To Our Children's Children's Children is the fifth album by the Moody Blues, released in November 1969.
Background The album was the first released on the group's newly formed Threshold record label, which was named after the band's previous album from the same year, On the Threshold of a Dream. It was inspired by the 1969 Moon landing. Drummer Graeme Edge remembers, "It was a very exciting time. Man had just gone to the moon and we thought of the album as a sort of time capsule - all our thoughts and feelings about living in such an epoch-making era."Murley, Mark. The Making of 'To Our Children's Children's Children'. Summer 1995. Higher & Higher. Issue 26/27.028: The Moody Blues - to Our Children’s Children’s Children (1969). Discord & Rhyme: An Album Podcast. Accessed February 3, 2024. https://discordpod.com/listen/028-the-moody-blues-to-our-childrens-childrens-children-1969. Keyboardist Mike Pinder adds, "To me, we were creating a rocket for every person who wants to go to the moon but couldn't, and would get to do so with the earphones on or the stereo turned up, lying on their backs on the carpet."
Writing Like the group's three previous albums, To Our Children's Children's Children is a concept album, one with a common theme that ties the songs together. For Children, the band was inspired by the space race and the July 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, which occurred during the album's sessions. Keyboardist Mike Pinder remembers, "We were watching man going to the moon. In the studio, we were watching it. I remember Neil Armstrong setting down. We weren't in the studio that night but I remember it was like 4 A.M. in the morning and I was in my apartment in London. I remember that part of it. But the album was all around the moon mission and man's venturing into space. This was the beginning of maybe discovering man's true legacy."Silverstein, Robert. Thinking Is (Still) the Best Way to Travel. 2000. MWE3 Features. Hayward remembers producer Tony Clarke being a driving force behind the concept: "To Our Children's Children's Children...was really driven by Tony Clarke, our producer. It was something that he really wanted to do, and I'm glad that we were able to share that with him."Sokol, Tony. The Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward Talks New Record and Lost Chords. Den of Geek. April 17, 2020. https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/the-moody-blues-justin-hayward-interview/. He elaborates, "He had a bee in his bonnet about doing an album about space; he was an astronomer and followed the stars. He built this dome on the top of his house with big telescopes, and really used to get quite boring about it! But it was a baby of his, and his idea was really to try and coincide releasing an album - in our usual kind of pretentious way - with man landing on the moon. I'd already written a song called 'Watching and Waiting,' which was done on this old pipe organ, and then, to balance that, I had the idea for 'Gypsy.'Barajas, Vincent. Gypsy (Of A Strange And Distant Time): Moody Blue Justin Hayward Makes Tracks For The Future. August 14, 2000. Outre. Clarke confirms, "I very much wanted us to make a space album, and at the time I was very immersed in that sort of thing. Now that was my frame of mind, and I rather pushed it in that direction, so everybody capitulated."
Bassist John Lodge remembers fleshing out the album by asking "What would it be like if we were the people on the rocket ship going out into space...going to the moon, going to Mars. What would we think? What would be our thoughts? And that was what the album was about."Silverstein, Robert. MWE3 Features the Moody Blues. Accessed February 3, 2024. https://www.mwe3.com/archive/pastfeature/mblues/moodyblues00b.htm. The album has the additional theme of the passage of time. Drummer Graeme Edge explains, "To Our Children's Children was kind of buried under stone to be dug up in 200 years with a time capsule kind of feeling."DeRiso, Nick. The Moody Blues Broke through with ‘on the Threshold of a Dream.’ Ultimate Classic Rock. April 25, 2015. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/moody-blues-on-the-threshold-of-a-dream/. He continues, "The idea behind the album was to imagine that the record had been placed under a foundation stone and wouldn't be removed for a couple of hundred years."Powell, Mark. Liner notes essay, 2006 To Our Children's Children's Children SACD Deluxe Edition.
The album, like its predecessors, begins with a Graeme Edge poem "Higher and Higher", recited by Mike Pinder. The spoken word introduction is set to a musical simulation of the sound of the Saturn V rocket blasting off. The band had intended to begin the album with the actual recorded sound of the moon mission rocket launching, and contacted NASA who provided the group with tapes. The sound proved unsatisfactory, inspiring the group to record their own interpretation on Mellotron and rock instruments. Lodge remembers, "We actually got NASA to send over a recording of real rocket taking off, but when we listened to the tape it sounded like a damp squib! We had to set about creating our own rocket sound which ended up sounding more authentic." Pinder varies the pitch of his vocal delivery on the track, with his voice becoming clearer and louder as the song progresses. To help achieve this, he holds his nose and then releases while delivering the lines of the poem. He remembers, "I was holding my nose until that one moment, and then when 'butterfly sneezes', that's when I opened up."
The recording of "Higher and Higher" represented a creative highlight of the album's production. Engineer Derek Varnals remembers how the band recreated the effect using only musical instruments on the track: "The rumbling sound of a rocket blasting off was several layers of instruments. We had guitar amplifiers turned up really loud with no instrument playing. You can get the sound of a general white noise roaring away on an amp. We had a Hammond organ and Mellotron motors going with microphones right by the motors. We had muffled drums being rolled and maybe a couple of electronic things in there. I think we had the Hammond and Mellotron gradually working their way up [the scale] to give you the idea of a crescendo. The idea is to give you the impression that you are going up into orbit, leaving the [booster] behind, as we've all seen film of the third stage separating and falling back to earth." Pinder adds, "It was armfuls of keyboards being played. It was crossed arms on the keys, starting at one end and working up to the other. We were all doing this sort of thing. It was five guys at their instruments, letting loose. I liked what we did, sound-wise: the fact that we actually conjured up the sound of a rocket taking off with nothing more than musical instruments. I definitely felt a sense of achievement with that."
Lodge's "Eyes of a Child" transitions the mood and opens with the more relaxed sounds of Pinder playing a 7 foot golden harp and Ray Thomas playing a bass flute. The song considers the first moments of experiencing space after liftoff completes. It considers the wonderment that space travel provides, and what the experience of seeing planets and Earth from a new perspective would be like. He explains, "I really thought if you were out there what would you expect, what would you see if you were on the spaceship going out. And I suddenly realized if you went up there with all preconceived ideas and preprogrammed ideas in your mind you'd probably miss everything. And I realized then, that's how a child works." He continues, "When you look at life through the eyes of a child there is a wonderment, isn't it? Children see the world differently. There are wonders every day: When you see a butterfly flying or when you see a bird flying or when you see anything, it's just a wonderful world for children to see. I thought, as we become older, we become prejudiced and if you can rid of whatever your prejudice is, you just see the world in naivety, without any restriction. It's wonderful for everyone to be able to see everything in life without any prejudice.'Interview: John Lodge (Solo, the Moody Blues) - Hit Channel. November 6, 2020. https://hit-channel.com/interview-john-lodge-solo-the-moody-blues-190584/.
Flautist Ray Thomas' whimsical "Floating" imagines a low-gravity stroll on the moon before an electric reprise of "Eyes of a Child." Drummer Graeme Edge shares, "My favorite track on To Our Children's Children's Children is 'Floating'. As always, you can count on Ray to poke a bit of irreverent fun just when we are all strutting around a little too pompously!"
"I Never Thought I'd Live to Be a Hundred" and its counterpart "I Never Thought I'd Live to Be a Million" consider the passage of time and the experiences and emotions of a long space journey. Hayward remembers their composition: "I never thought I'd be a hundred and I never thought I'd be a million. It was just something that I thought needed to be there in some way to give it some distance, to add to the distance that the album was providing. We were a group that recorded at night when the rest of the world was silent, and I still do that now. I write when I'm the only person in the world that's awake, and that's the way I like it. To have the opportunity putting that dimension into a record now and again in a quiet way is very rewarding. Particularly with those two little songs, I don't think there's anything else on them, just a guitar and voice."
"Beyond" includes instrumental sections performed by Pinder on his heavily customized Mellotron, dubbed the "Pindertron". The song demonstrates the instrument's ability to produce distinctive sounds in addition to orchestral notes and serve as the centerpiece of a track instead of being just a backing instrument.Barnhart, Ken and Tuckosh, Ken. The Making of the Mellotron. Higher and Higher. Spring/Winter 1998. Issue 11/12. The song uses the Mellotron and stereo panning to create otherworldly effects in order to convey the experience of observing the gas giants while traveling past, taking inspiration from The Planets by Gustav Holst. Tony Clarke remembers the challenge: "I remember thinking, 'Now how do we get the sound of Saturn or Jupiter?'" The song is credited to Edge, although Clarke remembers it being the work of Pinder, created as a prelude to "Out and In".Tony Clarke Chat. November 29, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20091217065837/http://rainbow_glo.webs.com/112909tonyclarkechat.htm
"Out and In" draws from Pinder's lifelong fascination with space and the night sky. He explains, "It is still one of my favorite songs. This was written 'within me', and draws from the experiences I had as a kid looking up into the night sky." In a 2014 interview, he recounts spending hours gazing at the stars as a child and how his interest was heightened by a pair of UFO experiences. His early passion would earn him the childhood nickname "Mickey the Moonboy".Shasho, Ray. Michael Pinder Exclusive: The Moody Blues Founder Admits to Seeing UFO Formations. February 27, 2014. https://www.classicrockmusicwriter.com/2014/02/michael-pinder-exclusive-moody-blues.html.
The songs on side two explore the emotion of space travel, and coming to terms with the isolation and loss of personal connection that a long voyage alone would present. It opens with the rocker "Gypsy (Of a Strange and Distant Time)", which would become the group's show opener in 1969 and 1970.