![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/58b9d100b33e184e84dba57f5a00051fee-john-justin-split.rsquare.w330.jpg\")
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\n Lodge and Hayward.
\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Scott Dudelson\/Getty Images, Steve Thorne\/Redferns\n <\/p>\n
The band name should\u2019ve made this obvious, but still, dang. Two months after John Lodge died \u201csuddenly and unexpectedly<\/a>\u201d at the age of 82, the last remaining member of the Moody Blues, Justin Hayward, told<\/a> Rolling Stone that his relationship with his bandmates was far more C-suite than what you were hoping for in your wildest dreams<\/a>. When asked if he talked to Lodge in the final years of his life, Hayward admitted that they weren\u2019t in contact following what became the Moody Blues\u2019 final concert in 2018. And perhaps more dispiriting, despite their decades of shared history, they weren\u2019t even chums. \u201cI don\u2019t think so, no,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut then, I didn\u2019t speak to Graeme Edge either much. I maybe had one call with him, or something like that. What we had in common was the group. That was what we were good at. That was our relationship. It wasn\u2019t a group of friends.\u201d (Edge died<\/a> in 2021 at the age of 80 after a battle with metastatic cancer.)<\/p>\n Hayward insists that there was \u201cno plan or strategy about falling out\u201d \u2014 both he and Lodge frequently toured as soloists in the aftermath of the pandemic, emerging from that era as a \u201clittle bit different\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s just that there was never a basis of friendship to begin with. \u201cI think with certain groups, Bono and Edge, it probably is true,\u201d Hayward noted of bands who consist of actual BFFs. \u201cThere was a time when it was wonderful, and then there was a time when it wasn\u2019t so. No, I don\u2019t miss anything.\u201d We\u2019ll need a somber flute solo and some musings about the passage of time to see us out.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lodge and Hayward. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Scott Dudelson\/Getty Images, Steve Thorne\/Redferns The band name should\u2019ve made this obvious,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":439493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[12732,171,150153,202968,202967,975,50,150154,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-439492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bands","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-john-lodge","11":"tag-justin-hayward","12":"tag-melancholy-men","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-the-moody-blues","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115699523432933639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}