Other Voices, Part 11: Moody Blues, 1968

The Moody Blues is an English rock band formed in 1964.  (Until late 1966, one of the group's members was Denny Laine who joined the last Paul replacement's--the current "Paul McCartney"--band, Wings.)  On May 17, 1968, the Moody Blues recorded a spoken word track, Departure that led into the next track, the song, Ride My See-Saw.  The song was released as a single on October 5, 1968.  It was described on a Paul-Was-Replaced discussion board as a song about Paul.  It is.

The spoken word introduction is about an LSD trip.   Some of the relevant lyrics of the song that follows are:

          Run, run my last race,
          Take my place
          Have this number
          Of mine.
          .     .      .      .
         
          Left school with a first class pass,
          Started work but as second class.
          School taught one and one is two.
          But right now, that answer just ain't true.

 Our Paul had been a college student (the first class pass) according to an article in the L.A. fan magazine, KRLABeat. (See the September 28, 2012 post.)  The second class reference would probably be that our Paul was a replacement for the real Paul McCartney.  The "one and one is two" reference has to do with our Paul's replacement being considered (in 1968) the one Paul McCartney.

But, the proof that the song was about Paul is that it has extended backmasked sequences with just one word:  PAUL----
     At he beginning of the reversed song until ~ 27 seconds into it,  the name Paul is sung three times.
     From 1:35-2:01, the name Paul is sung several times, in an extended, choir-like way.
     At 3:37-4:14, there is a strange, electronic, descending chord with unintelligible (reversed) talk
     that starts loud and screaming and becomes softer and softer as the chord descends.

It gets murky in these backmasked songs whether they are talking about the real Paul or our Paul, but my feeling is that if the band was talking in the present tense and the real Paul died in late 1965 or early 1966, then this song was about our Paul.