Led by singer, guitarist and chief songwriter Jeff Lynne, ELO – or Electrical Gentle Orchestra, to present them their full title – bestrode the Nineteen Seventies like a bearded, frizzy-haired large earlier than splitting in 1986. In 2012, Lynne returned his outdated band as soon as extra with Mr Blue Sky, a solo album that discovered him re-recording a number of ELO hits. When Traditional Rock sat down with him in London, he was able to look again over his stellar profession.
The hair is smaller, the beard neater, however these impenetrable sun shades nonetheless give him away. In a altering world, there’s one thing reassuringly unchanged about Jeff Lynne, the one-time composer and producer of symphonic rock ensemble Electrical Gentle Orchestra. Wearing an understated black jacket and denims, Lynne, a famously non-public man, friends out of the window of his chosen venue, a wise boutique lodge close to London’s posh Sloane Sq.. “Most individuals don’t find out about this place,” he says appreciatively.
Neglect punk-rock revisionism and important scorn (“Electrical Gentle Orchestra are technically adept, cynically introduced froth,” carped Rolling Stone). ELO dominated the Nineteen Seventies, with multi-platinum albums reminiscent of Out Of The Blue, and US and UK Prime 20 hits with the likes of Livin’ Factor, Candy Talkin’ Girl and Flip To Stone. In 1978 there was nobody greater. That 12 months, ELO undertook a record-grossing US tour with a spaceship-style stage set that pumped out 525,000 watts of sunshine and required 13 vehicles to move it from metropolis to metropolis. ELO have been simply as large within the studio: hiring 40-piece string sections and 30-piece choirs to recreate the sounds inside Jeff Lynne’s head. With their big choruses, deluxe manufacturing and everyman lyrics, they have been as soon as likened to what The Beatles would have appeared like had they been beer drinkers as an alternative of dope people who smoke.
It was apt, then, that George Harrison requested Lynne to provide an album for him in 1986. “And after that, all the pieces modified,” Lynne says, smiling. Inside months he had joined Harrison, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty in roots-rock supergroup the Touring Wilburys. In 1995 he co-produced The Beatles’ ‘comeback’ single Free As A Chicken.
Right this moment, regardless of greater than 30 years of Beverly Hills residing, the Shard Finish, Birmingham-born Lynne nonetheless hasn’t misplaced his Midlands burr. No marvel extra advanced, hung-up artists, reminiscent of Dylan and Petty, like having him round. You think he leaves his personal complexities and hang-ups on the door.
In October Jeff Lynne launched two solo albums: Lengthy Wave, a set of largely pre-rock’n’roll requirements; and Mr Blue Sky, his new interpretations of traditional ELO hits. Each intention to breed the extraordinary sounds whizzing round inside his head. “I really like being inside a tune,” he says. “So shut that it’s like I can nearly contact it.”
ELO have been by no means off the radio within the 70s. Lengthy Wave is filled with the songs you heard on the radio, rising up within the 50s.
My dad had the radio on all day. There was no TV till I used to be 13 so all I received was his music. A whole lot of these songs I hated as a child, like [Rodgers & Hammerstein’s] If I Cherished You. I additionally by no means thought I’d be singing [Bobby Darin’s] Past The Sea. However for those who hearken to the strings within the center, they sound like ELO. It’s solely once I found the best way to play the songs that I fell in love with them. It’s the best way they’re constructed that intrigues me. I wished to be a report producer from the age of 13.
Why so younger?
I heard Solely The Lonely by Roy Orbison [in 1960] and I couldn’t consider what I used to be listening to. All I may assume was: “How do they try this? How do they know what to play?” After that, all I considered was music. I left college at 15 and joined a bunch known as The Nightriders, however I nonetheless needed to work. So I took a job in a warehouse the place I may all the time go behind the bins and practise my guitar for half an hour. Once I turned professional at 18 I used to be so relieved.
What did you assume if you first heard The Beatles?
Please Please Me [The Beatles’ second single, released in January 1963] was the one. The primary single Love Me Do didn’t do it for me. I don’t imply that in a nasty manner, but it surely was quite simple, solely a few chords. Please Please Me felt prefer it was one thing else fully. It was mind-blowing.
The Nightriders later turned The Idle Race. Whereas recording their first album,The Birthday Celebration, in 1968 you visited Abbey Highway studios and watched The Beatles making the White Album. Did you ever think about you’d find yourself working with George Harrison?
By no means. Not in one million years. It was like assembly your gods. However I knew I used to be fairly good and will make a residing out of music. I had a sense I’d by no means should go to work once more. I’d been requested to affix [fellow Birmingham group] The Transfer in ’67 and I turned them down. I assumed I owed The Idle Race, as they’d saved me from this terrible lifetime of working. However their albums weren’t hits, so when The Transfer’s singer Roy Wooden requested me once more I needed to say sure.
As quickly as you have been in The Transfer, although, you and Wooden have been plotting ELO.
By the point I joined in 68 The Transfer have been doing cabaret, and I didn’t need to be part of that. Roy and I had been speaking concerning the concept of ELO for months. So we made these Transfer albums [1970’s Shazam and 71’s Message From The Country] to assist pay for ELO.
ELO’s debut LP, Electrical Gentle Orchestra, in 1972, featured bassoon, oboe, French horn, cello… Is it true you wished the group to proceed what The Beatles had began with I Am The Walrus?
I Am The Walrus was a giant affect due to the cello elements, true. So was A Day In The Life. However I by no means stated we have been selecting up the place The Beatles left off. I get the blame for that, and I by no means stated it. It was Roy Wooden. On the time I assumed, oh fuck. Now I believe, fucking nice, Roy, you’ve saddled me with this for years! [laughs]
You as soon as described the early ELO gigs as “shambolic”. What went mistaken?
Every little thing. We did our first gig at The Greyhound in Croydon. It was horrible, dreadful. It was superb how Roy taught himself to play the cello in per week, so he may play it on our first single, 10538 Overture. However on stage it took him without end to vary devices as a result of he was additionally taking part in the bassoon and the oboe. And we couldn’t hear ourselves correctly. We used to should get a bit of drunk simply to take the sting off. Then I did one thing mistaken.

What did you do?
It was the third ever ELO gig, in Liverpool. I’d had a drink and I wanted to take a piss. There was a giant curtain behind the stage dividing the room in half. So I went behind it and known as to my roadie Phil to get us a bucket. He got here again with this nice large cleaner’s bucket and held it up for me. I used to be taking part in bass, and all I needed to do was play an open-string A on the tune we have been doing. So I used to be taking part in with one hand and piddling into this bucket. Nevertheless it simply went on and on. I’d not completed when Phil moved and it was all up his arm [laughs]. I by no means did it once more after that.
Why did Roy Wooden depart ELO so quickly?
Roy and I didn’t collaborate in addition to we thought we might. We couldn’t work collectively. It was like having two particular person bosses within the band. So he went off to do [Wood’s next group] Wizzard, and I received to be the only real author and producer of ELO.
When did ELO begin getting higher?
About six months after Roy left. We made the second album [ELO II], and that had [a version of Chuck Berry’s] Roll Over Beethoven on it. It went Prime 40 in America. So all of a sudden we’ve received our foot within the door over there. However I all the time keep in mind my dad saying to me: “The difficulty along with your tunes is that they’ve received no tunes,” as a result of he didn’t assume a lot of my songs. So I assumed, I’ll present ya. And I wrote Can’t Get It Out Of My Head, a tune that was filled with tunes. We put that on the fourth report, Eldorado, which offered half-a-million and went gold in America.
Rising up in a suburb of Birmingham within the 50s, it’s essential to have dreamed of going to the States.
It was a really large deal. The Idle Race had been on United Artists, and on their report labels it used to say ‘United Artists, Sundown Boulevard’, with an image of a road with palm timber. And I used to assume: “God, I need to go there.”
The primary time we went to the States was supporting Deep Purple [1974]. They have been taking part in 10,000-seater ice hockey stadiums. You possibly can see the viewers taking a look at us with our cellos and pondering,: “What the hell is that this?” However they favored us. So it took off there, even earlier than the UK.
ELO have been managed by Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne, and a person nicknamed The Al Capone Of Rock. How was he to work with?
His popularity precedes him, sure. [Long pause] I don’t know if he was a great supervisor or a nasty supervisor. He received us there. I all the time had the studio time I wished. He helped make us profitable. So I owe him that. However he had his flaws. He was good and unhealthy.
Was there a specific level if you realised ELO had made it?
In America. After some time we began doing the 20,000-seaters. We have been driving in a limo up La Cienega in direction of Sundown Boulevard, and there was this nice large billboard that stated ‘Welcome ELO’. I assumed: “Fuck, that is good.” The report label had put us to remain within the Continental Hyatt Home, which was once known as the Riot Home after John Bonham or somebody rode a bike across the high ground. And there was one other signal saying ‘Welcome ELO’ exterior. That’s once I felt like we’d made it. However after that it simply received greater and greater.
Did you do all of the issues rock bands have been speculated to do when touring America? Was there such a factor as an ELO groupie?
Yeah, there have been ELO groupies [looking surprised]. However we solely ever wrecked one lodge room. We performed Washington, and the president Jimmy Carter’s son, Chip, got here to the gig and invited us to go to the White Home the subsequent day.
I dunno why, however after the present we ended up trashing someone’s room. We piled all of the damaged furnishings in a heap within the center like we have been going to have a bonfire. Then we checked out it and panicked. I all the time keep in mind somebody saying: “Lets depart now below the quilt of darkness?” We didn’t. However once we left the subsequent morning, we noticed Sharon [Osbourne] in reception and she or he was paying the invoice, and it was 10,000 {dollars} money. All of us went: “Oh fuck,” and ducked out earlier than anybody may see us. We didn’t do it once more.
ELO have been a seven-piece group, with two cellists and a violinist. How tough was it to maintain seven folks on the highway completely happy?
There have been two separate camps, y’see. There was us – we have been the rock’n’roll gamers – after which there have been the string gamers. We received on okay, however they’d a special mentality. They weren’t within the clique. They weren’t rock’n’roll folks – they’d all come from string participant’s faculty.

On stage you all the time appeared such as you have been a reluctant frontman, although.
I didn’t need to be there, no. I loved the primary two or three excursions, however after that I used to be out of joint with it. I simply wished to be at residence, writing and recording.
Did ELO compensate for that by utilizing so many particular results of their stay reveals?
I used to be compensating, I suppose. Any concept that was actually daft, I’d say: “Oh sure, we’ll have that.” Our cellist Mike Edwards had this concept for enjoying [French composer Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns’s] The Dying Swan whereas rolling an orange up and down the neck of the cello. Then he had a cello that exploded on stage. Thoughts you, typically it exploded, typically it didn’t. It was good when it labored correctly. Mike, sadly, later received killed by a bale of hay [after it fell on to the roof of a van he was driving, in 2010].
ELO’s 1976 album A New World Document went to No.1 within the US. A 12 months later Out Of The Blue was high 5 within the US and the UK. Subsequent, ELO have been touring with a spectacular, spaceship-style stage set, and US opening acts that included Coronary heart, Journey and Meat Loaf.
We have been doing 70,000-seaters in some elements of America by then. However the reveals have been getting too large for me. The spaceship was Don Arden’s concept. We first tried it out at The Who’s studios in Shepperton. Pete Townshend got here in, noticed it and stated: “I would like one in all them!” The spaceship was superb – the noise it made on the finish of the present was unbelievable, like rocket engines. I used to sprint out to the entrance and watch from the viewers. It was Don who received Tony Curtis to introduce us on stage at Wembley that 12 months, the place we performed to royalty [the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester]. However I used to be extra impressed on the reception afterwards.
Why was that?
They’d put all our gold discs up on the partitions on the reception. I saved pondering: “This appears spectacular. These are for songs I’ve written.” That was the issue: I simply wished to be within the studio. Touring cramped my type.
ELO’s music has a popularity for being upbeat, however hits reminiscent of Phone Line sound extraordinarily unhappy. Had been you having a very depressing time of it?
I all the time thought our music was unhappy. Each time folks say: “Wow, your songs makes me really feel so good,” I believe: “Maintain on, I’m writing about loneliness.” [Laughs] Phone Line is the saddest of all of them. It was written simply after an American tour. I’d received a girlfriend over there and she or he wasn’t answering the cellphone. That’s why I used the sound of the American dialling tone. It was all about lengthy‑distance phone calls. Touring performed havoc with relationships and something like that.
Which is the best ELO album?
Out Of The Blue must be one in all them. My favorite now, although, is On The Third Day, after I realised what a cheeky bastard I’d been. I had all of the music plotted out, however there are two or three songs the place I hadn’t written any phrases. So I simply stood in entrance of the mic and sang the very first thing that got here into my gob. And I used to be amazed once I performed it once more, because it sounds fairly good. A whole lot of ELO songs are easier than you may assume. I may present you the best way to play Mr Blue Sky in 10 minutes. It’s no symphony.
ELO cut up in 1986, and you then have been requested to provide George Harrison’s subsequent album, Cloud 9. How did that occur?
I‘d had sufficient of ELO. It was a aid to do one thing else. I’d been performing some recording with Dave Edmunds, and we had simply completed dinner in a restaurant in Marlow. He was about 200 yards down the road when he shouted again: “Oh, Jeff… by the best way, George Harrison requested if you need to work on his new album.” For fuck’s sake! We’d spent two hours having dinner and he by no means talked about it.
Had been you intimidated by assembly George?
I used to be intimidated by George’s home [the 120-room Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames]. It was like a mansion, a fort and a palace all rolled into one. Once I first turned up there I assumed: “I don’t know if I can do that.” I used to be that apprehensive it was going to be too posh. However George put me relaxed. He stated: “Look, earlier than we begin, simply so we will see how we get on, we could go to Australia to observe the Grand Prix?” I stated: “Er, yeah, alright.” He stated: “Nice. Meet me in Hawaii in two weeks’ time.”
So 18 years after you’d watched The Beatles making the White Album, you have been working with one in all them.
I do know [laughs]. However I didn’t really feel intimidated about making strategies within the studio. That’s what George wished me for. However you would ask him about The Beatles’ information and he’d inform you stuff. Like how Please Please Me had been actually sluggish to begin with, like a Roy Orbison report, and George instructed they pace it up.
Who got here up with the thought to place collectively the Touring Wilburys?
One night time, George and I had a little bit of a smoke and a drink, and he stated: “You and I ought to have a bunch.” I stated: “Who ought to we’ve got in it?” “Bob Dylan,” he stated. “Oh yeah, okay… Bob Dylan… What about Roy Orbison as effectively, then?” And we each instructed Tom Petty. I didn’t think about it could truly occur. Nevertheless it did. We did the primary Wilburys’ tune, Deal with With Care, in Bob’s storage.

What’s Bob Dylan truly like?
Bob’s a traditional man, pleasant, not aloof… However he’s on his personal wavelength. I imply, it’s Bob Dylan, so you’re all the time a bit in awe. I saved pondering: “He wrote all these phrases [laughs].”
After The Touring Wilburys, you produced Tom Petty’s first solo album, Full Moon Fever. Petty stated that your arrival upset his group The Heartbreakers. Did you sense that?
Just a little bit, sure. However I used to be solely taken with Tom. He’d requested me to put in writing with him and produce, and that was all I cared about. Free Fallin’ was the second tune we wrote for that album, and it was an enormous hit. Full Moon Fever got here collectively so simply. It’s nonetheless one in all my favorite information of all these I’ve labored on.
You’ve simply re-recorded and remixed a few of ELO’s largest hits for the brand new assortment Mr Blue Sky. What was mistaken with the originals?
There was no readability to them. They appeared like they’d a sock over them. It was bugging me each time I’d hear them on the radio. I didn’t have a lot studio expertise once I produced the originals. Now I’ve had 30 years extra expertise and expertise is 30 years forward. So I attempted doing Mr Blue Sky once more and it sounded so a lot better. Then I did Evil Girl, Unusual Magic, and I ended up doing 17 of them once more, however we received it all the way down to 12 for the album.
You possibly can’t keep out of the studio, are you able to?
No [laughs]. They’ve to come back and drag me out. Nevertheless it’s what I do. I’ve loved making these two albums greater than something I’ve ever carried out earlier than. Within the studio I can simply block all the pieces out. I stroll in there, shut the door, sit down and assume: “Ah… that is the fucking life… Happiness.”
Initially printed in Traditional Rock situation 178, November 2012