(Credits: Far Out / Jeff Lynne)
Sun 29 March 2026 12:58, UK
Jeff Lynne has always been a student of rock and roll. Perhaps the sort of student who smokes rollies behind the bike shed, but a student nonetheless.
Whether he was sitting behind the glass with a fellow music legend or working on his own masterpieces with ELO, he was more than happy to make something that no one had ever heard before or pay tribute to his musical heroes from yesteryear. While he may have cut his teeth listening to all the different flavours of British rock, Lynne knew he was listening to the best of the best when he heard the first waves of the British Invasion. Something was in the water, and it may well have been rivalry.
Then again, Lynne had a lot of work to do before he even touched the stage back in the day. Even though he got his start in bands like The Move, he was far more interested in seeing where music could take them that was outside the lines in terms of live music. Everyone and their mother was putting together blues bands in Birmingham, but Lynne was more interested in being a song craftsman in the same way Brian Wilson was during his prime. He wanted to do what the other Brummy bands weren’t.
And it’s not like he couldn’t put his money where his mouth was, either. Throughout ELO’s career, he was always willing to push himself in the studio even if he knew the song wouldn’t work live, like bringing together a mini symphony orchestra to make ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’ or throwing everything and the kitchen sink into a record like Out of the Blue. It was innovative, but he was following a famous lead.
If there’s one word that looms large in Lynne’s career, though, it’s “Beatles”. From the first time he picked up a guitar, Lynne seemed transfixed on getting his sound to match that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, to the point where he seemed to be making his own long-lost Fab tunes. Although Lennon himself had made jokes at Lynne’s expense through the years, studio experiments were only half of what the Fab Four could do.
The whole point behind their early days was being a scruffy bar band borne from playing to German gangsters in Hamburg, and even though Please Please Me does have its fine moments, what fans are listening to is a facsimile of what they could play live.
The natural echo coming off of songs like ‘There’s A Place’ and ‘A Taste of Honey’ may have been interesting, but as soon as everyone heard that first count-off from McCartney on ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, a whole generation fell in love almost instantly. It had the pop and fizz of a new rock ‘n’ roll revolution in waiting.
The Beatles at their best?
Lynne may have adopted the textures of the band’s later output, but he still knew there was no topping what the band did in their first incarnation, saying, “I think ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ was probably the greatest ever English rock’n’roll song. I would imagine that it’s as good as any old American rock’n’roll song, like the real thing. The real stuff. As good as a Chuck Berry tune or something. It was as solid as anything I’d ever heard or better.”
And English rock ‘n’ roll is exactly what it was. There was no doubting the Elvis-like nature of the music, but it was blended skiffle with the blues, and had a cheeky-chappy charm rather than gusty swagger. It was the moment that allowed British bands to be themselves because of that. Suddenly, individualism was all the rage in pop culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Rudimentary rock ‘n’ roll was in a new chapter.
So, even if Lynne had a few more members onstage than The Beatles, he still had that same rock and roll spirit when he played. The violins may be chugging away on some of his records, but a song like ‘Rockaria’ took all of the lessons that ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ taught him and put them on the same stage as classical music. Perhaps the same can be said for The Beatles. While they might have moved on from that moment, the evident camaraderie and musical cohesion at the heart of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ always remained central.
The ELO man always took note of that, cherishing their ‘masterpiece’ and keeping it close to his thinking. So while Lynne did take rock into new and interesting directions during his tenure with the group, his understanding of both the technical side and the garage rock side of The Beatles is what made him the perfect person to take over for George Martin for the Anthology project.
Anyone could take a few cues from Lennon and McCartney, but had Lynne not been a songwriting genius in his own right, he could probably double as a Beatles historian, and no one would have batted an eye.
ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE 
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.