B-side "Cities" Recorded 8 October 1967 | Format 7-inch single | |
Released 10 November 1967 (1967-11-10) Genre Symphonic rock
proto-prog
pop Length 7:38 (Album version)
3:06 (Single version #1)
4:26 (Single version #2) | ||
"Nights in White Satin" is a 1967 single by The Moody Blues, written and composed by Justin Hayward and first featured as the segment "The Night" on the album Days of Future Passed. When first released in 1967, the song reached #19 on the UK Singles Chart and #103 in the United States in early 1968. It was the first significant chart entry by the team since "Go Now" and its recent lineup change, in which Denny Laine had resigned and both Hayward and John Lodge had joined.
Contents
- Production
- Single releases
- Late Lament
- False claim of authorship
- Personnel
- Theme park attraction and other uses
- Other uses of the song
- Sandra version
- Other cover versions
- References
Upon its 1972 reissue, the single hit #2 – for two weeks – on the Billboard Hot 100 (behind "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash) and hit #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 in the United States. It earned a Gold certification for sales of over a million U. S. copies. It also hit #1 in Canada. In the wake of its American success, the song re-charted in the U. K. in late 1972 and climbed to #9. The song was re-released yet again in 1979, and charted for a third time in the U. K. – peaking at #14.
Production
Band member Justin Hayward wrote and composed the song at age 19 in Swindon, and titled the song after a girlfriend gave him a gift of satin bedsheets. The song itself was a tale of a yearning love from afar, which leads many aficionados to term it as a tale of unrequited love endured by Hayward. Hayward said of the song. "It was just another song I was writing and I thought it was very powerful. It was a very personal song and every note, every word in it means something to me and I found that a lot of other people have felt that very same way about it."
The London Festival Orchestra provided the orchestral accompaniment for the introduction, the final rendition of the chorus, and the "final lament" section, all of which were in the original album version. The "orchestral" sounds in the main body of the song were actually produced by Mike Pinder's Mellotron keyboard device, which would come to define the "Moody Blues sound."
The song is written in the key of E minor and features the Neapolitan chord (F).
Single releases
There are two single versions of the song, both stripped of the orchestral and "Late Lament" poetry sections of the LP version. The first edited version, with the songwriter's credit shown as "Redwave," was a hasty sounding 3:06 version of the LP recording with very noticeable chopped parts. However, there are many versions of the single that are listed on the labels at 3:06, but in fact are closer to the later version of 4:26.
Some versions, instead of ending cold as most do, segue briefly into the symphonic second half ("Late Lament") and, in fact, run for 4:33 (but are also listed on the label as 3:06). For the second edited version (with the song's writing credited to Hayward), the early parts of the song were kept intact, ending early at 4:26. Most single versions were backed with a non-LP B-side, "Cities."
Although it only had limited commercial success on its first release, the song has since garnered much critical acclaim, ranking #36 in BBC Radio 2's "Sold on Song Top 100" list.
"Late Lament"
The spoken-word poem heard near the six-minute mark of the album version of the song is called "Late Lament". Drummer Graeme Edge wrote the verses, which were recited by keyboardist Mike Pinder. On Days of Future Passed, the poem's last five lines bracket the album and also appear at the end of track 1 ("The Day Begins").
While it has been commonly known as part of "Nights in White Satin" with no separate credit on the original LP, "Late Lament" was given its own listing on the two-LP compilation This Is The Moody Blues in 1974 and again in 1987 (without its parent song) on another compilation, Prelude. Both compilations feature the track in a slightly different form than on Days of Future Passed, giving both spoken and instrumental tracks an echo effect. The orchestral ending is kept intact, but recording engineers have completely edited out the gong (struck by Mike Pinder) that closes the track on the original LP.
From 1992 through the early 2000s, the Moody Blues toured with shows backed by live orchestras. When with orchestral accompaniment, they often took the opportunity to include "Late Lament" in the performance of "Nights in White Satin". On these occasions, Edge recited it himself, since Pinder was not in the band at that point.
False claim of authorship
In the late 1990s, the UK magazine Record Collector printed a claim that "Nights in White Satin" had not been written by Justin Hayward at all, but that in fact the Moody Blues' management had simply bought the song outright in 1966 from an Italian group called The Jelly Roll and taken credit for it. This claim seems to have arisen from the discovery of a 7" single by The Jelly Roll which carries the words "This is the original version of Nights in White Satin" on the label.
Actually, "Les Jelly Roll" was a French band who did this cover of the Moody Blues song, and had the opportunity to release it in Italy, on Ricordi (an Italian record label), a few months before the original was released there. So as a joke (they appear not to have been a very serious band), they put the famous sentence on the cover.
Personnel
Theme park attraction and other uses
The work was reinterpreted as the focus of Nights in White Satin: The Trip, a dark ride at the Hard Rock Park theme park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, U.S.A. The attraction, which included 3D-black light and fiber-optic lighting effects and purpose-made films, was developed by Sally Corporation and Jon Binkowski of Hard Rock Park. Riders entered through a bead curtain, were provided 3D glasses, and upon return were greeted with the question, "How was your Trip?" Visual effects, digital CGI and special effects were designed, produced, and installed by Attraction Design Services; ride vehicles were from ETF.
The attraction operated as "The Trip" for the single 2008 season the park operated as Hard Rock Park, but was rethemed as "Monstars of Rock" with the sale and retitling of the park as Freestyle Music Park; "park officials said the experience will be similar but the presentation will be changed." Freestyle Music Park would cease operations after its only season as such in 2009.
Other uses of the song
Sandra version
"Nights in White Satin" is a pop-rock cover version of the selection written and composed by Justin Hayward, which was performed by the German singer Sandra. The song appeared on Sandra's sixth studio album Fading Shades (1995).
It was produced by Michael Cretu and received mixed reception from music critics. The song was released as the lead single in the spring of 1995 (see 1995 in music), although it failed to match the success of Sandra's previous singles. The song peaked at #1 in Israel (spending two weeks at the top), #17 in Finland, and #34 in New Zealand (Sandra's only charting hit there). In Germany it only peaked at #86, becoming her least successful lead single in that country to date. In the United Kingdom, it failed to enter the chart.
The music video, directed by Angel Hart, showed only close ups of Sandra's face as she was pregnant at the time. She even had to sit during the recording sessions of the album. (Note that the Fading Shades album cover was taken from the music video.)