Electric Light Orchestra

“It took three months to finish a double LP…

Today three years wouldn't be enough” (Jeff Lynne).

A spaceship lands in record stores in the autumn of 1977, destined to follow the band that recorded it until it became their most instantly recognizable symbol: at a highly turbulent moment, when much of the public was turning its attention to socially engaged singer-songwriters or to the blazing new season of punk (that same year, not coincidentally, saw the release of a trio of aces made up of “Never Mind The Bollocks” by the Sex Pistols, the self-titled debut by the Clash and “Rocket To Russia” by the Ramones), it seemed nothing would ever be the same again. Yet there are two albums in particular that, in that 1977, stood out and would become benchmarks for international pop music for years to come: one is “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac, destined to sell something like forty million copies and win a prestigious Grammy Award, and the other is the ambitious double album by Electric Light Orchestra, “Out Of The Blue”.

Unexpectedly, as suggested by the title of the work that, more than any other, represents the summa of Jeff Lynne's pop vision and thinking, this album would turn out to be both the artistic crowning achievement of a career that was already flourishing and the most successful record until the closing of the "Elo" chapter, which came in the second half of the Eighties.

Why was “Out Of The Blue” such a resounding success? Jeff Lynne has often recounted that the gestation of the double album initially didn't seem all that fruitful: the Birmingham pop genius, after a long tour and with high expectations from the record label and an ever-growing number of admirers, took up arms (well, easy now, it was just a guitar) and baggage and moved to a chalet in Switzerland (“a house that looked like a cuckoo clock, up in the mountains”) in search of new inspiration. He even made a quick trip to a small music shop to pick up an electric piano and a tape recorder, but over the first two weeks no ideas came — mostly the fault of the fog and bad weather. It seems it was the very first sunny day of that stay that triggered in him a true creative frenzy with few equals in the history of pop music.

It all begins with “Mr. Blue Sky” and its joyous explosion, destined to become an evergreen plundered for at least eight commercials around the world, covered by wildly different artists (worth mentioning at least the versions by Tony Visconti, Lily Allen and the Decemberists) and used in the soundtracks of films, video games and TV series. An easy, catchy melody, whose development, however, is anything but simple and straightforward: Jeff Lynne himself admits it took nine hours to perfect the chord progression and even a week to get the bassline exactly as he wanted it; add to that the curious choice of having Bev Bevan play a fire extinguisher, and the strange magic coalesces into a timeless classic, one the Elo themselves would chase again in later songs (above all “The Diary Of Horace Wimp”, from the album “Discovery”).

In twelve days, then, Jeff Lynne finished writing the seventeen songs of “Out Of The Blue”. It took three months to record and mix it: at first it was decided to record the strings in a very large room, but the excessive reverb didn't convince Lynne, who later opted for a more intimate room at Musicland Studios in Munich. The sound of the whole record is dense yet crystalline at the same time, the result of Jeff's obsessive pursuit of perfection, which during the recording of “Sweet Talkin' Woman” led him to re-record some parts, completely rewriting the lyrics (it was originally titled “Dead End Street”). The song became another huge hit, and is the perfect synthesis of past art-pop mixed with the disco-music temptations so fashionable at the time, between the funky fizz of the melody, the harmony of the overdubbed vocal parts and the clever use of the vocoder that bridges verse and chorus. A few years later Robert “Mutt” Lange apparently copied (unwittingly, it seems) the melody of “Sweet Talkin' Woman” when he wrote a song for Huey Lewis and the News, “Do You Believe In Love”.

"Out Of The Blue" successfully sums up the elements that had characterized the Electric Light Orchestra's sound up to that point, while boldly looking ahead, with one eye on the past and the other bravely fixed on the future. Jeff Lynne is as serious and meticulous in the recording studio as he is willing to not take himself too seriously when it comes to songwriting: a perfect example of this approach is "Jungle", sampled by the Beastie Boys in 1989. Here he dresses up as Tarzan and dances over a melody built on the same chord progression as Paul McCartney's "C Moon", underpinned, however, by a percussion pattern closer to Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia": a pastiche crafted down to the smallest detail – Lynne pokes fun at those who accused him of slipping satanic messages into his records, casually dropping in a line of German that's actually completely innocent (“Im Dschungel, da tanzen die Tiere herum”, best translated as “the animals are dancing in the jungle”), and adopts the pseudonym Spratley Bagweeds to even invent a “dance academy” that taps its way through the song. Bladys and Goreen Turvis, in fact, are two names concealing the band's other three members (sharing the same initials: Bevan, Groucutt and Tandy).

"Turn To Stone" is the first single lifted from the double LP and another huge hit, built around a keyboard riff that came to him during that fateful stay in Switzerland (something that would happen again two years later with "Confusion"), while "It's Over", rather than a song about a love gone wrong, is a song of liberation after having (indeed) successfully finished writing the songs for the long-awaited album. The Beatles aren't the only influence on the carnet here – "Across The Border" betrays close listening to the Beach Boys's "Heroes and Villains" too, somewhere between a tautly driven dad-rock and unusual mariachi touches. Inspired by the night sky over the Swiss mountains, "Starlight" has a rhythm 'n' blues flavor reminiscent of Al Green.

The zenith of the whole double LP is without doubt the first side of the second record, a suite titled "Concerto For A Rainy Day": Jeff Lynne keeps playing with secret messages – during "Standin' In The Rain" (complete with sampled rain crackle) he has the strings spell out the letters E, L and O over and over like Morse code, and intends the four songs making up the suite to be heard as a single indivisible block. At the end of the first track a vocoder announces the start of the melancholy "Big Wheels", but finally the rainy day ends with the irresistible vitality of "Mr. Blue Sky". Lynne indulges in one more quirk, having the vocoder recite the words "please, turn me over" – a clear hint to the listener that they'll soon need to flip the record and listen to side four.

There's only one instrumental track, the poignant "The Whale" (written by Jeff after watching a documentary on whale hunting), but "Out Of The Blue" continues – this time more subtly and only hinted at – to draw on themes dear to the classical tradition: it's hard, in fact, not to recognize a riff from Gershwin's famous "Rhapsody In Blue" quoted in "Birmingham Blues".

In its first pressing, the album closes with the dreamlike "Wild West Hero". The 2007 reissue, put out by Sony under Lynne's supervision, includes three bonus tracks: a very brief demo of the aforementioned song, "The Quick And The Daft", and a song never completed at the time, "Latitude 88 North", which was even released as a single to promote the new edition marking "Out Of The Blue"'s thirtieth anniversary. Joseph Palmaccio's remastering won praise even from the most uncompromising audiophiles, cleverly steering clear of the notorious "loudness war" that has marred so many old and new albums over the past decade.

Success would keep smiling on the electric light orchestra for a few more years. "Discovery" pushes Lynne's love for the prevailing disco music to its extreme, and would rest on its laurels thanks to the hit soundtrack for the film "Xanadu". While Jeff Lynne would mainly turn to producing other artists (such as Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and his great friend George Harrison), some began to rehabilitate him after the critical backlash that had scorned his grandiosity and often over-the-top tone.

In the Nineties, singer-songwriter Beverley Craven admitted to being heavily influenced by Elo ("Telephone Line" was her very first single), but it was only recently that she crafted her most explicit tribute to their sound with "Rainbows" ("there are no rainbows without the rain" is an allegory for the sun rising anew in her life after her battle with breast cancer). And then, of course, came Oasis, The Divine Comedy, Jake Shillington's My Life Story, the affectionate homage from Take That in "Shine" and Fyfe Dangerfield's in "She Needs Me", not to mention the giddy pastel shades of Scissor Sisters – proof that Elo left an indelible mark on the history of pop with a sound that can be intricate, blending different elements together and presenting them with an enviable ease and simplicity.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

28/04/2012