The Moody Blues
To Our Children's Children's Children

THE REVIEW

When, in a few days, it will once again be July 20th, television news, newspapers, the internet, all media will dedicate at least a few lines to remembering a summer evening in 1969 that kept approximately one billion people around the world glued to their televisions. Man set foot on the Moon at the peak of an endeavor born precisely under the zodiac sign dedicated to the celestial body nearest to us, sparking an unparalleled frenzy for space—neither before nor after. In the usual Romagna, a couple of enthusiastic parents decided to name their child LEM, the lunar module and its occupants were photographed and published everywhere, even on stamps issued in countries of the communist bloc; the space style ran rampant in clothing and furnishings. In one night, it seemed as though the boundary between science and science fiction had disappeared forever, and probably everyone dreamed a little of taking an interplanetary trip.

I, who was able to savor the last expressions of this mania (in the days of the earliest Shuttle flights), have often wondered what, for example, my parents felt that night. Of course, an idea can be given by the footage of that era, the cover of Messaggero with the word "Luna" written in gigantic letters, certain tracks from bands like Hawkwind and Tangerine Dream. Then I discovered "To Our Children's Children's Children" by the Moody Blues, an album that presents itself with one of the ugliest titles I can remember.

It is a work which, after recordings had already begun, the Moodies decided to dedicate entirely to the "giant leap for mankind," introducing a "space age" spirit so sincere that it often sounds more significant than any other historical testimony. Just one listen to "Floating" captures the band's amazement at the new frontiers opened up by the moon landing; a song as simple as a nursery rhyme to which an exceptionally enlightened production gives a profoundly cosmic sense without falling into the clichés associated with this attribute: no synthesizer whistles, no phasers and psychedelic lengths, but the dry and sparse sound of drums, a fabric of little bells (probably a celesta) expertly reverberated, guitars in glissando as a backdrop. Ray Thomas, the group's flautist, recites a deliberately childlike text in its images of people engaged in "sixty-foot jumps," reminiscent of certain passages from Heinlein's "Future History" stories. Here's how a track tells something nobody normally tells you about that evening: that billion people probably, first of all, became children again, with the eyes of wonder at new things, something also told by the gentle flower power ballad "Eyes of a Child."

Space, however, is also the field of epic enterprises, of astonishing speeds, of the sensation of freedom from the limits of gravity and the boundaries of man. These feelings are skillfully evoked in "Beyond," an epic and compelling instrumental played on Michael Pinder's beautiful use of the mellotron and a very dynamic rhythm section, and "Gypsy," probably the most rock track on the album (and one of the few subsequently performed live), where the figure of the wanderer is launched into the solar system and beyond onto yet another anthology riff by Justin Hayward. Or, even more so, in "Out and In," a track where mellotron and guitar intertwine with a calm, almost hinted vocal line, suggesting seraphic images of satellites in orbit or extravehicular flights.

However, an endeavor such as the conquest of the Moon must have also prompted profound existential questions: is this only a first step? What is man in the face of the unimaginable vastness of space? "Candle of Life" introduces a melancholic note into the album, describing that something that "tells you that you are alone in the hands of time," and communicates it to us with the notes of a minor-key track, with a mellotron theme so distinctive that it could rival "Nights in White Satin." A note that finds its better fulfillment in the track that closes the album, "Watching and Waiting," in line to be defined as the most beautiful song ever written by the band. Hayward’s passionate voice describes man's solitude in space without, however, the anxieties of Bowie's contemporary "Space Oddity," instead focusing on the sense of waiting, the patience of one awaiting the arrival of a friend. Once again, the mellotron seems to want to expand the atmospheres until it pushes them outside of space and time, making this track truly something eternal and poignant.

With eyes now full of images that go far beyond the thin Earth's atmosphere, I struggle to return in my mind to our present days. I would like to rediscover that enthusiasm, so simple and so genuine, that the Moody Blues communicated to me, and I am confronted with a reality in which one rarely looks towards the sky with the inner desire to one day explore it, and the feat of that distant July 20, 1969, if not outright dismissed as useless, is fit only to fuel the vain chatter of conspiracy theorists, divided between those who deny that man ever set foot on our satellite and those who insist that the usual Americans are hiding something more from us. "To Our Children's Children's Children" remains a consolation to me: the opportunity to relive for about forty minutes that spirit which, many years ago, made man feel like the protagonist of his universe.