Drummer and poet who was a co-founder of the Moody Blues
As well as playing drums on stage and on all 16 of the Moody Blues’ studio albums, Graeme Edge, who has died aged 80 of cancer, was also the band’s in-house poet. When his bandmates considered his attempts at lyric-writing too verbose, they decided to use them as spoken-word pieces instead.
Edge’s somewhat portentous poems – initially recited by the singer and keyboardist Mike Pinder – first appeared on Days of Future Passed (1967). Of his seemingly lugubrious piece Late Lament on that album, Edge, who also enjoyed a reputation as the group’s bon vivant, insisted that it was intended to be joyous and uplifting. “It’s a young boy discovering that he loves somebody for the first time, and he just wants to shout it out from the hills – and shout it out again!” he told Rolling Stone in 2018.
