Question time continues in the Senate, but this question, posed 50 years ago by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, still hasn’t been answered. This was the Moodies’ second-best-selling single in the U.K., reaching No. 2, but only No. 21 in the U.S., despite the song being inspired by the band’s American touring.
Hayward told Songfacts about the song’s genesis:
“We’d achieved great success in the United States and we were playing a lot of student venues and colleges, and the student audience was our audience. We were mixing with these people and seeing how different the problems were for them and the issues in being a member of the greatest nation on earth: the United States. How different they were from British people. I was just expressing my frustration around that, around the problems of anti-war and things that really concerned them, and for their own future that they may be conscripted. How that would morally be a dilemma for them and that kind of stuff. So it did really come out of that. And my own particular anger at what was happening. After a decade of peace and love, it still seemed we hadn’t made a difference in 1970. I suppose that was the theme of the song. And then the slow part of the song is really a reflection of that and not feeling defeated, but almost a quiet reflection of it, and mixing with a bit of a love song, as well.”
Nada Surf covered the song in 2010 on their “If I Had a Hi-Fi” album.
It was also covered by ex-Marillion front man Fish in 1993.
