Rarely did they gel better than on the mariachi flounce of Livin’ Thing, accompanied by members of (shh now) Fanny. Livin’ ThingĮLO were as much a close-harmony choir as an orchestral rock ensemble by now, with Lynne, drummer Bev Bevan, bassist Kelly Groucutt and keyboardist Richard Tandy often merging into a helium chorale for the big hooks. Of course, if it really had been the future, his ex would have blocked him inside five minutes and this song would be called Is WhatsApp Down? #Twentymessages #Stopignoringmecarol #Backtotinder. A simple doo-wop frippery like Telephone Line, for instance, became a weepie of the spheres Lynne forlornly hanging on an endless dial tone like it’s the last shred of his dissipating relationship, lost in an amorphous web of cold wires. A New World Record (1976) opened with a spaceship touching down, and the whole thing seemed dilithium boosted. The final piece of the ELO puzzle was the arrival of a sci-fi element, creating a symphonic space-opera tone that elevated them above their plodding prog contemporaries and probably soundtracked the conception of Matt Bellamy. And that, coming from a bearded Brummie in the 70s, was true love.Īnd the mothership descends. But it’s redeemed by the audacity of Lynne being so enamoured with this girl that he leaps into an exultant Bee Gees falsetto for the chorus, like Tom Cruise bouncing on Oprah’s sofa. The sound of a 1950s prom splashing out on the Royal Philharmonic for the last dance, it shuffles along beneath a Carrie-like hanging bucket of cheese, dribbling half-cut romantic poetry in our ear (“You’re sailing softly through the sun in a broken stone age dawn,” Jeff? Really?). Waterfall was a stately Niagara of languorous melody, but Strange Magic stands as ELO’s finest smoocher. Strange MagicĬome 1975, as Lynne tried out his newfound orchestral superpowers on early disco ( Evil Woman), colliery hoedowns (Down Home Town) and Poker, in which – trollbait alert – ELO predicted UK punk, his primary strength was still in bombastic balladeering. Operatic choirs, sonata pianos and a dash of mystic mystique – at least until the verse where Robin Hood, William Tell, Ivanhoe and Lancelot all get together to rob a bank, presumably calling themselves the Green Tights Gang – made this simple ballad sound like the backing track to Coleridge’s Kubla Khan opium reverie. Eldorado Overture, with its fantasy intonations about mythical cities and its oceanic strings, tossed and tumbled into Can’t Get It Out of My Head, the album’s grand panning shot settling on Lynne, alone, adrift on some midnight shoreline as a vision of Neptune’s daughter “walking on a wave” imprinted on his memory forever.
Hiring in a full orchestra gave ELO the authentic oomph the concept demanded, and instantly they blasted class. “I said, ‘Bastard! You rat! I’ll show you a tune!’” “My dad said to me one day: ‘The trouble with your tunes is they have no tune,’” Lynne said in 2012.
On the Third Day refined the recipe by sifting Lennon tributes like Bluebird Is Dead and Oh No Not Susan from their take on Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, but it wasn’t until 1974’s Eldorado that Lynne struck on the magic formula, thanks in no small part to his father telling him he was crap. In 1973, after Wood departed to form Wizzard, ELO 2 upped the tune tally, but buried them within lengthy classical structures to mimic a five-movement pop concerto. Though the first ELO song, 10538 Overture, perfected the formula from the off, their 1971 debut album let the classical dominate pop hooks played second fiddle to lengthy baroque evocations of English civil war battles that couldn’t have been more prog if they’d pulled on a fox’s head 24 minutes in and announced supper. The Move’s Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne first conceived their side-project Electric Light Orchestra as a way to “pick up where the Beatles left off” by bringing classical instruments into their songwriting, but their early experiments lurched lopsidedly between the two. Like meringue mix and Outkast, symphonic pop requires a craftsman’s balance too much of either ingredient and you end up with a watery mess.