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The Moody Blues 1967 UFO Close Encounter

PeteS said:
Don't think the various recountings tally really. The sections of the M6 at Carlisle and Penrith were not completed until 68 to 70 although they could have been on the Preston bypass which was opened in 58. Travelling at 120 (following their equipment truck?) because it was legal suggests the M6 although not having seen any cars for hours is doubtful even back then. I doubt though that a 64 Impala would achieve those speeds and certainly not on the A6 which they must have used to get to the Preston bypass. The "from Manchester" bit is confusing - I doubt that they could have got past Manchester by 1.30 if it was a late gig. No reason really for them to cross the Pennines I wouldn't have thought.

I think it's a question of misremembering details rather than anything else but it would have been fascinating to establish exactly where the encounter took place.
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I feel like Pinder's account has 'evolved' somewhat over the years. The interview with Edge is earlier, albeit many years after the event.

Pinder however seems more likely to have got the year right, assuming Edge wasn't misremembering his bandmates.
 
I don't know where the "going 120" came from. Is this a guess based on a series of assumptions? Mike Pinder, in his podcast interview posted above, is very clear about it being the original band, as he put it, and said they were going 85 mph "trying to get home." He also said they were three hours late getting home. Interesting episode.

85mph in a '64 Impala would be no problem, but it's bordering on white knuckle ride territory. Certainly it would be an, um, adventure today, all of us being used to far more effective brakes, vastly better tires, and so on, but a lot of people in the US routinely drove those cars at scary speeds.

Where is it mentioned they were in a '64 Impala? My dad had one (might have been a '65) with a 409 in it when I was a kid. It was a beast. I'm sure it would do 120, but I'm glad Dad had sense enough not to try it with a kid in the car.
 
The 120 figure came from another, written interview with Pinder. I suppose this is a bit of exaggeration, but if the figure of 80 was mentioned elsewhere then I guess the general impression is that they were trying to get home quickly.

As is the way of these things both witnesses place themselves at the centre of the action by saying they were the one who decided that they should stop and check it out - this is a fairly standard quirk of memory though!
 
EnolaGaia said:
In the podcast interview Pinder refers to their arrival back in London being "three hours late" and mentions nobody remembering what happened between the time they stopped the car and the time they got back in the car and took off again.

Was Pinder alluding to "lost time" that Edge didn't mention?
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If one blends the titles of the band's 1967 and 1968 albums, one gets "In Search of the Lost Days".

Just saying...
 
I feel we need to accept the assertions by both witnesses that they were sober and not on drugs. They are not looking for fame and/or money as they have both through their music. Also, it was a quite frankly a rather mundane sighting for anyone to have hallucinated through using drugs, especially as no aliens or humanoids were reported.

The discrepancy in the dates doesnt bother me that much as these guys were on the road on a regular basis over many years and the FSR interview appears to date from 1991, so over two decades later. We know for a fact that the MBs did play in Carlisle in the mid-1960s.

As ever in Ufology, what seems a straightforward case starts to show discrepancies when you start turning over stones and the alledged three hours of missing time is one such discrepancy that deserves further investigation…
 
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Some 1960s American cars could reach 120mph for short periods, but you couldn't keep it up for 320 miles. That might explain the 'lost time'; unrealistic expectations of speed by Pinder.

And I am very skeptical that the Moody Blues were sober at this point in their career.
 
eburacum said:
Some 1960s American cars could reach 120mph for short periods, but you couldn't keep it up for 320 miles. That might explain the 'lost time'; unrealistic expectations of speed by Pinder.

And I am very skeptical that the Moody Blues were sober at this point in their careerRespect but they met Leary after their encounter:
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Fair enough, respect your stance. Apparently they met Leary in 1969, so several years after the encounter:

https://www.furious.com/perfect/moodybluestimothyleary.html
 
They are musicians and so probably on something to make them poor witnesses.

Its an interesting story but too many holes.
 
With all due respect, there aren’t enough musicians in the UK to account for the almost £10 billion spent on illicit drugs in 2016/17, other people must be using them too:

https://www.russellwebster.com/carolblack5/

We could argue that Betty & Barney Hill were high as kites when they had their UFO abduction experience or that Travis Walton and the crew had been hitting the magic mushrooms.

In all matters Fortean we have to give some credit to the witnesses unless they are exposed as having told blatant lies as otherwise we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water. To my mind the discrepancies are minor given the time lapse involved. What we really need is the location, after all they may have been confused by a light aircraft and red runway lights.So, anyone prepared to do a little research…?
 
I suppose the start point would be to try and work out a likely range of locations along either the M6 or A6 given the journey time elapsed and assuming a reasonable speed for the era. Pinder's "about 120" is clearly exaggeration and he says 80mph elsewhere, so we can imagine something in the 70-80 range more realistically. Were there any radio masts visible along either road in 1966ish?
 
I was a bit sceptical of the likelihood of a UK band having an Impala but, no, it seems this menory was accurate at least (a brief mention near the top of this page).
 
Mention is made to lights on a radio tower, these could be the ones at
HMS Inskip about 4 miles from the M6 3 1/2 from the A6 very tall 600ft
with a line of red anti-collision lights, they can be seen for miles around.
 
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BS3 said:
I suppose the start point would be to try and work out a likely range of locations along either the M6 or A6 given the journey time elapsed and assuming a reasonable speed for the era. Pinder's "about 120" is clearly exaggeration and he says 80mph elsewhere, so we can imagine something in the 70-80 range more realistically. Were there any radio masts visible along either road in 1966ish?
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An example of one of many online maps of all known UK airfields, heliports etc:

http://www.ukairfields.org.uk/map.html
 
Another sort-of corroboration from a third member: Denny Laine, this time.

Mike Pinder (Moody Blues keyboardist) said the original line-up of The Moody Blues witnessed a UFO while coming back from a Manchester concert. Do you remember this incident?

(Laughs) Yes, I still do but I don’t remember much about it, really. I think I saw a light but Mike is that sort of person that thinks it was a UFO. Who knows whether it was a UFO or something else? But I saw a light in the sky, yes. I still see when I am travelling late at night when I come back from shows (laughs). But I don’t know how it chose me.
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From here.
 
RaM said:
Mention is made to lights on a radio tower, these could be the ones at
HMS Inskip about 4 miles from the M6 3 1/2 from the A6 very tall
with a line of red anti-collision lights, they can be seen for miles around.
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Interesting - Preston, a bit south of Inskip, is about 1 hr 30 from Carlisle by motorway these days. If Edge thought it took place at around 2am, they would have been in the Preston area had they left Carlisle at about 12.30, which sounds quite plausible after a gig.
 
A note about the timeframe for the sighting ...

Edge (FSR; 1991) claimed the sighting / encounter occurred circa 0130 - 0200. Pinder (in the podcast interview) claimed the incident occurred around 0300.
 
BS3 said:
Another sort-of corroboration from a third member: Denny Laine, this time.



From here.
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Hmmm... is he telling us - in a teasing sort of manner- that he still sees that light when coming home from gigs because it is from a prominent mast that was there in 1964 and still there today...? Also no mention of getting out of the car etc. So an endorsement, yes, but not a 'ringing' one.
 
If Denny Laine remembers this event, it happened in 1966 or earlier. So when did they go to Carlisle in 66 or earlier?
Note that Pinder thought the gig was in Manchester.
 
eburacum said:
If Denny Laine remembers this event, it happened in 1966 or earlier. So when did they go to Carlisle in 66 or earlier?
Note that Pinder thought the gig was in Manchester.
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According to fan-compiled gig listings (see my earlier post) the Moodies are claimed by one site to have never played Carlisle in 1966 / 1967, but they did play Carlisle in January and August 1965. Another site indicates they did play Carlisle in April 1967.

One or more of the witness interviews mentions the incident being in the autumn. I don't recall any timeframe claim indicating a different season.
 
August 1965 would allow for both Laine and Clint Warwick (who supposedly left earlier on in 1966) to be present and could be thought of as 'autumn'. I suppose you might be able to corroborate the year from newspapers, if what Pinder says about the sighting being run as a brief newspaper item is correct.
 
August 1965 seems too early for an acid trip, but they may have been drinking alcohol or taking bennies (which I believe were known as 'blues' at the time). It's not impossible that they may even have discounted benzedrine as not being a real drug, which would make them technically 'sober'. After all, wartime pilots (and James Bond) took this drug.
 
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke wrote ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien”following an incident when he was driving home late at night from a friends house in the country. He suddenly hit something with his car and stopped to investigate. He stepped out into the night air and was struck by how quiet, still and dark it was. He then became aware of the star-filled sky and imagined a spaceship coming to take him away. He later thought he might have hit a pheasant.

So the MBs are hammering down the A6 at 03.00, see the strange light, stop and get out. They are struck by the stillness and how empty the road is at that late hour. They see the dim red HMS Inskip lights from a shallow angle and believe them to be closer, maybe even the field across from the opposite carriageway….?
 
EnolaGaia said:
For a '64 Impala to hit 120 mph it would require a V8 engine (327 cu. in. or larger). A '64 327 Impala's theoretical top speed was 122 mph with the factory governor disabled. If the Chevy had one of the optional big-block (400+ cu. in.V8) engines 120 mph could have been feasible, provided the highway accommodated traveling at such speeds.

In light of how many other alleged facts are jumbled, I suspect the 120 mph claim is an exaggeration. Cruising at 120 kph (circa 74-75 mph) would have been no problem.
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With 4 or 5 up I think 120 was out of the question. 75 realistic but only on the section of the M6 which was built at the time - no way this could have been achieved on the A6, except for very very short blasts. I might possibly have tried this in my 57 Chevy once or twice :chuckle:
 
BS3 said:
I was a bit sceptical of the likelihood of a UK band having an Impala but, no, it seems this menory was accurate at least (a brief mention near the top of this page).
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Funnily enough it was quite common to see US cars in the UK in the 60's. I used to enjoy spotting them. UK films of that era invariably show a Chevy or something similar in the background or used by one of the main characters. There were a couple of huge US car dealerships in London at the time,
 
PeteS said:
Funnily enough it was quite common to see US cars in the UK in the 60's. I used to enjoy spotting them. UK films of that era invariably show a Chevy or something similar in the background or used by one of the main characters. There were a couple of huge US car dealerships in London at the time,
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A lot more US service personnel in the U.K. back then, Peter Pages (Welsh Triangle) relates there were a lot in Pembrokeshire during 1976-77 due to US air bases
 
One (very) long shot that came to mind, is that there was a rocket testing facility at Spadeadam about 15 miles to the north-east of Carlisle and the MBs might have seen something being delivered there as they drove home late at night.

I'd imagine moving a rocket on a truck would probably be a lot easier in the wee small hours of the morning.

DQ7-JS2WsAMyFwJ.jpg

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/940969945021722624

https://blog.mechanicallandscapes.com/2018/03/07/485-rockets-missiles-and-a-corner-of-cumbria/
 
Bigphoot2 said:
One (very) long shot that came to mind, is that there was a rocket testing facility at Spadeadam about 15 miles to the north-east of Carlisle and the MBs might have seen something being delivered there as they drove home late at night.

I'd imagine moving a rocket on a truck would probably be a lot easier in the wee small hours of the morning.

View attachment 61226
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/940969945021722624

https://blog.mechanicallandscapes.com/2018/03/07/485-rockets-missiles-and-a-corner-of-cumbria/
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This article says the Blue Streak components were manaufacted at Rolls-Royce in Derby and then transported to Cumbria:

https://calmview.derbyshire.gov.uk/calmview/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=D5525

The Blue Streak being transported:

https://www.flickriver.com/photos/127699427@N02/50497477698/
 
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