Justin Hayward

A Letter to Eric Burdon and a Call From Mike Pinder

While he was working for Wilde, Hayward sent some of his songs to Eric Burdon of the Animals. Burdon passed them to Mike Pinder, the keyboard player of the Moody Blues. In Rolling Stone's oral history of the band, Hayward recalls that Pinder phoned him, that he went to London and met Ray Thomas and Graeme Edge, "and I was in, really."

The band he joined was in trouble. The Moody Blues had a hit with "Go Now" in 1964, but by the autumn of 1966 they were broke, still wearing blue suits and playing rhythm and blues. The singer Denny Laine and the bassist Clint Warwick had resigned. Hayward and the bassist John Lodge came in to replace them.

Hayward did not hide what he brought, or what he lacked. "I was absolutely lousy at rhythm & blues, so it was my purpose to get my own songs done," he told Rolling Stone. He also had equipment the others did not: "an advantage that I had a Vox amplifier, which was more than they had."

Nights in White Satin, Recorded October 8, 1967

He wrote the two verses of "Nights in White Satin" when he was about 19, sitting on the edge of a bed after a gig in a shared two-room flat in Bayswater, on the 12-string Donegan had given him. Graeme Edge lived in the flat too. Hayward has described the song as written "at the end of one big love affair and at the beginning of another," and has said a gift of satin sheets from a former girlfriend gave it its title.

The band recorded it at Decca's studio in West Hampstead on October 8, 1967. The single and the album Days of Future Passed were released on November 10, 1967. Hayward did not even own a stereo at the time. "I didn't have a stereo unit until 1970!" he said.

The single was not an immediate success at home. Rolling Stone, quoting Edge, puts its 1967 UK peak at No. 19; an interview published on Hayward's own website gives No. 17. Five years later, around the release of Seventh Sojourn, a regional radio breakout that started in Seattle pushed it to No. 2 in the United States in 1972. It charted three times in the UK.

Hayward is modest about the lyric now. "It's still just a series of random thoughts of a young person, but I'm very pleased that people are able to share that and it resonates," he told Rolling Stone. Of the many covers, he singled out Bettye LaVette's as "probably better than ours."

Two Shows at Madison Square Garden in One Day

He told Louder that he first understood how big the band had become in 1973, when the Moody Blues played Madison Square Garden twice in one day and he saw their name in letters 50 feet high. They kept their distance from the press all the same. "None of us wanted to be personalities or celebrities," he said, and after being "burned by the press" the band went without a press agent.

Blue Jays, Songwriter and Forever Autumn

He and Lodge made Blue Jays in 1975. His first solo album, Songwriter, followed in 1977. Later solo records include Night Flight, Moving Mountains, Classic Blue (1989, made with Mike Batt and the London Philharmonic Orchestra), The View From the Hill and Spirits of the Western Sky.

In 1978 he sang "Forever Autumn" on Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. The single was a hit, and his official biography says it reached the top ten in several countries. Decades later he joined the stage production of the album, which he toured with from 2005 to 2010.

The band's news site records two songwriting honours at the Ivor Novello Awards: Composer of the Year in 1988 for "I Know You're Out There Somewhere," and the PRS for Music Award for Outstanding Achievement on May 16, 2013, presented to him by Marty Wilde, the singer who had hired him in 1965.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2018

The Moody Blues were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. The Hall lists six inductees: Denny Laine, Graeme Edge, John Lodge, Justin Hayward, Mike Pinder and Ray Thomas. The band has not toured together since that year.

Ultimate Classic Rock reports that every other member of the classic line-up has since died: Ray Thomas in 2018, Graeme Edge in 2021, Denny Laine in 2023, Mike Pinder in 2024 and John Lodge in October 2025. That leaves Hayward as the last of them.

Ann Marie and The Story in Your Eyes Tour

Hayward is married to Ann Marie, who, he told Louder, "had been with me throughout my career." In a 2018 interview with the music blog writewyattuk he put the marriage at "47 years and counting," and joked that touring meant he had been home for about eight of those years. He has spoken in interviews about his daughters but has given no public count.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1997.

In 2026 he is on the road with a solo show called The Story in Your Eyes, with songs from every part of his career and a question and answer session with the audience. The American leg ran from late August into September. The British dates include two nights at Cadogan Hall in London on October 12 and 13.

No dated estimate of his net worth from Forbes or Bloomberg exists, and the value of his songwriting catalog has not been reported, so this article gives no figure.

Sources

• The Moody Blues' 'Nights in White Satin': Oral History
• When the Moody Blues began to take themselves seriously | Louder
• A question of life balance - the Justin Hayward interview | writewyattuk
• Bio | Justin Hayward
• Classic tracks: Justin Hayward talks Nights In White Satin | News | Justin Hayward
• The Moody Blues | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
• Justin Hayward among those honored at the 58th Ivor Novello Awards - Moody Blues
• Moody Blues' Justin Hayward Adds More U.S. and U.K Shows