There is always a handful of songs which grate on you and the minute you hear them, you reach for the off switch. All Cilla Black songs do that to me along with Dancing Queen, I Will Always Love You (Whitney’s whine) and Unchained Melody (Righteous version), another that I think is a drone is Nights In White Satin by the Moody Blues, but everything else the Moody’s did, I love. The first Moody Blues song I heard was Driftwood in 1978 which really should have been a UK hit, but I never realised, back then, there was a pre-Justin Hayward lead singer. Hayward joined in 1966, but for two years since their formation, Denny Laine took the lead.
El Riot & The Rebels was a skiffle group which turned to beat and became Birmingham’s most popular group around 1962, but they broke up after failing an EMI audition. Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder formed a new group, The Krew Cats, and went to Hamburg. When they returned some months later, they found 200 groups in Birmingham, many of them copying The Beatles. They realised that the only way to make an impact was to form a local supergroup and so they teamed up with Denny Laine (born Brian Hines), Graeme Edge and Clint Warwick. They called themselves The M&B 5 as they were playing Mitchells & Butlers pubs. When the brewery refused to sponsor them, they became The Moody Blues in 1964.
They signed with the London manager, Tony Secunda, and he secured a recording contract with Decca. Their first single, a Mike Pinder original, Lose Your Money, lost money, but the next was Go Now with an impassioned lead vocal from Denny Laine. The song was first recorded by the soul singer Bessie Banks, who had been born Bessie White. For a few years she had sung with Larry Banks before launching her solo career in 1963. Larry wrote the song specifically for his wife even though they weren’t splitting up at the time. The gospel-styled love song was recorded as a demo with Bessie hawking it around numerous record companies but when Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller heard it, they offered to produce it and she went back into their studio and re-recorded for Blue Cat Records in 1964 and that is the version we know today. Her version is an emotional tour de force though not as commercial as the Moody’s treatment.
A few years later, Bessie recounted a poignant story about the song saying, “Shortly after her version was released, it was chosen as a Pick Hit of the Week on W.I.N.S, a radio station in New York and that means your record is played for seven days. I was so thrilled, but on day five, when I heard the first line, I thought it was me, but all of a sudden, I realised it wasn’t. At the end of the song it was announced, ‘The Moody Blues singing Go Now.'” Her timeline was a little out because the Moody Blues version wasn’t released until over a year later in the States. Bessie’s version features two female backing singers who were Whitney Houston’s mother, Cissy and Dionne Warwick’s sister, Dee Dee.
The song tells the common story of a break up where the couple split up and he can’t bear to see her anymore, the Moody Blues version seems more believable than the original because of the close harmonies and, more so, the drenched echo and the way the song begins on an acapella, ‘We’ve already said’ then a pause before the piano dramatically enters with a regal chord structure, before we hear, ‘goodbye’. It’s reinforced by the next line, ‘Since you gotta go, oh you better Go now.’ followed by Denny’s doubling up of a more staccato, ‘Go now, Go now’.
Alan Freeman was one of the first to play The Moody Blues’ Go Now and Paul McCartney was so impressed that he rang the BBC to praise the record and hopefully hear it again. The switchboard, thinking his call was not genuine, refused to put him through to Fluff.
Go Now became the first new chart-topper of 1965 having knocked I Feel Fine by the Beatles off the top. It was the Moody’s only number one, they would grace the UK top 10 twice more, once with their 1970 hit Question which went to number two and when Nights In White Satin, re-entered the chart at Christmas 1972, it reached number nine, five years after it was first released.
After Laine left in 1966, he initially joined Ginger Baker’s side project group Air Force for about a year before becoming a founder member of Wings with Paul McCartney. His guitar work and occasion vocals with Wings were distinctive and he also contributed some bass guitar, keyboards and wind instruments. Additionally he co-wrote the number one hit Girls’ School (the double A-side with Mull of Kintyre), I’ve Had Enough and London Town. Whilst Wings were on tour, Macca was happy to let Laine perform Go Now and Paul and Linda were happy to provide backing vocals. Now that’s a thing to boast about. In 1967, he wrote and recorded the original version of Say You Don’t Mind which was a top 20 hit for Colin Blunstone in 1972 and in 1980, he re-recorded Go Now as a solo single which was originally released on Scratch records and then Polydor picked it up, but it never troubled the charts. In 2008, Simply Red released 25 – The Greatest Hits which contain one new track, a ropey cover of Go Now which they decided to release as a single to promote the album. The album reached number nine and the single was nowhere to be seen – therefore, not a greatest hit at all.
McCartney disbanded Wings in 1980 although the then-current tour carried on until early 1981 and then launched a solo career. As for the Moody Blues, of the mainstays, only two members are still with us, singer Justin Hayward who will be 80 next year and bass player John Lodge who will turn 82 this year. The original bassist, Clint Warwick, whose real name was Albert Eccles, died from hepatitis in May 2004, flautist and occasional vocalist Ray Thomas died in January 2018, drummer Graeme Edge died of cancer in November 2021, Denny Laine died in December 2023 from a lung disease and keyboard player Mike Pinder passed away in April 2024 after suffering with dementia.