https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/11/11/graeme-edge-dead-moody-blues-drummer-founding-member/6391179001/

Graeme Edge, the lone original member of The Moody Blues, has died. He
was 80.

Frontman Justin Hayward confirmed the news in a Facebook post on the
band's account, saying that “Graeme’s sound and personality is present
in everything we did together and thankfully that will live on.”

Edge’s cause of death on Thursday has not yet been confirmed.

The drummer of the band, renowned for its sweeping ‘60s and ‘70s
symphonic prog-rock hits “Nights in White Satin,” “Tuesday Afternoon”
and “I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band),” co-founded the group
in 1964 in Birmingham, England.

Throughout The Moody Blues’ history, Edge remained an anchor, both in
sound and spirit.

“In the late 1960’s we became the group that Graeme always wanted it to
be, and he was called upon to be a poet as well as a drummer. He
delivered that beautifully and brilliantly, while creating an atmosphere
and setting that the music would never have achieved without his words,”
Hayward said in his post.

“Graeme, and his parents, were very kind to me when I first joined the
group, and for the first two years, he and I either lived together, or
next door to each other - and despite us having almost nothing in
common, we had fun and laughs all the way, as well as making what was
probably the best music of our lives," Hayward continued. "Graeme was
one of the great characters of the music business and there will never
be his like again.”

As a serious disclaimer at the outset of this rock & roll mini-essay, I should grant I'm so third-rate a Moody Blues follower that, from 1972 when I first heard "Nights in White Satin" on AM radio*--and never much bothered to note its lyrics as I never much liked the tune--I always thought the title referred to KKK night-riders, never noticing the title didn't spell it "Knights", nor that Klansmen's hooded sheets were likely ever fashioned out of costly satin! (A MB fan in college eventually set me straight on my silly supposition.)

But I certainly PROUDLY am a (way too late-in-life) drummer, and even before I finally took up that exhilerating instrument, I had developed enough interest in the band by the early '90s that I watched (from the SF Bay Area, where I was hosting commercial newstalk on that same wonderful AM radio band) much of the late Graeme Edge's lengthy testimony in that civil trial carried by Court TV, covering the lawsuit by some former touring MB sideman claiming he was entitled to the same royalties due full-fledged MB members.

Meanwhile, I'm a longtime U2 appreciator, and a die-hard one at that**.

All that said: Since U2 first took America by musical storm in the '80s and, given that sticksman Graeme--love that Brit spelling!--and The Moody Blues had hit it big more than a decade prior, U2's amazing guitarist OUGHT to have instead adopted the stage name An Edge, doncha think?

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
____________________________________________
* On good ol' KIRL/St. Charles, beaming out its iffy signal at 1460 kHz from across the Missouri River to us St. Louis County high school rockers.
** And consider it one of the apexes of my underground rock journalist career that I once--late on Monday night, April 20, 1987 poolside at the Sunset Marquis Hotel, just south of The Strip--not merely hung out at length with Bono following his third performance of a five-gig residency at The Sports Areana, but even for a minute or two found little ol' me fully a (not-at-all co-equal!) third of a quite memorable conversation. The three of us were chatting whilst standing against a wall, with Bono on my right and, to my left...yep, none other than that evening's unbilled guest star for a vocally-earnest two-song encore: the future Nobel laureate of lyrics himself, that quite serious (and seriously-gifted) recording artist with the funny nose, the funnier hair and the funniest voice.

In article <ddd6d0c5-7819-4cb7-9f29-06e229ef7c7bn@googlegroups.com>,
<"radioacti...@gmail.com"> wrote:

> As a serious disclaimer at the outset of this rock & roll mini-essay, I
> should grant I'm so third-rate a Moody Blues follower that, from 1972 when I
> first heard "Nights in White Satin" on AM radio*--and never much bothered to
> note its lyrics as I never much liked the tune--I always thought the title
> referred to KKK night-riders, never noticing the title didn't spell it
> "Knights", nor that Klansmen's hooded sheets were likely ever fashioned out
> of costly satin! (A MB fan in college eventually set me straight on my silly
> supposition.)

The album version of this song got enormous airplay in New York because
it was seven and a half minutes long, and there was a stomach flu
epidemic at the time. Back then all shows were done live, of course.
It's a really good song, but its length would have prohibited Top 40
stations from playing it from the album -- except for the DJs being in
the bathroom for half their shift, I mean. For them, the album version
was a godsend.