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The moment everything shifted for John Lodge and his bandmates in the Moody Blues occurred one evening at the Fiesta club in Stockton. Lodge and Justin Hayward were recent additions to the band, with Lodge playing bass and Hayward on guitar. They had been scheduled for a well-paid series of cabaret shows across the north of England. The Moodies were performing a revue-style performance, blending rhythm and blues with humorous acts, all while dressed in matching blue outfits. They had scored a major hit a few years earlier with "Go Now," but by 1966, their image and sound seemed outdated.

Following the performance, Hayward mentioned in a past interview, a man approached the dressing room to speak with the band. "Usually, audience members would comment something like, 'Oh, you're great.' But he said, 'I just thought I'd tell you, you're the worst bloody band I've watched in my life. You're terrible. And somebody's got to tell you.'" Hayward and vocalist Ray Thomas were reduced to tears, and afterwards, as their van drove back from the venue, percussionist Graeme Edge chimed in from the rear: "That guy's right. We're awful."

The next day, the Moodies vowed to abandon the suits, the act, and the past, and transform themselves. In doing so, they emerged as UK rock's most underrated band: pioneers of a distinct style, consistent chart-toppers across many years in the US, and Hall of Fame members who played at prestige venues on both sides of the Atlantic until their career concluded in 2018 with a Vegas residency.

And John Lodge, who passed away at the age 82, was central to that lasting success, as bassist, singer, and composer. With Days of Future Passed in 1967, the Moody Blues didn't just adopt the new experimental trends but assimilated them and catapulted past them in one movement: a prior year, they had been a cabaret band, and now they were developing the components that would form a fresh category: prog rock.

It's not as if the Moodies were terribly inclined to lengthy compositions with multiple time signatures. They wrote what were, at heart, pop songs, but wrapped them in beautiful orchestrations, with rich harmonies and detailed musical layers (the signature element in "Nights in White Satin," their "legacy" track, isn't the guitar: it's the flute). They understood the capabilities of the studio in a way not many of their peers did. And in a group filled with capable songwriters, Lodge stood out prominently.

"Ride My See-Saw," from the 1968 album "In Search of the Lost Chord," showcased Lodge's talents: you can hear the R&B band in the rhythm section and Hayward's choppy playing, but the singing are layered so intricately the track becomes almost spiritual. It's quite of its time, but also completely amazing – the sound of pop evolving in the moment, during recording. (There's a live version from 1969's that's electrifying: this group truly knew how to rock.)

Lodge had decided to be a bass player because he admired pianists. As he explained in a recent interview: "When I was at college, there was a cafe right by my school with a branded music player. Every midday, I used to leave and instead of having lunch at school, I'd go to the establishment, have a cup of espresso and put a coin in the slot and play whatever my preferred record was. I understood that what I truly enjoyed about rock'n'roll is the bass line on the keyboard, the rhythmic engine. I realised that the musicians I was hearing were figures like Fats, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and I realised the bass part, the rhythmic piano, was the heart of the genre ... There were no basses in the city at the time. When the instrument eventually came to town, it showed up in a music shop called Jack Woodross. Every Saturday morning, all the aspiring players would go there and play their instruments and pick up something new from someone else. And on a particular day, I went there and I saw 'Direct from the USA, Sunburst Precision Bass' in the window. So I went home and asked to my dad, would you help me buy this bass? And we went back to the store, I bought it, and it's stayed with me ever since."

By the early 70s, the Moodies were genuinely huge, and influenced by their tendency for vague but faintly profound-sounding lyrics, fans took to thinking they had rather more wisdom than they really did, a situation that provoked what became Lodge's signature song for the Moodies, "I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)." The track, which reached No 12 in the United States as a single, featured Lodge disavowing any form of knowledge: "And if you want the shift to blow about you / And you're the sole additional individual to know, don't tell me / I'm just a vocalist in a rock 'n' roll group."

The 1973's tour to support "Seventh Sojourn" saw the Moody Blues living a lifestyle more typically associated with Led Zeppelin. As Lodge recalled in the liner notes for a reissue of the record: "We had our own jet aircraft which was fitted with a sitting room and a hearth. There were a couple of bedrooms, some twenty individual TVs, audio systems everywhere, and we had our dedicated attendant and our band name written on the outside of the aircraft. I had a quite empty feeling realizing that things had become this excessive."

The following period, the group went on hiatus for several years. It was likely a wise move, because as a critic wrote in ZigZag in January 1976, just as punk was emerging, "The Moodies produce records which appeal to middle-class trendy young couples residing in the suburban areas who understand and worry as much about the genre as Batman."

When they returned in 1978, with the "Octave" album, it didn't quite resemble the Clash, but the album's opener, Lodge's "Steppin' in a Slide Zone," showed that the Moody Blues could adjust to changing times without sacrificing their core identity – the layered singing and unusual arrangements were still in effect, but "the song" had an sharpness that feels quite of that era, clean and tight and tense. Just in case anyone was put off, Lodge's "Survival" from that same record had string sections to go with the synths, and the gentleness that was among the group's notable qualities.

Yet although they were the great survivors and great successes of the psychedelic era's peak period – perhaps only Paul McCartney had more success for a longer time – the Moody Blues never occupied a central place in culture. But they did carve out their unique niche, and that was more than adequate for the multitudes of fans who continued loving them.

And Lodge did not take his craft lightly. He consistently saw in it the potential for something more than entertainment. In that recent conversation, he was asked what "psychedelic" meant to him, and answered aptly: "My wish is your mind will explore the music and lead you where the composition guides you. It's not a case of singing along, it's listening. It can be one note and that carries you somewhere. And I believe if you can conjure up experiences and narratives in your thoughts as the melody leads you, to me that's psychedelic. You have to engage to music, not just hear them."