The Electric Light Orchestra were everywhere in the 1970s. Jeff Lynne’s love of The Beatles manifested itself in the band – originally Roy Wood was the “biggest” member but after two albums (imaginatively titles ELO and ELO2) Wood left and Lynne fused classical music with melodic pop (including a lot of strings) to make On The Third Day. Not their most famous album today but one of their absolute finest.
Eldorado was their first concept album and features the song that cemented my love for them when I heard a song from it on the radio one Sunday afternoon – Poor Boy (the Greenwood).
The first time I was aware of ELO had been when Mike had bought the single Livin’ Thing in 1976. With their big hair they looked like typical members of the glam rock era, which could hardly have been further from the truth. By this stage rather than using overdubs they were hiring whole orchestras to play on the albums.
I really became aware of them again through their involvement with the terrible film Xanadu – a musical so epically awful that no one mentions it. Ironically the title track (a collaboration with Olivia Newton-John) gave the group their own UK number one, naggingly it was not as good as the occasional older track from them that I heard.
In 1981 Clive Hook (again) lent me Out of the Blue – a double album that features a couple of the group’s most famous tracks – Mr Blue Sky and Sweet Talkin’ Woman. The whole of side three was a concept piece called Concerto for a Rainy Day. This was more like it and posters for their next album were appearing with the slogan “The waiting is over, it’s Time” (as the album was called Time). Imagine my shock when the lead single was a rock and roll song – Hold On Tight – wholly different from their other output. It may have been well timed as the UK was in the middle of a small rock and roll revival led by Shakin’ Stevens and the Stray Cats, but it was their worst song to date.
Time itself is a concept album about a man who may have time travelled. ELO had dispensed with their string section – a source of much rancorousness with those band members who were fired. A concept album was not really right for 1981 and I was largely disappointed. The strings, their defining sound, had gone. It was as if they wanted to be relevant and uses synths, but ELO were never going to be trendy in the early 0s.
1983’s Secret Messages in better and the title track is a real success. ELO had lost their distinctiveness and they felt obliged to do another rock and roll track as the lead single, but the rock and roll revival was over. This was the time when the record companies put extra tracks on cassettes over vinyl to encourage the purchase of the former. The missing track was not worth it – it was released as a B side and I had to buy that to satisfy my completeness obsession.
There was the terrible Calling America album which brought the curtain down on the group – I was actually embarrasses to play it to Dave Carter at university and forced him to listen to earlier material to show that I was not insane. Jeff Lynne went onto producing and the Travelling Wilburys (working with a real Beatle must have been his dream). Drummer Bev Bevan formed ELO2 with other former members but really it had been Lynne’s band since 1972 and this was just a karaoke version of the real thing.
ELO were terminally untrendy for over 20 years, but during the 21st century they came back. Like Abba who were ignored for a long time, a generation of fans made it into media positions. Don’t Bring Me Down was featured in the Doctor Who episode Love and Monsters (shame it was a track from Discovery, or Disco, Very as the fans dubbed it – in retrospect that was the start of their decline). Jeff Lynne played live again as ELO and the songs were out there again.
This is that B side to Livin’ Thing.
Fire On High
Playlist:
- Bluebird is Dead
- Daybreaker
- Ma-Ma-Ma Belle
- In the Hall of the Mountain King
- Can’t Get It Out of My head
- Boy Blue
- Poor Boy (the Greenwood)
- Laredo Tornado
- Eldorado
- Fire on High
- Poker
- Down Home Town
- Tightrope
- Telephone Line
- Rockaria!
- Livin’ Thing
- Shangri-La
- Turn to Stone
- Sweet Talkin’ Woman
- Summer and Lightning
- Mr Blue Sky
- Wild West Hero
- Last Train to London
- Xanadu
- Yours Truly, 2095
- The Way Life’s Meant To Be
- Secret Messages
- Danger Ahead
Five Miles Out 