Graeme Edge
Moody Blues drummer BORN 1941
Born in Staffordshire and transplanted to Birmingham as a young boy, Graeme Edge came from a musical family which included a mother who’d played piano for silent movies and several generations of musical hall singers on his father’s side. His early groups included The Silhouettes and, briefly with Roy Wood in the line-up, Gerry Levene & The Avengers. Edge left to form The R&B Preachers, who, with Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder, evolved into The Moody Blues in 1964. As tastes and their line-up changed again, and they shifted from R&B to orchestrated, progressive rock, Edge began contributing the poems which memorably punctuated such concept-based albums as Days Of Future Passed, a US Number 3 in 1967 containing band cornerstone Nights In White Satin. His poesy did not hold back, and he told Record Mirror in 1970: “I think it is something of a compliment to be called ‘pretentious’.” Top 10 regulars in the UK album charts, and embraced by the US, the huge-selling group went on hiatus from 1974, whereupon Edge sailed the Med in his yacht Delia and recorded two records with his own Graeme Edge Band. After The Moody Blues re-formed in 1978 to record eight more LPs, he also played with jazzers Loud, Confident & Rong in London’s clubs in the ’80s. He retired in 2018, the last original Moody in the line-up, whereupon the band was done. “It’s true that he kept the group together throughout all the years,” said singer and guitarist Justin Hayward, “because he loved it”.
Ian Harrison