Page 46 - Classic Rock (January 2020)

He never got a proper job, much to his mum’s chagrin. Instead the songwriter, singer and multi-

instrumentalist can look back at a long and hugely successful rock’n’roll career. One that has seen
him lead ELO, work with The Beatles, be in a band with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and so much more.

Interview: Rob Hughes

“ was worried that there weren’t enough Out Of Nowhere, is essentially a one-man
operation. It’s a sumptuous addition to his
people who knew about us,” says Jeff
Lynne, explaining his anxiety over
reviving ELO to headline at an all-day extensive recorded catalogue, bursting with
semi-symphonic goodness and melodies to melt
I festival in London’s Hyde Park in the stoniest of hearts.
September 2014. “We took a big chance. The “Chords are my favourite thing, really,” Lynne
crowd could’ve gone home any time, they didn’t enthuses. “There aren’t many left, but I still keep
have to wait around for us at the end. But it was still stumbling across little strange quirky ones and big
full. I remember looking through a little gap in the fat juicy ones. Finding them is so much fun.”
curtain and going: ‘They’re still here!’”
Of course they were. The festival was a sell-out, What’s the story behind From Out Of Nowhere?
shifting its full quota of 50,000 tickets in just The title track just literally came from out of
a quarter of an hour. It seems ridiculous that one nowhere. It was the first tune I sat down to write,
of the most bankable stars of all-time ever doubted and nearly all the chords came to me at the first
he still had an audience. But then Jeff Lynne isn’t sitting. And that’s really how the whole album
your typical rock star. Modest and self-effacing, it’s came around. I wanted to put some kind of
difficult to equate the soft-spoken 71-year-old optimism in there too. It’s a reaction to the way
– his Brummie accent still intact despite living in things are in the world at the moment; it’s a very
Los Angeles for many years – with his status as the upside-down situation. At the same time, I didn’t
head of ELO, with record sales of well over 50 want to get into politics whatsoever.
million and counting. Indeed, from 1972 until
Jeff Lynne in the Idle
their original dissolution in 1986, ELO scored Race, circa 1968. One of the new songs, Time Of Our Life, is
more transatlantic Top 40 hits than any other about ELO’s Wembley Stadium show in 2017.
band on the planet. It’s like a diary of the Wembley show, which turned
There’s more to Lynne than just ELO, of course. out to be absolutely fantastic, because I was still
Since emerging with the Idle Race in the late 60s, projects and 1995’s Anthology, for which Lynne worried about trying to fill up these great big
the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist oversaw a fresh version of John Lennon’s ‘lost’ places. But there they all were. I’d played there
has passed through The Move, co-founded demo Free As A Bird. with ELO once before, about thirty-odd years
supergroup the Traveling Wilburys (with Bob Although Lynne re-formed his old band for ago [in July 1986, supporting Rod Stewart], but
Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Roy that Hyde Park show and beyond, the studio I’d never done it as top of the bill. Everyone seemed
Orbison) and produced a host of A-listers, remains his preferred environment. Nowadays to be having a fabulous time. It was just
including the three remaining Beatles, both on solo billed as Jeff Lynne’s ELO, their latest album, From a marvellous experience. GETTY

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