The Moody Blues ( B17 )

Hayward and Lodge wrote and sang on most of the songs as the band came under pressure from their new record company, Polydor Records, to promote those it deemed to be the two more commercial looking and sounding members and they decided to exploit that aspect rather than catering for the band as a whole or retaining the five-way songwriting methods the group had done with Pinder.

By then, Ray Thomas was playing a diminished role in the recording studio with the band evolving into a synthpop act, a genre that was unsuitable for the use of a flute. Thomas provided additional percussion, notably a brisk tambourine, on many more Moodies songs which continued to be featured, plus occasional harmonica, but by this point he was largely relegated to the status of a backup singer and he was also unwell during this period, further limiting his involvement with the band in the recording studio.

Thomas provided some backing vocals for both The Other Side of Life and Sur La Mer; however, for reasons unclear, multiple production considerations led Visconti to leave Thomas' vocals off the latter of these two albums, thereby further reducing the texture of their overall vocal sound, which had previously been rich four-part harmonies (Hayward, Lodge, Thomas and Pinder), then went down to three (Thomas, Lodge and Hayward) upon Pinder's departure and reduced still further to just the more similar-sounding voices of Hayward and Lodge (Lodge also providing falsetto vocals and high harmonies), with Pinder and Thomas each having provided both lower and higher-pitched vocal harmonies in the group's earlier vocal sound. The band's vocal "sound" had become the blend of just Hayward and Lodge, which was still recognisable, if less textured than the original four-part, more complex "choral" sound. Moraz was displeased with Visconti's exclusion of Thomas from the final release of Sur La Mer and accused him of tailoring the album for radio, as revealed in a 1989 newspaper article where it revealed Moraz's anger with the state of the band and at Visconti in particular.

Despite his diminished participation in the recording process, Thomas' high value remained on stage primarily from his continued ability to sing out his 1960s and 1970s Moodies classics, and also in flute and keyboard duets he composed with Moraz which were performed only during Moodies' concerts. 

continuare