(Credits: Far Out / Jeff Lynne)
Wed 17 December 2025 10:37, UK
There are more than a few classic albums with Jeff Lynne’s name on them.
On top of the material that he recorded on his own with the Electric Light Orchestra, Lynne was behind the board for classic albums by George Harrison, Roy Orbison, The Travelling Wilburys, and even The Beatles during the Anthology project.
That’s not bad for a working-class lad from Birmingham. In fact, with the Wilburys and ELO alone, the fuzzy-haired fellow has fetched sales heading swiftly towards the 60 million mark. So, it’s understandably hard for Lynne to single one out as his favourite.
But according to the barnstorming all-rounder himself, the answer wasn’t his work with any of the above. Instead, it was when he joined forces with Tom Petty on his first solo album, 1989’s Full Moon Fever. “I met Tom in England and then I saw him again at some streetlight in Los Angeles,” Lynne recalled to Rolling Stone.
The ‘Mr Blue Sky’ singer continued, “He said, ‘Jeff, pull over.’ I did and he said, ‘I just listened to George’s album. What about coming over and writing some tunes together?’ I said, ‘I’d love to.’”
Jeff Lynne with Tom Petty, George Harrison and Bob Dylan. (Credits: Far Out / The Traveling Wilburys)
The connection was natural – The Travelling Wilburys weren’t quite in place yet, with Lynne and Petty’s partnership preceding the first Wilburys recording by at least a year. But Lynne’s natural songwriting instincts gelled well with Petty, causing the two to create a classic song early in their creative process.
“Probably the second song we wrote was ‘Free Fallin’. I got the chords to it, and we both fleshed out the chorus,” Lynne said. “It was like ‘Evil Woman’ in that we got a repetitive chord sequence, and then the melody turns into a chorus. Everyone who heard it knew it was a hit, and the next song we did was ‘I Won’t Back Down.’”
It helped that the only consistent people involved in the album’s making were Petty and Lynne. With the two sharing guitar duties, Lynne would add bass, keyboards, and even drums when the time called. The only other presence in the studio was Petty’s bandmate and creative partner Mike Campbell, something that took Lynne a while to get his head around.
“It was Tom’s first solo album, and I didn’t realise it would be such a big thing for the band, Tom going off on his own. I ended up doing most of the stuff, playing the keyboard and the bass and telling the drummer what to play,” Lynne said.
Adding: “Mike [Campbell] was there, but I found out afterwards it was a problem for the other guys. The thing is, he got a great record out of it. It’s still my favourite record that I ever made with anybody. I love it. It’s so simple and fresh, and it’s got no bullshit.” The whole thing was utterly refreshing in an era of sordid excess.
Campbell had a similar recollection of working with Lynne. “We’d put the mics up on the drums, and he’d walk out and take the microphone over the drum and he’d turn it away from the drum facing the corner, and he’d go ‘OK, record it like that.’ Sure enough, 99% of the time he’d be right,” Campbell recalled to SongFacts back in 2003.
He proudly continued, “We’d go, ‘Yes sir, Mr. Lynne.’ We learned so much from him about arrangements and countermelodies and all kinds of stuff.”
It’s a corroboration that truly defines why Lynne is such a magical addition to he pop music canon. The Brummie knows everything there is to know about music, but he never lets that get in the way of a pop hit. As he defined his own self-evident ethos, “I take pretty complicated stuff and simplify the hell out of it.”
That’s beautifully present on Full Moon Fever, an album that was so full of Petty’s pent-up ideas that it needed a calming composer to pull it all together in a refined fashion, and despite Lynne championing Brian Wilson as the best producer in the world, you’d be hard-pushed to say anyone has ever been better than Lynne at this fine sifting task.
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