(Credits: Far Out / Jeff Lynne)
Tue 3 February 2026 18:00, UK
Anyone would have been satisfied to have accomplished even a third of what Jeff Lynne has done during his lifetime.
The fact that he has rubbed elbows with so many legends has made for one of the most impressive resumes in pop music, but that’s only because of his massive attention to detail when working on everything he does. Whether it’s with ELO, Tom Petty, or even Joe Walsh later on, he was going to give it everything he had, but there were special projects that were always going to stick out in his mind as moments where he knocked it out of the park.
If you look at what he was already doing in his own outfit, though, it’s not like everyone couldn’t see the kind of genius that he was working with. His singles with ELO are still some of the finest pop tunes to come out of the 1970s, and even if he claimed to be picking up where The Beatles left off, there’s a good chance that even John Lennon and Paul McCartney would have had a hard time coming up with a tune as brilliant as ‘Telephone Line’ or ‘Mr Blue Sky’ throughout their solo careers.
But after a decade of spinning his wheels, there had to be a point where Lynne had had enough. There were many chances for him to go into new areas in the studio, but when it came time to reproduce the same thing live, it’s not like he was exactly itching to go onstage and give a half-hearted rendition of what he had created. Much like the Fab Four, his artistry had outmatched the physical medium of touring, but that didn’t mean he had to stop making new music.
He may have folded ELO for the time being, but getting the chance to work with someone like George Harrison didn’t necessarily hurt. Harrison had been friends with Lynne for a while but after spending most of the 1980s making some of the most milquetoast rock and roll of his entire career, he knew that he had a kindred spirit when Lynne stepped in to help him on Cloud Nine.
Harrison was already happy to have a friend guiding him through the sessions, but Lynne was like a kid in a candy store getting the chance to work with a Beatle, saying, “That was a fantastic opportunity for me and I walked in there and had a marvelous time and it sort of snowballed from there. George Harrison’s slide guitar playing is second to none. He’s got this velvet touch that’s smooth and beautiful and soulful. I’ve never heard anything quite as beautiful as how he could do it, so when [he] asked me to work with him, it was one of the biggest thrills of my life.”
Even if Lynne was the confidante that Harrison needed in the studio, there was a good chance he could have never predicted what would happen next. One of the biggest names in music had practically arrived at his doorstep, and from there, getting to work with everyone from Ringo Starr’s solo records to The Traveling Wilburys to masterminding Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever was the best job that he could have asked for.
And were it not for Harrison, Lynne would have never had the opportunity to flex his chops some more when working on The Beatles Anthology. Getting into that inner circle would have been any other fan boy’s dream, but Lynne was more than happy to be a mate when he entered the studio and made sure that everything sounded perfect when they were putting together tunes like ‘Real Love’ and ‘Free as a Bird’.
The fact that ELO got off the ground would have been any other rock star’s dream, but Lynne was always looking to go bigger in every sense of the word. Rubbing elbows with members of the Fab Four may have been a pipedream at the time, but it’s not like Lynne didn’t have the experience to back up every single decision he made in the studio.
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