108 | CORNWALL TODAY www.cornwalltoday.co.uk | 108

justin hayward

6tanding on the edge of a Cornish cliff, looking out to the sun setting over the sea, you certainly get a sense that here, in the county he has called his ‘spiritual’ home since the 1970s, Justin Hayward has found a sense of peace.

Justin is pictured this way by photographer and family friend Marcus Way for the cover of his latest album, Spirits Of The Western Sky, his first solo album in 17 years. It is easy to imagine that the title pays homage to the Cornish horizon, which has held a fascination for the singer-songwriter ever since Justin bought a home in Lelant in the early 1970s.

But in truth, although the story behind that title explains in part his love of Cornwall, the majority of the songs he has written as a solo artist and for the Moody Blues - the band he has fronted for a staggering 48 years - have been composed far away from the county. Cornwall, it seems, is a place where he seeks escape from his day to day working life as a musician.

“I never really wrote on the beach,” he says. “Inspiration has to find you working. I had to be with a keyboard and guitar. People thought that Cornish beaches must be inspiration for a lot of the songs, but for me, Cornwall has always been a haven away from music. It has been a place where I could be with my family and my horse. It’s a beautiful county to ride in. When it came to knuckling down and really getting work done, I’d come back to my flat in London, as my studio was there.

“I never brought work home to Cornwall. There was always something outside the window that was more interesting, and in the middle of the night I’d just want to be asleep and get up the next morning to discover a bit more of the county. I still played. I had a whole keyboard set up and guitars in the house, but more often than not I just played for pleasure.”

Originally from Swindon, Justin never spent any time in Cornwall as a child. His first visit happened almost by chance, thanks to a newspaper advert which led to take a break with his wife Marie.

“None of the band had thought about taking a holiday - that was something adults did. But I think I was looking in the Evening Standard one day, and I noticed this newly-built house on the Hayle estuary at Lelant that was available to rent by the week. Marie and I took it for a couple of weeks, and we just loved it. We were enchanted by it, really.”

Even the eight-hour drive from London, as it was at that time, wasn’t enough to put them off. On the contrary, they soon started looking for a property of their own. “Two years later, we bought an old bungalow on top of the hill at Lelant and converted it into a bigger house, and that’s where we lived.”

Justin describes the early 1970s as a golden time for Cornwall - “it drew me in” - as a lot of people had gone there as hippies and ended up staying, setting up lives as sculptors and artists. Meanwhile, Justin and Marie were thinking about starting a family and in 1972 their daughter, Doremi, was born. Then, after his father died, Justin’s mother moved down to Carbis Bay. “That’s why many people think I am from Cornwall originally,” explains Justin, “but I was here before the rest of my family.”

Of course, there was always a steady stream of friends visiting, among them Mike Aldred from Ready, Steady Go! and songwriter Lionel Bart. But it was Phil Travis, the cover artist for many of the Moody Blues’ early albums, who really impressed Justin. “He came down and stayed with us in the early 1970s, and he just fell in love with the place - and he stayed. He never went back to London. I really admired him, it was a very brave thing to do to up sticks from his house in West London with his family. He was just captivated by it.”

Justin, however, still had many commitments with the Moody Blues to fulfil. Not only were they rarely out of the charts in the UK, but they had built up a strong fan base in the US — where Justin is currently launching a new summer tour — and so inevitably London ended becoming the family’s main home and where Doremi went to school.

“Every school holiday, we’d come down,” Justin says. “I would commute from Cornwall to the US — getting on the plane from Newquay or driving up to Heathrow. It worked out really quite well and I was always happy to get over the river to Cornwall,

Spirit of the :(67(51�6.<

MOODY BLUES FRONTMAN JUSTIN HAYWARD EXPLAINS WHY CORNWALL WILL ALWAYS BE HIS SPIRITUAL HOME.

Words by Adam Carpenter, photographs by Marcus Way

108 | CORNWALL TODAY www.cornwalltoday.co.uk | 108

justin hayward

particularly into West Cornwall. I’d become enamoured with the area, particularly the stone circles. There’s so much written about the county, and I was just on a mission to discover as much as I could about it. It’s absolutely wonderful.”

Around this time, Justin did write some songs in Cornwall, including the Moody Blues’ 1978 comeback single Driftwood. Until then, he had led a relatively anonymous existence in Lelant, but that same year everything changed when he featured on the soundtrack for Jeff Wayne’s musical War Of The Worlds musical and scored a Top 5 hit with Forever Autumn: “For the first time in my life, I really got recognised. I used to ride a lot on the horse, and people would shout out, ‘Hey, Justin!’ That was a wonderful summer. »

Justin enjoyed more success in the 1980s and 1990s, both with the Moody Blues and as a solo artist, working with the likes of keyboard player Rick Wakeman and songwriter/musician Mike Batt. He also contributed songs to film

soundtracks and even the children’s programme The Shoe People. In recent years, much time has been spent touring with the Moody Blues - including an annual Moodies cruise which began last year. In 2005, Justin also reprised his role in a new stage production of War Of The Worlds.

Last year’s Spirits Of The Western Sky became his first solo album in 17 years: “I’d been collecting new songs, and I couldn’t see a new Moodies album on the horizon. About three years ago, my engineer said: ‘Let’s just do it properly and see what happens.’ I didn’t have a deal or anything like that. And suddenly this album became my whole life. It’s the fondest thing I’ve ever done, and I enjoy playing the songs on stage now. »

And if the songs themselves do not take root in Cornwall, there’s no doubt about the origin of the album cover, taken by photographer and family friend Marcus Way. “I already had the title, so it was Marcus’ idea to do the photos where we did. He’d keep having to move his location, and we’d

go back a couple of weeks later and the sun wouldn’t be setting over that exact place. It would have moved a bit in the winter sky, or something like that.

“I’ve loved the idea of there being spirits in the western sky since I was a kid. I grew up with my brother in this house in Swindon, and there was a room at the back of the house with these giant windows through which we could see the weather coming. It was facing the western sky, and it would roll in across the Wiltshire Downs.

“We both loved music, we liked different things, but we both knew that our heroes were in that western sky, and I was the one lucky enough to go there in the mid-Sixties with the group and have some success in America. I went to Lubbock, Texas, where Buddy Holly was born, and to Nashville. Even today, I am compelled to live in a place with a view of the western sky.”

Which brings us back to his home in Lelant. Asked if he considers Cornwall his home, he pauses whimsically, then

replies: “Spiritual home, yeah. I would spend more time here, but the Moody Blues have never really gone away. We are offered more work now than ever, and could play every night of the year around the world. That’s like a bit of a drug - it’s not something I’d want to give up easily.”

But Cornwall, it seems, is also something of a drug too, and he talks enthusiastically about returning at the end of June just when the flowers come into in full bloom.

“It will be lovely. In the 1970s, I knew if I committed completely to it, I’d never leave. But I knew there were other things I had to do in my life, and I had to get up and not surrender to Cornwall. The county is so beautiful, and it is so alluring that it was very hard to drag myself away from it. But I think in the end - maybe in a wheelchair - that’s where I am going.”

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justin hayward