Like its predecessors,
On the Threshold of a Dream is a concept album, but carries a looser theme than
Days of Future Passed and
In Search of the Lost Chord. The album's title reflects the hopes of the flower power zeitgeist and Woodstock free-love era, and the hope that society was on the cusp of a new era of consciousness, a new enlightenment. The title was coined by Mike Pinder in conversation with his friend and BBC presenter
David Symonds. Pinder remembers, "About halfway through making the album, when we were kicking some titles around, I remember talking about how here we are, we'd just come through '67 in
kaftans; everybody was out in the street and it was a fun time, and flower power and all that kind of thing. So, we were thinking, 'Hey, we're on the brink of a new consciousness, a new way of looking at things.' And so we were talking about that, and it was like we were 'on the verge of a human dream, a dream of humanity', and Dave said 'threshold', and I came up with 'of a dream', and it was like perfect." Guitarist
Justin Hayward continues, "We probably were [taking ourselves too seriously]. But quite rightly. To do what we were doing we had to believe in it. It was from the heart. But at the time we got the reputation for that. I felt I was speaking for a lot of other people in the late '60s. I wanted to write about our search for enlightenment, as simple as that. I'm still kind of doing it." Bassist
John Lodge remembers the band's creative process, how each member would bring ideas to the group related to the album's theme, and then work on the songs together as they produced the album: "Collectively we all had the same subject. But because we were all different people and we all played different things and would sound differently, every song was different even though the subject was the same." He continues, "When we came into the studio, we had a coffee table; we used to sit around there and talk about a song. If I had written a song I wanted on the album, I played it to the rest of the guys when we sat around that table, and everyone around that table would put their interpretation into that song. As soon as you played the song to the rest of the guys, it really became a Moody Blues song. You had total faith in the rest of the guys that they were going to be as creative as they can be in making that song work to its highest degree." The album begins with a spoken word introduction inspired by
René Descartes's philosophical argument
Cogito, ergo sum, where the narrator questions and then confirms his own existence, and then questions the meaning of his existence. Written by drummer
Graeme Edge, keyboardist
Mike Pinder remembers the introduction's production being a collaborative effort among the group's members. "In the Beginning" features three characters, listed as "First Man", "Establishment" and "Inner Man" in the printed lyrics provided in the album gate-fold sleeve. Hayward takes the role of a slightly bemused lone person who confirms his own existence. Edge, a mocking establishment figure, confirms the first man's existence, but insists his purpose is to be a cog in a corporate machine. The first man sheepishly asserts that he thinks his existence is about more than that, finding encouragement from his "Inner Man, spoken by Pinder, who tells him to "keep cool" and "keep thinking free." The upbeat "Lovely to See You" opens the album. With its welcoming lyrics, the song later served as a concert opener during the later part of the group's career. The lyrics of "Dear Diary" reflect on a feeling of being unable to relate to the world as it rushes by around you. The song presents a bit of cutting social commentary by closing with a mundane diary entry recounting a day of posting letters and window shopping followed by a subdued recounting that "Somebody exploded an H-bomb today...But it wasn't anybody I knew" as the song fades out. Engineer Derek Varnals remembers Thomas adlibbing the final narration during recording. When mixing the album, Varnals was careful to fade out the track at the right moment for maximum effect: "Yeah, we wanted to keep that in because it was witty and quite amusing. All we had to do was to get the timing right on the fade out. We didn't want it to be too loud - it had to be part of the fade, and I think we got it right." The upbeat "Send Me No Wine" and "To Share Our Love" are both written by bassist
John Lodge. The lyrics of "Send Me No Wine" reflect a country music style. Varnals suggests, "'Wine' is really a country and western song. When you play it, imagine it slower, with some of the repetition taken out. Listen to the song and note that the Mellotron parts are very much like a pedal steel guitar as well." Side two opens with Hayward's "Never Comes the Day", an ode to unrequited love. He remembers the song being influenced by his struggles to find meaning in his life at the time: "It was quite a difficult time in my life. It was a real painful situation for someone who was as young as me then. I wasn't quite sure about my own life and what I was doing and what was weird and where I was living and the people around me, including the people in the group. I was just kind of questioning everything and at the same time trying to live out some of the philosophies of the time. It was a time of strong philosophical roads and routes that people were writing about. It was a kind of age of enlightenment and searching for enlightenment." The song's plaintive mood builds to a crescendo with an exhortation for listeners to share their feelings with each other. He explains, "I felt it needed to build to something that was happier and more optimistic. It just came naturally to me. I like dynamics in songs: light and shade. I liked starting quiet and getting loud." Ray Thomas' "Lazy Day" and Hayward's "Are You Sitting Comfortably" introduce a mood of drowsiness, preparing the listener for the album's centerpiece, Mike Pinder's "
Have You Heard" suite. "Lazy Day" incorporates a bit of satire, poking fun at those who while away their days in a sense of contentment. With the line "must be lamb today because beef was last week" the re-release liner notes describe the lyrics as "an acerbic comment on the average Sunday for the British working man". The contentment of the verses is contrasted with ethereal yet cynical backing vocals: "It's such a crying shame / Week after week the same / That's how your life goes by / Until the day you die" According to Hayward, "Are You Sitting Comfortably" is "about storytelling, but elevated to a bit of a psychedelic story". "Are You Sitting Comfortably" was written towards the end of the sessions, and apart from "The Dream", was the last track recorded for the album. Hayward remembers, "I already had the guitar riff and the chord sequence, and I had the first line and the title. And then we just took it from there. Ray contributed a lot of lyrics. I know the first thing he did was that second line, "A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea," which is a very Ray Thomas phrase." "Have You Heard" dates from at least 1966, when an early version appeared in the band's live set. ==Recording==