A Brief History of the Electric Light Orchestra

It all began as a project of the Birmingham-based band the Move in 1970. Move leader Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne created which was then the most unusual and remains the most fascinating genre of rock music: overlaying finely crafted string and orchestral arrangements into the thick, textured sound unique to Birmingham, a gritty, factory-and-smokestack dominated city a hundred miles northwest of London, home to other local bands such as Traffic, The Moody Blues and the Spencer Davis Group. On their 1971self-titled debut album The Electric Light Orchestra . Capitol records mistakenly labeled the title as No Answer in the United States due to a clerical error-- when the record company called Lynne to get the title, and failed to reach him, the call attempt was noted as 'No Answer' as the title submission. the single 10538 Overture met with barely a modest showing in the British pop charts. Wood, preferring a different approach, left after the group's first album to form Wizzard. Undaunted, Jeff Lynne took over and continued to blend and refine the divergent sounds into a fascinating collection of heavy, ponderous music laced with magic and wizardry. Electric Light Orchestra II (1972), initally announced as 'The Lost Planet', begat Jeff Lynne's first smash ELO single , his hit remake of Chuck Berry's classic Roll Over Beethoven. A year later, their third album, On The Third Day (1973) gave the rough-n-randy single Ma-Ma-Ma Belle, and the bigger hit Showdown which was publicly praised by John Lennon on the radio. This surprised and gratified Lynne, who regarded the Fab Four as personal heros, and ELO would later be acclaimed by them as "picking up where 'I am the Walrus' left off." Interestingly enough, Lynne later would produce for George Harrison's album Cloud Nine, and Harrison and Ringo Starr both contributed to the upcoming release of Zoom, but you'll find out about that soon enough.

While on tour in 1974, a live preformance was recorded in California on May 12 and sold as a foriegn release, The Night the Light Went On In Long Beach. Lynne wasn't happy with the album or the timing: "It's terrible. As much as I didn't particularly want to be on tour, I even more particularly didn't want to do a live album." Sound quality aside (which was about the same as you'd get recording from the audience with the portable, monoural, piano-key Panasonic tape recorders popular in the seventies), the live album does sport some good concert staples of the period, including 10538 Overture, Roll Over Beethoven, an extended version of Showdown, In the Hall of the Mountain King seguing into Chuck Berry's Great Balls of Fire, a feisty rendition of Orange Blossom Special plus the Beatles' Daytripper.

The finest work from those early years flows in Eldorado (1974), a Michevallian theme album of one man's search for the gold at the end of the rainbow. Eldorado is best described in the 1990 compilation box set Afterglow's liner notes by Ira Robbins: "Eldorado sketches the story of a Walter Mitty charecter who fantasizes about the travels, travails, disillusionment and paradise found in his dream world". Hits from the album include my favorite,Can't Get It Out Of My Head, Boy Blue, and the likable Dylan-esque tune Poorboy, a period glimpse into life as seen through the eyes of a victorious Robin Hood charecter returning to his native Greenwood after battling the King's forces. The whole album, song by song, is a psychadelic mind trip through time and history, through the eyes of different charecters represented in the eternal dreamer's fantasy world. Lynne summed up the title track in 1974: "It's about the eternal dreamer who wakes up, sees the stark reality of life and can't stand it." Interestingly enough, Lynne and the group did not understand the cover selected for the album, the now-famous close up from the Wizard of Oz of the hand of the Wicked Witch of the West being zapped by the magic in Dorothy's ruby slippers, as The Wizard of Oz was largely unfamiliar in Europe. The magical theme was a big hit with American listeners, with Eldorado becoming their first gold record in the U.S. Eldorado was followed by Face The Music (1975) offering both a taste of the old and the new- the old Birmingham influence being felt in the blue-sy Evil Woman while a higher, more refined direction was sought in the lush yet haunting Strange Magic. An excerpt from the driving guitar riff in the instrumental Fire on High became the opening theme for CBS Sport Spectacular, a Saturday-afternoon rival to ABC's Wide World of Sports. Face the Music likewise went gold, as did the group's 1976 greatest hits album Ole' ELO.


	Yours Truly, 2095 \| home A Brief History of the Electric Light Orchestra Click on the album covers or their highlighted titles below for a complete discography Part One: 1970-1976 The Light Brightens It all began as a project of the Birmingham-based band the Move in 1970. Move leader Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne created which was then the most unusual and remains the most fascinating genre of rock music: overlaying finely crafted string and orchestral arrangements into the thick, textured sound unique to Birmingham, a gritty, factory-and-smokestack dominated city a hundred miles northwest of London, home to other local bands such as Traffic, The Moody Blues and the Spencer Davis Group. On their 1971self-titled debut album The Electric Light Orchestra . Capitol records mistakenly labeled the title as No Answer in the United States due to a clerical error-- when the record company called Lynne to get the title, and failed to reach him, the call attempt was noted as 'No Answer' as the title submission. the single 10538 Overture met with barely a modest showing in the British pop charts. Wood, preferring a different approach, left after the group's first album to form Wizzard. Undaunted, Jeff Lynne took over and continued to blend and refine the divergent sounds into a fascinating collection of heavy, ponderous music laced with magic and wizardry. Electric Light Orchestra II (1972), initally announced as 'The Lost Planet', begat Jeff Lynne's first smash ELO single , his hit remake of Chuck Berry's classic Roll Over Beethoven. A year later, their third album, On The Third Day (1973) gave the rough-n-randy single Ma-Ma-Ma Belle, and the bigger hit Showdown which was publicly praised by John Lennon on the radio. This surprised and gratified Lynne, who regarded the Fab Four as personal heros, and ELO would later be acclaimed by them as "picking up where 'I am the Walrus' left off." Interestingly enough, Lynne later would produce for George Harrison's album Cloud Nine, and Harrison and Ringo Starr both contributed to the upcoming release of Zoom, but you'll find out about that soon enough. This 1974 live album, The Night the Light Went On In Long Beach, was never seen in the United States or Great Britain (probably owing to the horrid sound quality), being released only in Australia, Germany and South Africa. Even so, it is still a sought-after item for its relative rarity. While on tour in 1974, a live preformance was recorded in California on May 12 and sold as a foriegn release, The Night the Light Went On In Long Beach. Lynne wasn't happy with the album or the timing: "It's terrible. As much as I didn't particularly want to be on tour, I even more particularly didn't want to do a live album." Sound quality aside (which was about the same as you'd get recording from the audience with the portable, monoural, piano-key Panasonic tape recorders popular in the seventies), the live album does sport some good concert staples of the period, including 10538 Overture, Roll Over Beethoven, an extended version of Showdown, In the Hall of the Mountain King seguing into Chuck Berry's Great Balls of Fire, a feisty rendition of Orange Blossom Special plus the Beatles' Daytripper. The finest work from those early years flows in Eldorado (1974), a Michevallian theme album of one man's search for the gold at the end of the rainbow. Eldorado is best described in the 1990 compilation box set Afterglow's liner notes by Ira Robbins: "Eldorado sketches the story of a Walter Mitty charecter who fantasizes about the travels, travails, disillusionment and paradise found in his dream world". Hits from the album include my favorite,Can't Get It Out Of My Head, Boy Blue, and the likable Dylan-esque tune Poorboy, a period glimpse into life as seen through the eyes of a victorious Robin Hood charecter returning to his native Greenwood after battling the King's forces. The whole album, song by song, is a psychadelic mind trip through time and history, through the eyes of different charecters represented in the eternal dreamer's fantasy world. Lynne summed up the title track in 1974: "It's about the eternal dreamer who wakes up, sees the stark reality of life and can't stand it." Interestingly enough, Lynne and the group did not understand the cover selected for the album, the now-famous close up from the Wizard of Oz of the hand of the Wicked Witch of the West being zapped by the magic in Dorothy's ruby slippers, as The Wizard of Oz was largely unfamiliar in Europe. The magical theme was a big hit with American listeners, with Eldorado becoming their first gold record in the U.S. Eldorado was followed by Face The Music (1975) offering both a taste of the old and the new- the old Birmingham influence being felt in the blue-sy Evil Woman while a higher, more refined direction was sought in the lush yet haunting Strange Magic. An excerpt from the driving guitar riff in the instrumental Fire on High became the opening theme for CBS Sport Spectacular, a Saturday-afternoon rival to ABC's Wide World of Sports. Face the Music likewise went gold, as did the group's 1976 greatest hits album Ole' ELO. [More>>]