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Thehe moment all shifted for John Lodge and his fellow musicians in the Moody Blues happened one night at the Fiesta club in Stockton. Lodge and Justin Hayward were new to the band, with Lodge handling bass and Hayward on guitar. They had been booked for a lucrative series of variety performances across northern England. The Moodies were playing a variety-style performance, blending rhythm and blues with humorous acts, all while dressed in matching blue outfits. They had achieved a big hit a few years earlier with "Go Now," but by 1966, their image and music seemed passé.

After the performance, Hayward recalled in a past interview, a man approached the backstage area to speak with the group. "Typically, people would comment something like, 'Oh, you're great.' But he stated, 'I just thought I'd tell you, you're the worst bloody band I've watched in my life. You're rubbish. And somebody's got to tell you.'" Hayward and vocalist Ray Thomas were brought to tears, and afterwards, as their van drove back from the venue, drummer Graeme Edge chimed in from the back: "He's right. We're awful."

The following day, the Moodies vowed to abandon the suits, the act, and the past, and transform themselves. In doing so, they became British rock's most underrated band: trailblazers of a unique sound, consistent platinum sellers across many years in the US, and Hall of Fame inductees who played at renowned venues on each side of the ocean until their musical journey concluded in 2018 with a Vegas residency.

And John Lodge, who has died at the age 82, was central to that enduring achievement, as bass player, vocalist, and songwriter. With their album Days of Future Passed in 1967, the Moody Blues didn't just embrace the new psychedelic fashions but integrated them and propelled beyond them in a single leap: a prior year, they had been a variety act, and now they were creating the elements that would define a fresh category: prog rock.

Not that the Moodies were terribly inclined to lengthy compositions with multiple time signatures. They wrote what were, at core, pop songs, but enveloped them in gorgeous arrangements, with rich vocal blends and detailed instrumentation (the signature sound in "Nights in White Satin," their "legacy" song, isn't the guitar: it's flute). They grasped the capabilities of the studio in a way not many of their peers did. And in a band filled with talented composers, Lodge stood out prominently.

"Ride My See-Saw," from 1968's "In Search of the Lost Chord," highlighted Lodge's skills: you can hear the R&B roots in the beat and Hayward's choppy playing, but the vocals are layered so intricately the track becomes almost spiritual. It's quite representative of the era, but also completely fantastic – the experience of popular music evolving in the studio, in the studio. (There's a live version from 1969 that's blistering: this band truly knew how to rock.)

Lodge had decided to be a bassist because he admired keyboard players. As he explained in a recent discussion: "When I was at college, there was a coffee shop right by my campus with a branded jukebox. Every midday, I used to skip and instead of having lunch at the institution, I'd go to the cafe, have a cup of espresso and put a token in the slot and play whatever my preferred record was. I realised that what I truly enjoyed about rock music is the bass line on the piano, the rhythmic engine. I recognized that the musicians I was hearing were people like Fats, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and I realised the bass part, the rhythmic piano, was the heart of rock'n'roll ... There were no basses in the city at the time. When the bass finally came to town, it appeared in a music shop called Jack Woodross. Every weekend, all the aspiring players would go there and practice their instruments and pick up something different from someone else. And one day, I went there and I spotted 'American-made bass guitar' in the display. So I went back and asked to my dad, could you help me buy this guitar? And we went returned to the store, I bought it, and it's stayed with me from then on."

By 1972, the Moodies were genuinely huge, and encouraged by their tendency for vague but somewhat deep-seeming words, fans took to believing they had greater wisdom than they actually did, a scenario that provoked what became Lodge's signature song for the Moodies, "I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)." The track, which reached number twelve in the United States as a release, featured Lodge disavowing any form of knowledge: "If you want the wind of change to affect you / And you're the sole additional person to understand, don't say / I'm just a singer in a rock 'n' roll band."

The 1973's tour to promote "Seventh Sojourn" saw the Moody Blues experiencing a way of life more typically associated with Led Zeppelin. As Lodge recalled in the album commentary for a reissue of the record: "We had our personal jet aircraft which was fitted with a lounge area and a fireplace. There were two sleeping quarters, some 20 individual TVs, audio systems throughout, and we had our dedicated attendant and our name displayed on the exterior of the plane. I had a very hollow sensation knowing that things had become this over-the-top."

The next year, the group went on hiatus for four years. It was likely a wise move, because as Andy Childs wrote in ZigZag in the mid-70s, just as the punk movement was stirring, "The Moodies produce records which sell to middle-class trendy pairs residing in the stockbroker belt who understand and worry as much regarding the genre as Batman."

When they returned in 1978, with the "Octave" album, it wasn't exactly punk bands, but the record's opener, Lodge's "Steppin' in a Slide Zone," demonstrated that the Moody Blues could adjust to evolving times without losing their core Moodiness – the multitracked vocals and unusual arrangements were remained in effect, but "Steppin' in a Slide Zone" had an sharpness that still sounds very 1978, clean and taut and tense. Just in case anyone was scared off, Lodge's "Survival" from that same record had string sections to complement the synths, and the softness that was among the band's notable traits.

However although they were the great enduring acts and great achievements of psychedelia's's golden age – perhaps only a Beatle had more acclaim for a longer time – the Moody Blues never held a prominent cultural space. But they did occupy their own niche, and that was sufficiently adequate for the multitudes of fans who never stopped adoring them.

And Lodge did not take his craft lightly. He always saw in it the possibility for something more than entertainment. In that 2023 interview, he was asked what "psychedelic" meant to him, and answered perfectly: "I hope your imagination will delve into the music and take you where the music guides you. It's not just about singing along, it's listening. It can be a single tone and that carries you somewhere. And I believe if you can create visions and stories in your mind as the melody leads you, to me that's mind-expanding. You have to engage to things, not just hear them."