What is the remix of “Sitting at the Wheel?
PolyGram’s office in Germany took it upon itself to hire a remix engineer, redo the song and release it as a 12-inch single when “The Present” came out. The remixed “Sitting at the Wheel” was released only as a 12-inch single in 1983 and, then, only in Germany. It’s now available in Europe on “The Moody Blues Master Series”, which was released in 1998. The 7-minute remix is nifty because it uses all the original tracks (and only the originals) from the song. The remix engineer just broke down the song into its discrete parts and rebuilt it, by isolating them and combining them in different ways. Some of the revelations include an excellent acoustic guitar part (strumming), that’s virtually inaudible on the album mix, and the entire ripping slide-guitar solo. The only real liberty the engineer took was adding some echo to John vocals. It’s really a top-notch effort.
