THE JUSTIN HAYWARD HISTORY:

Born 14. October, 1946, Dean Street, Wiltshire, England.

Best known as singer, songwriter and guitarist in the rock band The Moody Blues.
Hayward was born in Dean Street, Swindon, Wiltshire, England, and educated at Shrivenham School, Berkshire, and The Commonweal School in Swindon.

Early career
When Justin Hayward was 15, he was able to afford a Gibson guitar and a Vox amplifier through performing with local Swindon groups in clubs and dance halls playing mostly Buddy Holly songs. One of Justin Hayward's early groups was All Things Bright, which opened for The Hollies and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. At age 17, he signed a publishing contract as a songwriter with the skiffle artist and record producer Lonnie Donegan, a move Justin Hayward later regretted as it meant the rights to all his songs written before 1974 would always be owned by Donegan's Tyler Music. In 1965 he answered an advertisement in Melody Maker and auditioned as guitarist for Marty Wilde and he went on to work with Wilde and his wife in The Wilde Three.

The Moody Blues
In 1966, after answering another ad in Melody Maker, this time placed by Eric Burdon of The Animals, Justin Hayward was contacted by Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues after Burdon had passed on Hayward's letter and demo discs to Pinder. Within a few days Hayward had replaced departing The Moody Blues vocalist and guitarist Denny Laine. Bassist John Lodge replaced temporary deputy Rod Clarke who had stood in for departed Bassist Clint Warwick at the same time.
After beginning by singing the old blues-inspired repertoire of The Moodies' 1964-1965 era, Justin Hayward's initial artistic contribution to The Moody Blues was his song 'Fly Me High', which was a Decca single early in 1967. It failed to chart but gave the revised band a new direction forward from the 'R & B' sound they had been largely producing up to that point.
Justin Hayward's driving rocker 'Leave This Man Alone' was then used as 'B' side to the next Moodies single on Decca, backing Mike Pinder's 'Love And Beauty' (1967) the first Moodies record to feature the mellotron.
Justin Hayward's and John Lodge's integration into The Moody Blues along with Mike Pinder's use of the Mellotron sparked greater commercial success and recognition for the band, transforming them into one of pop music's biggest-selling acts. Justin Hayward says of Mike Pinder: "Mike and the Mellotron made my songs work."
The 1967 album Days of Future Passed, one of the first and most influential symphonic rock albums, spawned the Justin Hayward-penned singles "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin". The latter record went on to sell over two million copies, charting three times in the UK (1967, 1972, and in 1979) and has been recorded by many other recording artists. Justin Hayward's 'B' side song 'Cities' being an early ecology themed item.
Justin Hayward became the group's main onstage figurehead over the 1967-1974 period, and the most prolific songwriter and composer of several big hit singles for the band. During this time he wrote memorable album tracks such as: "Tuesday Afternoon" (originally the first half, with John Lodge's (Evening) Time to Get Away, of "'Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)"), "The Actor", "Lovely to See You", "Never Comes the Day", "Gypsy (Of a Strange and Distant Time)", "It's Up To You", "Dawning is The Day","You Can Never Go Home", "The Story in Your Eyes" (a US chart hit), "New Horizons", "The Land of Make-Believe", and "Island"
Hayward wrote the band's UK No. 2 hit, "Question" as well as "Voices in the Sky", "Driftwood", "The Voice", "Blue World", "Your Wildest Dreams", "I Know You're Out There Somewhere", "English Sunset" and "December Snow"; in all, writing 20 of the group's 27 post-1967 singles.
In addition to handling the lead vocals on his own compositions, Justin Hayward also took a featured lead or co-lead vocal on other band members songs such as; "Dawn is A Feeling" (Mike Pinder), "Gimmie A Little Something", "Isn't Life Strange", "Candle of Life" (John Lodge), "After You Came", "I'll Be Level With You", "The Spirit". "Nothing Changes" (Graham Edge) etc....
The Moodies' attempts to come up with another specific 'hit single' during the 1967-68 period saw them record three other Hayward compositions; "Long Summer Days", "King and Queen" and "What Am I Doing Here?" all of which were then left unissued, but together with unissued songs by Mike Pinder and John Lodge later formed the 'studio side four' of Decca's 1977 release; Caught Live Plus Five which largely comprised a December 1969 Live Recording of a concert at The Royal Albert Hall (issued against the group's wishes).
Hayward also co-wrote album tracks with Ray Thomas - "Visions of Paradise", "Are You Sitting Comfortably", "Watching and Waiting", and much later "Never Blame the Rainbows for the Rain", plus later co-wrote many songs with John Lodge for The Moodies, notably "Gemini Dream" (a US Chart hit), "Meet Me Halfway", "Talkin' Talkin'", "Want To Be With You", "Once is Enough", "Strange Times","Sooner or Later (Walking on Air)" among others.
Justin Hayward's songs have opened each of The Moodies albums in their 'post Mike Pinder era' since Long Distance Voyager in 1981, and his songs, both solo compositions and co-written with John Lodge, plus his lead vocals, harmony voice, and guitar playing have been a major overriding factor in the bands work and continued success since 1981.
Their album sales from 1978 to the present are more than 60 million. This is the regularly quoted total of their album sales, since the total sales of their albums before 1978 is disputed due to lack of official record company data, However the period 1967 to 1974 was when their albums (and singles) were charting highest in the UK and US plus worldwide (album track "Melancholy Man" made number one in France as a single in 1970) - Days of Future Passed topped the US album charts on re-issue in 1972, then was followed into the album charts by the new studio album Seventh Sojourn.

Hiatus and Blue Jays / Solo Work
In 1974, the Moody Blues decided to take what ended up being a four-year break from performing and recording. Justin Hayward continued working with Lodge and producer Tony Clarke, using musicians from The Moody Blues' label, Threshold, and sounding very much like the mother group. Together, they had a hit in 1975 with "Blue Guitar" (a Hayward recording with the band 10cc), and released an album titled Blue Jays.
In 1977 Hayward recorded his first solo album Songwriter. He enjoyed international solo success in 1978 when he appeared on Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds concept album, which yielded his hits "Forever Autumn" and "The Eve of the War". Jeff Wayne later contributed to Hayward's 1980 album Night Flight.
Hayward issued a rare non-album single "Marie" c/w "Heart of Steel' (Decca F13834) in April 1979, both sides composed by him, the 'A' side dedicated to his wife. These tracks were later included among the 'Bonus' tracks on a CD re-issue of his Songwriter solo album in 2004.
During the 1980s, Hayward composed and performed for film and television, including the theme song "It Won't Be Easy" for the 1987 BBC2 science fiction series Star Cops, "Something Evil, Something Dangerous" for the film Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, "Eternal Woman" for the film She and music for the animated television series The Shoe People.
In 1989, with producer-arranger Mike Batt, Hayward released Classic Blue, an album of pop standards written by other composers, set to orchestration arranged by Batt. Classic Blue included a cover version of Led Zeppelin's hit "Stairway to Heaven." Hayward's solo album, The View from the Hill, was released in 1996, and a live recording, Live in San Juan Capistrano, followed in 1998.
Hayward contributed vocals to a song on Rick Wakeman's 1999 album Return to the Centre of the Earth.
In 2003 he sang along with other rock singers on another orchestral album, consisting of the Moody Blues songs with the Frankfurt Rock Orchestra, titled Justin Hayward and Friends Perform the Hits of the Moody Blues (alternatively called Justin Hayward and Friends Sing the Moody Blues Classic Hits). Hayward was later involved in a legal dispute, now resolved, arguing he was not paid for his participation on the album.
In April 2006, Hayward took part in the stage tour of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, reprising his role in Autumn 2007 in Australia and in the UK in December 2007. He did so again in the UK in June 2009, and appeared on the tour in November and December 2010.
the Moody Blues, with Hayward, John Lodge and original drummer Graeme Edge, continue to tour extensively and in a recent. BBC World Service interview, Hayward and John Lodge made it clear they have no plans to stop working, regarding it as "a privilege" to still be working in the music industry. In an interview, in 2005, Graeme Edge said if he remained in good health, he could go on for 10 more years.
On 10 December 2011 Hayward along with Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull and Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden played a concert together at Canterbury Cathedral.
On 26 February 2013 Hayward released his solo album "Spirits of the Western Sky" on the Eagle Rock label. He toured solo with this album on the east coast of the USA in August 2013, to much acclaim, with the Moody Blues backups keyboardist Alan Hewitt, and vocalist Julie Ragins and an opening act and accompanying guitarist for Justin in the show, UK's Mike Dawes, an amazing guitarist in his own right. The final show of the solo tour in Atlanta, GA was recorded for a live DVD project (and a live CD) to be released August 19,2014.
Instruments
For the most part, Hayward has used a red Gibson ES-335 ("main axe"), though he also uses other guitars in both performing and recording, including a 1955 Martin D-28 "Dreadnought", a James Olson six-string acoustic, a black Guild acoustic, a Squier Stratocaster (essentially an inexpensive Fender Stratocaster, as Squier is a subsidiary of Fender), a Fender Telecaster, a blonde Guild 12-string acoustic (tuned to "open C"), a 12-string Gibson acoustic (for "Question"), and in 1967 a black Gibson Les Paul. Between 1965 and 1968 he was without his Gibson 335 and relied on other instruments, most notably a 1964 Fender Telecaster and a hand-built 12-string guitar he had renovated for Donegan (he eventually bought this guitar from Donegan's widow). However, in an interview included on the Lovely to See You concert DVD (2005), Hayward says the 1963 Gibson 335 has been with him since 1967. Recently he has played a Collings D3 on stage and on recordings. Among other instruments, Hayward also played mandolin on A Question of Balance and sitar on "In Search of the Lost Chord".

Personal life
At the end of one love affair and the beginning of another, the song "Nights in White Satin" was, according to Hayward, written 'in adoration of all women'. Ann Marie Guirron and Justin were married on 19 December 1970. Their daughter Doremi, born in 1972, was an exchange student at UCLA where she majored in American Studies. She sings on the track "Raised on Love" on Hayward's 1977 album Songwriter.
Awards
Hayward was awarded the first of numerous awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for songwriting in 1974. In 1985, the Moody Blues picked up the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and in 1988 Hayward received the Novello, among other honours, for Composer of the Year (for "I Know You're Out There Somewhere"). In 2000, he was one of a handful of British artists to receive the "Golden Note" award for lifetime achievement by ASCAP. In 2004, Hayward was awarded the "Gold Badge" for lifetime achievement by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA). At the Ivor Novello Awards in London on May 16, 2013 Justin Hayward was given the PRS for Music Award for Outstanding Achievement (presented to Justin by Marty Wilde)