It seems odd that a man who’s sold 50 million albums and had countless pop-classic hits with ELO, is hugely beloved both in the UK and the US, has been inducted into the US Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and worked with The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, should be surprised at a stadium-full of fans enjoying his 2017 Wembley concert. Yet, since his first public show in over a quarter-century at Hyde Park in 2014 made him realise there was still a demand and real affection for his songs, he’s enjoyed a new chapter, a fresh lease of life. One wondered why this Mr Blue Sky had to hide away for so long – though, of course, he was thriving as producer-mentor to the idols of his youth, with whom he’d now become a peer.
Birmingham-born Lynne, 71, and a long-time resident of California, is every bit as humble and unpretentious as that song suggests. The multi-instrumentalist with the knack for the perfect hook recently finished another epic US tour and wants this new record to offer “optimism. Everybody’s got to have a bit of hope”. The beard-and-shades, once called “Bacharach-meets-Beethoven”, has carved a curiously durable canon, from his early years in The Move and the original proggy Electric Light Orchestra, through the streamlined, unstoppable disco-tinged, zinging-strings spaceship that ELO became, to the jukebox-from-Jupiter pop titans on an international-treasure par with ABBA and Bee Gees. The 1977 double-album Out Of The Blue, dismissed as “sterile muzak” by some contemporary reviewers, made a nonsense of punk by selling 10 million, bearing five massive hit singles, popularising the vocoder and, in Mr Blue Sky, producing an anthem so buoyant it’s already being used in trailers for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Lynne still doesn’t quite know how the magic happens.
“Sometimes I get an idea that I don’t think will belong anywhere,” he murmurs affably. “Then it’ll turn out to be my favourite bit, and last for years. It’s very hard to put your finger on it.
Oh, it’s hot, y’know, the usual. Yes, it does, really – I mean, I’ve been here, like, 25 years. I’ll be visiting England soon on a promotional tour, so I’ll probably visit Birmingham, see my folks and my mates, the old homeland.
It started with my dad. He owned this great big radiogram, and he’d have all these records… this was late 50s, early 60s. And he’d be playing South Pacific and all these show tunes, which I used to not like at all at the time because of the arrangements.
It was all these little flutes going “doo, doo, doo, doo” and all these clarinets going up and down: I couldn’t hear what the chords were. I couldn’t play then, either, so at that point it wouldn’t’ve done me any good anyway. But not long afterwards I did learn to play. Dad gave me a guitar. He bought it from his friend for £2, and gave it to me, which I thought was fantastic. It was a real bastard to play: it had an action, like, three-quarters of an inch off the neck. Very tough on your fingers! At first, I was learning things like Joe Brown, then the early Beatles, and, of course, Roy Orbison and Del Shannon.
But I always wanted to have a go at these show-tunes, so when I made the Long Wave solo album much later in 2012, I’d learned the chords. Finally! Just by ignoring what was going on in the arrangements, which were too complex. Too many notes! I suppose they were being all frilly for the films. I tuned out all that and found I could finally play, for instance, If I Loved You. I love that tune and now found it was easy, whereas I’d always assumed it was over my head. All these songs, I realised, were simple chords. That’s all they were. And that’s all any music is, really. Music is simple. There was a reviewer once who said, “Jeff Lynne of ELO writes simple tunes and then complicates the hell out of them.” See,
I don’t agree with that. I think I do the opposite. I take pretty complicated stuff and simplify the hell out of it!
Oh, the first time I ever heard Only The Lonely on the radio was… I couldn’t believe it. My mum and my auntie said, “Ooh, he’s so sexy, he is!” I said, “Don’t be ridiculous.” Not that I knew anything about it – I was
12 or 13. They’re going, “Ooh, but he’s too sexy… I don’t like it.” And I went, “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
And it was. Probably still is. Pure magic. We’ll come to your collaborations with The Big O and other greats later. One thing which nudged you on the path to becoming producer to the stars was acquiring, after your two-quid guitar, a reel-to-reel recorder, on which you got into multi-tracking at a young age. Was this the dawn of your fascination with arranging and producing?
Absolutely. Getting that machine was my favourite thing I ever did. It was a Bang & Olufsen Beocord 2000 De Luxe. It was well ahead of its time. And it had sound-on-sound on it, which meant you could bounce one track onto another while adding another instrument. Then you’d keep bouncing. The most I ever did was probably about 20 bounces. Of course, it gathers distortion as it goes along – but that’s great! I like that kind of distortion. And… even doing it in your front room, it started to sound like a proper record. With just a mic and a guitar input I could record more or less anything.
I made demos on it. I used to send these to Liberty Records, who I was signed to at the time in the group The Idle Race. And that’s how I became a producer. They said, “Well, who’s gonna be the producer?” And I said, “Well, that’s me, what you’re hearing, so I am.” And they went, “Oh… OK.” So, I said, “Thanks very much,” and that was it – I got the job. I was a producer.
So yeah, early ELO was kind of different. And that’s all we wanted to do – make a record that was different from what you generally heard on the radio. And it certainly was, because… 10538 Overture? You’d never heard anything like that on the radio!
That’s… nice, thank you. Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Funnily enough, I’ve never tried to be either of those styles. Or… well… I guess I have tried to be pop music, that’s basically what I like best. I don’t mean, like, sugary pop. I mean melodies and arrangements that aren’t too picky and clever for my own good… because then I couldn’t play them [laughs]. I do put layer upon layer, yes, but usually, in recording, it’s only me playing, so I have to.
Of the old ones? I think Out Of The Blue is probably my favourite album. And Turn To Stone is my favourite song to play live nowadays. Which amazes me, because I never realised how popular that song was. So, I moved it to second-to-last in the set, before Mr Blue Sky. See, it’s got that high, “I’m turning to stone ’cos you ain’t comin’ home” chanted bit which stops dead… and the crowd go absolutely mad at that point. The noise level… they just go through the roof! So I love playing it for them. Plus, it’s got nice chords. Shouldn’t say so myself, but… it has! I didn’t invent the chords, I just put them in that order [laughs].
Talking of the crowd going mad, let’s bring up that disarming moment in Time Of Your Life on From Out Of Nowhere, where you express your wonder at playing a packed Wembley Stadium. It feels like the four years since your big comeback show at Hyde Park have rejuvenated you?
That’s fair to say. The thing is… I didn’t have a lot of confidence about suddenly appearing again in that big Hyde Park show. I was worried about it. Because it was a one-day festival and I thought: well, if they’re all still here at the end of the evening, we’ll be good. I was nervous all the way up to when we went on, thinking half the crowd would go home after Chrissie Hynde and Blondie. Thinking they’d have forgotten all about
us. I peeped round the curtain just before we went on and… oh! It was full! It was fantastic. I was thrilled to bits.
Ah, but when you haven’t played gigs for about as many years as you did play gigs… it’s even weirder, y’know? We hadn’t played for so long: 30, 35 years?
Not a proper show like that. That’s quite a gap in years before coming back onstage. Five minutes is a long gap, but 35 years?!
Oh, yeah… At Wembley Stadium we had a PA system that was 200,000 watts. Now, I mention that because I remember when we started out, playing in pubs and clubs, you were lucky if you got a 50-watt PA. You never imagined the likes of this. I just loved shouting through it and hearing the echo back, at the place where Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup…
It seems like you’re on a roll again now, with From Out Of Nowhere following 2015’s Alone In The Universe (on which Lynne sang, “When I was a boy I had a dream… music played inside my head… in those beautiful days where there was
no money”)?
It does in a way. Alone In The Universe went platinum in England. I don’t think anyone expects a platinum album any more. Physical copies, this is, not streaming. It’s not so often that people buy a real actual disc that they own and keep, hold in their hand. I love looking at album covers, too, myself. Anyway, I was chuffed. So, we’ll see where this one goes. I’m really pleased with it.
I’m happy. I started it before the last tour, but hadn’t finished it by last Christmas, when I was supposed to deliver. We’d done 37 shows, and I said: “I’m sorry, everybody, but I can’t release it like this, it’s not exactly how I want it.” Whereas it is now, I hope. I just needed to… generally make it better. Production, harmonies.
That can be a problem, yes. And it can get to be a bit of a mess sometimes, if you can’t stop. But even though I used to be a member of the More Is More club, now I’m leaning towards Less Is More. Well, I’m half and half, anyway, because sometimes, more is more! What are the LP’s themes and motivations?
It’s hard to explain. OK, there was a point, a couple of years ago, where there were all these disasters going on in California. I mean, there always are, in the US, lately. Tornadoes everywhere. The climate change thing. So,
in Santa Barbara, Montecito, all these giant boulders came out of the mountains, at the back end, away from the sea, and rolled down into the houses. Flattened hundreds of really beautiful mansions. It was awful. And there were fires everywhere, all the time. And this was all… from out of nowhere. It felt like, when you least expect it, here’s another bleeding thing to worry about! So, it’s like… the songs come from out of nowhere, too. They do. I just sit down with the guitar or
at the piano, doodling and noodling, and suddenly, I’ll hear a chord sequence, and I’ll record that onto a little memo machine. Then another. There’s no way of knowing where they come from. It’s luck. When they flow together and make you go, “Ooooh, I love that bit”… OK, you’ve got to have some kind of skill at making them sound cohesive. You want them to belong together yet be surprising at the same time.
from Showdown…Well, I always have to have a bit of rain in there somewhere, y’know?
Er… yeah, right.
Sometimes, late at night, I’ll watch Turner Classic Movies, those old black-and-white films noirs: they have some really old-fashioned ones on. Where sparks and lightning bolts fly out of things, y’know?
I’ll watch them if I’m trying to get to sleep.
I used to watch The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits when I was a kid. That’s sort of the area I’m into. The album cover’s beautiful, unbelievable. The detail. It blows my mind.
Oh, it amazes me, when these tours are filled to the brim with every age from 10-year-olds to 60-year-olds. I suppose the music has been passed on through families: the kids have come to love it, too. And they dance like crazy, these kids! Bopping along! Which is totally different from what we ever had before… Ever since I decided we could be bold enough to play that Hyde Park show, it’s been a doddle. Everything’s just gone nicely. I mean, I never dreamed I’d play the O² Arena, but I’ve played there eight or nine times now. I’m always shocked.
All of them. All wonderful. Because I’d never expected, say, George [Harrison] to get in touch in 1987 and ask me to work on his new album, which was Cloud Nine. I was like, “Yeah, of course! When can we start?”
I was an enormous Beatles fan, always loved them. And, in fact, I ended up producing three of them: Paul on Flaming Pie, Ringo on Time Takes Time. In fact, all of them, nearly, with Anthology and Free As A Bird and Real Love. I utterly loved doing that.
It was scary as heck, because the project was actually called “The Beatles”, you know what I mean? So, I was very on my toes. And it was difficult at times, but we got through it and it turned out great.
From then on, well… I even worked with Del Shannon. And Brian Wilson: I wrote and produced a song with him, Let It Shine, for his first solo album in 1988. A real nice one as well; I liked it.
Ooh… we both sort of… look, you can’t really have them on a pedestal when you’re doing that. When you’re in there, trying to do something, make something, you just have to put all that to one side. You just remember it at the back of your mind – don’t completely forget who you’re talking to, he might know something you don’t.
All the people I’ve produced were really nice. Apart from myself! I answer back; I say, “Don’t be stupid…”
I think [1989’s] Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. We made that in Mike Campbell’s garage in LA, using his spare bedroom as the control room. It was a real Heath Robinson job. I mean, we mixed it in a proper studio, to make it “sound nice”, but the way we recorded it was so simple.
Just us three with acoustics and a drummer, and then we’d start filling in the holes.
I’d do some bass; Mike would put lead guitar on. Tom would bring the vocals. All in this pleasant little back garden vibe. Tom said it was his most enjoyable, too. And we had George [Harrison], Roy [Orbison], Del Shannon on it. It was a relaxing atmosphere, a nice feeling, where nobody expects too much, and when you get something good, pretty quickly, everybody’s happy. If it’s all too posh, with marble pillars and velvet curtains, it can be a bit intimidating. Too formal. And maybe that takes the rough edges off it.
Ever since I first heard Roy on record, I knew there was a kind of pure magic to the best records. I went to the Country Museum in Nashville to learn how they made those records in that era: Roy, Johnny Cash etc. Looked at the exhibits, bought the books, read up on it. So much of it was just making the sound of the room as good as it could be. And they used to feedback reverb into Roy’s vocal… I won’t get too technical but there were little electronic things they were doing that you wouldn’t expect, in those days. So much of pop music since, as it’s gone on, has taken ideas from there.
I’ll take that as a high compliment, thank you!
It’s just a sad song. There’s not much I can say to you to embellish it.
Obviously, I think Roy was probably the best ever.
So far! Of course, I was chuffed when I ended up working on [1989’s] Mystery Girl. It’s unbelievable, really.
I can’t complain.
Next year, I expect. To be honest with you, tours can go on a bit long. You start thinking: “Fuck, how much longer am I gonna be in these bleeding hotels?” All that stuff, y’know? We’ve got our own plane now. And you need one, really, on a cross-America tour. Otherwise, it’s a nightmare – you’ve got to get up at six in the morning to get anywhere. With your own plane it’s much easier and better.
And tours are so much better organised and streamlined than they were before. There used to be so many cock-ups. Oh, it was horrible back in the old days! That’s kind of why I packed it in. I just didn’t like it then. The travelling was so rough. George [Harrison] used to say, “Why don’t they all just come to my house instead? I’ll just stay in, and they can all come here.” He thought maybe they could pay to get in, then he’d play for them, and then they go home.
You never know! As I’ve found, there’s always a surprise around the corner…