still-active Moodies, Hayward now performs his compositions as an acoustic solo act. On Aug. 30, Hayward will open the newly refurbished Barrymore Theatre, sharing a bill with finger-percussive style guitarist Mike Dawes, recently voted the world’s best acoustic guitar player by the readers of Musicradar.
Hayward’s compositions helped define the sound of the Moody Blues, starting with “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Nights in White Satin” from Days of Future Passed. He went on to write some of the band’s biggest hits, including “Question,” “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere,” “The Story in Your Eyes” and “Your Wildest Dreams.”
The writing process, Hayward says, is usually the same for each song. A drum machine and DX7 keyboard frequently figure into the process.
“I find I am able to capture the essence at home, and then I have the risky bit done,” he says. “I bring my demo into the studio and we begin working on the arrangements.”
“Your Wildest Dreams” came about that way, Hayward says. Written in 1986, the song came along at a time when Hayward felt he was at the top of his game; it became a big hit.
As to what comes first — the lyrics or the melody — Hayward says it depends on the song and the situation.
“Picasso said that inspiration has to find you working, and there never was a truer phrase,” Hayward explains. “Songs usually come out of playing. In the very first moments of having something you can almost see it unfold as a Cinemascope landscape in your mind.
“That’s a very big breakthrough,” he adds, “ and it’s usually accompanied by a word or a phrase. That’s how a song starts.”
Hayward, who counts Nina Simone, Nat King Cole, The Beatles, Paul Simon and Prince among his major influences, describes himself as a music fan and “active listener.” It’s something he hopes his audiences will be, too.
“I enjoy music for its own sake,” he says. “I am never interested in meeting my heroes; I just want the music to bring something out in me.”
And if he couldn’t play music? Hayward chuckles at the idea.
“I’d probably be just a sad old man in a bookshop somewhere,” he says. “I had an office job for three months when I graduated from school and that was enough.
“I can play it from the heart, and that’s about all I can do.”
