“Legend of a Mind” by The Moody Blues

Ray Thomas, the Moody Blues' flute man, wrote "Legend of a Mind" and stepped up to the microphone to sing it himself. It was the very first track the band cut for In Search of the Lost Chord, taped in January 1968 and put out on Deram that July, with Tony Clarke producing and Derek Varnals engineering.

The subject is Timothy Leary, the acid guru who preached that LSD could open the spirit, and Thomas treats him like a cosmic folk hero, half hymn and half grin. The Mellotron is everywhere, swelling and sighing like a church organ left out in the sun, and the whole thing floats along on the kind of bright-eyed mysticism that only the late '60s could pull off with a straight face.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.