To celebrate the airing of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction this Saturday, 4/29 on HBO we’re running a series of essays and feature analyzing and highlighting the implications of who was inducted in 2017.
Earlier this month, Electric Light Orchestra was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. The flamboyant ’70s band had been eligible since the late ’90s, which tells you all you need to know about how strangely under-appreciated ELO has been by critics and tastemakers over the years. But in spite of ELO’s innate ’70s-ness — few rock bands embraced the era’s ethos of excess with greater verve — the sheer quality of Jeff Lynne’s songs and the love-it-or-hate-it audacity of his lavish production has helped the band’s music age with surprising grace.
Nevertheless, this is still a band that is known to most people by a small handful of songs that have been played incessantly on the radio — “Evil Woman,” “Livin’ Thing,” “Mr. Blue Sky.” Those are all wonderful songs, but ELO’s catalogue has so much more to offer. Before the premiere of the Rock Hall induction telecast on HBO this Saturday, here is a playlist of 10 deep cuts that will deepen your appreciation of all things ELO.
“1st Movement (Jumping Biz)” (from 1972’s No Answer)
Electric Light Orchestra was formed by three former members of the the wondrous ’60s psych-rock band The Move: Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne, and Bev Bevan. The original concept of ELO was to faithfully represent its grandiose moniker — this was a band that would essentially play classical music on rock instruments. The most famous song from the debut, No Answer, is “10538 Overture,” which rides a Wagnerian guitar riff over slashing cello accents. (It was later featured in American Hustle — David O. Russell is a big ELO stan.) But I also stump for the instrumental “1st Movement (Jumping Biz),” which leavens the prog-rock leanings of ELO’s early work with the pop sensibility that would soon make Lynne a big star.
“Bluebird Is Dead” (from 1973’s On The Third Day)
The second ELO album, 1973’s ELO 2, is a muddled mishmash of ’50s rock and overly fussy pomposity. The band didn’t really hits its stride until On The Third Day, on which Lynne more or less assumed full control of the band in the wake of Wood’s departure. Subsequent editions of On The Third Day featured ELO’s first great single, “Showdown,” though there are signs throughout On The Third Day that Lynne is settling into one of the great songwriting grooves in all of ’70s pop-rock. Never shy about hiding his affection for The Beatles, Lynne would prove adept at applying the baroque melodicism of Revolver to a deliriously overblown and technology-addled ’70s context, starting with the stately “Bluebird Is Dead,” a McCartney-esque ballad as beautiful as anything on Paul McCartney’s own Band On The Run, released around the same time.
“Laredo Tornado” (from 1974’s Eldorado)
On the brilliant song cycle Eldorado, Lynne realized ELO’s earliest ambitions — the album ranks among the most successful hybrids of rock and classical music — while continuing to hone his rapidly burgeoning talent for pop wizardry on the Top 10 hit “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head.” And then there’s “Laredo Tornado,” a pocket symphony composed of glam-rock guitars, funky clavinet splashes, a string section straight out of a Douglas Sirk melodrama, and Lynne’s stunning Roy Orbison-like falsetto.
“Fire On High” (from 1975’s Face The Music)
With ELO, more was always more. As a listener, you either embrace the excess or miss out on the fun. “Fire On High,” the first track on 1975’s giddy Face The Music — which also includes the classics “Evil Woman” and “Strange Magic” — opens with a drawn out fanfare that includes an allusion to Handel’s “Messiah,” back-masked messages, and wigged-out synthesizers. It’s like an even more outrageous precursor to modern-day prog-maniacs like Muse.
“So Fine” (from 1976’s A New World Record)
The most potent gateway drug for ELO newbies is probably A New World Record, which boasts some of Lynne’s gooiest singles (“Livin’ Thing,” “Telephone Line”), his best arena-rock song (“Do Ya!,” a leftover from the old Move days), and several fantastic examples of bombastic baroque pop in the deep cuts (“Tightrope,” “Rockaria!”) Or you can just head to “So Fine,” the most kitchen-sink moment on the record, in which choral voices rub up against a zippy pop-soul melody and a rhythmic breakdown in which African drums are replicated by a Moog synthesizer for some odd reason. It’s everything that’s fun and innovative and crazy and ridiculous about ELO in one three minute and 55-second package.
“Starlight” (from 1977’s Out Of The Blue)
After A New World Record, pick up the wonderful double-album Out Of The Blue, my personal favorite ELO record. It’s the product of Lynne’s most feverish period of creativity, in which he dashed off 17 songs in just three and a half weeks while encamped in the Swiss Alps. Out Of The Blue was a commercial monster, shipping quadruple platinum and spinning off the hit singles “Turn To Stone” and “Sweet Talkin’ Woman,” as well as the deathless movie-trailer staple “Mr. Blue Sky.” But really, nearly every song on Out Of The Blue is a perfect spring-time roller-rink jam, including the sci-fi makeout number “Starlight,” in which Lynne imagines getting it on with a sexy astronaut.
“Last Train To London” (from 1979’s Discovery)
In the ’80s and ’90s, Lynne became a go-to producer for classic-rockers like Tom Petty, George Harrison, and the reconstituted Beatles on Anthology-era tracks such as “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love.” But Lynne was never a rock snob — no matter how proggy or pretentious he got, he never lost his pop instincts. At the height of disco in the late ’70s, Lynne happily incorporated four-on-the-floor beats and danceable bass lines into the ELO fold, mostly notably on Discovery, which spawned one of the best-ever disco-rock marriages, “Don’t Bring Me Down.”(ELO proceeded to really go over the top with this on 1980’s Xanadu soundtrack with Olivia Newton-John.) Another fine example of ELO’s “leisure-suit pop” phase is “Last Train To London,” a romantic dance-floor stomper cut with Giorgio Moroder-style synths.
“The Way Life’s Meant To Be” (from 1981’s Time)
In ELO’s prime, Lynne was fearless when it came to combining seemingly incongruous elements — The Beatles and disco, acoustic guitars and synthesizers, old-fashioned songcraft and UFOs. On Time, ELO co-mingles songs like “Your Truly, 2095” and “Ticket To The Moon” with “The Way Life’s Meant To Be,” a blissful slice of Brill Building pop that sounds like it was produced by Phil Spector on Mars. At the end of the ’80s, Lynne would essentially replicate the sound of “The Way Life’s Meant To Be” with the Traveling Wilburys and on Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever.
“Secret Messages” (from 1983’s Secret Messages)
ELO was pretty much washed up commercially by the time of Secret Messages. At the time, the album’s obliviously lush pomp-pop songs must’ve seemed horribly out-of-step with what was happening in pop music in 1983 (mostly Thriller and Men At Work). But in retrospect, Lynne’s stubborn insistence on making ELO records that sounded like ELO records has served underrated LPs like Timeand Secret Messages quite well. (1986’s Balance Of Power is still pretty mediocre, though.) The title track from Secret Messages was Lynne trolling religious fundamentalists who heard “Fire On High” and accused ELO of being Satanists. Apparently Lynne had a lot to say on this subject, as Secret Messages was supposed to be a double-album originally, but the record company balked.
“Dirty To The Bone” (from 2015’s Alone In The Universe)
After Balance Of Power, Lynne commenced a successful career as a producer and songwriter, and only occasionally released his own records, like 1990’s solid Armchair Theatre and 2012’s Long Wave. Lynne waited 15 years after Balance Of Power to revive ELO with 2001’s shockingly good Zoom, and then another 14 years to return with 2015’s even better Alone In The Universe. More restrained that ELO’s classic albums, Alone In The Universe is more akin to Lynne’s work on 1991’s Into The Great Wide Open, the dreamy album he produced for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. But Lynne’s prowess as a singer and writer is still strong on songs such as “Dirty To The Bone,” a sly update on “Evil Woman” spotlighted by shimmering guitars and Lynne’s multi-tracked vocals.
