The Moody Blues’ ‘Legend of a Mind’ Idealizes Timothy Leary and his Acid Dreams

The song’s lyrics reveal a roadmap to psychedelia. The songwriter asserts it wasn’t meant to be taken so seriously.

Legend of a Mind

“Legend of a Mind,” a song recorded in 1968 by the progressive rock band the Moody Blues, pays homage to counter-culture icon Timothy Leary, whose advocacy of LSD and psychedelic drugs compelled President Richard Nixon to name Leary as “the most dangerous man in America.”

The song was written by Moody Blues flautist Ray Thomas, who also performed a memorable two-minute flute interlude in the recording. “Legend of a Mind” was included in the Moody Blues’ third album, In Search of the Lost Chord. It was not released as a single.

Here are five components that comprise what AllMusic.com called “the defining psychedelic-era anthem.”

1) The band: the Moody Blues

The Moody Blues began in the mid-’60s in Birmingham, England, as a British Invasion pop band with one hit, “Go Now” (sung by Denny Laine, who would soon join Paul McCartney’s Wings), under their belt. In 1967, they released their second album, Days of Future Passed, a groundbreaking “concept” recording that blended orchestral sounds from a London symphony, soaring vocal harmonies, mystical lyrics, and conventional rock instruments. Breakthrough hit: “Nights in White Satin.”

For the recording of “Legend of a Mind,” the Moody Blues traded the London Festival Orchestra for their novel keyboard device, the Mellotron, an instrument capable of duplicating orchestral sounds such as violins, brass sections, and choirs. Rock fans loved it, and the Moody Blues were hailed as progressive rock pioneers.

Notably, some band members took their first LSD trip in 1967.

Without further ado, let’s listen to “Legend of a Mind,” a 6+ minute video with great graphics and band shots, published by sunsetz777 via YouTube:

2) The subject: Timothy Leary

In the early ’60s, Timothy Leary was a clinical psychologist at Harvard University whose research was increasingly focused on the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs. Leary’s interest in psychedelics might have begun when he had a favorable experience with Psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”) in Mexico in 1960. Along with colleague Richard Alpert, Leary experimented with LSD in clinical settings in which undergraduates took the drug. Harvard was not amused and Leary and Alpert were fired in 1963. But Leary was just getting started.

“Set and Setting”

In 1964, Leary co-authored a book titled The Psychedelic Experience, which instructed readers how to prepare for and experience LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Sub-titled A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Leary’s book introduced terms such as “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” and “Set and Setting,” the latter of which set two parameters for safe LSD usage amid the intense pyschic effects of LSD: “Set,” or a relaxed and positive mindset; and “Setting,” or finding a safe space among friendly people. (I can assure you that this was crucial information for me back in the day.) “Legend of a Mind” captured the aspirational nature of an LSD trip.

By the end of the ’60s, Leary was being called “the High Priest of LSD.” In 1970, Leary was convicted of drug charges under the Marijuana Tax Act.

3) The subject meets the band

The Moody Blues met Timothy Leary during their first US tour soon after “Legend of a Mind” was released. Leary reportedly didn’t like the song when he first heard it, but ended up adopting it as a sort of theme song on his lecture circuit. “We met Tim [in 1968], and he wasn’t offended by our lyrics at all,” remembers Justin Hayward. “He enjoyed it, and we became friends over the years.”

Justin Hayward:

Some of us in the band were going through our own psychic experiences…We were reading a lot of underground press and reading a lot about Tim Leary, so we put him in…

The song is a very tongue-in-cheek version, a very cheeky English version of what we thought things would be like in San Francisco in the ‘flower power’ days…It was tongue-in-cheek but with a background of serious meaning…We were using a lot of phrases at the time extracted from the Tibetian Book of the Dead, talking about the astral plane and so forth…

Songwriter Ray Thomas:

When he came to see us, we were playing the Greek Theater [in LA]. Tim came on stage for “Legend of a Mind” and played tambourine. That brought the bloody house down…

So anyway, Tim came back stage and complimented us on the show. So he asked me to go outside with him, says there’s something I want to tell you…says I’m going to tell you something, but if you repeat it, I will deny saying it…So I said, okay Tim, what is it? He said that bloody song made me more famous than [anything] I did (laughing)…I never told anybody what he said until after he was gone.

4) The lyrics

Here is a condensed version of the lyrics, excluding the repetition common in popular songs:

Timothy Leary’s dead
No, no, he’s outside looking in.

He’ll fly his astral plane, takes you trips around the bay,
Brings you back the same day,
Timothy Leary

Aong the coast, you’ll hear them boast
About a light they say sounds so clear.
So raise your glass, we’ll drink a toast
To the little man who sells you thrills along the pier.

He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down
He’ll plant your feet firmly on the ground.
He flies so high, he swoops so low,
He knows exactly which way he’s going to go…

Timothy Leary was very much alive when the “Legend of a Mind” was released in 1968, having died of prostate cancer in 1996. One reviewer observed that “Timothy Leary’s dead…is a metaphorical transcendence rather than a literal cessation.”

5) Beatles connection

In the late ’60s, psychedelic music was hitting its stride, and prominent among popular psychedelic songs were the Moody Blues’ “Legend of a Mind” and the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The two songs share a significant trait: the Mellotron. And according to legend, it was Moody Blues keyboardist Mike Pinder who introduced the Mellotron to John Lennon, who went on to utilize the instrument in his childhood dream masterpiece. Pinder:

We [opened for] the Beatles’ last tour of England…[We] were busy creating our own music, but we were always inspired by the [Fab Four]…This is why I wanted those guys to have a Mellotron. The Mellotron allowed musicians to explore musical landscapes, and who better to do that than the Beatles.

Coda

“Legend of a Mind” represents a milestone in the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture of the late ’60s. It captured Timothy Leary’s advocacy of consciousness expansion through mind-altering substances. The song heralded progressive rock’s emphasis on thematic depth rather than the three-minute love song. Musically, “Legend of a Mind” expanded the experimental boundaries of rock ‘n’ roll, showcasing the flute as the primary solo instrument and featuring provocative orchestral elements that few bands at the time could muster.

When Ray Thomas died in 2018, the Moody Blues ceased playing “Legend of a Mind” to live audiences.