In Search of the Lost Chord

The Moody Blues

Deram SML 711 UK

1968

Spurred on by a lousy treatment in this Wikipedia article, I offer my interpretation of the lyrics of "The Actor," my favorite tune on The Moody Blues’ 1968 release In Search of The Lost Chord.

In Search of the Lost Chord

To my mind, “The Actor” (written by progressive rock heartthrob Justin Hayward) is probably a breakup song. The narrator sees himself as an actor in his own life. All the world's a stage, as old Bill Shakespeare once said. All the men and women merely players (As You Like It, II vii). As "the curtain rises on the scene” described in the first verse, someone is shouting to be free. That suggests separation. Perhaps he's leaving a lover, or a lover is leaving him.

Note the cadence in the first verse:

The curtain rises on the scene

With someone shouting to be free

The play unfolds before my eyes

There stands the actor who is me. 

A pleasing rhythm, but was it intentional? It doesn’t do to over-analyze these things, but my more experienced ear does hear things that weren’t apparent in 1968.

After this fine beginning, the second verse, "The sleeping hours take us far," is a bit obtuse. (In fact, the whole song is obtuse.)  If you accept my interpretation up to this point (and admittedly it is speculative), the second verse may be telling us that after their "scene" is over, the lovers sleep. They escape from this sad world, dreaming of traffic, telephones and fields until the alarm clock wakes them up.  Sleep knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, as it were (Macbeth, II i).

The poignant third and fourth verses provide more support for our theme of love gone bad. They happen to be my favorite:

It's such a rainy afternoon

No point in going anywhere

The sounds just drift across my room

I wish this feeling I could share 

It's such a rainy afternoon

She sits and gazes from her window

Her mind tries to recall his face

The feeling deep inside her grows

It seems some time has passed. I have always pictured the narrator and his former lover in the aftermath of their breakup, sitting in separate houses across town from one another, gazing out at the rain. He's unhappy. She’s thinking about some man -- but who? The analysis gets complicated here because she's thinking about "his" face, a man referred to in the third person, but the narrator refers to himself in the first person. 

The chorus and yearning tone of the entire song fit perfectly with my broken love affair hypothesis. Always the romantic of the Moodys, it's no wonder Hayward connected with his female audience. 

Of course, it doesn’t do to over-explicate rock lyrics, particularly with this band. Some words may have been chosen merely to carry the melody and make the song an acceptable length. Some will chuckle at this post (if anyone reads it at all). And I suppose I deserve it, having spilled all this ink. Here I sit, all these years later, dissecting Moody Blues lyrics.  Still, 47 years ago, this album was very important to me. It was the first “psychedelic” record I ever owned – such a contrast to the cheaply produced, shallow tunes which dominated pop music charts of that era. The emotions expressed in “The Actor” fit perfectly with the teenage angst which consumed me at age 16. Back then, I listened to it alone in my bedroom thinking "Yeah, that's right, we're all actors, pretending and faking our way through life."  Even pretending to be in love, perhaps. I assumed that the phrase "the only truth we know comes so easily" was a reference to having casual sex. I was very young.

Whatever the meaning, it's a great song – the best on the album, in my view, with a haunting melody, wistful mood and soft flute and guitar passages that delighted mellowed-out listeners in the late 1960s. Especially the actor who is me. 

--Afterword--

This is the 100th post in this blog. Call me The Centurion.