![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Jeff-Lynne-Electric-Light-Orchestra-1990-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Jeff Lynne)<\/p>\n
Thu 23 April 2026 20:00, UK <\/p>\n
Some of the greatest ideas in history have been drummed up in the warm surroundings of a local pub, spurred on by the kind of confidence that only warm ale and camaraderie can bring. During the latter part of the 1970s, though, his penchant for a local pub very nearly cost Jeff Lynne<\/a> the chance to create his magnum opus.<\/p>\n Pubs have an unlikely importance within the expansive tale of the Electric Light Orchestra. After all, Lynne, along with Roy Wood, spent the vast majority of their famously disastrous early days attempting to translate their expansive compositions into live performances, typically in the backrooms and on the ramshackle stages of local pubs around London<\/a>. <\/p>\n Inevitably, those early gigs \u2013 while well-meaning \u2013 often ended in a rather drunk ELO falling over their extensive arsenal of instruments and struggling to get through a single track. <\/p>\n Even when ELO truly took off, though, with Wood leaving the band and live music technology catching up with their grandiose concert ambitions, the group were never too far away from a local boozer. At points, it wasn\u2019t clear whether Lynne\u2019s endless hours spent sitting at a bar were providing him with musical inspiration or an excuse to forget about his musical ambitions entirely, if only for a brief period. <\/p>\n In an attempt to begin working on the album that would eventually become Out of the Blue, Lynne holed himself up in the mountains of Geneva for weeks on end. While you might envision that period as a flowing euphoria of songwriting inspiration, in the naturalistic surroundings of the Swiss Alps, the reality was that it was incredibly rainy during Lynne\u2019s four-week stint <\/a>in the mountains, so he invariably forwent the mountainous scenery and found the pub.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe weather was crap for the first couple of weeks,\u201d he recalled to Prog<\/a> in 2016. \u201cI didn\u2019t come up with anything, and I was down the pub all the time, this nice little tavern in the village.\u201d Fortunately, both for Lynne\u2019s liver and the musical future of ELO, that rainy period eventually ended, with the emerging sunshine bringing with it immediate songwriting inspiration. <\/p>\n \u201cFinally, the weather cleared, and that\u2019s what gave me the idea for the words to \u2018Mr Blue Sky\u2019,\u201d Lynne shared, adding: \u201cInspiration could come at any moment. And did, frequently.\u201d Inevitably, \u2018Mr Blue Sky\u2019 became ELO\u2019s definitive anthem<\/a> upon its eventual release in 1978, peaking at number six in the UK singles charts and spurring on Out of the Blue to sell a whopping ten million copies upon its release.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is difficult to envision ELO\u2019s beloved discography without that landmark album, which ushered in perhaps their most essential period, both in terms of its commercial success and the ambitious songwriting at the heart of the record. <\/p>\n Seemingly, though, if the rain in Geneva had never cleared, the entire album might have been left scrawled on the back of a beer mat in that local tavern; it might never have been written in the first place. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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