"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

When I listened to Days of Future Passed yester-day, I listened to the edition with bonus tracks, and I noticed a small feature in "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," performed live on the BBC.

The second "long" in the line "Sometimes I spend long nights long regrettin'" is sung with a melisma (E D), musically giving a sense of duration.

I'm still going under the assumption that the Moodies based their version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" on the Animals' version.  Not only does the Animals' version not feature a melisma'd "long," but the line itself is quite different.  In the Moodies' version, the line "Sometimes I spend long nights long regretting" is present in the second and third verses (I'm not very confident in my transcription, and there's one line I can't even make out in full):

Sometimes, babe, oh, I feel so carefree
With a joy it's hard to hide
Sometimes I spend long nights long regrettin'
If you hurt me [???] down inside

Oh, oh, baby, don't you know I'm human
With thoughts like any other man
Sometimes I spend long nights long regrettin'
Some similar little stupid thing that you've done

In the Animals' version, these verses are:

Baby, sometimes I'm so carefree
With a joy that's hard to hide
And sometimes it seems that all I have to do is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side

Oh, oh, oh, baby, don't you know I'm human
Have thoughts like any other one
Sometimes I find myself long regretting
Some foolish thing, some little sinful thing I've done

I might not even have my transcription of the Animals' version right.  It might be "Sometimes I find myself [a]lone regretting."  In any case, the melisma'd "long" for duration seems to be unique to the Moodies' version.

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

Shortly after I first listened to the edition of Days of Future Passed with bonus tracks (including "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" performed live on the BBC), I learned the guitar phrase and chords for the Animals' version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."  After I learned those parts, I tried playing the guitar phrase from the Animals' version on flute (which is how it's played in the Moodies' version).  In doing so, I discovered that the Moodies' version (in A minor) is a whole step lower than the Animals' version (in B minor).

At first, I thought the key was changed just to make the guitar phrase from the Animals' version easier to play on flute*.  In the Animals' version, it's:

On guitar, that C# to D transition isn't anything special, but it's a bit difficult on flute.  The fingerings for C# and D don't have any keys in common.  Here's part of the fingering chart from the back of my flute book:

Lowering the phrase a whole step makes it a lot easier to play on flute.  Here's the notation:

(I should note that in a few instances of this phrase, Ray Thomas adds some trills, but I didn't include those in my notation.)

Here are the relevant fingerings:

All of the fingerings here have at least two keys in common.

Initially, I thought that facilitating that part on flute was the reason the Moody Blues lowered the key from the Animals' version, but as I continued to think about the song, I realized that there might have been an-other reason.  B minor has two sharps, but A minor doesn't have any accidentals.  It might be a bit arcane, but that lack of accidentals is a musical representation of the purity mentioned in the line "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good."  (There are some accidentals in the song [for example, there's a D# in the bass part during the verses and - although I think it might be more implied than outright strummed - there's an E major chord, which contains a G#], but there aren't any accidentals "built-in" as it were in A minor.)  That extra-musical meaning might just be a coincidence and moving the song to A minor was just for a practical purpose, but it's still a valid explanation.

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*Because the liner notes specifically mention the Animals' version and because the two versions of the song have roughly the same structure, I'm assuming that the Moodies based their version off the Animals' version.  There are some significant differences in the lyrics though.