(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 2 November 2025 17:30, UK
For as much as rock and roll was about the live show, Jeff Lynne never saw his music in those terms.
Countless artists revel in the idea of making music that’s made to be played in stadiums, but the production genius behind ELO was always more interested in the mechanics behind making a great song than having to worry about how it sounds on the live stage. He was more of a musical craftsman, and when he found that a song came together properly, he knew nothing on Earth felt better to him.
And it’s not like it’s hard to tell why he preferred the studio if you look at the band’s live performances during their prime. A New World Record and Out of the Blue are among the finest records to come out of the 1970s, but when taking into account the amount of people that would have to have been onstage to make tunes like ‘Telephone Line’ and ‘Mr Blue Sky’ sound pristine, they would either needed a small town’s worth of musicians onstage or make some compromises.
Every artist might have to deal with that dreaded word “compromise” at some point in their lives, but Lynne felt that was too far over the line. ‘Mr Blue Sky’ may have been one of the best songs that he would ever write, but it was also the song that convinced him that maybe the touring life wasn’t really for him.
It’s not like he didn’t have opportunities to work outside the confines of the road, either. Right after taking a break from ELO, his run of albums with everyone from the Traveling Wilburys to Tom Petty to George Harrison to The Beatles gave him a better outlook on the studio. He could make himself comfortable in the producer’s chair making symphonies, and it wasn’t like it had to take much convincing, either.
He had already started to figure out the mechanics of what a hit song could sound like, and while ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’ was the first time he got a massive hit out of a record, Out of the Blue really is the masterpiece of his catalogue. The whole thing feels like one big journey through space, but even for a massive double record, setting things up on ‘Turn to Stone’ was a great way of getting everyone ready for his musical adventure.
But for Lynne, the reason why a song like that is so much fun is because of how simple the core tune is, saying, “Being able to write simple songs is a real craft. The simpler you can get it is the best way to do it. A tune with chords that I really love is a very simple song called ‘Turn to Stone’. I just love those chord changes. They still make me smile when I play them today. If you can get it good and simple and meaningful at the same time it’s the best feeling in the world.”
Throughout his entire career, Lynne wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of songwriting by any means. He usually started with the right chords, and even if there were a few cheeky Beatles chords to catch everyone off guard, everything from the guitar solos to the string lines were always focused on the melody rather than worrying about competing with the likes of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck.
That wasn’t how Lynne operated, and if he could get his point across with only a handful of chords, that was more than enough. Because while everyone had to play a thousand notes for people to take notice, Lynne realised pretty quickly that all he needed was to play the notes that can make people’s hearts sing whenever they hear them on the radio.
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