The Moody Blues recorded this with The London Festival Orchestra (Which never actually existed. It is the name given to the musicians put together to make this album.) The original idea was for the group and orchestra to record a Rock version of Dvorak's "New World Symphony," which their record company would use to demonstrate enhanced stereo sound technology.

"Days of Future Passed" is a concept album based around different times of day. For example, "Dawn Is a Feeling" and "Tuesday Afternoon." This song was last on the album because it represented nighttime.

Justin Hayward was inspired by Moody Blues keyboard player Mike Pinder's composition "Dawn Is A Feeling." Since Pinder had done 'The Morning' for the concept album, Hayward tried to do 'The Night.'

Justin Hayward, who joined the band the previous year. He got the idea for the song after someone gave him a set of white satin sheets, and wrote it in his bed-sit at Bayswater. Haywood told the Daily Express Saturday magazine May 3, 2008: "I wrote our most famous song, 'Nights in White Satin' when I was 19. It was a series of random thoughts and was quite autobiographical. It was a very emotional time as I was at the end of one big love affair and the start of another. A lot of that came out in the song."

This was a new sound for the band. When they formed, they were more of a Blues band, and had a hit in 1965 with a cover of Bessie Banks' "Go Now." With this album, they became more of a psychedelic/orchestral band and did very well.

This was originally released in 1967, but it didn't do very well in the US because the song was over 6 minutes long and a lot of people never heard of the band. In 1972, after songs like "Hey Jude " and "Layla" paved the way for long, dramatic songs and the band became well known, this was re-released in the US and became a hit.

Even though this didn't have chart success when it was first released, the album did very well. It was commercially successful in countries across the world, staying on many charts for nearly two years.

The poem at the end was recorded separately. It is called Late Lament and was written by their drummer, Graeme Edge. The poem was read by keyboard player Mike Pinder. Edge wrote another poem that appeared early on the album called Morning Glory.