(Credits: Far Out / Jeff Lynne)
Mon 22 December 2025 16:00, UK
Being a producer like Jeff Lynne tends to mean being insanely critical of your own work.
The ELO frontman surely had moments that he was proud of, but across every single record, there are always going to be moments where things take a turn for the worse or where everyone starts to wonder if they’re even having fun anymore. But when you have that perfect marriage between producer and artist, Lynne knew that there was no reason for him to ever leave the producer’s chair.
Then again, the journey to him being one of the biggest producers didn’t come that easily. He was already working his way through bands when he first started making a name for himself, but the first real education he got was being able to see The Beatles working. He had already been a diehard fan, but when he got to look in on George Martin working on arrangements for The White Album, he knew that he wanted to make that same kind of thing for the rest of his life. All he needed now was the right band to do it with.
And while ELO did have a great track record for making fantastic records, not all of them really lent themselves well to live performances. There are plenty of people who could easily make the whole thing work in the modern age, but in the era of no backing tracks and playing everything off the floor, it’s hard to even imagine trying to choreograph everything going on on the record when it came time to go out onstage.
But when Lynne decided he had had enough of the road, that was when things started to get a whole lot more interesting. He was free to work with whoever he wanted, and while the Traveling Wilburys would have been some of the most fun that any artist could have asked for, it took a while for him to be comfortable working in the same room as someone like George Harrison.
When you look at his work on Cloud Nine, though, Lynne seemed like a fish in water when guiding the former Beatle in the right direction. He was the one who was going to take Harrison back to the top of the charts, and while no one may have been clamouring for what the rest of the Threetles were doing by the late 1980s, Lynne had already worked his magic when producing Mystery Girl for Roy Orbison around the same time.
Playing with The Beatles is no tall order, but Lynne felt that getting the chance to work with his favourite singer in the world was too good to be true, saying, “I’ve been a producer as well as making my own records, and to work with Roy Orbison on ‘You Got It’, to produce it and write the song, was fantastic. I couldn’t ever wish for anything more fun than that. And he was such a lovely guy. But he died just a month after his song had just gone in the top 10. So he never got to see it get to No.5.”
It is a bit tragic to see Orbison pass away before the world was ready to let him go, he at least knew that he went out on top to some degree. Even before the proper record came out, Tom Petty remembered discussing the Traveling Wilburys with Orbison and hearing the crooner being overcome with happiness seeing himself back on the charts just like he was in the days of ‘Oh Pretty Woman’.
Lynne was simply doing his part to help out his favourite singer, but what he did was more than turning the knobs and getting everything in order. He wanted to remind everyone of the kind of excitement he felt as a kid, and when listening to ‘You Got It’, you can hear a hint of that same showstopping voice that sent shivers up and down the spines of everyone from Bruce Springsteen to John Lennon
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